Month: September 2018

The Anatomy Of A Cannabis Plant, And Its Lifecycle

By 2027, it’s projected that the legal cannabis market in the U.S. and Canada could hit $47.3 billion in size.

As Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, that will make it bigger than annual global sales for raw metals like nickel and silver put together. It would be a size that even exceeds the North American pork market.

But while almost everyone has a sense of the basic mechanics of mining or ranching, knowledge around the essentials of cannabis are understandably not as well ingrained in our culture.

CANNABIS PLANTS 101

Today’s infographic comes to us from The Green Organic Dutchman, and it breaks down the anatomy of a cannabis plant, the differences between types of plants, and also the basics around cannabis cultivation.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Here are some of the more important things you need to know about the plant:

Plant Anatomy
Commercial cannabis comes from the female species, which have long skinny stems and large, iconic fan leaves. The plant is trimmed down into buds, which come together in a cola at the top of the stem.

Trichomes are a blanket of crystal resin coating the cannabis plant, and they contain both terpenes and cannabinoids.

Cannabinoids
The two most well-known cannabinoids are THC and CBD, which also occur in the largest volume.

Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is known to cause psychoactive effects or the “high” felt from cannabis.
Effects: pain relief, anti-nausea, sleep aid, appetite and mood stimulant.

Cannabidiol (CBD) lacks nearly any psychoactive effect, making it preferred as a medicine.
Effects: pain relief, anti-nausea, anti-inflammatory, anti-anxiety, seizure reduction.

Other cannabinoids such as cannabichromene (CBC), cannbigerol (CBG), and cannabinol (CBN), have similar therapeutic properties. Research is also validating the plant’s efficacy in treating medical conditions such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, PTSD, and Alzheimer’s.

Terpenes
Terpenes are organic, aromatic compounds found in the oils of all flowers, including cannabis. Interestingly, these oils have their own independent medical potential that is waiting to be unlocked.

Cannabinoids and terpenes work in harmony, resulting in an “entourage effect” and enhances the medical properties of cannabis

Sativa, Indica, Hybrid
There are two common types of cannabis plants: sativa and indica.

Sativa plants have long and thin leaves that are lighter in color. Buds are long and wispy, and feature red or orange coloring. They tend to contain high THC and low CBD levels – optimal for daytime use, described as being energizing, stimulating, and creative.

Indica plants have leaves that are wide, broad, and deep in color. Buds are dense and tightly packed, featuring purple coloring. Indica usually contains medium levels of THC, and a higher amount of CBD. Its effects are often described as being relaxing and calming, which is more optimal for nighttime use.

It’s also worth noting that hybrid strains can often bring together the best qualities of both into one plant.

THE LIFECYCLE OF A CANNABIS PLANT

Every stage of growth of a cannabis plant needs different care:

1. Germination (Seed): 1-2 weeks
Seeds ready for germination are dark brown, hard, and dry. Encourage sprouting by watering seeds in a paper towel.

2. Seedling: 2-3 weeks
Move seeds into growing medium. Plants need the maximum light at this stage, and appropriate water levels. Cotyledon (seed leaves) and iconic fan leaves will grow.

Light: 18-24 hours
Humidity: 70%
Temperature: 20-25°C

3. Vegetative: 2-8 weeks
Plants need flowing dry air, fresh warm water, and increased nutrients – especially nitrogen. It’s important at this stage to separate male and female plants before pollination to prevent female plants producing seeds instead of trichomes.

Light: 12 hours sunlight (18 hours fluorescent light)
Humidity: 50%
Temperature: 20-24°C

4. Flowering: 6-8 weeks
Gradually reduce light exposure to produce medicinal qualities. Increase phosphorous levels and decrease nitrogen. Fertilizers can help stimulate bud formation.

Light: 12 hours
Humidity: 40-50%
Temperature: 20-28 °C

5. Harvesting
Trim and dry the buds. The plant is ripe when buds turn from milky white to reddish orange. Harvest once 70-90% of pistils are browned for maximized taste and effect.

Humidity: 50%
Temperature: 20-25°C

As the cannabis industry matures, consumers will demand the highest-quality products. Growing cannabis in a natural environment is increasingly vital to create a premium end-product.

In the next part of this series, we will dive into various growing methods and the benefits of organic methods on quality and effects of cannabis.

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Why Chris Hedges Thinks The American Empire Has Lost Control… And Its Failure Is Imminent

Authored by Brian Bethune via Macleans.ca,

Pretending the world isn’t bleak feeds the mania for unreal hope that exists within American culture…

Chris Hedges – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, ordained Presbyterian minister, ferocious anti-corporate activist and prolific author – has long occupied an isolated spot among American public intellectuals, as much a moral crusader as a political critic. But as American, and Western, politics continue to decay and xenophobic nativism continues to rise, Hedges, 61, seems less and less an outlier, his critique of contemporary America more acceptable to his countrymen. And that’s without walking back any of his analysis. If Hedges was worried nine years ago in Empire of Illusion that his nation – like all republics before it – would fail to survive the acquisition of an empire, he’s now convinced it won’t. The title of his newest book, America: The Farewell Tour, says it all. In powerfully reported chapters – including “Decay” (deindustrialization), “Heroin” (the opioid epidemic), “Sadism” (the pornography-industrial complex), and “Hate” (racism) – Hedges talks to the most oppressed and dispossessed citizens of an empire he thinks has not much more than a decade of life left.

Q: A very bleak and wide-ranging report. The Farewell Tour is, in its way, the antithesis of Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now.

