Month: July 2018

Authored by Debalina Ghoshal via The Gatestone Institute,

In January, 2018 Turkey reportedly awarded an 18-month contract for a study on the development and production of a long-range air- and missile-defense system to France and Italy, showing — ostensibly — Turkey’s ongoing commitment to NATO. The study, contracted between the EUROSAM consortium and Turkey’s Aselsan and Roketsan companies, was agreed upon in Paris, on the sidelines of a meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The contract for the study came on the heels of a deal between Ankara and Moscow, according to which Turkey would purchase the S-400 missile defense system — one of the most sophisticated on the global market — from Russia.

The question is: Why would Turkey first order a Russian defense system and then turn around and make a cooperation agreement with Europe for the same purpose?

The answer is likely that Ankara is trying to pretend that it is still loyal to NATO, at a time when its strategic inclinations seem to indicate otherwise.

As Turkey is a member of NATO, its decision to opt for the S-400, a non-NATO missile-defense system, has been the subject of speculation and controversy. NATO has adopted the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA), according to which the United States plans to deploy its missile-defense systems in various parts of Europe, to protect its forces and those of other NATO members from Iranian missile attacks. Turkey’s move appears to run counter to the EPAA.

It is also not the first time that Turkey has turned to a non-NATO country for its missile-defense needs. In 2013 — even as the U.S., Germany and The Netherlands sent Patriot missiles to Turkey to protect it from Syrian Scud missiles — Ankara, seeking to procure its own missile-defense system, chose China’s FD-2000. This was of great concern to NATO, which feared that such a deal would make it easier for China to study NATO’s system and develop ballistic missiles that could evade it. Turkey canceled the deal with China in 2015, partly due to U.S. pressure and partly over pricing issues. But then Ankara turned to Russia. To justify its preference of Russia’s S-400s over U.S. Patriot missiles, Turkey said that the U.S. did not allow room for a joint production of the missile-defense system, while the deal with Russia enables co-production of the system.

Pictured: A Russian S-400 missile battery. (Image source: Vitaly Kuzmin/Wikimedia Commons)

 

After the failed coup against Erdogan in July 2016 — when two Turkish military jets reportedly attempted to down the plane transporting him home from vacation — the government became suspicious of its air force and fired several F-16 pilots. This move severely limited Turkey’s air-defense capability; hence, the S-400 deal with Russia. However, according to Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hami Aksoy, “The system we are buying from Russia cannot be integrated into NATO systems.” In other words, as Turkey needs a missile-defense system that can be integrated with the NATO’s — and as NATO will not allow integration of the Russian S-400, for the same reason that it opposed Ankara’s deal over China’s FD-2000 — Ankara turned to Europe.

Beyond that, a deal with EUROSAM would allow Turkey to make the sovereign decision of whether it wishes to integrate the missile-defense system with that of NATO, and would also allow for a joint production of the system — something that Ankara considers imperative.

Furthermore, and perhaps of equal, if not greater, importance, by signing the EUROSAM deal, Turkey is probably trying to persuade NATO that the decision to purchase Russian S-400s was merely a technological and budgetary one, not an indication that Turkey is opposed to NATO weapon systems. This may be its way of preventing its deal with Russia from becoming an obstacle in its path to procuring American F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (JSF), which the U.S. is refusing to provide it, due to its purchase of the S-400s. This goes back to America’s apprehension that if Turkey uses the S-400s along with the F-35s, Russia could gain access to information about the aircraft’s sensitive technology.

If Turkey is playing a double game with NATO, let us hope that the United States does not fall prey to it.

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Scientists from Caltech Astronomy examined the great solar flare of 1990 that occurred in active region NOAA 6063. The eruption and subsequent shockwave were so massive that scientist decided to write a report on their findings titled “Tangential Field Changes in the Great Flare of 1990 May 24.”

The region on the sun gave rise to a dangerous X9.3 flare, which was visible in white light. The flare was observed by several observatories, including the Big Bear Solar Observatory at Caltech.

Shockwave on the sun after solar flare pic.twitter.com/7IA3mwBTNG

— World and Science (@WorldAndScience) June 27, 2018

Solar flares are enormous explosions on the sun that unleash streams of energy, light, and high-speed particles into space. The most dangerous solar flare is known as “X-class flares” based on a classification system that divides solar flares according to their strength.

If Earth faced, the solar flares and associated coronal mass ejection (CME) can create geomagnetic storms that can disable satellites, communications systems, and even ground-based technologies and power grids.

A massive solar storm in April 2017 allegedly interfered with power grids in San Fransisco, New York, and Los Angeles. On both coasts, critical infrastructure such as communication networks and mass transportation were severely impaired.

This was the period when mainstream media blamed the Russians for cyber hacking America.

Meanwhile, in a report from NOAA titled “Geomagnetic Storms and the US Power Grid,” the paper mentions how US power grids are highly interconnected and susceptible to damage from solar flares.

The report shows how the sun produces Geomagnetically Induced Current (GIC) [solar flares] and launches it to the Earth.

