Category: zerohedge

Upon arrival on Saturday in China as part of his last visit to Asia as US Commander in Chief for the periodic photo-op that is the G-20 meeting, something unexpected happened: a very undiplomatic greeting when an unusual tarmac altercation involving Chinese and U.S. officials, including national security adviser Susan Rice, devolved into a shouting match by a member of the Chinese delegation.

After Air Force One landed in Hangzhou, a Chinese official began shouting at White House staff after the traveling American press contingent was brought onto the tarmac, according to pool reports. The Chinese official also attempted to block Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes after they lifted a blue rope holding back press and walked to the other side of it, closer to Obama.

Barack Obama arrives on Air Force One at Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport
in Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province on Sept. 3 for the G20 summit

As Politico reports the press pool was brought under a wing of Air Force One where the pool was supposed to stay behind a blue rope. However, a member of the Chinese delegation began shouting at White House staff, demanding the pool leave the arrival scene. A White House official said Obama was our president and Air Force One was our plane and that the press was not going to move from the designated area. The Chinese official angrily responded “This is our country. This is our airport.”

“They did things that weren’t anticipated,” Rice told reporters afterwards.

However, the disagreements between Chinese and American officials did not just stay on the tarmac. At Westlake Statehouse, where the summit was being held, a group of White House staff arriving before Obama was stopped at a security checkpoint. A heated argument between Chinese officials and White House staff, protocol officers and Secret Service, who were trying to enter the building separately from the press, broke out at the security gate.

According to the pool report, U.S. officials could be heard arguing in Chinese with Chinese officials over how many Americans could go through security at one time, how many White House officials were allowed to be in the building before Obama’s arrival, and which U.S. officials were on a security list.

“The president is arriving here in an hour,” a White House staffer was overheard saying in exasperation. A Chinese official assisting the U.S. officials became angered by how the guards were treating the White House staff as the disagreement escalated.

“You don’t push people. No one gave you the right to touch or push anyone around,” he yelled in Chinese at one of the Chinese security officials.

Another Chinese official trying to help White House staff stepped between the two men arguing, as the security official looked like he was going to throw a punch, according to the pool report. “Calm down, please. Calm down,” a White House official said.

“Stop, please,” said a foreign ministry official in Chinese. “There are reporters here.”

Another disagreement occurred when officials and press finally made it inside the building. Chinese officials told White House press officers that only 10 American journalists were allowed in. “That’s not right,” a White House press official said.

Two U.S. journalists were left outside and were not allowed to stand in the room, despite White House press officials insisting there was space. “There’s space. They are print reporters. They would just be just standing,” one White House press officer said. The two reporters were eventually granted access.

The unprecedented show of disrespect for a standing US president and his envoys took place after Obama once again criticized China over the ongoing territorial dispute in the South China Sea. As cited by Reuters Obama said  that China needs to be a more responsible power as it gains global influence and avoid flexing its muscles in disputes with smaller countries over issues like the South China Sea, U.S. President Barack Obama told CNN in an interview to be aired on Sunday.

Obama, who meets with President Xi Jinping at a G20 summit next week in China, told CNN the United States supports the peaceful rise of China but that Beijing had to recognize that “with increasing power comes increasing responsibilities,” a quote taken by Obama’s speechwriter from the Spiderman movie. 

Obama said Washington had urged Beijing to bind itself to international rules and norms to help build a strong international order. “Where we see them violating international rules and norms, as we have seen in some cases in the South China Sea or in some of their behavior when it comes to economic policy, we’ve been very firm,” Obama told CNN. “And we’ve indicated to them that there will be consequences.”

“If you sign a treaty that calls for international arbitration around maritime issues, the fact that you’re bigger than the Philippines or Vietnam or other countries … is not a reason for you to go around and flex your muscles,” Obama said. “You’ve got to abide by international law.”

So far China not only refuses to abide by international law, showing a clear disregard for US warnings about “consequences”, but with today’s latest diplomatic incident has telegraphed to the world that its respect for the US presidential institution has never been lower.

via http://ift.tt/2bTuApf Tyler Durden

Last week, following the recent dramatic decline to slam the Vancouver housing market after a 15% luxury real estate sales tax aimed at foreign purchasers, ground the local market to a halt, we reported that China’s angry consul general to Vancouver lashed out at the local government for finally bursting a housing bubble which doubled Vancouver real estate prices in the past decade.