A: That book is the modern version of Candide. I mean it is completely unplugged from reality. Pinker, who has spent his life in academic gardens like Harvard, just doesn’t understand what societies look like when they break down. I’ve been there. I’m not an academic. I was primarily a war correspondent for 28 years. Pinker doesn’t get the dark side of human nature and how technology has, in degenerated societies, accelerated the power to commit wholesale slaughter. People love his book. It’s what they want to hear. But it’s not real.

Q: Yet he is correct that much of the world, especially in Asia, has been lifted out of poverty in the last generation.

A: But consider income inequality in China. It’s massive—there’s now a Chinese oligarchy just like the ones in the rest of the world. China is buying up half of Vancouver—what’s that town north of Vancouver that’s becoming the largest Chinese-speaking city outside of China? Richmond? To somehow measure wealth by GDP is a mistake. Having worked in places, especially Africa, in vast urban slums, I know the poverty is worse [than it was] for people who at least had subsistence agriculture before. So the whole measurement of wealth is wrong. The rise of global oligarchic classes with obscene amounts of money doesn’t mean the world’s richer. Not unless you read Thomas Friedman.

Q: You argue from a socialist perspective…

A: I’m not an ideologue. I once gave a talk in a Canadian university—I think it was the University of Winnipeg—some place where you can still hire Marxist economists. That doesn’t happen in America. Anyway, I finished my talk and one of the members of the economics department who had been sitting in the back stood up and said to the students, “I just want to make it clear that he’s not really a socialist, he’s a radical Keynesian.” Which actually is true. He wasn’t wrong. I’m not a Marxist. I read Marx and I think Marxist critique and understanding of capitalism is absolutely vital and true and probably the greatest critique we have. If I were running a hedge fund, I would only hire Marxists because they understand that capitalism is about exploitation, the maximization of profit and reducing the cost of labour. I think sometimes, to put it in Canadian vernacular, I’m a Tommy Douglas socialist.

Q: I think “perspective” still works here, given you don’t see any difference between the purported liberal and conservative parties in the U.S. or in the rest of the developed world.

A: Put it this way: nations have lost control of their own economies, in essence. So it doesn’t matter what people want. There is no way to vote against the global interests of Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil. You can’t do it. And this, of course, is what has created political crises. The result is anger and authoritarian populist figures like Orbán in Hungary and the leaders of the current Polish government, and similar strong movements in France, Germany, Italy. This is a global phenomenon of which Trump is a part. But there’s an important difference. America is an empire. So we’re much more fragile than nation-states, non-imperial countries.

Q: And much more dangerous. You cite historians who note how rising empires tend to be judicious in their use of military force, while declining empires are prone to wild swings of the bat to try to stay on top.

A: Yes, much more dangerous. You see that throughout history: the ancient Greeks invading Sicily, and their entire fleet sunk, thousands of soldiers killed and their empire becoming unsustainable; or in 1956 when Britain tries to invade Egypt after the nationalization of the Suez Canal, retreats in humiliation and thereby triggers a financial crisis and the end of the pound sterling as a reserve currency, marking the death of the British Empire, which had been on a slow descent since the end of World War One. The dollar as the world’s current reserve currency is running on fumes. The moment that’s over, American financial supremacy is instantly finished. It will be very similar to the aftermath of the Suez disaster—something like that is always characteristic of late empire. And the fragility of an empire means that when collapse comes it’s almost instantaneous. You look back at the rapid final fall of the old Soviet Union. A failing empire is like a house of cards that just comes down—it’s not a slow descent. We know from history what happens. It’s not a mystery.

Q: You don’t believe there is anything the system—meaning the opposition party, meaning the Democrats—can do to effect real change in the U.S.

A: Let’s be clear. The Democratic Party under Bill Clinton transformed itself into the traditional Republican Party, and the Republican Party moved, was pushed, so far to the right it became insane. The Democratic Party is a creation of the better-educated, more enlightened wing of the billionaire class, those who don’t want to be identified as racist, misogynist, homophobic Islamophobes. But fundamentally, the economic structures and imperial structures remain untouched because the Democratic Party, like the Republican Party, depends on corporate money to exist. So figures like [Nancy] Pelosi or [Chuck] Schumer have power within the party because they control the money and which candidates get the money. They’re the bag people, and they are acutely aware that should they institute real electoral reform—purging corporate money from the system—they wouldn’t hold political power. However decayed the ship of state is, they are not going to give up their first-class cabins. The Democrats’ entire electoral strategy is to hope that Trump implodes.

Q: To run on “we’re not Trump”?

A: Yeah—which could fail, by the way. Their elites, which include the media elites, are woefully out of touch with the country.

Q: When you write about Charlottesville, it’s clear you feel that all the people there, whether neo-Nazis or counter-protesters, were reacting to the same economic, social and psychological dislocations.

A: Yes.

Q: With no answers at all from their government short of mass incarceration?

A: That’s right, that and militarized police. And again, in Canada too—look at the streets of Toronto during the G20.

Q: So that is the answer to the question puzzled liberals pose in America: why do Trump supporters in particular, or Republican working-class supporters in general, vote against what liberals see as their own interests?