When GICs penetrate the Earth’s geomagnetic field, they usually enter transformers in the power grid.

What happens next? Well, GICs blowup transformers and force a terrifying grid-down event.

Even the White House has been preparing for a catastrophic solar storm through a recent 2016 Executive Order titled “Coordinating Efforts to Prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events.”

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta warns about solar storms and its physiological impact on markets.

So, what does this all mean? Like the great solar flare of 1990, scientist and governmental agencies have been fascinated by the sun and its occasional expulsion of energy. Not all solar flares are Earth-facing, but it is only a matter of time before the next big one cripples modern society. Then what?

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Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Democrats have won the national vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, which, with the retirement of Anthony Kennedy, will have resulted in the appointment of eight of the Supreme Court’s nine justices. And yet four of those justices will have been appointed by presidents who took office despite having fewer votes than their opponent. Republicans will have increasingly solid control of the court’s majority, with the chance to replace the sometimes-wavering Kennedy with a never-wavering conservative movement stalwart.

Over the last generation, the Republican Party has moved rapidly rightward, while the center of public opinion has not. It is almost impossible to find a substantive basis in public opinion for Republican government. On health care, taxes, immigration, guns, the GOP has left America behind in its race to the far right. But the Supreme Court underscores its ability to counteract the undertow of its deepening, unpopular extremism by marshaling countermajoritiarian power.

This is the way that the neocon (Hillary Clinton wing) Democrat Jonathan Chait, writing at the Democratic Party propaganda-organ New York magazine, got something profoundly correct, for a change. That quotation opened Chait’s June 27th commentary, which was titled “The Republican Court and the Era of Minority Rule”.

Neoconservatives (otherwise called “America’s imperialists” but they’re basically no different from imperialists in other countries) now run both of America’s political Parties – not only the Republican Party – regardless of what voters might happen to think of the neoconservative philosophy.

This disparity between the non-ideological public and the virtually 100% neoconservative rulers, is due to the fact that voters have no real power in America (something that Chait noted in that excerpt, but only within a partisan Democratic-Party-versus-Republican-Party context, not any broader or more encompassing context, that questions the political and economic system itself — at a deeper level than merely “Democratic” versus “Republican”). By contrast against that powerless public, America’s aristocrats possess all of the power, and they’re imperialists (“neocons”) because they want their private international corporate empires to dominate over the entire world. But this insightful (though too narrowly focused) opening from Chait shows that even neoconservatives (such as he) aren’t always wrong about everything.

In fact, this opening, from a Democratic Party neoconservative, about America’s increasing conservative (Republican) dictatorship, was entirely truthful within its partisan narrow scope, and therefore (to that extent) more like an exemplification of the proverbial “infinite monkey theorem” — that “a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.” 

However, Chait’s ‘Shakespearean’ string ended precisely there, when he immediately followed up that opening statement of his, by saying, “The story really begins in December 2000,” and he proceeded to blame everything on Bush-v.-Gore, and on the way that the Republican operatives raped the American nation on 9 December 2000. This problem of America’s being a dictatorship, however, actually goes far deeper — and farther back — than that Republican Party victory (as will be shown here).

The only comprehensive and scientific study which has ever been done of whether the US is a democracy or instead a dictatorship, was published in 2014, and it found that, “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.”

Consequently, for example, our opinions of “Saddam’s WMD” were simply being manipulated by the controlling owners of US-based international corporations, just as those same super-rich individuals (most of whom are Americans) have controlled whom the nine people will be who rule from the Supreme Court, on what the US Constitution means, and doesn’t mean (and this judicial panel, of course, also decided Bush-v.-Gore).

So: the US Constitution has become increasingly twisted (by such jurists) to ‘mean’ things (such as aristocratic dictatorship) that were loathed by America’s Founders, who actually went to war against Britain’s aristocracy — this Constitution has become increasingly twisted to ‘mean’ things such as creating and expanding an international empire, and as allowing US taxpayers to be forced to subsidize the political speech of some religions and not of other religions, nor of opponents of all religions. (Especially the Republican Party benefits enormously from empowering evangelical pastors to preach Republican propaganda to their congregations.)

According to that scientific study, the United States, during the period that was studied, which extended from 1981 through to 2002, which was virtually the entire twenty years PRIOR to Bush-.v.-Gore — and this is quoting now directly from the study itself: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

So: how does this — the aristocracy’s dictatorial grip on America’s Government — function? Not only the 2000 US Presidential ‘election’ was stolen from the American electorate, but so too are almost all US national elections stolen, especially the crucial ones, such as the political primary elections to Congress and the Presidency, for candidates to become the selected nominees of each of the two political Parties and thus to become offered to the public as the final contestants who might actually win those offices in the US national Government. Just as Bernie Sanders was the most-preferred of all candidates in 2016 to become the US President but the nomination was stolen from him by the Democratic National Committee for Hillary Clinton, it’s the same in most ‘elections’ to American national offices. And this dictatorship by the super-rich didn’t start with Bush.-v.-Gore, such as Chait alleges.

