Month: September 2018

Authored by Victor Davis Johnson via NationalReview.com,

Truth, due process, evidence, rights of the accused: All are swept aside in pursuit of the progressive agenda.  

George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is no longer fiction. We are living it right now.

Google techies planned to massage Internet searches to emphasize correct thinking. A member of the so-called deep state, in an anonymous op-ed, brags that its “resistance” is undermining an elected president. The FBI, CIA, DOJ, and NSC were all weaponized in 2016 to ensure that the proper president would be elected — the choice adjudicated by properly progressive ideology. Wearing a wire is now redefined as simply flipping on an iPhone and recording your boss, boy- or girlfriend, or co-workers.

But never has the reality that we are living in a surreal age been clearer than during the strange cycles of Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

In Orwell’s world of 1984 Oceania, there is no longer a sense of due process, free inquiry, rules of evidence and cross examination, much less a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Instead, regimented ideology — the supremacy of state power to control all aspects of one’s life to enforce a fossilized idea of mandated quality — warps everything from the use of language to private life.

Oceania’s Rules

Senator Diane Feinstein and the other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had long sought to destroy the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. Much of their paradoxical furor over his nomination arises from the boomeranging of their own past political blunders, such as when Democrats ended the filibuster on judicial nominations, in 2013. They also canonized the so-called 1992 Biden Rule, which holds that the Senate should not consider confirming the Supreme Court nomination of a lame-duck president (e.g., George H. W. Bush) in an election year.

Rejecting Kavanaugh proved a hard task given that he had a long record of judicial opinions and writings — and there was nothing much in them that would indicate anything but a sharp mind, much less any ideological, racial, or sexual intolerance. His personal life was impeccable, his family admirable.

Kavanaugh was no combative Robert Bork, but congenial, and he patiently answered all the questions asked of him, despite constant demonstrations and pre-planned street-theater interruptions from the Senate gallery and often obnoxious grandstanding by “I am Spartacus” Democratic senators.

So Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed unless a bombshell revelation derailed the vote. And so we got a bombshell.

Weeks earlier, Senator Diane Feinstein had received a written allegation against Kavanaugh of sexual battery by an accuser who wished to remain anonymous. Feinstein sat on it for nearly two months, probably because she thought the charges were either spurious or unprovable. Until a few days ago, she mysteriously refused to release the full text of the redacted complaint, and she has said she does not know whether the very accusations that she purveyed are believable. Was she reluctant to memorialize the accusations by formally submitting them  to the Senate Judiciary Committee, because doing so makes Ford subject to possible criminal liability if the charges prove demonstrably untrue?

The gambit was clearly to use the charges as a last-chance effort to stop the nomination — but only if Kavanaugh survived the cross examinations during the confirmation hearing. Then, in extremis, Feinstein finally referenced the charge, hoping to keep it anonymous, but, at the same time, to hint of its serious nature and thereby to force a delay in the confirmation. Think something McCarthesque, like “I have here in my hand the name . . .”

Delay would mean that the confirmation vote could be put off until after the midterm election, and a few jeopardized Democratic senators in Trump states would not have to go on record voting no on Kavanaugh. Or the insidious innuendos, rumor, and gossip about Kavanaugh would help to bleed him to death by a thousand leaks and, by association, tank Republican chances at retaining the House. (Republicans may or may not lose the House over the confirmation circus, but they most surely will lose their base and, with it, the Congress if they do not confirm Kavanaugh.)

Feinstein’s anonymous trick did not work. So pressure mounted to reveal or leak Ford’s identity and thereby force an Anita-Hill–like inquest that might at least show old white men Republican senators as insensitive to a vulnerable and victimized woman.

The problem, of course, was that, under traditional notions of jurisprudence, Ford’s allegations simply were not provable. But America soon discovered that civic and government norms no longer follow the Western legal tradition. In Orwellian terms, Kavanaugh was now at the mercy of the state. He was tagged with sexual battery at first by an anonymous accuser, and then upon revelation of her identity, by a left-wing, political activist psychology professor and her more left-wing, more politically active lawyer.

Newspeak and Doublethink

Statue of limitations? It does not exist. An incident 36 years ago apparently is as fresh today as it was when Kavanaugh was 17 and Ford 15.

Presumption of Innocence? Not at all. Kavanaugh is accused and thereby guilty. The accuser faces no doubt. In Orwellian America, the accused must first present his defense, even though he does not quite know what he is being charged with. Then the accuser and her legal team pour over his testimony to prepare her accusation.

Evidence? That too is a fossilized concept. Ford could name neither the location of the alleged assault nor the date or time. She had no idea how she arrived or left the scene of the alleged crime. There is no physical evidence of an attack. And such lacunae in her memory mattered no longer at all.

Details? Again, such notions are counterrevolutionary. Ford said to her therapist 6 years ago (30 years after the alleged incident) that there were four would-be attackers, at least as recorded in the therapist’s notes.

But now she has claimed that there were only two assaulters: Kavanaugh and a friend. In truth, all four people — now including a female — named in her accusations as either assaulters or witnesses have insisted that they have no knowledge of the event, much less of wrongdoing wherever and whenever Ford claims the act took place. That they deny knowledge is at times used as proof by Ford’s lawyers that the event 36 years was traumatic.

An incident at 15 is so seared into her lifelong memory that at 52 Ford has no memory of any of the events or details surrounding that unnamed day, except that she is positive that 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, along with four? three? two? others, was harassing her. She has no idea where or when she was assaulted but still assures that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were drunk, but that she and the others (?) merely had only the proverbial teenage “one beer.” Most people are more likely to know where they were at a party than the exact number of alcoholic beverages they consumed — but not so much about either after 36 years.