A: That idea is just untrue. The Democratic Party has long abandoned working-class America. And the sense of betrayal on the part of the Democrats was deeper because traditionally the Democrats had been at least open to the interests of labour. That was all abolished under Bill Clinton, who—like Hillary—understood astutely that if they did corporate bidding they would get corporate money. The political spectrum in the United States across the two major parties is now so narrow as to be almost irrelevant. What they argue about are cultural or social issues. But that’s a form of anti-politics. They don’t actually argue about anything of substance in terms of the economy or foreign policy. That’s why you see complete continuity between Republican and Democratic administrations. So the rage is quite legitimate. That was fascinating for me when I was in Anderson, Ind., which is—was—one of GM’s epicentres. After NAFTA, carmakers could move to Mexico and pay workers $3 an hour without benefits. According to the old UAW officials, their members voted for Sanders in the primary but then voted for Trump in the general, because they weren’t going to vote for Clinton. They were fully aware that their city, their lives, their families, their ability to make an income that could sustain them, was taken away from them by the Democratic Party machine. Oh, and when I say complete continuity, one caveat—Barack Obama’s assault on civil liberties and levels of deportations of undocumented workers were actually worse than Bush’s.

Q: Civil liberties have been eroding for quite a while in the U.S., at least since the Patriot Act.

A: This is global. You have it in Canada, too. That security bill Harper passed that Trudeau hasn’t revoked? Your wholesale surveillance is as draconian as ours.

Q: One of your major themes is that contemporary politics has neither language nor platform to talk about economics and social issues from an anti-corporate, anti-capitalist position.

A: Not within the mainstream media, which has co-opted political language quite effectively. There is no genuine debate about the nature of corporate capitalism: how it works, what its economic effects are both nationally and globally, what its political effects are. It’s never discussed at all. In Canada the situation is better because of people like John Ralston Saul, Naomi Klein, Adbusters, so it’s at least possible to raise the issue. But in the U.S. it is quite stunning how it’s completely censored from public discourse. The health-care system is the perfect example. There is no rational discussion of it because people who advocate universal government-funded health care are never allowed to have a platform. We just don’t talk about how much money we spend for the most inefficient health-care system in the industrialized world. Instead, Americans get spectacle: this endless reality television show with porn stars and a maniacal idiot in the Oval Office sitting in front of a television set tweeting, and it’s good entertainment. CNN made more money last year than they’ve ever made. But it is not news. It has nothing to do with news.

Q: What can you tell me about the mix of hope and despair in your book. Is there hope in it?

A: I don’t think like that. One of the great existential crises of our time is to understand how bleak the world is, and resist anyway. But pretending that it’s not bleak feeds the mania for unreal hope that exists within American culture that I don’t share. That’s our exit door—it allows us to find excuses not to react with the militancy that we must embrace if we’re going to ultimately survive. There is a moral dimension to fighting radical evil. Most rebels throughout history do not succeed. But you don’t succeed without them, and the situation truly is hopeless if we do nothing. If we resist we have hope, however marginal and impossible that hope may seem. If we don’t resist, you can’t use the word hope.

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Ted Cruz And Wife Chased Out Of DC Restaurant By Anti-Kavanaugh Protesters

Senator Ted Cruz, supporter of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, was verbally assaulted by protesters at a DC restaurant Monday night, as seen in a video posted by twitter account Smash Racism DC. 

At one point the protesters chanting “we believe survivors” blocked Cruz’s wife from exiting the restaurant, prompting the Texas Senator to ask them to “let my wife through.” 

A woman claiming to be a survivor of sexual assault approached Cruz and his wife while accompanied by her backup chanters. 

(h/t Cassandra Fairbanks @ Gateway Pundit) 

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Millennials Are Flocking To Cheap Rust Belt Cities

Educated, but poor, millennials are transforming neighborhoods in several Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin in search for affordable communities.

Since the end of the American high (the late 1960s), the Rust Belt had experienced decades of deindustrialization and a mass exodus of residents. Manufacturing plants closed down, jobs disappeared, and communities disintegrated, as this once vibrant region is now a symbol of decay and opioids.

However, this trend has reversed in recent years, as some millennials have abandoned big cities for Rust Belt communities, in hopes to catch the falling knife and invest in real estate that could be near its lows.

It is a massive risk, and the narrative behind this “attractive investment bet” are affordable communities, unlike the Washington Metropolitan Area, San Francisco, New York, San Diego County, and Boston.

Yet this revitalization of the Rust Belt economy could not have come at the worse time: Last week, Bank of America rang the proverbial bell on the US real estate market, saying existing home sales have peaked, reflecting declining affordability, greater price reductions and deteriorating housing sentiment.

While it is difficult to say what exactly happens in Rust Belt communities in the next downturn, one should understand that housing prices in these regions will probably stay depressed for the foreseeable future. So, if the millennial who was hoping for a Bitcoin-style like move, they should think again as investing in Rust Belt communities is a long-term strategy.

Constantine Valhouli, Director of Research for the real estate research and analytics firm NeighborhoodX, told CNBC that millennials are flocking to these areas not just for home ownership, but rather rebuilding these communities from the bottom up.

“It is about having roots and contributing to the revival of a place that needs businesses that create jobs and create value.”

According to Paul Boomsma, president and CEO of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World (LeadingRE), some of these formerly blighted towns are gradually coming back to life. The latest influx of millennials view these regions as financial opportunities and places to construct new economies – especially with real estate prices far below the Case–Shiller 20-City Composite Home Price Index.

“Millennials are swiping up properties for next-to-nothing prices near downtown city areas that have completely revitalized,” Boomsma said. LendingRE has listed a three-bedroom Victorian home in Mansfield, Ohio, with an asking price of $39,900.