Right now, the US aristocracy, who control all of the large US corporations — including all of the major news-media — are pushing very hard to impose a kind of lock-down against the few media that they don’t control: against the media whose only presence is online, because these small media lack the funding to have either a print-and-paper presence, or else network broadcast and telecast facilities or a cable network.

The way that the ‘news’-giants propagandize this lockdown against unwanted truths, is by calling those small media sites (the half-dozen or so which do publish the elsewhere prohibited truths) ‘fake news’ media, and by alleging that only the print-broadcast-cable ‘news’ media (the very same ‘news’media which had deceived the public in 2002 to fear “Saddam’s WMD” and which had ‘justified’ in 2011 Obama’s destruction of Libya, and his subsequent invasion of Syria) ought to be trusted by the American people. Obviously, that’s crazy, but America’s aristocrats want the public to believe this way.

On June 27th, Gallup reported:

Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation conducted a web-based experiment to assess the effectiveness of a news source rating tool designed to help online news consumers discriminate between real news and misinformation. The tool identifies news organizations as reliable (using a green cue) or unreliable (using a red cue) based on evaluations of their work, funding and other factors by experienced journalists.

The Gallup news-report closed: “Gallup and Knight Foundation acknowledge support for this research provided by the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.” All of them are neoconservative organizations, which represent the interests of America’s billionaires — not of the public anywhere.

The technical report of this experiment concluded that mainstream news-media can increase the public’s prejudice against non-mainstream news-media, by having their own hired “experienced journalists” label those small competing news-media as providers of ‘misinformation’ instead of ‘news’: 

This survey experiment evaluated the effect of a specific source rating tool — cues about news organization trustworthiness based on evaluations from experienced journalists. The findings suggest that using this approach may help combat online misinformation and restore confidence in obtaining quality news.

Of course, this finding is very good news for America’s billionaires, because further suppressing what the aristocrats are calling ‘misinformation’ (such as this) will enable them to increase their dictatorship, even more.

As time goes by, the means of deceiving the public, become even cagier than they were before. The way that the dictatorship in America functions is by deceiving the public; and perhaps this Gallup-Knight-Ford-Gates-Soros study has helped them to develop a more effective “tool” to do that.

Maybe the next big invasion will be of Iran. American-and-allied media seem to be focusing increasingly on this particular target. Perhaps “experienced journalists” are being promoted right now, for that very purpose. With Donald Trump in power, Iran is systematically becoming the main next target. It was his top target even before he became elected; and one can even say that he was selected by the US aristocracy, and by Israel’s aristocracy, and by the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, and by the leader of UAE’s royal families, mainly for this reason, to be installed to run the US regime. But, of course, they would also have done very well if Hillary Clinton had been ‘elected’.

That’s the way things are: politics in America, especially at the national level, is now merely a puppet-show. And, apparently, many if not most of the people who are pulling the strings in it don’t so much as live here — they are foreigners, though of the types that Trump (as now is obvious), relies upon, instead of persecutes (such as ‘wetbacks’).

The American people are merely the audience. We didn’t even buy this puppet-show. Those billionaires did. (The American ones also buy the puppet-theater which presents Russia as being the foreign power that controls the US Government and that ‘endangers democracy’ everywhere. During the communist era, that story-line was believable by even intelligent people, but after 24 February 1990, it no longer is.)

NOTE: The way that the present writer tries to facilitate readers’ checking-out the trustworthiness of the allegations in my own news-reports, isn’t based on sites but on individual news-reports, by means of providing links to the source whenever a given allegation is one that a significant percentage of readers might think to be false. I am selective of each and every individual article or video that I cite as being evidence; I never select sources on the basis of the news-medium that published them, because I sometimes find falsehoods published on even the best media, and sometimes find thoroughly accurate articles or videos to be published on even the worst media. Selecting on the basis of media, is for fools. Every news-consumer should know what the prejudices of any given ‘news’medium are — its main propagandistic orientations. But to evaluate any given allegation on that basis, is foolish. It is ad-hominem, not ad-rem, regarding the given allegation.

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Seattle cops are leaving in droves because they’re “fed up” with Seattle’s policies, according to the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild. 

In a Sunday appearance on Fox & Friends, Guild VP Rich O’Neill said that a “number of issues” are causing Seattle officers to pack up and leave town – opting for jobs elsewhere. At least 41 officers have left the Seattle PD this year. While retired, at least 20 officers left Seattle for other cities and county law enforcement agencies.

O’Neill told Q13 FOX that local officials “are allowing certain crimes to go on without accountability.”

“Worker bees on the street, they don’t feel appreciated. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” another source within the Seattle PD told Q13 Fox.

Also at issue is a lack of pay raises throughout the department in over four years – despite Seattle’s economy “booming,” while officers are complaining that more money is being invested in social programs. 

Officers complain they’ve been working without a contract for more than three years. The negotiations are ongoing with meetings taking place, but there’s still distance between what the city wants and what officers find acceptable. And due to the confidentiality of the process, the public doesn’t know how far apart the sides are. We do know one sticking point is pay and the process is complex and multifaceted.