Testimony? No longer relevant. It doesn’t matter that Kavanaugh and the other alleged suspect both deny the allegations and have no memory of being in the same locale with Ford 36 years ago. In sum, all the supposed partiers, both male and female, now swear, under penalty of felony, that they have no memory of any of the incidents that Ford claims occurred so long ago. That Ford cannot produce a single witness to confirm her narrative or refute theirs is likewise of no concern. So far, she has singularly not submitted a formal affidavit or given a deposition that would be subject to legal exposure if untrue.

Again, the ideological trumps the empirical. “All women must be believed” is the testament, and individuals bow to the collective. Except, as in Orwell’s Animal Farm, there are ideological exceptions — such as Bill Clinton, Keith Ellison, Sherrod Brown, and Joe Biden. The slogan of Ford’s psychodrama is “All women must be believed, but some women are more believable than others.” That an assertion becomes fact due to the prevailing ideology and gender of the accuser marks the destruction of our entire system of justice.

Rights of the accused? They too do not exist. In the American version of 1984, the accuser, a.k.a. the more ideologically correct party, dictates to authorities the circumstances under which she will be investigated and cross-examined: She will demand all sorts of special considerations of privacy and exemptions; Kavanaugh will be forced to return and face cameras and the public to prove that he was not then, and has never been since, a sexual assaulter.

In our 1984 world, the accused is considered guilty if merely charged, and the accuser is a victim who can ruin a life but must not under any circumstance be made uncomfortable in proving her charges.

Doublespeak abounds. “Victim” solely refers to the accuser, not the accused, who one day was Brett Kavanaugh, a brilliant jurist and model citizen, and the next morning woke up transformed into some sort of Kafkaesque cockroach. The media and political operatives went in a nanosecond from charging that she was groped and “assaulted” to the claim that she was “raped.”

In our 1984, the phrase “must be believed” is doublespeak for “must never face cross-examination.”

Ford should be believed or not believed on the basis of evidence, not her position, gender, or politics. I certainly did not believe Joe Biden, simply because he was a U.S. senator, when, as Neal Kinnock’s doppelganger, he claimed that he came from a long line of coal miners — any more than I believed that Senator Corey Booker really had a gang-banger Socratic confidant named “T-Bone,” or that would-be senator Richard Blumenthal was an anguished Vietnam combat vet or that Senator Elizabeth Warren was a Native American. (Do we need a 25th Amendment for unhinged senators?) Wanting to believe something from someone who is ideologically correct does not translate into confirmation of truth.

Ford supposedly in her originally anonymous accusation had insisted that she had sought “medical treatment” for her assault. The natural assumption is that such a term would mean that, soon after the attack, the victim sought a doctor’s or emergency room’s help to address either her physical or mental injuries — records might therefore be a powerful refutation of Kavanaugh’s denials.

But “medical treatment” now means that 30 years after the alleged assault, Ford sought counseling for some sort of “relationship” or “companion” therapy, or what might legitimately be termed “marriage counseling.” And in the course of her discussions with her therapist about her marriage, she first spoke of her alleged assault three decades earlier. She did not then name Kavanaugh to her therapist, whose notes are at odds with Ford’s current version.

Memory Holes

Then we come to Orwell’s idea of “memory holes,” or mechanisms to wipe clean inconvenient facts that disrupt official ideological narratives.

Shortly after Ford was named, suddenly her prior well-publicized and self-referential social-media revelations vanished, as if she’d never held her minor-league but confident pro-Sanders, anti-Trump opinions. And much of her media and social-media accounts were erased as well.

Similarly, one moment the New York Times — just coming off an embarrassing lie in reporting that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had ordered new $50,000 office drapes on the government dime — reported that Kavanaugh’s alleged accomplice, Mark Judge, had confirmed Ford’s allegation. Indeed, in a sensational scoop, according to the Times, Judge told the Judiciary Committee that he does remember the episode and has nothing more to say. In fact, Judge told the committee the very opposite: that he does not remember the episode. Forty minutes later, the Times embarrassing narrative vanished down the memory hole.

The online versions of some of the yearbooks of Ford’s high school from the early 1980s vanished as well. At times, they had seemed to take a perverse pride in the reputation of the all-girls school for underage drinking, carousing, and, on rarer occasions, “passing out” at parties. Such activities were supposed to be the monopoly and condemnatory landscape of the “frat boy” and spoiled-white-kid Kavanaugh — and certainly not the environment in which the noble Ford navigated. Seventeen-year-old Kavanaugh was to play the role of a falling-down drunk; Ford, with impressive powers of memory of an event 36 years past, assures us that as a circumspect 15-year-old, she had only “one beer.”

A former teenage friend of Ford’s sent out a flurry of social-media postings, allegedly confirming that Ford’s ordeal was well known to her friends in 1982 and so her assault narrative must therefore be confirmed. Then, when challenged on some of her incoherent details (schools are not in session during summertime, and Ford is on record as not telling anyone of the incident for 30 years), she mysteriously claimed that she no longer could stand by her earlier assertions, which likewise soon vanished from her social-media account. Apparently, she had assumed that in 2018 Oceania ideologically correct citizens merely needed to lodge an accusation and it would be believed, without any obligation on her part to substantiate her charges.

