Some 1.2 billion people do not have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2016 report. About 2.7 billion still cook and heat their dwellings with wood, crop residues, and dung. In its main scenario for the trajectory of global energy consumption, the IEA projects that in 2040, half a billion people will still lack access to electricity and 1.8 billion will still be cooking and heating by burning biomass. In its new report, Energy for Human Development, the eco-modernist Breakthrough Institute make the case that ending energy poverty for hundreds of millions of poor people should be prioritized over efforts to mitigate future climate change. They correctly argue that “it is untenable morally and practically to insist that global climate change targets be balanced upon the backs of the poorest people on earth.”
After three consecutive quarters of losses, the world’s biggest pension funds, Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, posted its first modest profit in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, providing a reprieve to the state money manager after it had come under attack in recent quarter for taking on too much risk by taking on too much exposure in risky assets.
The GPIF returned an annualized 1.8%, or 2.4 trillion yen ($21 billion) in the third quarter, boosting assets to 132.1 trillion yen, or roughly $1.17 trillion at today’s exchange rate, it reported on Friday. Domestic and foreign equities added 3.1 trillion yen as they recovered from their Brexit rout, outweighing a loss of 706.9 billion yen on bond holdings. Even with the modest rebound, the fund’s cumulative profits since fiscal 2001 remained over 8 trillion yen below its recent all time high gains achieved at the end of fiscal 2014 when it had generated cumulative profits of 50.7 trillion yen.
As reported previously, and as Bloomberg points out, the fund had lost than 15 trillion yen over the last three quarters, wiping out all investment gains since it overhauled its strategy in 2014 by boosting shares and cutting debt. The good news for the GPIF is that thanks to Donald Trump’s victory, which has unleashed a historic plunge in the Yen, and corresponding spike in the Nikkei, the GPIF will likely report further gains in Q4, quieting complaints at home that GPIF’s investing approach is too dangerous, assuming of course that there is no dramatic reversel in the recent USDJPY gains which have come on expectations of future rate hikes by the Fed in light of Trumpflation.
“It’ll take some pressure off,” said Naoki Fujiwara, chief fund manager at Shinkin Asset Management Co. in Tokyo. “This quarter will probably be good too. But before we all get too excited, we need to be wary about whether this can continue for long.”
The fund’s holdings have recently become a topic of political discussion, with opposition lawmaker Yuichiro Tamaki claiming in an interview earlier this month that the GPIF’s purchases of stocks are a “gamble,” after an almost 20% drop in Japan’s Topix index in the first half of the year. Shinzo Abe has countered that the
fund’s short-term losses aren’t a problem for Japan’s pension finances.
The GPIF’s holdings of domestic bonds, which have been mauled in the past three weeks, posted a 1.3% loss in the three months through September after yields rebounded; they will likely record even greater losses in Q4. The decline has reduced Japanese debt held by the GPIF to 36% of holdings, fractionally above the target allocation of 35% meaning that the fund will have little leeway to purchase more equities absent another change in the fund’s asset allocation.
According to a detailed breakdown provided by the fund in excel form (a first), local stocks made up 22% of GPIF’s portfolio at the end of September, while foreign shares accounted for 21%. That compares with targets of 25 percent for each. Based on Bloomberg calculations, the GPIF delivered a 7.1% gain on domestic stocks in Q3, beating a 6.2 percent rebound in the Topix during the period. Returns from overseas assets were muted by a stronger yen, which rose 1.8 percent against the dollar in the quarter. GPIF’s international stocks gained 3.7 percent, while foreign bonds lost 0.2 percent as yields rose amid speculation the U.S. will tighten borrowing costs.
Among international stocks, Apple, Microsoft and Exxon were the GPIF’s top stock investments at the end of September, while Japanese government bonds, U.S. Treasuries and Italian debt were the largest bond holdings.
The full breakdown of the GPIF’s holdings in excel format can be found here, while the list of the top 100 international equity holdings is listed in the table below.