Repeatedly, officers have complained to me about unsatisfactory pay, which they don’t believe has kept up with the cost of living. Indeed, some officers are leaving because they can’t afford to live in the very city they police. –Mynorthwest.com

“The number of officers on the street [is] pretty much the same as the 1970s, which is just alarming,” said O’Neill. 

The city’s liberal stance on the homeless population and drug use is another issue for Seattle cops.

[T]here are many homeless citizen “encampments” and tents and “open-air drug markets” on the streets.

“It’s just like lawlessness,” he said. “As our officers encounter them they don’t want shelter, they don’t want help.“

“They want to live there where they can have their guns and their drugs and their needles and just not be bothered.” –Fox

It also doesn’t help that two city council members have been highly critical of law enforcement – with one calling two police officers murderers.

Officers are growing tired of the constant barrage of negativity from councilmembers like Kshama Sawant, Mike O’Brien, and Lorena Gonzalez. In exit interviews with the SPD, some officers noted Seattle politics played a role.

Sawant’s name came up in nearly every conversation I’ve had for this story — none of it positive. No stranger to controversy, Sawant is currently the subject of a defamation lawsuit after claiming two officers committed a “brutal murder” when they shot and killed convicted felon Che Taylor. Taylor was reaching for a gun when he was shot and the officers were cleared by an internal review board. –Mynorthwest.com

“[Officers] came to help people and we help people all the time, but we don’t talk about that,” argued Stuckey. “If you make a mistake, we’ll put your name in the paper, pull every mistake you ever made, and beat you down so you can’t work anywhere else, take away your livelihood, if we don’t like your mistake. Tell me another profession that treats people like that?”

“Not only do they not support the police, but they villainize us,” one officer explained to journalist Jason Rantz. “Sawant, in no way shape or form, should she make a comment on something she doesn’t understand.”

“I live here. This is where I call home,” said Officer’s Guild president Kevin Stuckey. “I just recently visited some other cities; Minneapolis. Madison, WI. These are beautiful cities. Ours used to be beautiful, too. Seattle isn’t beautiful anymore and I see no one making it beautiful again. If I was ten to fifteen years younger, I’d look to move somewhere else, too, if I’m being honest. I hope that we’ll be able to fix this situation…”

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Authored by Benny Johnson via The Daily Caller,

High-profile members of America’s media and political circles have used amplified, irresponsible rhetoric to describe President Trump’s immigration detainment policies. Terminology from Nazi Germany is now regularly used to describe American immigration policy in the public arena. Many have likened illegal alien detainment facilities on the Southern border to “concentration camps,” referred to Trump as a “Nazi” or “Hitler” and call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents the “Gestapo.”

Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal likened America’s zero tolerance immigration policy to the “cattle cars of Nazi Germany.” Many pundits and politicians have echoed the sentiment.

David Tuck was born in Poland in 1929. He was enslaved by the Nazis and survived multiple concentration camps. In the wake of pundits and politicians comparing illegal immigrant detainment facilities in modern day America to Nazi concentration camps, Tuck felt compelled to speak out.

Today, Tuck has a message for those comparing American illegal immigrant detainment facilities to the Holocaust.

“They know nothing of the Holocaust,” Tuck says. “Grow up. You can’t compare. Every time I hear it, it’s sickening.”

“Wake up,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller. “This is not the Holocaust.”

WATCH:

As the Daily Caller previously reported:

When he was 10 years old, the Nazis invaded his country. They marched through his neighborhood, identifying Jews. David had a golden Star of David sewn to his clothes and was moved to a ghetto.

In 1941, David was deported to Posen, a Nazi labor camp in Poland, to work as a slave. In 1943, David was once again deported, this time to Auschwitz, where he was forced to build anti-aircraft guns. In 1945, David was deported a third time to the Mauthausen labor camp. He nearly died on the trip from the horrible cold.

David was deported once more to the Nazi military labor camp, Güsen II, where he was required to build German aircrafts. When the Americans liberated his camp, David weighed 78 pounds.

Tuck immigrated to America after being liberated.

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Washington’s so-called allies continue to gravitate towards the Russian sphere of influence, and specifically the Russian S-400 Triumph advanced anti-aircraft weapon system.

First it was Turkey, which openly defied Trump’s threats that the US would sanction Ankara if it completes the purchase of the anti-aircraft missiles, saying the acquisition of the missile defense system is “a done deal and Turkey will not turn back from its decision.”

Now India is also moving towards acquiring five or more S-400 from Russia despite the threat of US retaliation. The Defense Acquisitions Council (DAC), chaired by minister Nirmala Sitharaman, last week approved the “minor deviations” in the $5.7 billion deal to purchase S-400s for final government approval, to the finance ministry and the Prime Minister’s office sources told the Times of India.

The DAC discussed the S-400 deal just one day after Washington on Wednesday canceled a “two-plus-two” discussion involving foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and defense minister Sitharaman and Washington officials Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis, which was scheduled for July 6.