When a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, followed Ford seven days later to allege another sexual incident with the teenage Kavanaugh, at Yale 35 years ago, it was no surprise that she followed the now normal Orwellian boilerplate: None of those whom she named as witnesses could either confirm her charges or even remember the alleged event. She had altered her narrative after consultations with lawyers and handlers. She too confesses to underage drinking during the alleged event. She too is currently a social and progressive political activist. The only difference from Ford’s narrative is that Ramirez’s accusation was deemed not credible enough to be reported even by the New York Times, which recently retracted false stories about witness Mark Judge in the Ford case, and which falsely reported that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had charged the government for $50,000 office drapes.

As in 1984, “truths” in these sorts of allegations do not exist unless they align with the larger “Truth” of the progressive project. In our case, the overarching Truth mandates that, in a supposedly misogynist society, women must always be believed in all their accusations and should be exempt from all counter-examinations.

Little “truths” — such as the right of the accused, the need to produce evidence, insistence on cross-examination, and due process — are counterrevolutionary constructs and the refuge of reactionary hold-outs who are enemies of the people. Or in the words of Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono:

Guess who’s perpetuating all of these kinds of actions? It’s the men in this country. And I just want to say to the men in this country, “Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing, for a change.”

The View’s Joy Behar was more honest about the larger Truth: “These white men, old by the way, are not protecting women,” Behar exclaimed. “They’re protecting a man who is probably guilty.” We thank Behar for the concession “probably.”

According to some polls, about half the country believes that Brett Kavanaugh is now guilty of a crime committed 36 years ago at the age of 17. And that reality reminds us that we are no longer in America. We are already living well into the socialist totalitarian Hell that Orwell warned us about long ago.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2NGPQ9d Tyler Durden

On Wednesday at 2PM, the FOMC will publish its September rate decision and economic projections, followed at 2:30PM ET by Chair Powell’s press conference. With a 25bps rate hike priced in, attention will be the on December 2018 meeting, as well as the 2019 “dots”, where the risk is that the median dot may fall given several new dovish participants making projections. This will also be the first FOMC forecast that includes 2021.

While there will hardly be any bombshells tomorrow, here’s what to expect, courtesy of RanSquawk:

RATES: The FOMC is expected to lift rates by 25bps to 2.00-2.25% at its September meeting, which would be the third rate rise in 2018, of the four rises forecast in its June dots. Money markets are pricing the hike with a very high degree of certainty, and prices two more rate hikes this year with around 80% certainty. In recent commentary, policymakers have generally said that they are comfortable with pursuing a gradual course of rate rises, and accordingly, Citi’s analysts say that the focus is on whether the FOMC will lift rates again in December, and if the Fed will push policy rates into “restrictive” territory (above around 3.0%) in 2019. (The Fed’s current rate forecast configuration is for four hikes in 2018, three hikes in 2019, and a single hike in 2020).

NEUTRAL RATES: The FOMC recent projections pencil in rates between 2.75-3.00% in the long-run. The range of policymaker estimates of the neutral rate is between 2.50-3.50%. The debate about what the Fed should do when it gets to neutral is gaining traction, with some participants looking for a pause giving it time to evaluate the situation, while others suggested that lifting rates above neutral.

RISKS TO THE OUTLOOK: Officials seemed generally comfortable in the inflation outlook, with the likes of Powell, Brainard, and Williams seeing little signs of runaway inflation. Barclays notes that the August meeting minutes made 32 references to a “strong” economy, more references than any minutes in recent years. “Although downside risks appear to have risen, none of these seem to unduly occupy the Fed’s attention,” Barclays writes. “Some on the committee see upside risks from fiscal stimulus, while others have concerns that fiscal stimulus may fade quicker than expected. Protectionism, housing, oil prices, and an abrupt slowing in emerging market economies are also on the Fed’s radar as potential downside risks.” Accordingly, the bank believes that the FOMC will continue to categorise risks as “roughly balanced.”

YIELD CURVE: Fed officials are broadly in two camps, Goldman Sachs notes: those who have downplayed the signal from a potential yield curve inversion (Brainard, Evans, Mester, Williams), and those who will place a significant amount of emphasis of the yield curve on their policymaking (Bostic, Bullard, Kaplan). TD Securities expects Chair Powell “to remain cautious and data dependent here, noting that the yield curve is but one of a number of indicators the Fed is watching. He also is likely to suggest that the Fed does not necessarily see a flat or inverted yield curve as a reason to halt rate hikes.”

TRADE: Zerohedge has noted that mentions of trade tensions has been rising in the Fed’s recent Beige Books. There were 41 instances of the word “tariff” in the September Beige Book, rising from 31 in the July. And the impact is negative: “Tariffs were reported to be contributing to rising input costs, mainly for manufacturers,” the Beige Book stated. Fed’s Brainard this month said that trade tensions have introduced uncertainty, while Rosengren has stated that tariffs and higher oil prices causes stresses on China and a lot of other emerging economies, and that could foster the conditions where global growth takes a hit, which could be a problem for US growth.

TONE: Citi expects a dovish hike, arguing that the median 2019 ‘dot’ may fall; it explains that as the SF Fed will make a forecast (despite newly appointed Mary Daly taking her position on 1 October), and therefore the total number of dots will increase from 15 to 16 with the addition of Vice-Chair Clarida. “The median thus will be split between the 8th and 9th dot,” Citi says, “Vice-Chair Clarida may be more dovish than former NY Fed President Dudley (who will no longer place a dot, instead replaced by Williams).”