Having topped $49 earlier in the week, hopes of a ‘freeze’ deal are fading fast as first Saudi Arabia abandons Monday’s planned meeting with non-OPEC producers and now Reuters reports a delegate confirming Monday’s OPEC/NOPEC meeting has been cancelled…
We discuss the latest in the OPEC Saga to arrive at an agreement to tighten the oil market and raise oil prices to bring in long term CAP Ex Investment back into the Industry which has seen three straight years of annual declines and has long term ramifications for the oil market. The Speculators have taken 500 Billion to a Trillion Dollars from OPEC over last 3 years!
Since its lows in May of 2014, short-term USD borrowing costs (1M Libor) have quadrupled. As the 100%-priced-in December rate-hike looms, the cost of funding for American businesses is once again on the rise, now at its highest since December 2008.
For now, it seems, the most levered US equity market ever appears ignorant of this rapid tightening of financial conditions…
"Similar to our view on payout ratios limiting dividend growth, we believe debt-to-EBITDA has reached a point where it is becoming a constraint on additional leverage."
While we would be the first to agree, so far companies have proven very resilient to recurring warnings that "peak debt" has arrived, almost exclusively thanks to central banks which continue to force investors to chase what little yield remains, ostensibly in corporate debt – the BOE's launch of corporate debt monetization today being a perfect example this morning – while ignoring all the flashing red signs..
But maybe things have got just a little out of hand this time…
There certainly is a lot of fake news. And some of it is by anti-establishment types trying to discredit American institutions with false reports.
But – as we document below – the government and mainstream media are by far the biggest purveyors of fake news.
The Government’s Been Deploying Propaganda On U.S. Soil for Many Years
The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities found in 1975 that the CIA submitted stories to the American press:
After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the CIA. By this time, Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The usual methodology was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to witting or unwitting reporters. Those reports would then be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services.
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning off funds intended for the Marshall Plan [i.e. the rebuilding of Europe by the U.S. after WWII]. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers.
During the early years of the cold war, [prominent writers and artists, from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to Jackson Pollock] were supported, sometimes lavishly, always secretly, by the C.I.A. as part of its propaganda war against the Soviet Union. It was perhaps the most successful use of “soft power” in American history.
A CIA operative told Washington Post owner Philip Graham … in a conversation about the willingness of journalists to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories:
You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.
Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein wrote in 1977:
More than 400 American journalists … in the past twenty?five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.
***
In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.
***
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were [the heads of CBS, Time, the New York Times, the Louisville Courier?Journal, and Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include [ABC, NBC, AP, UPI, Reuters], Hearst Newspapers, Scripps?Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald?Tribune.
***
There is ample evidence that America’s leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. “Let’s not pick on some poor reporters, for God’s sake,” William Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church committee’s investigators. “Let’s go to the managements.
***
The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were “taught to make noises like reporters,” explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management.
***
Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings.
***
Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience.
***
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Time magazine’s foreign correspondents attended CIA “briefing” dinners similar to those the CIA held for CBS.
***
When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources. “It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from,” said a former deputy director of the Agency. “Frank Wisner dealt with him.” Wisner, deputy director of the CIA from 1950 until shortly before his suicide in 1965, was the Agency’s premier orchestrator of “black” operations, including many in which journalists were involved. Wisner liked to boast of his “mighty Wurlitzer,” a wondrous propaganda instrument he built, and played, with help from the press.)
***
In November 1973, after [the CIA claimed to have ended the program], Colby told reporters and editors from the New York Times and the Washington Star that the Agency had “some three dozen” American newsmen “on the CIA payroll,” including five who worked for “general?circulation news organizations.” Yet even while the Senate Intelligence Committee was holding its hearings in 1976, according to high?level CIA sources, the CIA continued to maintain ties with seventy?five to ninety journalists of every description—executives, reporters, stringers, photographers, columnists, bureau clerks and members of broadcast technical crews. More than half of these had been moved off CIA contracts and payrolls but they were still bound by other secret agreements with the Agency. According to an unpublished report by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Representative Otis Pike, at least fifteen news organizations were still providing cover for CIA operatives as of 1976.