The median home value in Mansfield is $60,300, now compare that to the median home value of nearly $700,000 in New York City and a whopping $1.3 million in San Francisco, and it is obvious why millennials are flocking to the Rust Belt. Experts add that there is more to consider than discounted prices.

“There is a community-mindedness with millennials that attracts them to the smaller Rust Belt towns,” said Peter Haring, president of Haring Realty in Mansfield, Ohio.

“We are seeing an intense interest in participating in the revitalization of our towns and being a part of the community. It’s palpable, and it’s exciting,” he added.

Haring said affordable homes in Mansfield comes with a significant drawback: distance. The closest large cities, Cleveland and Columbus, are each an hour’s drive, and amenities are lacking.

“For people working in those cities, they are sacrificing drive time,” Haring said. “In some cases, they are sacrificing the convenience of nearby shopping and restaurants.”

But for millennials that is a little concern: they have the luxury of working remotely and ordering consumable goods from Amazon.

“More and more people are now working virtually, which means they do not need to be in their office and can work from almost anywhere,” said Ralph DiBugnara, senior vice president at Residential Home Funding. “So why not find somewhere to live where your city dollars can go a lot further?”

CNBC points out that some large corporations are moving back into these areas, the same areas that they left decades ago for cheap labor overseas. One example is home appliance manufacturer Whirlpool, whose corporate headquarters are in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

“It helped revitalize surrounding areas with new lifestyle and cultural amenities,” said LendingRe’s Boomsma. “This type of corporate commitment draws a young workforce, who are attracted by the lifestyle, paired with the relative affordability.”

Todd Stofflet, a Managing Partner at the KIG CRE brokerage firm, said for the millennials who still cannot afford to buy a home, the Rust Belt also has a robust rental market. Millennials who are heavily indebted with student loans, auto debt, and high-interest credit card loans could discover that these low-cost regions are perfect strategies to break free from the debt ball and chain and start saving again. Restore capitalism and say goodbye to creditism, something the Federal Reserve and the White House would not be happy about.

Millennials are creating demand for new apartments, which is a “a catalyst for retail, grocery and office development,” Stofflet added. “As downtown populations experience a resurgence, so does the dining, entertainment and lifestyle of the area.”

Although discounted real estate prices in Rust Belt regions are appealing in today’s overinflated Central Bank controlled markets, Daniela Andreevska, a marketing director at real estate data analytics company Mashvisor, cautioned millennials to learn about the dynamics of why these communities have low prices.

“One should keep in mind that many of the homes there are foreclosures or other types of distressed properties,” she said. “You should analyze and inspect the property well in order to know how much exactly you will have to pay in repairs before buying it.”

These migration trends indicate both positive and negative shifts: on one hand millennials are fleeing unaffordable large cities to Rust Belt regions, in an adverse reaction to failed economic policies to reinflate the housing market. On the other hand, for millennials with insurmountable debt, migrating to these low-cost regions could be the most viable solution to get their finances under control.

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The UN Accidentally Exposed Passwords And Sensitive Data To The Entire Internet

Via TheAntiMedia.com,

The U.N. accidentally released passwords, internal documents, and other sensitive details when it failed to properly secure its accounts on Trello, a popular workplace project management website.

According to The Intercept, “[a]ffected data included credentials for a U.N. file server, the video conferencing system at the U.N.’s language school, and a web development environment for the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.” It was made available to anyone who had the links to the material as opposed to specific users granted access.

The security slips were first identified by Security researcher Kushagra Pathak back in August after he conducted Google searches, which led him to public Trello pages that also linked to Google documents and Jira pages. Jira is an “issue tracking app,” as noted by The Intercept.

Despite Pathak’s attempts to notify the U.N., the international governing body first took two weeks to respond and verify they would investigate his concerns. A little over a week later, they told him they were unable to locate the vulnerabilities and asked for more information on how he located the exposed information. “May we request you to provide the exact Google search criteria that was used?” they asked him.

Throughout this time, he continued to send them his findings on the publicly available information.

 “In all, he reported 60 Trello boards, several Google Drive and Google Docs links that contained sensitive information, and sensitive information from a public U.N. account on Jira,” The Intercept reports.

The outlet also says they contacted the U.N. on September 12, and a day later, they started taking down the exposed information.

In an email statement to The Intercept, U.N. spokesperson Florencia Soto Nino-Martinez said :

“Some of the boards listed have communications materials which are not sensitive, while some have outdated information. However, we are reviewing all boards on the list to ensure that no passwords or credentials are shared through this medium.”

She also said:

“We take security very seriously and have reached out to all staff reminding them of the risks of using a third-party platform to share content and to take the necessary precautions to ensure no sensitive content is public.”

The Intercept noted “just some” of the information made available to the public:

  • A social media team promoting the U.N.’s “peace and security” efforts published credentials to access a U.N. remote file access, or FTP, server in a Trello card coordinating promotion of the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. It is not clear what information was on the server; Pathak said he did not connect to it.

  • The U.N.’s Language and Communication Programme, which offers language courses at U.N. Headquarters in New York City, published credentials for a Google account and a Vimeo account. The program also exposed, on a publicly visible Trello board, credentials for a test environment for a human resources web app. It also made public a Google Docs spreadsheet, linked from a public Trello board, that included a detailed meeting schedule for 2018, along with passwords to remotely access the program’s video conference system to join these meetings.