“ACCOMMODATIVE“: Some have argued that the FOMC could signal its intention to continue hiking rates gradually by tweaking the description that “the stance of monetary policy remains accommodative”. Former FOMC policymaker Dennis Lockhart stated that there is no need for the Fed to tweak its current description, arguing that it remains accurate given that the current federal funds rate target remains below neutral. However, Morgan Stanley points out that the minutes of the Fed’s August meeting hints that “many participants” wanted to revise it in the “not-too-distant future”, and the bank says this leaves the Fed with three options: 1) change “accommodative” to “modestly accommodative”; 2) replace the sentence with one that describes the target rate as having moved “closer to the range of estimates of its neutral level”; 3) remove the sentence altogether; “whichever option it chooses, the Committee’s desire will be to alter the language without signalling a change in policy stance,” MS writes.

FED INDEPENDENCE: US President Trump’s recent remarks on interest rates and the Fed chair Powell have been taken as an affront on the central bank’s independence, CNBC reported. And some have now noticed that Chair Powell has been ramping up meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill as he seeks to protect the Fed’s independence. CNBC notes that Powell has met or called lawmakers 48 times in his first six months in office, while his predecessor Janet Yellen by comparison had only 17 contacts with lawmakers. Powell will inevitably face questions about what he has spoken to lawmakers about, though if his recent performances are anything to go by, he will likely reveal little and reiterate the FOMC conducts policy in an independent manner.

Finally, from TD Securities, this is what the potential changes to the September statement may look like:

via RSS https://ift.tt/2zuNDVF Tyler Durden

The fact that all 11 Republican members on the Senate Judiciary Committee are men, it was somewhat inevitable they would bring in outside female assistance to question Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford about her allegation of sexual assault.

According to multiple reports tonight, Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell has emerged as Senate Republicans’ choice. The Washington Post reports that Mitchell, the sex crimes bureau chief for the Maricopa County Attorney’s office in Phoenix, is the likely candidate, according to two people familiar with the decision.

A registered Republican, picture above – back row left, Mitchell has worked for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for 26 years.

Chairman Grassley has just confirmed that it will be Mitchell, noting that she “has experience prosecuting sex crimes.”

WaPo  offers this color as background on Mitchell: In a 2011 interview, Mitchell said she was drawn to sex crimes work after she was paired with a senior lawyer prosecuting a youth choir director after joining the office as a law clerk awaiting the results of her bar exam.

“It was different than anything that I would have ever imagined it being,” she said. “It struck me how innocent and vulnerable the victims of these cases really were.”

And here’s what Rachel Mitchell said in a 2012 interview.

“False accusations are very rare… do not keep these things internal and circle the wagons… the authorities and the criminal justice system can weed out false accusations”

No matter what, it will be circus.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Q6DKD6 Tyler Durden

Authored by Charlie Gao via NationalInterest.org,

The M230 is probably one of the definitive weapons of the Global War on Terror. Mounted on the belly of Apache gunship helicopters, the M230 has provided critical fire support to U.S. troops in almost every theatre they’ve engaged in combat in.

But now as the military considers ways to enhance the firepower of ground vehicles, the M230 is attracting attention again as a lightweight solution to add heavy firepower to a ground vehicle. But can it be easily adapted to the ground role? How does it compare to the larger 30mm Bushmaster cannons?

The M230 from its outset was designed for use in an aerial role. For instance, it uses the 30×113 rounds originally designed for DEFA and ADEN cannons for fighter jets. Moreover, it also uses a linkless feed as it’s assumed to be mounted in a way in which this will always be possible (e.g., Upside down on the belly of a helicopter).

Its ammunition is notable as it has a relatively low muzzle velocity compared to other cannons. As it made for air to air combat, velocity was a secondary concern as most planes have light to no armor. The explosive effect of the round was expected to produce the results desired on target.

To compare, the muzzle velocity of the 30x113mm the M230 is around 810 m/s. Comparatively, the 30x173mm cartridge used in the A-10’s GAU-8 rotary cannon and the 30mm Bushmaster II has a muzzle velocity of 1020 m/s (for a High-explosive incendiary cartridge, armor-piercing rounds go even faster).

As such, the M230 is reliant on an high-explosive, dual-purpose (HEDP) round with a small shaped charge in its nose to defeat armor. This potentially lessens the explosive filler of the round, as there must be hollow space for the copper jet to form with the shaped charge.

However, due to safety concerns with the HEI round for the M230, the HEDP round is the primary combat round for the Apache throughout the war on terror. It has proven effective for fire support.

In a ground role, the HEDP would likely be effective against soft targets and light unarmored vehicles as it has proven in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the penetration performance of the round could prove lacking. Northrop Grumman cites the performance as 25mm of RHA at 50 degrees at 500 meters.

While this is probably good enough for most infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and armored personnel carriers (APCs) of the current generation, it would fail to perform against heavy IFVs. The reliance on a shaped charge also means that slat or spaced armor might easily defeat it, compared to pure anti-personnel (AP) rounds, which would simply pass right through slat armor.

The M230LF, the variant of the M230 for ground purposes does feature a slightly longer barrel for enhanced muzzle velocity. But the lack of a true AP round in that caliber ( in U.S. inventory ) means that enhanced muzzle velocity is to make the cannon shoot flatter and faster, not to increase armor penetration.

The round technology used in the M230 does have benefits. The individual round’s smaller round and lightweight characteristics (as it was designed for helicopters) mean more can be carried, and the additional weight of the weapon system is minimized.

In the transition to a ground mount, a linked feed was introduced into the M230, and a delinker was attached to the cannon. This makes the ground version heavier than the air version, but the system was expected to be slightly heavier overall due to the additional barrel length. The linked feed is also more complex but necessary for the flexible overhead mounts in which the M230LF had been tested.