***
Those officials most knowledgeable about the subject say that a figure of 400 American journalists is on the low side ….
“There were a lot of representations that if this stuff got out some of the biggest names in journalism would get smeared” ….
A 4-part BBC documentary called the “Century of the Self” shows that an American – Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays – created the modern field of manipulation of public perceptions, and the U.S. government has extensively used his techniques.
John Pilger is a highly-regarded journalist (the BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson remarked, “A country that does not have a John Pilger in its journalism is a very feeble place indeed”). Pilger said in 2007:
We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fake.
***
One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said the spokesman, “that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don’t have to do any of that. What is the secret?”
For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.
The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I’ve spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.
The “Zarqawi letter” which made it on to the front page of The New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into news media.
This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of “strategic communications” which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.
***
The Pentagon has now designated “information operations” as its fifth “core competency” alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own “psyop” element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department’s campaign of “public diplomacy” which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.
In the case of British intelligence, you can see this combination of reckless propaganda and failure of oversight at work in the case of Operation Mass Appeal. This was exposed by the former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who describes in his book, Iraq Confidential, how, in London in June 1998, he was introduced to two “black propaganda specialists” from MI6 who wanted him to give them material which they could spread through “editors and writers who work with us from time to time”.
The government is still paying off reporters to spread disinformation. And the corporate media are acting like virtual “escort services” for the moneyed elites, selling access – for a price – to powerful government officials, instead of actually investigating and reporting on what those officials are doing.
One of the ways that the U.S. government spreads propaganda is by making sure that it gets its version out first. For example, the head of the U.S. Information Agency’s television and film division – Alvin A. Snyder – wrote in his book Warriors of Disinformation: How Lies, Videotape, and the USIA Won the Cold War:
All governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first.
***
Another casualty, always war’s first, was the truth. The story of [the accidental Russian shootdown of a Korean airliner] will be remembered pretty much the way we told it in 1983, not the way it really happened.
In 2013, the American Congress repealed the formal ban against the deployment of propaganda against U.S. citizens living on American soil. So there’s even less to constrain propaganda than before.
One of the most common uses of propaganda is to sell unnecessary and counter-productive wars. Given that the American media is always pro-war, mainstream publishers, producers, editors, and reporters are willing participants.
It’s not just lying about Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction … the corporate media is still selling lies to promote war.
(Unknown artist)
Former Newsweek and Associated Press reporter Robert Parry notes that Ronald Reagan and the CIA unleashed a propaganda campaign in the 1980’s to sell the American public on supporting the Contra rebels, utilizing private players such as Rupert Murdoch to spread disinformation. Parry notes that many of the same people that led Reagan’s domestic propaganda effort in the 1980’s are in power today:
While the older generation that pioneered these domestic propaganda techniques has passed from the scene, many of their protégés are still around along with some of the same organizations. The National Endowment for Democracy, which was formed in 1983 at the urging of CIA Director Casey and under the supervision of Walter Raymond’s NSC operation, is still run by the same neocon, Carl Gershman, and has an even bigger budget, now exceeding $100 million a year.
Gershman and his NED played important behind-the-scenes roles in instigating the Ukraine crisis by financing activists, journalists and other operatives who supported the coup against elected President Yanukovych. The NED-backed Freedom House also beat the propaganda drums. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Shadow Foreign Policy.”]
Two other Reagan-era veterans, Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan, have both provided important intellectual support for continuing U.S. interventionism around the world. Earlier this year, Kagan’s article for The New Republic, entitled “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” touched such a raw nerve with President Obama that he hosted Kagan at a White House lunch and crafted the presidential commencement speech at West Point to deflect some of Kagan’s criticism of Obama’s hesitancy to use military force.