The Times of India noted that in October 2015, India had planned to procure the S-400s – which can detect, track and destroy supersonic bombers, drones, fifth-generation fighters, spy planes, and supersonic missiles at a range of up to 400km and altitude of 30km – in what many Indian officials have praised as a game-changing military acquisition.

The world’s leading Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems are Patriot Advanced Capability-3, THAAD, S-400 Triumph and S-500. India has big ambitions for regional dominance and has been attempting to develop a domestic BMD system over the last several decades.

And while Washington officials briefed India on the use of Patriot system, it seems that the country is more interesting in purchasing Russian made BMDs instead.  The New York Times reported in April that the Indian/Russian deal serves as a blow to the United States’ ”struggling Patriot missile defense system.”

“India wasn’t very impressed with the Patriot compared with the S-400, which wins hands-down in capability, in its availability, service availability. It’s a more efficient system,” it cited Rahul Bedi of Jane’s Information Group as saying.

Petr Topychkanov, a senior researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Centre’s Non-Proliferation Programme, says “despite heavy investments in developing anti-ballistic missile systems, India may not be able to fully defend itself in a conflict from strikes by Pakistani missiles.”

India and Russia have worked on a plan to beat the financial sanctions called CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act) that attempts to prevent countries from purchasing Russian weapons.

“The acquisition of this technology will limit, I am afraid, the degree with which the United States will feel comfortable in bringing additional technology into whatever country we are talking about,” US armed services committee chairman Mac Thornberry said back in May, noting that there is also concern that “any country that acquires the system [S-400] will complicate the ability of interoperability” with US forces.

It seems as the plan for the Indian government is to fully integrate the S-400 system with the Indian Air Force’s air defense network called IACCS (integrated air command and control system), which could provide an umbrella of air defense support and serve as a deterrent against Pakistan. To complicate matters, China has also acquired S-400 batteries and Saudi Arabia has also been reported to consider a purchase. Meanwhile, Washington’s influence even among US allies in the East is waning fast.

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Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

For several months, now, there has been a steadily growing focus on the U.S.’s implementation of increased border patrols, the creation of a permanent fence or divider on the border, and the question of illegal aliens. The president has taken a firm and unyielding stance. On June 25, AP was quoted as reporting “President Donald Trump on Sunday compared people entering the U.S. from Mexico to invaders and said they should be back without appearing before a judge.”

The president was quoted as saying, “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our country. Our immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting [in] line for years! Immigration must be based on merit – we need people who will help to Make America Great Again!”

Absolutely right: they are illegal aliens, and as they are crossing the border illegally without citizenship, they are foreign, non-citizens – aliens, by definition.

The stance of the ACLU, the Democratic Party, and other communist organizations are just such: communist platforms that are evident within Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” Van Jones’ “Top Down, Bottom Up,” principle, and the pseudo-heartfelt “welcome” to the illegals from lifelong party operatives such as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer. In the manner of the “open dams” in Europe, allowing the floodgates to open up with Muslims and destroy the European nations from within, the Democrats, communist-sympathizing domestic corporations (globalist and communist are interchangeable), and the “entitlement nation” of citizen-sheeple are pushing hard to make that happen here.

From a technical standpoint, not only are they illegal aliens, but also they are invaders, just as the president stated, and that by their own admission. In the words of the Mexicans who are proponents of “La Reconquista,” the entire southwest and half of California “belongs” to the Mexicans. The exact percentage is unknown: polls of this nature are not taken, and if they were, the results would be discounted or labeled as “racist” in the manner of “The Bell Curve,” released in the mid 1990’s with amazing statistical analyses.

The majority of these “Reconquistadores” truly believe that with a combination of illegal incursions, the drug cartels, and eventually the support of the Mexican government, that the territory ceded to the U.S. in and surrounding the war with Mexico will be reclaimed and renamed Aztlan. Tens of millions have already crossed, and the majority of these illegal aliens brought that philosophy with them: thus, they are illegal aliens, and this is an invasion.

Complicit with that invasion are the politicians in the United States and the moneyed interests, lobbyists, and corporations who set up and pay the politicians’ “second retirement fund,” as in the “Clinton Foundation,” the most massive presidential money-laundering operation carried out by a former president, his family, and his network. The corporations have paid these politicians to look the other way and make it easier for illegal aliens to work in this country under the table. President Reagan had a big hand in triggering this “amnesty” mind-set with his policies that did not enforce border security or crackdowns on corporations employing illegal aliens outside of the tax-format of society.

President Trump is doing the right thing. He is setting the wheels in motion for a no-tolerance policy for illegal entry into the United States. He is fulfilling his job as the Commander-in-Chief by dealing with the border and protecting the interests of U.S. citizens as provided within the Constitution.

Time Magazine’s June 25 edition has an article entitled “A parent’s nightmare at the U.S. border.” The article is a perfect characterization of the Left’s demonization of any…any…upholding of U.S. laws relating to border control. The article uses “A young Honduran woman named Miriam” and her “18 month-old son” that she carried in her arms and walked across the border with, on grounds of “asking for asylum.”