The primary platform on which the M230LF is planned to be mounted on are the military’s new series of armored cars: the MATV and the JLTV. Putting an M230 LF on these platforms would prove to be a significant upgrade from existing CROWS systems, which only mount a .50 caliber machine gun.

However, the ammo for the system is likely to take up a lot of space, so as per the military’s plan, the cannon system will likely not be deployed on every vehicle. On those that it is, they would likely prove to be effective fire support platforms, delivering more effective high explosive shells out to a few kilometers.

The system wouldn’t have the advanced features (such as airbursting rounds and real armor piercing rounds) found on the 30mm Bushmaster II that’s planned to be mounted on the Stryker. However, the turret is far lighter and represents an interesting middle ground between a full-fledged 30mm cannon system and lighter heavy machine gun and automatic grenade launcher systems.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2N39Mhk Tyler Durden

The former chief financial officer of Bankrate Inc. was sentenced to 10 years in prison for accounting and securities fraud that cost shareholders $25 million in losses, the US Justice Department announced Tuesday. 

53-year-old Edward DiMaria was also ordered to pay $21.2 million in restitution to Bankrate’s shareholders.

DiMaria pleaded guilty in late June to one count of conspiracy to make false statements to the company’s accountants, falsifying a public company’s books, records and accounts, and securities fraud; as well as one count of making materially false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 

DiMaria orchestrated a scheme to artificially inflate Bankrate’s earnings through a so-called “cookie jar” or “cushion” accounting “whereby millions of dollars in unsupported expense accruals were purposefully left on Bankrate’s books and then selectively reversed in later quarters to boost earnings,” according to the DOJ. Additionally, DiMaria admitted to conspiring with other Bankrate employees to misrepresent certain expenses as “deal costs” in order to artificially inflate earnings. 

Bankrate’s former VP of finance, Hyunjin Lerner, previously pleaded guilty for his part in the scheme, and is currently serving out a five year prison term handed down earlier this year. 

“While serving as Bankrate’s CFO, Edward DiMaria blatantly manipulated the company’s publicly reported financial statements by repeatedly lying and directing others to lie to auditors, regulators, and shareholders,” said Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski.

“The significant sentence handed down today underscores the serious nature of corporate fraud and the damage it causes to shareholders and to the public’s trust in our financial markets. The sentence also demonstrates the Department’s commitment to prosecuting corporate misconduct to the fullest extent of the law.”

Not too big to jail!

via RSS https://ift.tt/2QYUn4L Tyler Durden

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

Over the past year and a half, I’ve written many pieces on the surveillance state and how we are one step away from the inculcation of technological “omniscience” pertaining to control. The objective is not simply “control,” as they have already obtained that for the most part: limiting cash withdrawals from the bank, restricting your movements and business outside of the country, and new laws being created by the day. This latter part is akin to a “tag team” event of WWF: what the feds can’t or won’t do, they “tag” off for the states to accomplish, with local governments following suit.

The objective is total control: over everything you read, hear, and watch in the (so-called) media, and an eyeball on you in every facet of your life.

Mac Slavo released an article on SHTFplan entitled Apple is now giving people trust scores based on their calls and emails on 9/21/18. This is an example of how tech firms in the U.S., in conjunction with one another and other American business entities are instituting social engineering by controlling our communications via social media.

The big picture is much more frightening, as this article comes on the heels of another, more insidious occurrence: a nationwide “scoring system” instituted in the largest surveillance state in the world…communist China.

On 9/20/18, an article written by Peter Dockrill was released that will really open your eyes when you read it.  The piece is entitled China’s Chilling ‘Social Credit System’ is straight out of Dystopian Sci-Fi, and it’s Already Switched On. Here is an excerpt:

“China’s Social Credit System – which is expected to be fully operational by 2020 – doesn’t just monitor the nation’s almost 1.4 billion citizens.  It’s also designed to control and coerce them, in a gigantic social engineering experiment that some have called the “gamification of trust…assigning an individual trust score to each and every citizen, and to businesses too.  According to China’s Communist Party, the system will “allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”

To pull this off, the unprecedented scheme will harness the immense reach of China’s technological infrastructure: some 200 million CCTV cameras…

The idea is these ever-watchful eyes will be hooked up to facial recognition systems, and cross-checked with financial, medical records, and legal records – with the whole apparatus regulated and interpreted by advanced, big-data-crunching AI networks.”

The article goes on to tell of how it is already in place: it is just not completely finished. The piece also presents the case of a Chinese journalist who was sidelined and marginalized for criticizing the government. In brief, the system will allow a privileged few to do what they want, and the rest restricted in every portion of their lives, even more than today.

Three Phases are evident within this progression of surveillance to totalitarianism. Here they are:

1. Inception and Initial Emplacement: The “new measure” is put into place, eventually becoming widespread and taking root. CCTV cameras started out as simple video cameras in the convenience store, liquor store, bank, and the parking lot to workplaces. Now they sprout up in the intersections, the shopping malls, the cafes, and the bus terminals.  This is the beginning of surveillance.

2. Fostered Dependence and Regulation: The ever-present “bogeyman” in our society is the invisible malcontent, labeled as a terrorist, and this creates the “need” for more security and greater surveillance. The sacred goal: to keep everyone “safe,” is a boldfaced lie. The paradigm is shifted, and the senses of the populace are dulled (not very much work in that department) to not even pay the increased surveillance any mind. Over the past two decades, the corporations, the government (federal, state, and local), and the moneyed interests (oligarchs and politicians) have quietly inculcated a cross-linked and cross-functioning surveillance “net” or network…all cameras accessible and tied in to the information systems of the authorities. Authorities: those who are backed by the State and enforce the State’s edicts with firearms. Bio-scanning facial recognition, complete body scanners, and fingerprint recognition are now just a “matter of fact” in airports.  Just five years ago, the mobs were ready to storm the TSA with torches and pitchforks for the “affront at having their bodies exposed,” blah, blah, blah, yada, yada.