  • One public Trello board used by the developers of Humanitarian Response and ReliefWeb, both websites run by the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, included sensitive information like internal task lists and meeting notes. One public card from the board had a PDF, marked “for internal use only,” that contained a map of all U.N. buildings in New York City. Another card had an attached PDF that included a phone tree with names and phones numbers of people working for a division of U.N.’s human resources department. Some cards contained links to internal documents hosted on Google Docs that, in turn, contained sensitive information about web development projects, including a web address and password to access a staging environment to test early features of the website.

  • The U.N. website developers also used a public Jira bug tracker that contained detailed technical information about how the sites were developed and what issues they were having.

Pathak says he thinks organizations make their sensitive information public simply because it’s easier. They can “share the details present on the board with their team members just by sharing the URL of the board with them without adding them to the board,” he said.

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How Long Before China’s Exports Are Hammered By Trade War

Two weeks ago we asked “when will the US finally feel the pain from trade wars” and answered: as soon as the $200BN in “phase II” tariffs are implemented, which happened just after midnight on Monday at which point is is only a matter of time before rising prices catch up with ordinary Americans. Today, we reverse the query and ask a similar question for China, which unlike the US has already suffered substantially in its capital markets (and the slumping currency), if not so much where it really matters – at least according to Trump – its exports, the reason behind the US trade deficit.

In other words: When will the trade war affect China’s exports?  

Echoing the above observations, Deutsche Bank, which once again deconstructs the answer, notes that while the US-China trade war has caused “visible damage” to China’s stocks, it seems to have had no impact on China’s exports so far. But now that the US has announced a tariff on US$ 200bn of China’s exports, when will the actual pain to exporters, corporates, and consumers start to be felt?

Well, according to DB’s Zhang Zhiwei, the damage of the trade war has already shown up in disaggregate data. Specifically, after the US imposed a 25% tariff on $34bn of Chinese exports on July 6, US Customs data show that the imports of this group of goods dropped by 10% yoy in July. However, disaggregate data on this level is only available with a lag of about two months, which is why DB expects imports in August for this group of goods to drop further.

The flipside, of course, is that aggregate US  imports from China were strong in July, because of interesting “front running” behavior as traders rushed to lock in deliveries, and prices, ahead of the next tariff round. The US government announced on June 15 that a 25% tariff would be imposed on another group of Chinese goods worth US $16bn, which came into effect on August 23. This caused a surge of imports for this group in July, up to 40% yoy, which in turn helped to offset the slump of imports for the US$ 34bn of goods already facing tariffs in July. Meanwhile, the headline trade data, which is the total US imports from China, remained strong at 8% yoy in July.

In addition to tariff frontrunning, other factors that may have helped China stabilize trade include

  1. strong external demand, as evidenced by the high PMI numbers ( Figure 2 );
  2. depreciation of the RMB against the dollar; and
  3. hiking tax rebates for exporters for some goods.

Looking ahead, Deutsche Bank expects to see a moderate slowdown of exports in the next few months as the front-running efforts may help to smooth out the damage:

The $200bn tariff list was first announced in July. Tariffs will become effective at 10% on September 24, and will increase to 25% on the first day of 2019. Exports could be supported by front-running efforts against this list in Q3. As a baseline expect exports to fall in Q4. But there could be some upside risk, as companies might choose to increase their exports in Q4 to front-run the 25% tariff, even if they need to pay a 10% tariff on them. Exports should drop in 2019 when the tariff rate increases to 25%.

In addition, the US said it may further impose tariffs on the remaining $267bn of Chinese exports. These include major products such as computers, cell phones, apparel and shoes (Figure 3). If the US takes further action on this, it may trigger further front-running in the short run for these products.

In other words, with staggered “frontrunning” of future sanctions, 2018 will likely be a strong year for Chinese trade: as a baseline case, overall exports growth is expected to slow, but only gradually to 7% in Q4 2018 and 4% in Q1 2019. As a result, exports to the US will slow more rapidly, though growth will likely still stay positive in Q4 2018, and finally turn negative only in Q1 2019. It is only then that the trade outlook will be more challenging, especially if the trade war escalates further and drives out some supply chains from China.

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Ron Paul Praises New Tax Plan Making It Easier To “Ed-exit”

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

This week the House of Representatives will vote on a package of bills making the temporary tax cuts contained in last year’s tax reform bill permanent and making additional tax law changes. The bills will likely pass in the House, but will almost certainly be filibustered in the Senate if the Senate leadership tries to bring them to the floor.

The GOP tax plan does offset some of the damage caused by federal control of education by making it easier for parents to escape failing government schools or ‘edexit’. It accomplishes this by allowing money saved in a tax-free 529 education savings account to be used for homeschooling expenses.

This provision will help homeschooling families and inspire more families to consider homeschooling. Homeschooling parents must not only pay for all their children’s education expenses, they also must subsidize government schools via property taxes and other taxes. A commitment to homeschooling may also require a parent to limit or even forgo outside employment.

Despite the financial costs, more families are choosing to homeschool. This is due to increasing dissatisfaction with government schools, greater public acceptance of homeschooling, and the availability of quality online homeschooling curricula, such as my Ron Paul Curriculum.

My curriculum provides students with a well-rounded education including rigorous programs in history, mathematics, and the physical and natural sciences. The curriculum also provides instruction in personal finance. Students can develop superior oral and verbal communication skills via intensive writing and public speaking courses. Students also get the opportunity to create and run their own internet businesses.

The government and history sections emphasize Austrian economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of liberty. However, unlike government schools, my curriculum never puts ideological indoctrination ahead of education.