The author’s name is Haley Sweetland Edwards (go figure), and it painted a picture of the struggling, valiant young mother and her infant son against the evils of the U.S. government who wouldn’t just let her walk across. Asylum? Viktor Belenko was granted asylum back in ’74 when he flew a MiG, the “Foxbat” to Japan and defected from the USSR. That’s a case for asylum. Haley Sweetland Edwards, you just walk across the Mexican border asking for “asylum,” and see what they do to you there, or in any other country for that matter.

The mindset is this: you give your money, open your homes, and you let them into the borders…but just don’t give them my things: that is the liberal mindset in a nutshell. Liberals are always generous with things that don’t belong to them, generous with anything that doesn’t come directly out of their pockets or bank accounts.

The irony: it does, because indirectly these illegal aliens are responsible for making their taxes rise, making their wait time in an emergency room double, and is adding to the cost of goods and services in the U.S. across the board. The illegals take jobs out of the hands of American citizens and devalue your own money, liberals, by allowing an outflow of cash that increases the balance of payments for the U.S. and undermines the economy. The president is looking out for the interests of the United States and her citizens, bottom line.  July 2 of Time Magazine’s cover has a picture of the president looking down at a crying Latino child, with the caption, “Welcome to America.”

Let’s take an investigative look at this and find out who the staff at Time is and how many of them have an interest either politically or economically or both – of allowing illegal aliens to cross the border with no restrictions. The American media is one of the vilest, most evil, most despicable institutions that has ever existed on the planet. The crimes that have been committed with their blessings make them nothing less than complicit in their commissions.

And regarding that Time issue? They don’t have a page that lists the editor-in-chief, the editorial staff, and the photographers: the anonymity to protect operatives of the communist party, card-carrying or otherwise. “Pravda” or “Izvestya” is a better title for those fawning communist-syndicated AP parrots.

Omitted are the details of the gang-bangers and narcotrafficantes, and the challenges the Border Patrol faced within the administration that was supposed to support it. Omitted are the crimes committed…murders of U.S. citizens…after these illegal aliens have been let out of detention. Fast and Furious and a dead border patrol agent was under Obama’s watch, and these detention camps that are just now coming to the forefront of the media’s camera lenses? They all sprung up during Obama’s tenure, not under the current administration.

In Europe, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and now Italy are taking a stand and stemming the inflow of illegal aliens into their countries. The United States has the chance to do the same. The globalists cannot win unless they completely collapse nations from within and destroy and devalue the borders, language, religion, economy, and culture. They’re using mass migrations (illegal aliens) to accomplish this. In order for the president to succeed, he needs the support of the Congress and American people to stem the tide of illegal aliens into the United States.

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Authored by Tom Luongo,

Populism is popular.  Andrés Manuel López Obrador won yesterday’s election in Mexico with enough of the vote to have a clear legislative majority in the lower house.

Most of the commentary on this is fatuous.  The right wants to harp on Obrador’s past statements about the corruption in Mexico is so bad that Mexicans should seek a better life in the U.S.

The U.S. establishment derides his and his proposals as unrealistic and unworkable, which they may well be as the corruption in Mexico runs deep.  But, that said, the main reason they don’t like Obrador is because he is an outsider to the political establishment and the ruling caste of Mexico.

Martin Armstrong’s conclusions may well be right that Obrador can’t fight the tide in the short run.

He will raise taxes dramatically and we will see Mexico spiral downward into 2020. He is ill-prepared to get rid the government of corruption when the bureacracy is the problem. In fact, many who were deeply involved in the corruption saw the shifting trends and were a part of Obrador’s campaign. It is also not likely that he will make a dent in the unyielding violence of the drug war. The people are fed up with the drug wars which has escalated out of control. There were more homicides last year in Mexico than any time in the last two decades.

But the Drug War is the big issue here.  And I don’t think in any way that it is in Obrador’s power to change it.  That power lies with the U.S. president, Donald Trump.

And if you look carefully at Trump he has been attacking the Drug War and the entrenched power in the U.S. which supports it, albeit outside of the main headlines.

His focus on immigration and the opioid crisis is real.  It is aimed at staunching the flow of immigrants into the U.S. which was a fully-blessed policy of the Obama administration to turn the important red states — Texas, Florida, Arizona — blue.

He’s allowing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to attack the Drug War through the human trafficking angle which is the right way to keep the center of the country on his side while the Democrats fulminate and try to turn this into a humanitarian crisis.

And it’s simply not working.  At all.

The polling numbers are stark.  Trump’s approval rating is soaring.  His numbers among blacks and hispanics are at levels a Republican hasn’t seen in decades. The #walkaway movement is going viral.

By allowing the Left to immolate themselves by trying to turn every issue he tackles into a negative Trump is setting the stage for a post-mid-term ratcheting up of his domestic policy agenda.