***
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is bigger than ever ….
Another key to American propaganda is the constant repetition of propaganda. As Business Insider reported in 2013:
In context, Colonel Leap is implying we ought to change the law to enable Public Affairs officers to influence American public opinion when they deem it necessary to “protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will.”
The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 appears to serve this purpose by allowing for the American public to be a target audience of U.S. government-funded information campaigns.
Davis also quotes Brigadier General Ralph O. Baker — the Pentagon officer responsible for the Department of Defense’s Joint Force Development — who defines Information Operations (IO) as activities undertaken to “shape the essential narrative of a conflict or situation and thus affect the attitudes and behaviors of the targeted audience.”
Brig. Gen. Baker goes on to equate descriptions of combat operations with the standard marketing strategy of repeating something until it is accepted:
For years, commercial advertisers have based their advertisement strategies on the premise that there is a positive correlation between the number of times a consumer is exposed to product advertisement and that consumer’s inclination to sample the new product. The very same principle applies to how we influence our target audiences when we conduct COIN.
And those “thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs” appear to serve Baker’s strategy, which states: “Repetition is a key tenet of IO execution, and the failure to constantly drive home a consistent message dilutes the impact on the target audiences.”
Government Massively Manipulates the Web, Social Media and Other Forms of Communication
Of course, the Web and social media have become a huge media platform, and the Pentagon and other government agencies are massivelymanipulatingboth.
The CIA and other government agencies also put enormous energy into pushing propaganda through movies, television and video games.
Cross-Border Propaganda
Propaganda isn’t limited to our own borders …
Sometimes, the government plants disinformation in American media in order to mislead foreigners. For example, an official government summary of America’s overthrow of the democratically-elected president of Iran in the 1950′s states, “In cooperation with the Department of State, CIA had several articles planted in major American newspapers and magazines which, when reproduced in Iran, had the desired psychological effect in Iran and contributed to the war of nerves against Mossadeq” (page x).
Why? Because the Founding Father knew that governments (like the British monarchy) will always crack down on those who point out that the emperor has no clothes.
But the freedom of the press is under massive attack in America today …
Obama has gone after top reporters. His Department of Justice labeled chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen a “criminal co-conspirator” in a leak case, and for many years threatened to prosecute Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times journalist James Risen
The government admits that journalists could be targeted with counter-terrorism laws (and here). For example, after Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and others sued the government to enjoin the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans – the judge asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys. The government refusedto promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge
In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of the bank’s wrongdoing, the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this)
In late January of the year 98 AD, after decades of turmoil, instability, inflation, and war, Romans welcomed a prominent solider named Trajan as their new Emperor.
Prior to Trajan, Romans had suffered immeasurably, from the madness of Nero to the ruthless autocracy of Domitian, to the chaos of 68-69 AD when, in the span of twelve months, Rome saw four separate emperors.
Trajan was welcome relief and was generally considered by his contemporaries to be among the finest emperors in Roman history.
Trajan’s successors included Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, both of whom were also were also reputed as highly effective rulers.
But that was pretty much the end of Rome’s good luck.
The Roman Empire’s enlightened rulers may have been able to make some positive changes and delay the inevitable, but they could not prevent it.
Rome still had far too many systemic problems.
The cost of administering such a vast empire was simply too great. There were so many different layers of governments—imperial, provincial, local—and the upkeep was debilitating.
Rome had also installed costly infrastructure and created expensive social welfare programs like the alimenta, which provided free grain to the poor.
Not to mention, endless wars had taken their toll on public finances.
Romans were no longer fighting conventional enemies like Carthage, and its famed General Hannibal bringing elephants across the Alps.
Instead, Rome’s greatest threat had become the Germanic barbarian tribes, peoples viewed as violent and uncivilized who would stop at nothing to destroy Roman way of life.