Unlike government schools, and even many private schools, my curriculum addresses the crucial role religion played in the development of Western civilization. However, the materials are drafted in such a way that parents of any or no religious belief can feel comfortable using the curriculum.

Interactive forums allow students to engage with and learn from each other. The forums ensure students are actively engaged in their education as well as give them an opportunity to interact with their peers outside of a formal setting.

The latest Republican tax plan has laudable features, such as allowing the use of tax-free education savings accounts for homeschooling. However, as long as Congress refuses to offset tax cuts with spending cuts, the benefits of tax cuts will be limited and short-lived. Therefore, while all lovers of liberty should support any and all tax cuts, we must work to pressure Congress to cut spending. Bringing the troops home and shutting down the Department of Education are two good places to start.

*  *  *

Parents interested in my homeschooling curriculum can find out more about it at ronpaulcurriculum.com.

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China-Japan Maritime Crisis Would Threaten “Belt and Road Initiative”, PLA Warns

Kyodo News has published an internal document from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that specified a military crisis at sea between China and Japan would severely threaten Beijing’s strategy of peaceful development and its “Belt and Road initiative” (BRI).

The internal report, authored by two military officials at the Naval Military Research Institute and Dalian Naval Academy, suggested the probability of a significant military crisis at sea between both countries is rapidly increasing due to disputes over the sovereignty of the Senkaku Islands, maritime demarcation in the East China Sea, and the development of marine resources in the region.

Last week, a Japanese submarine war drill was conducted in the South China Sea. The Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) said in a rare statement that one submarine and three other vessels performed aggressive maneuvers to deter China’s militarization in the region.

The PLA report, which was published for internal use only in April 2017, warns that a minor misjudgment of the above issues could deteriorate bilateral relations between both countries and lead to a maritime crisis.

As a result, the disruption could jeopardize Beijing’s BRI or the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road, a series of trade routes that connect China by land, air, and sea to Southeast Asia, Pakistan and Central Asia, and beyond to the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

The second region in focus for a potential trigger point between China and Japan is the East China Sea, in particular, the Japan-owned Senkakus Islands, which are also claimed by China, where the land masses are known as the Diaoyu, and Taiwan, which calls them Tiaoyutai.

In late 2012, a private Japanese landowner sold the group of uninhabited islands to the Japanese government, infuriating Beijing and leading to a brief but acute diplomatic war between the two nations.

“The Diaoyu clearly possess economic and sovereign value, but its military significance is even more evident,” the PLA report states. “Its location is strategically important if we choose to take Taiwan by force. It is also important in competing with Japan for maritime rights.”

The third potential region where a military crisis could emerge between both countries is the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

The PLA report also states Japan’s strategy is to strengthen relations with Taiwan and the US to contain China. In the South China Sea, Japan is said to be jointly working with individual Southeast Asian countries and the US to challenge China’s “legitimate actions to protect its national sovereignty in the area,” the report claims.

To prevent a military skirmish between China and Japan that could spiral out of control and lead to World War III, the PLA report suggests six precautionary measures:

“The first is to ensure both sides maintain high-level official contacts and “properly handle” long-standing disputes, while the second is to have both establish a military confidence-building mechanism and strengthen military exchanges.

Recognizing that the disputes over the Senkakus and the demarcation of the East China Sea cannot be resolved overnight, the article advised, as a third measure, that Beijing and Tokyo establish a “highly efficient” crisis management mechanism that involves government agencies related to such fields as defense, diplomacy, and maritime affairs.

The fourth is to strengthen the capacity for managing a military crisis, including through academic study of maritime crisis management.

The fifth is to strengthen cooperation on maritime security with the United States. The purpose is to avoid involving the United States in a “China-Japan military crisis on the sea” so China will not be “hijacked into a maritime crisis with the United States.”

Finally, the sixth measure calls for China to build a strong navy to ensure its maritime supremacy.”

The PLA report also said Japan as a country has a tradition of “not making enemies with a strong country.” China’s survivability depends on the strength of its naval power. “Only by securing maritime supremacy can we make our adversary flinch,” the report concluded.

As a result, we can now add the smoldering China-Japan maritime crisis to the list of powderkegs ready to ignite into a regional, or global, armed conflict.

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Confirming Assange’s Assertion That WikiLeaks’ Source Was The DNC Itself

Authored by Elizabeth Vos via DisobedientMedia.com,

Disobedient Media has closely followed the work of the Forensicator, whose analysis has shed much light on the publications by the Guccifer 2.0 persona for over a year. In view of the more recent work published by the Forensicator regarding potential media collusion with Guccifer 2.0, we are inclined to revisit an interview given by WikiLeaks Editor-In-Chief Julian Assange in August of 2016, prior to the publication of the Podesta Emails in October, and the November US Presidential election.

During the interview, partially transcribed below, Assange makes a number of salient points on the differentiation between the thousands of pristine emails WikiLeaks received, and those which had surfaced in other US outlets by that date. Though Assange does not name the Guccifer 2.0 persona directly throughout the interview, he does name multiple outlets which publicized Guccifer 2.0’s documents.

The significance of revisiting Assange’s statements is the degree to which his most significant claim is corroborated or paralleled by the Forensicator’s analysis. This is of enhanced import in light of allegations by Robert Mueller (not to mention the legacy media), despite a total absence of evidence, that Guccifer 2.0 was WikiLeaks’s source of the DNC and Podesta emails.