“Why a 15 percent tax? Why now? Why this rate? What’s the purpose? Will it work?” Liu Fei, China’s infuriated consul general in Vancouver, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “The issue is how to help young people afford housing,” she added. “I’m not sure even a 50 percent tax would solve the problem.”

 

Arguing that the tax would halt the influx of hot Chinese money into Vancouver – which many have claimed is the reason for Vancouver’s stratospheric housing prices – Liu said that “this is a big country with a small population. It needs immigration to grow the economy.” The implication was that absent a hospitable housing market where Chinese hot money launderers can park their cash, it is Canada that would suffer.

Whether or not the conflicted Chinese consul is correct, remains to be seen, but for now one thing is undisputed: the Vancouver market is being roiled as the latest numbers from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver confirmed. In August, the board reported that Vancouver home sales fell 26% from a year earlier, while prices slid as the 15% tax crimped demand. Compared to July, sales tumbled by 23% to 2,489 transactions. Detached properties were hit hardest as sales dropped 45% from a year
earlier. Transactions of attached homes such as town-houses dipped 25%
and apartment sales were down 10 percent.

 

Meanwhile, the average price of detached Vancouver properties crashed, dropping 17% on the month, and 0.6% on the year, to C$1.47 million ($1.13 million) in August, the lowest price since September 2015.

Dan Morrison, president of the real estate board, said in the press release that Friday’s data show the tax “appears to have added” to a slowing trend that started several months ago by “reducing foreign buyer activity and causing some uncertainty amongst local home buyers and sellers.”

“It’ll take some months before we can really understand the impact of the new tax. We’ll be interested to see the government’s next round of foreign buyer data”, Morrison said adding that there’s an “imbalance between supply and demand in most communities”, with the supply clearly overwhelming demand.

Needless to say, the realtor’s group opposed the tax after it was announced as it also applied to pending transactions, leaving many buyers shouldering an unexpected tax and sellers with scuttled deals. He said in the statement the board is seeing fewer detached home sales, particularly in the highest price points.

As sales slow and prices cool, new listings of properties increased only slightly from last year, rising 0.3 percent. “What we’ve seen in August is mostly buyers going on the sidelines, either being forced onto the sidelines because they were cut by the sales tax and decided not to proceed with sales, or folks out there saying ‘let’s see how the dust settles,’” Robert Hogue, senior economist at Royal Bank of Canada, told Bloomberg. “So far we haven’t seen necessarily a flood of properties being listed on the market.”

One look at the chart above, however, and what is so far only a trickle will become a flood shortly as local sellers “on the sidelines” realize just how big the drop now is.

Meanwhile, the bursting of the housing bubble is bad news for the local government: as the city cools, governments of all levels are deriving the biggest share of their revenue from housing and related activities, about 17%, in about two decades, according to a National Bank of Canada report this month.

Worse, the August swoon is just the beginning: the city is still the least affordable in the country. As reported previously, roughly 90% of a typical family’s income goes to service a mortgage and pay property taxes and utility bills in Vancouver, double the national average, according to a Royal Bank of Canada second-quarter report. The benchmark price of all housing types, a custom measure used by the real estate board which excludes some properties, showed the price of a home on that measure increased 31 percent from a year earlier in August to C$933,100.

If the Vancouver bubble has indeed burst, keep an eye on the blue line in the chart above whose rate of fall is only set to accelerate.

via http://ift.tt/2c9ABlN Tyler Durden

The physical gold delivery failure to clients of Deutsche Bank who own Xetra-Gold, the gold exchange traded commodity, was confirmed yesterday by Deutsche Bourse who said that the inability to deliver gold was not limited to Deutsche Bank and that other German banks were having “problems” delivering gold.

This is yet another example of a bank not making good on promises to redeem their gold investment products, as seen with ABN Amro in 2013 and indeed Julius Baer in recent months as we pointed out yesterday (see here). It is the latest example of the unappreciated risk of owning gold exchange traded commodities (ETCs), exchange traded funds (ETFs) and indeed most institutional gold investment offerings.

Xetra-Gold filed an official response yesterday regarding the physical gold delivery failure, one which can be read in German on the following page and was reported and commented on by Zero Hedge overnight:

What is notable is that instead of immediately refuting the story – as it should have done if there is no breach of prospectus covenants – and declaring that any and all physical gold demands have and will be satisfied, Xetra took a very circular approach to responding, one which in effect confirmed our concerns, that the issue was not so much with Xetra, but with the sponsor bank, in this case Deutsche Bank.