Corruption and destructive bureaucracy were increasingly rampant.
And the worse imperial finances became, the more the government tried to “fix” everything by passing debilitating regulation and debasing the currency.
In his seminal work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon wrote:
“The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.”
Gibbon was right. These trends are incredibly powerful. And once they reach a tipping point, they’re almost impossible to stop.
Similarly, though, no one has the ability to look into a crystal ball and predict with any certainty when it will all finally break down.
In today’s version of the Roman Empire, the United States, we can see similar circumstances.
The debt level is now rapidly closing in on $20 trillion, well in excess of 100% of GDP.
And even under the government’s most optimistic estimates, this debt is growing at a far more rapid rate than the economy could ever hope to expand.
We can see a central bank that is nearly insolvent.
We can see a commercial banking system that, even in the opinion of its own regulators (most recently the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis), is still at significant risk to succumb to a major crisis.
We can see Civil Asset Forfeiture levels that have increased to astonishing rates.
These trends are pretty obvious, and they have been building for years.
And history shows that, whenever governments reach these tipping points, they tend to rely on a very limited playbook.
In ancient times, the Romans imposed wage and price controls under penalty of death.
In our modern era, governments default on the obligations they’ve made to taxpayers (for example, social security and pension payments).
They impose capital controls, preventing you from engaging in even the most basic financial transactions like withdrawing money from your own bank account.
They grab assets and retirement savings. They freeze accounts.
This isn’t theory or conjecture– it’s reality. Each one of these examples has actually taken place in the developed world in the past few years.
It’s not crazy or radical to acknowledge these simple facts.
Actually, denying them and pretending like these problems don’t exist seems pretty crazy.
And understanding the truth doesn’t mean that the world is coming to and end. Far from it.
But it does make sense for rational, thinking people to take some simple steps to distance themselves from the consequences of such obvious trends.
For example, if your banking system is deeply flawed, don’t keep all of your money there. Easy. Why take the chance?
Instead, consider holding a bit of cash, or perhaps move some funds to a more conservative, well-capitalized bank that’s backed by a government with zero debt.
If the fundamentals of your currency are pitiful and your central bank is nearly insolvent, don’t keep 100% of your assets denominated in it.
Consider diversifying into other currencies or owning some real assets, like productive land, profitable businesses, precious metals, cash-producing real estate.
If your government is flat broke and losing money every year, don’t keep all of your assets there, especially your retirement savings.
Consider structuring a better retirement plan where you have the latitude to move funds outside the conventional financial system and away from their easy reach.
These concepts ensure that, no matter what happens (or doesn’t happen) next, you’ll always be in a position of strength.
There may be good emperors and bad emperors, devils and saints.
And the consequences of the trends they’ve created may come to pass tomorrow, next month, next year, or perhaps (by some miracle), never at all.
But it’s hard to imagine you’ll be worse off for having a portion of your savings in a safe, well-capitalized bank as opposed to an illiquid one.
It’s hard to imagine you’re worse off because it’s more difficult for frivolous plaintiffs to sue you.
Or that the completely legal steps you’ve taken have reduced your tax bill.
Or that your new retirement plan is safer and exposed to more lucrative investment options than ever before.
Rational, thinking people don’t ignore such obvious risks. They understand that the biggest risk of all is doing nothing.
The solutions are simple, effective, and absolute no-brainers. All it takes to implement are the proper tools, the right education, and the basic will to take action.
The desperate flailing of a mainstream-media struggling through the five stages of grief continues as no lesser unbiased foundation of the fourth estate than The Washington Post pushes ahead with its "fake news, blame the Russians" narrative for why their candidate failed so miserably.
Citing "two teams of independent researchers" (who surely have a substantial libel litigation provision) who found "Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery… echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal," the Jeff Bezos-owned website names Drudge, Zero Hedge, and The Ron Paul Institute and countless other outlets among the "useful idiots" that true American patriots should be wary of.