The torches burned out and the pitchforks are back in the garden sheds.

Now surveillance is the norm, and it’s backed by regulation. “Phase 2” is the transition from surveillance being present to the creation of the SurveillanceState.

3. Total Surveillance: Control, and beyond. We have not reached this phase yet in the United States, but we’re well on our way there. Look to China. China is the model, the template, the “guinea pig” for the totalitarian road map of one world government…in reality, a world of slavery. Kissinger, Bill Gates, Soros, and a plethora of others all laud Communist China as the blueprint for the world state. Remember: Gates has scheduled (with his team of investors) to place 500 satellites in orbit to map the entire globe in real time, by late Spring of next year.

When that “omniscient” surveillance is in place, what do you think they’ll do then?

What they will do is follow their Malthusian leanings, toward Thomas Malthus’s recommendations for global population reduction in the interests of “saving the planet and its resources.” In reality, to cull the herd, reducing it to a more “manageable” population of masters and slaves, the latter category making up the majority in a world not much different from that of Orwell’s “1984.”

The article by Mac Slavo shows what they’re doing in this country at the “micro” level: the efforts being put forth to limit people in their communications via “social media,” and socially engineer the consciousness and actions of the people passively before the active engineering (first by rule of law and then by force) occurs. When that is complete? Look to the past to see what will happen in the future, and the answer is right there. The solution is not that simple, and the more the system emplaces the control, the more difficult it will be to exercise that solution.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Oaxwoj Tyler Durden

A shock jump in the Hong Kong dollar. Rising interbank rates. Both moves are synonymous with limited liquidity, which is driving Hong Kong borrowing costs sky-high, and is a troubling sign for its bubbly housing market.

The Hong Kong dollar saw its largest spike since 2003 on Friday, blasting off its lows where it traded a narrow lateral range for six months. The currency move reverberated across the city’s money market instruments on Monday, with interbank rates rising by the most since the global financial crisis.

Meanwhile, between the expected hike in the prime rate which caps the cost of some mortgages, rising deposit rates, and the likely increase in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate, credit conditions are set to tighten further. This is bad news for Hong Kong’s property market.

“It’s a warning shot” to Hong Kong’s overpriced assets, said Cliff Tan, Hong Kong-based East Asia head of global markets research at MUFG Bank quoted by Bloomberg. “I expect interbank liquidity to be even tighter and bank funding needs to be more pressing, hence higher money market rates and higher mortgage rates.”

Citigroup and CLSA have warned of a reversal in real estate prices on expectations that mortgage servicing costs will soar. A currency peg with the US, open financial borders and a hot economy were some of the catalysts that transformed Hong Kong into the hottest real estate market in the world.

Hong Kong, an autonomous territory, and former British colony, in southeastern China, was one of the greatest beneficiaries of ultra-low lending costs in the wake of the global financial crisis, where home prices have soared more than 170% since the crisis low,  making the city essentially unaffordable today.

“The market has underestimated the pace of interest rate increases in Hong Kong,” said Kevin Lai, chief economist for Asia ex-Japan at Daiwa Capital Markets Hong Kong Ltd. This “will bring pressure to the property market and leveraged home buyers.”

Here are a few charts from Bloomberg that show the wild fluctuations in Hong Kong’s money markets:

As of Monday, the one-month interbank borrowing costs, known as Hibor, surged the most in nearly a decade, as liquidity dried up amid bets local banks will increase the prime rate for the first time since 2006. That came after Hong Kong Economic Times reported eight of the city’s most significant lenders including HSBC Holdings and China CITIC Bank International raised time deposit rates last week.

In the foreign-exchange market, the Hong Kong dollar’s one-week forward tagged the highest level since October 2007 on Monday, adding more evidence that credit conditions have significantly tightened.

Societe Generale analyst Jason Daw wrote in a note on Monday, “the gap between Hong Kong banks’ prime rate and the Fed funds rate has narrowed to around 300 basis points, close to the lowest in a decade. A tighter spread suggests the chance of an increase in the prime rate is quite high.”

“Friday’s move suggests borrowing costs in Hong Kong have tightened a lot and will tighten further,” said Ken Peng, an investment strategist at Citi Private Bank in Hong Kong.

“The short-Hong Kong dollar carry trade has come to an end” Peng said, confirming what we reported over the weekend.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2xLxvxZ Tyler Durden

Authored by Elias Hazou via TheDuran.com,

Before getting down to brass tacks, let me say that I loathe penning articles like this; loathe writing about myself or in the first person, because a reporter should report the news, not be the news. Yet I grudgingly make this exception because, ironically, it happens to be newsworthy. To cut to the chase, it concerns Anglo-American financier Bill Browder and the Sergei Magnitsky affair. I, like others in the news business I’d venture to guess, feel led astray by Browder.

This is no excuse. I didn’t do my due diligence, and take full responsibility for erroneous information printed under my name. For that, I apologize to readers. I refer to two articles of mine published in a Cypriot publication, dated December 25, 2015 and January 6, 2016.

Browder’s basic story, as he has told it time and again, goes like this: in June 2007, Russian police officers raided the Moscow offices of Browder’s firm Hermitage, confiscating company seals, certificates of incorporation, and computers.