Furthermore, the author of the original godmode article, Oliver Baron, penned his own reaction, in an article titled “Deutsche Boerse takes a stand.” He writes that “yesterday’s article “Xetra-Gold: Nothing but a scrap of paper?” has struck nerves: Not only that GodmodeTrader was cited among others, at “Zero Hedge” a financial website influential on Wall Street, but also at Deutsche Bank and at Deutsche Boerse, where the article has caused quite an internal stir, as Godmode traders was informed.”

He further writes that Deutsche Boerse Commodities has released a fairly spongy formulated observation on the physical delivery of Xetra-Gold. The key phrases are:

“The Deutsche Boerse Commodities GmbH points out that holders of Xetra-Gold shares can at any time exercise the right to delivery of securitized gold. Deliveries are made via a branch of a bank indicated by the investor. The requirement is that the branch offers this service because the delivery can take place only through the depository bank of the investor.”

As we reported yesterday, what made this particular “failure to deliver” notable is that the original client had asked for delivery via a Deutsche Bank branch, the same bank as the ETC’s sponsor, which is why, as we noted before, this appears to have been a problem involving not Xetra-Gold, as much as Deutsche Bank itself.

Baron agrees. As he writes, “in other words, it depends, according to Deutsche Boerse Commodities, on the particular bank branch whether the physical delivery can be carried out.”

And, as we learned last night, it does appear that if the delivery is requested at a Deutsche Bank branch, the answer is no.

But this is where it gets even worse. As Baron adds, in a telephone conversation with the author, the Deutsche Boerse Commodities exchange was unwilling to supply further information to Godmode traders whether physical delivery is generally feasible at most bank branches or not. And worst of all, “the exchange was unable to name any bank which is in a position to deliver physical gold without problems.“

Baron’s conclusion: “the “right” for actual delivery at Xetra-Gold is theoretical: physical delivery is only possible if the respective bank branch also cooperates. Suspicious gold investors should consider Xetra-Gold as another form of paper gold and not as a physical gold investment.”

Our take is slightly different: while we already know that physical delivery at Deutsche Bank appears to have been compromised, according to the Deutsche Boerse response, the ability of any and every other bank in Germany to deliver gold is now likewise questionable. Which begs the question: where is all the physical gold?

The risks inherent in investing in gold exchange traded funds (ETFs) and exchange traded commodities (ETCs) is something that we have warned of since these new gold proxy investment instruments came on the scene in 2003.

See Beware of Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs) Bearing Gold and watch the Bloomberg video from 2012 below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=M-gfXeme6kA
Physical Gold Favored Over Derivatives at GoldCore: See Bloomberg Video Here

Paper, digital and financial proxies for gold are not real gold. Hence the importance of owning coins and bars either in one’s possession or in allocated and segregated storage in the safest vaults in the world.

Paper is paper, digits are digits and gold is gold. Gold is not a safe haven unless the buyer owns actual physical gold in the safest way possible.

Why take chances with your safe haven asset and money? Test your gold investment vehicle or provider today and see can you take delivery of at least some of your allocation to gold.

If you can’t take delivery of physical gold, you don’t own gold. If you cannot hold your gold, you don’t own your gold. Possession remains 9/10s of the law. This will especially be the case in the coming global financial and monetary crisis.

Gold and Silver Bullion – News and Commentary

Gold steady ahead of U.S. jobs data (Reuters)

Gold prices gain in Asia as investors cautious ahead of nonfarm payrolls (Investing)

Gold Volatility Falls to Year’s Low as Investors Await Jobs Data (Bloomberg)

US Mint gold coin sales down 42% on year to 1.8 mt in August (Platts)

Shrinking manufacturing activity surprise blow to economy, market shifts on Fed (CNBC)

Deutsche Bank refuses clients’ demand for physical gold (RT)

TICKING FINANCIAL TIME BOMB? Deutsche Bank ‘refuses’ customer demands for gold withdrawals (Express)

Gold withdrawals from New York Fed are increasing (Zerohedge)

Giant Oil Companies Are Reaching Their Breaking Point (Casey Research)

How Silver Prices Get Set – Butler (Silverseek)

Gold Prices (LBMA AM)