“The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity with the Post.
“It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign."
In the wake of the election, fake news and its spread on social media has come into the spotlight – for our latest thoughts on this topic please see our "thank you" notefrom last night.
President Obama denounced the attention garnered by false information last week, saying: “If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not … if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.” And as The Hill reports, a sophisticated Russian propaganda effort helped fuel the spread of fake news during the election cycle, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
Two groups of independent researchers found that Russia employed thousands of botnets, human internet “trolls” and networks of Web sites and social media accounts to inject false content into online political talk and amplify posts from right-wing sites.
“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who co-authored a report about Russian propaganda.
“This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.”
The Washington Post states – without irony – that there are now scientific studies that show how the Russians influenced the 2016 election…
The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.
Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of Web sites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.
Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.
The report from PropOrNot, provided to the Post, identifies more than 200 websites that routinely pushed Russian propaganda to at least 15 million Americans, and found that false stories pushed on Facebook were viewed more than 213 million times. You may be surprised by some of the sites on the list (it seems even satirical fakes news sites are propagandists too)…
So in other words, any and every one who is anything but a liberal drone is now a Russian plant? McCarthy would be proud.
Please note that our criteria are behavioral. That means the characteristics of the propaganda outlets we identify are motivation-agnostic.
For purposes of this definition it does not matter whether the sites listed here are being knowingly directed and paid by Russian intelligence officers, or whether they even knew they were echoing Russian propaganda at any particular point: If they meet these criteria, they are at the very least acting as bona-fide "useful idiots" of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further scrutiny.
Which reminded us of @SarcasmRobot's artist's impression of what desperation by the establishment, and its pet media, looks like.
For further color on "Useful Idiots", Jim Quinn uncovered the following video by a former KGB member Yuri Bezmenov who defected to Canuckistan in 1970. In it he details how the Marxist/Leninist’s planned to conquer the west from within without ever firing a shot. How well do you think their plan is working? At about 7:20 the host, G. Edward Griffin, asks Yuri "What do we do?" (to counter the takeover) and we were more than a little surprised by his response:
Since the election and even a little before, many have pushed the idea that Trump needs to concentrate on aggressively educating people to the evils that surround us… it appears that is the only way to right back against the tyranny of the fourth estate.
Finally (and no this is not Friday Humor), this is how the scientists described Zero Hedge.
ZeroHedge qualifies as “dark gray” propaganda, systematically deceiving its civilian audiences for foreign political gain.
Articles from ZeroHedge are frequently reposted by other sites, but appear on ZeroHedge first — the site’s authors are driving and shaping the stories, not merely reacting to them. An analysis of web traffic patterns and linking backs this up: ZeroHedge has a prominent place within the network of pro-Russia news and propaganda outlets.
We at PropOrNot rate it: Five Shadies.
While this latest spin on the so-called "narrative" will certainly backfire, and accelerate the demise of the mainstream media's efforts to maintain credibility and control of the American mindset – which it painfull lost with their lies during the presidential campaign – not to mention "eyeballs" and ad revenue, we remain fascinated by the so called "liberal left's" relentless charges that Trump will unleash a massive censorship assault on the "free press" when the "free press" itself is doing everything in its power to squash dissenting voices. To which all we can add is that it is a good thing that said "power" is declining with every passing day.
We began writing on the War on Cash some time ago, when it was still just a theoretical ploy that we believed banks and governments were likely to employ as their economic adventurism continued to unravel.
But, in the last year, several countries have, as a part of the War on Cash, begun removing larger bank notes from circulation in order to force people to perform all economic transactions through the banking system, assuring that the banks would gain total control over the movement of money.
Of course, the banks could not admit their true goal to the public. They instead used the governments to claim that the measure was being undertaken to restrict crime (money laundering, drug deals, black marketing, terrorism, etc.)