And, I think, he’ll get a very sympathetic ear from Obrador on marijuana legalization.  Trump has already begun the about-face about legalizing cannabis.  Back in April he unilaterally abandoned the federal policy on a crackdown on recreational cannabis use, removing the inter-governmental stress between federal and state law.

President Trump personally directed the abrupt retreat, which came at the behest of Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado. White House officials confirmed the policy shift Friday. Trump did not inform Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions in advance of the change in policy, an almost unheard of undermining of a Cabinet official.

Gardner was incensed in January when the Justice Department announced that it was rescinding an Obama-era policy that directed federal prosecutors not to target marijuana businesses that operate legally under state law. The senator had blocked Justice Department nominees in retaliation.

And he told Jeff Sessions to stuff his outdated and insane ideas about pot and shove them.  But, now is not the time to spend one erg of political capital on cannabis legalization.   Not when there are so many other things that are pressing geopolitically.

But, looking ahead past the mid-terms and giving Obrador some time to get settled into the office, Trump will be able to revisit this issue and clean up a number of dangling issues.

He can’t fire Sessions until after he gets a real majority in the Senate, not the fake one he has today.  If that occurs, and the odds are very good (c.f. the Democrats’ implosion above), then he’ll be able to get someone on his side through the confirmation process.

And you can bet a lot that cannabis legalization will be something the Democrats try to pin any AG candidate on.

And, back to Obrador, there is not one thing holding back a successful shift in Mexico’s future than a coordinated attack on the drug cartels’ power.

And what better way to start than legalizing cannabis?

So, today marks the possibility of a new era in relations between the U.S. and Mexico.  One where two outsiders can coordinate policy to attack the core issues creating tension.  My wife visited Mexico last year as part of a scouting trip in case we decide to ex-patriate.

And it’s very clear Trump is not popular with most Mexicans, and with good reason.  But, at the same time if he embraces Obrador’s reform plan and supports him then that attitude could change very quickly.

In the short-term, however, markets will react badly to all of this.  The Peso will continue falling as global trade collapses thanks to Trump’s war on the European Union.  No emerging market will be spared.  But, that also means there will be quite the opportunity opening up in 2019-2020 if Obrador is truly as advertised and Trump has created the power base he needs.

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Whether or not the PBOC finally decided to show the US it means business with the “weaponized” Yuan, but moments after today’s PBOC yuan fixing, which dropped against the dollar by a whopping 340 pips to 6.6497 from 6.6157, which while slightly lower than expected, still sent the offshore yuan tumbling, with the selloff accelerating as the currency took out one large figure after another, eventually crossing what until now had been seen as a key support level at 6.70, then quickly shooting lower and dropping as low as 6.73.

As shown in the chart above, the offshore Yuan has suffered a 10 handle drop in the span of 24 hours, an unheard of move either during the Chinese devaluation phase in the summer of 2015, or the subsequent capital outflow panic in early 2016.

As we noted this morning, yesterday PMI showed that growth momentum in the country is softening, while new export orders slumped into contraction as China’s growth dynamo suddenly goes into reverse. 

And while there are still those naive “experts” who claim that the Yuan move is not in response to Trump’s trade war, or even more laughably that 2018 is in no way like 2015 (for JPM’s explanation why 2018 could be far worse than 2015, read this), the next chart makes it quite clear what Beijing is doing to “punish” the Trump administration.

Some have suggested that China began in early April to allow the Yuan to weaken against the USD (but not against the rest of their trading partners), but in the last few days they have lost control.

The sharp drop is in line with our observations earlier today, which noted that one way or another, both the USDCNH, and Yuan vol, are set to spike in the near term. Now it turns out the near term was even nearer than we thought. This is what we said:

will China, whose currency just had its worst month in history, seek to devalue even more aggressively? Until now China has appeared to take a view that the last thing it needs is to interject CNY weakness into the equation and complicate negotiations with the US. However, the recent price action itself suggests this resolve to keep USD/CNY stable is weakening.

Worse, with the Yuan plunging, Yuan vol is surging, which in turn creates a feedback loop resulting in even more selling, leading to even more vol and so on:

The market is taking a view that China will make sure that USD/CNY is not going to intercede in ongoing negotiations with the US that will straddle the Congressional mid-term elections. However, for a currency pair that has moved from 6.38 to 6.65 since mid-June, vol still looks extraordinary low.

Well, we can now make it 6.73, as the collapse in the Yuan is accelerating.

And now we sit back patiently until Peter Navarro spots what is going on in the FX market, and how China’s stealth devaluation is no longer stealthy and tells Trump all about it, leading to the next serious of escalating trade war outbursts.

Meanwhile, expect more fireworks: the week’s key date is Friday, July 6 when 25% tariffs totaling $34 billion go into effect against Chinese exports. We already know one way that Beijing will retaliate.

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China’s newly announced ZKZM-500 laser assault rifle is able to “burn through clothes in a split second… If the fabric is flammable, the whole person will be set on fire. The pain will be beyond endurance,” according to a Chinese weapons expert cited in a bombshell South China Morning Post report.