This author previously discussed the possibility that Assange’s current isolation might stem in part from the likelihood that upon expulsion from the embassy, Julian Assange could provide evidential proof that the DNC emails and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks were not sourced from Russia, or backed by the Kremlin, all without disclosing the identity of their source.

Julian Assange told RT:

 “In the US media there has been a deliberate conflation between DNC leaks, which is what we’ve been publishing, and DNC hacks, of the US Democratic Party which have occurred over the last two years, by their own admission… what [Hillary Clinton] is attempting to do is to conflate our publication of pristine emails – no one in the Democratic party argues that a single email is not completely valid. That hasn’t been done. The head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, has rolled as a result.

… And whatever hacking has occurred, of the DNC or other political organizations in the United States, by a range of actors – in the middle, we have something, which is the publication by other media organizations, of information reportedly from the DNC, and that seems to be the case. That’s the publication of word documents in pdfs published by The Hill, by Gawker, by The Smoking Gun. This is a completely separate batch of documents, compared to the 20,000 pristine emails that we have at WikiLeaks. 

… In this [separate] batch of documents, released by these other media organizations, there are claims that in the metadata, someone has done a document to pdf conversion, and in some cases the language of the computer that was used for that conversion was Russian. So that’s the circumstantial evidence that some Russian was involved, or someone who wanted to make it look like a Russian was involved, with these other media organizations. That’s not the case for the material we released. 

… The Hillary Clinton hack campaign has a serious problem in trying to figure out how to counter-spin our publication… because the emails are un-arguable… There’s an attempt to bring in a meta-story. And the meta-story is, did some hacker obtain these emails? Ok. Well, people have suggested that there’s evidence that the DNC has been hacked. I’m not at all surprised its been hacked. If you read very carefully, they say it’s been hacked many times over the last two years. Our sources say that DNC security is like Swiss Cheese.

… Hillary Clinton is saying, untruthfully, that she knows who the source of our emails are. Now, she didn’t quite say “our emails.” She’s playing some games, because there have been other publications by The Hill, by Gawker, other US media, of different documents, not emails. So, we have to separate the various DNC or RNC hacks that have occurred over the years, and who’s done that. The source: we know who the source is, it’s the Democratic National Committee itself. And our sources who gave these materials, and other pending materials, to us. These are all different questions.“

The core assertion made by Assange in the above-transcribed segment of his 2016 interview with RT is the differentiation between WikiLeaks’s publications from the altered documents released by Guccifer 2.0 (after being pre-released to US media outlets as referenced by Assange). This finer point is one that is corroborated by the Forensicator’s analysis, and one which it seems much of the public has yet to entirely digest.

Disobedient Media previously wrote regarding the Forensicator’s publication of Did Guccifer 2 Plant his Russian Fingerprints?:

 “Ars Technica found “Russian fingerprints” in a PDF posted by Gawker the previous day. Apparently, both Gawker and The Smoking Gun (TSG) had received pre-release copies of Guccifer 2.0’s first batch of documents; Guccifer 2.0 would post them later, on his WordPress.com blog site. Although neither Gawker nor TSG reported on these Russian error messages, some readers noticed them and mentioned them in social media forums; Ars Technica was likely the first media outlet to cover those “Russian fingerprints.”

The Forensicator’s analysis cannot enlighten us as to the ultimate source of WikiLeaks’s releases. At present, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that Guccifer 2.0 was, or was not, WikiLeaks’ source. There is no evidence connecting Guccifer 2.0 with WikiLeaks, but there is likewise no evidence to rule out a connection.

It is nonetheless critically important, as Assange indicated, to differentiate between the files published by Guccifer 2.0 and those released by WikiLeaks. None of the “altered” documents (with supposed Russian fingerprints) published by Guccifer 2.0 appear in WikiLeaks’s publications. 

It is also worth noting that, though Assange’s interview took place before the publication of the Podesta email collection, the allegations of a Russian hack based on Guccifer 2.0’s publication were ultimately contradicted by a DNC official, as reported by the Associated Press. Disobedient Media wrote:

“Ultimately, it is the DNC’s claim that they were breached by Russian hackers, who stole the Trump opposition report, which directly belies their allegation – because the document did not come from the DNC, but from John Podesta’s emails.”

Again: The very document on which the initial “Russian hack” allegations were based did not originate within the DNC Emails at all, but in the Podesta Emails, which at the time of Assange’s RT interview, had not yet been published.

Disobedient Media also noted in relation to the Forensicator’s Media Mishaps report:

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

This creates a massive contradiction within the DNC’s narrative, but it does not materially change Assange’s assertion that the pristine emails obtained by WikiLeaks were fundamentally distinct and should not be conflated with the altered documents published by Guccifer 2.0, as the WikiLeaks publication of the Podesta emails contain none of the alterations shown in the version of the documents published by Guccifer 2.0.

Though no establishment media outlet has reported on this point, when reviewing the evidence at hand and especially the work of the Forensicator, it is evident that the Guccifer 2.0 persona never actually published a single email. The persona published documents and even screenshots of emails – but never the emails themselves. Thus, again, Guccifer 2.0’s works are critically different from the DNC and Podesta email publications by WikiLeaks.

The following charts are included to help remind readers of the timeline of events relative to Guccifer 2.0, including the date specific documents were published:

Image Courtesy Of The Forensicator

Image Courtesy of the Forensicator

This writer previously opined on the apparent invulnerability of the Russiagate saga to factual refutation. One cannot blame the public for such narrative immortality, as the establishment-backed press has made every effort to confuse and conflate the alterations made to documents published by Guccifer 2.0 and the WikiLeaks releases. One can only hope, however, that this reminder of their distinct state will help raise public skepticism of a narrative based on no evidence whatsoever.