Recently, without any fanfare, ATM’s in Mexico have ceased issuing the 500 peso note US$24). The largest note is now the 200 peso note (US$10).
At about the same time, Citibank in Australia declared that it will no longer accept coins or banknotes.
India has joined those countries that have done away with larger notes. They did so quite suddenly and the effects are already being felt by the Indian people. The elimination of the 500 rupee and 1000 rupee notes has, of course, not limited the level of spending in India, but it has caused a sudden demand for considerably more smaller notes through which to accomplish the same transactions.
A problem with the removal surfaced immediately when people using ATM’s were withdrawing far more notes than ever before in order to have enough cash to function normally. The ATM’s were quickly being emptied of the smaller denominations. The people of India cried foul, as 86% of all money in circulation had vanished from the system overnight. The limit for withdrawal per day is 2500 rupees (US$37) – which for some is sufficient to pay for daily expenses, but is most certainly not sufficient to carry on a business or facilitate larger transactions.
Although deliveries of notes to the ATM’s has increased, the banks simply cannot make up for the sudden loss of 86% of the nation’s money. Not only can the delivery trucks not meet the demand, the machines cannot store the volume of notes needed.
The result has been a partial breakdown of commerce. With millions of people beginning each day with insufficient funds to function, one bi-product of the money shortage is that over 9.3 million trucks have simply been abandoned by their drivers. (Nearly two thirds of all freight in India moves by road.)
In January of 2016, we published an article that made reference to the turning point of World War Two on the western front. Although the German war machine was collapsing, a major last-ditch effort was made at the Battle of the Bulge to reverse the tide of the war. German tanks raced to the battle and might well have made the Germans the victors, but they ran out of gasoline along the way.
The crews, understanding that the game was well and truly over, simply left the tanks and began to walk back to Germany. The great significance of this event is that, no matter how much bluster a political or military leadership presents, and no matter how obediently the soldiers respond to such posturing, once it’s clear that the game is up, the pretense amongst the soldiers evaporates.
The same is true in commerce. When those who make the decisions in banking and government try to game the system one time too many, dysfunction sets in and the “soldiers” – the countless minor participants in the system – simply walk away.
The lesson to be learned here is that, in all countries where a War on Cash is being destructively waged, the end will not be a positive one. The people of each country will increasingly become unable to function normally, as in Greece, where there have been riots due to the banking squeeze. Banks and governments have colluded to tie up wealth in order to have their hands on as much of it as possible, as they grow nearer to economic collapse. As the situation drags on, their intent is becoming ever-more transparent to those who have to suffer the difficulties caused by the squeeze.
But, as difficult as it may be to accept, these are “the good old days”. The direst events to come have not yet begun to surface.
As I’ve mentioned in past articles, the problem reaches its nadir when trucks that move the country’s food come to a halt. As long as sufficient food remains available to us, we treat it as just another commodity. But unlike clothing, hardware, vehicles, etc., when our source of food is cut off, even for a very short period, we become frightfully aware that its level of importance is far beyond that of any other commodity.
It’s been said that the average person abandons his moral inhibitions after three days without food. After this time, an otherwise morally responsible man is literally prepared to kill his neighbour for a loaf of bread.
To date, none of the countries that have declared a War on Cash has yet experienced a food panic. It would not be surprising if India becomes the first, as their trucking problem has them on the edge already.
However, it’s ironic that the War on Cash problem is most pronounced in what was called “the free world” only two generations ago. Many of those countries that we’ve come to regard as being both prosperous and “safe” are becoming less so with great rapidity.
Small wonder, then, that an increasing number of people are exiting these once-choice jurisdictions and seeking those that are not similarly in economic decline. Although we cannot predict how far the elimination of cash will spread, the further you are from the epicentre of the problem, the greater your chances of coming out with your skin on.
The trick, of course, is to say, “This is where I get off,” well before (as we are beginning to see in India) the driver himself has abandoned the bus.
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