Browder says the owners and directors of Hermitage-owned companies were subsequently changed, using these seized documents. Corrupt courts were used to create fake debts for these companies, which allowed for the taxes they had previously paid to the Russian Treasury to be refunded to what were now re-registered companies. The funds stolen from the Russian state were then laundered through banks and shell companies.

The scheme is said to have been planned earlier in Cyprus by Russian law enforcement and tax officials in cahoots with criminal elements.

All this was supposedly discovered by Magnitsky, whom Browder had tasked with investigating what happened. When Magnitsky reported the fraud, some of the nefarious characters involved had him arrested and jailed. He refused to retract, and died while in pre-trial detention.

In my first article, I wrote: “Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian accountant, died in jail in 2009 after he exposed huge tax embezzlement…”

False. Contrary to the above story that has been rehashed countless times, Magnitsky did not expose any tax fraud, did not blow the whistle.

The interrogation reports show that Magnitsky had in fact been summoned by Russian authorities as a witness to an already ongoing investigation into Hermitage. Nor he did he accuse Russian investigators Karpov and/or Kuznetsov of committing the $230 million treasury fraud, as Browder claims.

Magnitsky did not disclose the theft. He first mentioned it in testimony in October 2008. But it had already been reported in the New York Times on July 24, 2008.

In reality, the whistleblower was a certain Rimma Starova. She worked for one of the implicated shell companies and, having read in the papers that authorities were investigating, went to police to give testimony in April 2008 – six months before Magnitsky spoke of the scam for the first time (see here and here).

Why, then, did I report that about Magnitsky? Because at the time my sole source for the story was Team Browder, who had reached out to the Cyprus Mail and with whom I communicated via email. I was provided with ‘information’, flow charts and so on. All looking very professional and compelling.

At the time of the first article, I knew next to nothing about the Magnitsky/Browder affair. I had to go through media reports to get the gist, and then get up to speed with Browder’s latest claims that a Cypriot law firm, which counted the Hermitage Fund among its clients, had just been ‘raided’ by Cypriot police.

The article had to be written and delivered on the same day. In retrospect I should have asked for more time – a lot more time – and Devil take the deadlines.

For the second article, I conversed briefly on the phone with the soft-spoken Browder himself, who handed down the gospel on the Magnitsky affair. Under the time constraints, and trusting that my sources could at least be relied upon for basic information which they presented as facts, I went along with it.

I was played. But let’s be clear: I let myself down too.

In the ensuing weeks and months, I didn’t follow up on the story as my gut told me something was wrong: villains and malign actors operating in a Wild West Russia, and at the centre of it all, a heroic Magnitsky who paid with his life – the kind of script that Hollywood execs would kill for.

Subsequently I mentally filed away the Browder story, while being aware it was in the news.

But the real red pill was a documentary by Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, which came to my attention a few weeks ago.

Titled ‘The Magnitsky Act – Behind The Scenes’, it does a magisterial job of depicting how the director initially took Browder’s story on faith, only to end up questioning everything.

The docudrama dissects, disassembles and dismantles Browder’s narrative, as Nekrasov – by no means a Putin apologist – delves deeper down into the rabbit hole.

The director had set out to make a poignant film about Magnitsky’s tragedy, but became increasingly troubled as the facts he uncovered didn’t stack up with Browder’s account, he claims.

The ‘aha’ moment arrives when Nekrasov appears to show solid proof that Magnitsky blew no whistle.

Not only that, but in his depositions – the first one dating to 2006, well before Hermitage’s offices were raided – Magnitsky did not accuse any police officers of being part of the ‘theft’ of Browder’s companies and the subsequent alleged $230m tax rebate fraud.

The point can’t be stressed enough, as this very claim is the lynchpin of Browder’s account. In his bestseller Red Notice, Browder alleges that Magnitsky was arrested because he exposed two corrupt police officers, and that he was jailed and tortured because he wouldn’t retract.

We are meant to take Browder’s word for it.

It gets worse for Nekrasov, as he goes on to discover that Magnitsky was no lawyer. He did not have a lawyer’s license. Rather, he was an accountant/auditor who worked for Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan.

Yet every chance he gets, Browder still refers to Magnitsky as ‘a lawyer’ or ‘my lawyer’.

The clincher comes late in the film, with footage from Browder’s April 15, 2015 deposition in a US federal court, in the Prevezon case. The case, brought by the US Justice Department at Browder’s instigation, targeted a Russian national who Browder said had received $1.9m of the $230m tax fraud.

In the deposition, Browder is asked if Magnitsky had a law degree in Russia. “I’m not aware that he did,” he replies.

The full deposition, some six hours long, is (still) available on Youtube. As penance for past transgressions, I watched it in its entirety. While refraining from using adjectives to describe it, I shall simply cite some examples and let readers decide on Browder’s credibility.

Browder seems to suffer an almost total memory blackout as a lawyer begins firing questions at him. He cannot recall, or does not know, where he or his team got the information concerning the alleged illicit transfer of funds from Hermitage-owned companies.

This is despite the fact that the now-famous Powerpoint presentations – hosted on so many ‘anti-corruption’ websites and recited by ‘human rights’ NGOs – were prepared by Browder’s own team.

Nor does he recall where, or how, he and his team obtained information on the amounts of the ‘stolen’ funds funnelled into companies. When it’s pointed out that in any case this information would be privileged – banking secrecy and so forth – Browder appears to be at a loss.

According to Team Browder, in 2007 the ‘Klyuev gang’ together with Russian interior ministry officials travelled to Cyprus, ostensibly to set up the tax rebate scam using shell companies.