It is also especially important to reconsider Julian Assange’s statements and texts in light of his ongoing isolation from the outside world, which has prevented him from commenting further on an infinite array of subjects including Guccifer 2.0 and the “Russian hacking” saga.

Winston S. contributed to the content of this report.

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3 Ways Facebook Is Increasingly Becoming An Arm Of The US Government

Facebook has lately announced a series of major steps it would take to combat fake news and the global spread of misinformation that it says could influence elections, but the more we learn about just who it is Facebook is partnering with in this endeavor, the clearer it becomes that these initiatives are not at all designed to foster independent thought and discourse, but to ultimately ensure that public online discourse doesn’t stray too far from official state narratives. 

Mark Weisbrot, a co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, recently slammed Facebook’s decision to work with US government-funded organizations as “Orwellian” — especially given the fact these organizations themselves “specialize in overseas propaganda.”

Thus while claiming to fight Russian, Iranian, and other propaganda these very groups will strictly enforce an official establishment Washington and NATO view of world events. 

Here are 3 extremely worrisome Facebook initiatives to which the public should pay close attention, and which suggest the social media giant is increasingly becoming a censorship arm of the US government and its allies…

* * *

Facebook’s Partnership with US state-funded think tanks

Last Wednesday Facebook announced it would work with two US government-funded think tanks in order bolster the social media giant’s “election integrity efforts” around the globe.

The new partnership with the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) has been described by Reuters as an initiative to “slow the global spread of misinformation that could influence elections, acknowledging that fake news sites were still read by millions”.

But both the IRI and NDI are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has since its late Cold War era founding defined itself as a “soft power” wing of the US government abroad focused on “democracy promotion”. 

Journalist Max Blumenthal recently described the NDI as “a taxpayer funded organization that has interfered in elections, mobilized coups, and orchestrated public relations campaigns against nations that resist Washington’s agenda.” 

Max Blumenthal explored the National Endowment for Democracy’s machinations in recent history and today in a mini-documentary entitled, “Inside America’s Meddling Machine”

This is tantamount to Facebook relying on the US government to interpret what is “fake” news and what is not. 

* * * 

Facebook’s close ties to NATO and US allies

Another think tank, The Atlantic Council, has since last May been directly advising Facebook on identifying and removing “foreign interference” on the popular platform through its Digital Forensic Research Lab, or “DFR Lab”. The Atlantic Council is funded by NATO and European governments and Gulf monarchies. 

Previously Mark Zuckerberg indicated the need for an outside source that could identify “foreign influence” bent on malicious intent through specialized geopolitical expertise.

Supposedly the whole partnership is aimed at bringing more objectivity and neutrality to the process of rooting out fake accounts that pose the threat of being operated by nefarious foreign states. Yet as a Reuters report confirmed, Facebook is itself a top donor to the Atlantic Council, alongside Western governments, Gulf autocratic regimes, NATO, various branches of the US military, and a number of major defense contractors and corporations. 

A partial list of top Atlantic Council funders and DFR lab associates. 

The Atlantic Council has frequently called for things like increased military engagement in Syria, militarily confronting the “Russian threat” in Eastern Europe, and now is advocating for Ukraine and Georgia to be allowed entry into NATO while calling for general territorial expansion of the Western military alliance. 

Further it has advocated on behalf of one of its previous funders, Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and gave a “Distinguished International Leadership” award to George W. Bush, to name but a few actions of the think tank that has been given authorization to flag citizens’ Facebook pages for possible foreign influence and propaganda. 

Quite disturbingly, this is Mark Zuckerberg’s “neutral” outside “geopolitical expertise” he’s been seeking. 

* * * 

Facebook has set up a “War Room” ahead of the November midterm elections

Facebook announced last Wednesday that it plans to set up a “war room” at its Silicon Valley campus to prevent potential foreign election meddling during the midterms. 

“We are setting up a war room in Menlo Park for the Brazil and US elections,” Facebook elections and civic engagement director Samidh Chakrabarti said, according to the AFP. He added, “It is going to serve as a command center so we can make real-time decisions as needed.”

A “command center” in a “war room” to make “real-time” decisions huh?… And Facebook says it will gain help from artificial intelligence software to prevent fake posts by those pesky Russians to boot.

The “war room” will further include assistance from the aforementioned NATO-funded DFR Lab, which is to help in flagging posts which could have a malevolent foreign power behind them. All of this should translate into very real concern for the potential of political censorship of American citizens in the name of protecting against foreign election meddling.

Early this year The New York Times reported that in order to combat the “discord” allegedly sewn by Russians, most of which the Times story admitted happened after the election, Facebook hired a fleet of people to review content, added to its security team, and hired counterterrorism experts and recruited workers with government security clearances. 

* * *

What’s the ultimate aim here? 

The Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) Richard Stengel, a former TIME editor, told an audience at a CFR event in late April called “Political Disruptions: Combating Disinformation and Fake News” that governments “have to” direct “propaganda” toward their own populations.

Notably CFR members are also typically a who’s who among the leadership of above-mentioned organizations like the NED, IRI, NDI, and the Atlantic Council.

These are the types of people looking to “guide” Facebook on flagging disinformation. See what they have to say in their own words:

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