News of this latest handheld directed energy weapon, described as a “laser AK-47” is now going viral as its claimed capabilities are jaw-dropping, foremost being that it can ignite materials from a half-mile away, and that it can cause the “instant carbonisation” of human skin and tissues.

But some in the US military and veteran community are already calling bullshit as the report appears but the latest in the tit-for-tat propaganda war with the Pentagon over advanced military tech. 

Here are further ZKZM-500’s capabilities, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) exclusive:

• The portable laser weapon’s energy beam cannot be seen by the naked eye, and the device makes no sound, and if concentrated for multiple bursts can set fire to a target from nearly a kilometer away.
• It’s ready for mass production based on the prototype built by Xian-based ZKZM Laser, and though officially billed as “non-lethal” (merely indicating its lethal applications are less immediate than regular firearms) will be strictly controlled by the Chinese government, with use by anti-terror squads in the Chinese Armed Police.
• Powered by a rechargeable lithium battery pack akin to those found in smartphones and can fire more than 1,000 bursts with each lasting about two seconds.
• The laser has been tuned to an invisible frequency, thus “nobody will know where the attack came from. It will look like an accident,” a researcher cited in the report said. 
• The report notes that “The lasers cannot kill a target with a single shot, but if fired at a person for long enough the weapons would start to burn a hole in their body, cutting through them like a surgical knife.”
• It is now ready for mass production and the first units are likely to be given to anti-terrorism squads in the Chinese Armed Police, who would have the capability to “carbonize” a living person.
• The laser can be easily mounted on cars, boats and planes, or can be a handheld tactical weapon, as it weights only three kilos (6.6lb), about the same as an AK-47.
• It marks a huge advance over the most recent laser “machine gun” announced by Chengdu Hengan Police Equipment Manufacturing company only last month, which can purportedly fire up to 500 meters, compared to the new weapon’s 800 meters and greater power.

What could go wrong? The SCMP report assures that “Given their potential for misuse, the design and production of the devices will be tightly monitored and the only customers will be China’s military and police.”

There are currently no international or UN-enforced bans on such advanced technology, only the UN Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, signed in 1980, which focuses on older technology that could cause loss of eyesight if used against aircraft or ships. 

The report further envisions the ZKZM-500’s use in both covert operations and police hostage situations: “it could be used to fire through windows at targets and temporarily disable the kidnappers while other units move in to rescue their captives,” and further: “It could also be used in covert military operations. The beam is powerful enough to burn through a gas tank and ignite the fuel storage facility in a military airport.”

However, the military website Task & Purpose says the dubious SCMP report is “probably bullshit” while identifying a number of the claims as highly suspect based on what’s currently known about laser technology. 

Task & Purpose lists the following problematic examples: 

• Range and weight are described, but the actual power system is not. Sure, anyone can claim OPSEC here, but it is hard to believe that the Chinese engineered a powerful-enough directed energy beam that can torch enemies from a half-mile away without being refracted by environmental factors like dust or fog — all with “a rechargeable lithium battery pack similar to those found in smartphones.”
• The author of the story refers to this boxy piece of shit as a “15mm caliber weapon.” I didn’t realize laser weapons had caliber? Oh wait, they don’t.
• The South China Morning Post isn’t state-run media (it’s owned by the Alibaba Group), but the story does come amid reported progress in the Chinese military’s electromagnetic railgun program. This one-two punch of groundbreaking directed energy weapon news — an area where the United States has lagged in recent years — suggest the ZKZM-500 update could just be another piece of science fiction propaganda designed to rankle the Pentagon.
• Last point: Heat-based weapons are usually bullshit. Consider, for example, the time T&P Pentagon correspondent Jeff Schogol stood directly in front of a non-lethal Active Denial System meant for crowd control and didn’t even break a sweat. Sure, lasers have come a long way since 2007, but this far? I doubt it.

And given all that’s claimed about the weapon, the price tag floated in the report seems quite economical given that enemies could be “carbonized” from afar without any hint of where the shot came from. The SCMP report lists “large-scale production at a cost of 100,000 yuan (US$15,000) a unit” — which again is not bad for such a sci-fi weapon that makes its possessor pretty much all-powerful in the face of conventional weapons. 

Public disclosure of the weapon first appeared via a technical document published on a government-run website, the Public Service Platform for National Civil-Military Integration, which listed possible applications as countering “illegal protests” by setting fire to banners from a long distance or that protest leaders could be targeted by setting fire to their clothing or hair which, the document says, would mean they lose “the rhythms of their speech and powers of persuasion”.

While we are also skeptical concerning some of the claims surrounding this latest Chinese laser gun, and await proof of its capabilities through an official field test video, it doesn’t actually seem so far outside the realm of possibility considering what can now be built in a garage.

In 2015 Military.com covered the story of an American teenager who built a “laser shotgun” in his garage and demonstrated it could light things on fire from meters away.  If this was accomplished three years ago by industrious American kids in garages, imagine what the Chinese military-industrial complex can do. So there is probably reason to be concerned.

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