But in his deposition, the Anglo-American businessman cannot remember, or does not know, how his team obtained the travel information of the conspirators.

He can’t explain how they acquired the flight records and dates, doesn’t have any documentation at hand, and isn’t aware if any such documentation exists.

Browder claims his ‘Justice for Magnitsky’ campaign, which among other things has led to US sanctions on Russian persons, is all about vindicating the young man. Were that true, one would have expected Browder to go out of his way to aid Magnitsky in his hour of need.

The deposition does not bear that out.

Lawyer: “Did anyone coordinate on your behalf with Firestone Duncan about the defence of Mr Magnitsky?”

Browder: “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

Going back to Nekrasov’s film, a standout segment is where the filmmaker looks at a briefing document prepared by Team Browder concerning the June 2007 raid by Russian police officers. In it, Browder claims the cops beat up Victor Poryugin, a lawyer with the firm.

The lawyer was then “hospitalized for two weeks,” according to Browder’s presentation, which includes a photo of the beaten-up lawyer. Except, it turns out the man pictured is not Poryugin at all. Rather, the photo is actually of Jim Zwerg, an American human rights activist beaten up during a street protest in 1961 (see here and here).

Nekrasov sits down with German politician Marieluise Beck. She was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace), which compiled a report that made Magnitsky a cause celebre.

You can see Beck’s jaw drop when Nekrasov informs her that Magnitsky did not report the fraud, that he was in fact under investigation.

It transpires that Pace, as well as human rights activists, were getting their information from one source – Browder. Later, the Council of Europe’s Andreas Gross admits on camera that their entire investigation into the Magnitsky affair was based on Browder’s info and that they relied on translations of Russian documents provided by Browder’s team because, as Gross puts it, “I don’t speak Russian myself.”

That hit home – I, too, had been fed information from a single source, not bothering to verify it. I, too, initially went with the assumption that because Russia is said to be a land of endemic corruption, then Browder’s story sounded plausible if not entirely credible.

For me, the takeaway is this gem from Nekrasov’s narration:

“I was regularly overcome by deep unease. Was I defending a system that killed Magnitsky, even if I’d found no proof that he’d been murdered?”

Bull’s-eye. Nekrasov has arrived at a crossroads, the moment where one’s mettle is tested: do I pursue the facts wherever they may lead, even if they take me out of my comfort zone? What is more important: the truth, or the narrative? Nekrasov chose the former. As do I.

Like with everything else, specific allegations must be assessed independently of one’s general opinion of the Russian state. They are two distinct issues. Say Browder never existed; does that make Russia a paradise?

I suspect Team Browder may scrub me from their mailing list; one can live with that.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2MZ9TKJ Tyler Durden

Delta Air Lines Inc. said it halted services to address a technology glitch impacting some of its systems.

Delta Air’s Full (brief) Statement is as follows:

Delta IT teams are working diligently to address a technology issue impacting some of our systems.

We have issued a Delta groundstop as we work to bring systems back up as quickly as possible. 

We apologize to all customers for this inconvenience. 

In response to one upset traveler, @Delta support explained that “Our computer tracking system is temporarily down. I suggest you reach back again in about an hour when our system should be back up and we will be able to assist you”

Hi Nicole. Our computer tracking system is temporarily down. I suggest you reach back again in about an hour when our system should be back up and we will be able to assist you. *TKR

— Delta (@Delta) September 26, 2018

May need to rethink this award…

via RSS https://ift.tt/2OSpWMa Tyler Durden

Police in Southern California arrested 47-year-old Saleh Ali last week after two active Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were discovered in his vehicle that would “readily explode when exposed to flame.” They were found during a routine traffic stop for an expired registration, according to Brea Police Lt. Adam Hawley. 

The devices were “containers covered in shrapnel” which “contained explosive material.” 

“During the traffic stop, the officer keyed in on a couple of suspicious items in the car he believed to be an explosive device,” Hawley said of last Tuesday’s traffic stop. “He detained the driver out of an abundance of caution, locked down a little bit of the area and called out sheriff’s bomb squad deputies.”

The devices were destroyed on the scene, according to Hawley, who added that police also alerted the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center – a “coalition of federal, state and local law enforcement,” according to NBC Los Angeles. 

There is no evidence at this time tying Ali to a terrorist organization. 

Ali – who was arrested approximately 350 miles south of his home in Salinas, remains in jail on $200,000 bail. He appeared in a Santa Ana courtroom on Thursday where he pleaded not guilty to two charges of possession of a destructive device and single counts each of the sale and transportation of a destructive device, and intent to unlawfully make a destructive device, according to a press release by the Orange County District Attorney’s office.

Ali faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison on the four felony charges. 

Circumstances of the Case

• On Sept. 18, 2018, a Brea Police Department (BPD) officer conducted a traffic stop on Ali’s vehicle for expired registration tags.

• Ali is accused of having a suspended driver license and BPD conducted an inventory search prior to the vehicle being towed.

• During the inventory search, the defendant is accused of possessing two small destructive devices which were containers covered in shrapnel and contained explosive material in his vehicle.

• BPD contacted the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) Bomb Squad to examine the two devices.

• Ali is accused of possessing Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) or bombs, also referred to as destructive devices that would readily explode when introduced to a flame.

• Ali was arrested at the scene.

Ali has two prior convictions in Passaic County, NJ for aggravated assault with serious bodily injury and terrorist threats according to court records, and will return to court on September 28 for a pretrial hearing.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Ob2gWd Tyler Durden