02Sep: USD 1,311.50, GBP 987.95 & EUR 1,172.74 per ounce
01Sep: USD 1,305.70, GBP 1,985.80 & EUR 1,172.13 per ounce
31Aug: USD 1,314.45, GBP 1,000.30 & EUR 1,179.19 per ounce
30Aug: USD 1,318.85, GBP 1,008.39 & EUR 1,180.90 per ounce
26Aug: USD 1,324.90, GBP 1,002.95 & EUR 1,173.33 per ounce
25Aug: USD 1,324.50, GBP 1,001.06 & EUR 1,172.98 per ounce
24Aug: USD 1,337.30, GBP 1,010.73 & EUR 1,185.38 per ounce

Silver Prices (LBMA)

02Sep: USD 18.75, GBP 14.15 & EUR 16.76 per ounce
01Sep: USD 18.65, GBP 14.08 & EUR 16.73 per ounce
31Aug: USD 18.74, GBP 14.27 & EUR 16.82 per ounce
30Aug: USD 18.78, GBP 14.35 & EUR 16.82 per ounce
26Aug: USD 18.67, GBP 14.15 & EUR 16.54 per ounce
25Aug: USD 18.50, GBP 14.02 & EUR 16.39 per ounce
24Aug: USD 18.84, GBP 14.23 & EUR 16.70 per ounce

Recent Market Updates

– Avoid Paper Gold – “Gold Delivery” Refused By Gold Exchange Traded Commodity
– Debt Bubble in Ireland and Globally Sees Wealthy Diversify Into Gold
– “Why Case Against Gold Is Wrong” – James Rickards
– Obama To Leave $20 Trillion Debt Crisis For Clinton Or Trump
– Gold Bullion Averages Biggest Seasonal Gains in September Over Past 20 Years
– Gold Futures See Massive $1.5 Billion “Non Profit” Liquidation In “One Minute”
– Jim Grant Is “Very Bullish On Gold”
– Germans Warned To ‘Stockpile’ Cash In Case Of ‘War’
– Ireland’s Biggest Bank Charging Depositors – Negative Interest Rate Madness
– Rothchilds Buying Gold On “Greatest Experiment” With Money In “History of the World”
– Gold – “Mother of All Bull Markets Has Only Just Begun” – Grandich
– 45th Anniversary Of Nixon Ending The Gold Standard
– Gold In UK Pounds Collapses 38% Versus Gold and 56% Versus Silver Year To Date

via http://ift.tt/2bK1f0h GoldCore

At 7:02:44 am local time, a major, M5.6 earthquake hit 14km northwest of Pawnee, Oklahoma, and rattled a swath of the Great Plains, from Kansas City, Missouri, to central Oklahoma. The quake was especially felt in Oklahoma City, while residents as far as Dallas said the shaking continued for at least 10 seconds.

It’s not yet clear whether the earthquake caused any injuries or damage. Earthquakes hit Oklahoma frequently, but they are typically below 4.0 magnitude and rarely are felt in the northeast part of the state, according to Tulsa World.

USGS Ntl Equake Info Cntr has determined an preliminary magnitude of 5.6, 14 Km NW of Pawnee @ 7:02 am. Aftershocks may occur. #earthquake

— USGS in Oklahoma (@USGS_Oklahoma) September 3, 2016

 

People in Kansas City, Missouri, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Norman, Oklahoma, all reported feeling the earthquake at about 7:05 a.m. Saturday.

The shake map:

A seismograph of the quake when it hit, just after noon GMT.

 

 

The USGS has said on its twitter account that it hopes the M5.6 quake is not a foreshock of a similar or larger quake.

The Prague earthquake of 2011 was preceded by a strong 4.5 M quake. Hopefully this 5.6 was not a foreshock of a similar or larger quake.

— USGS in Oklahoma (@USGS_Oklahoma) September 3, 2016

via http://ift.tt/2chPS0S Tyler Durden

Submitted by Christopher Irons, Quoth the Raven Research

On Friday, a potential conflict of interest regarding Herbalife and the California Attorney General's office may have gotten a push from “notable” to “alarmingly important”.

Back in late 2014, Quoth the Raven was the first to break that the California Attorney General may have a conflict of interest as it relates to Herbalife because she is married to a partner at Venable, LLP, a well known and reputable California law firm that has been retained by Herbalife as recent as 2013.

The California Attorney General has, in my opinion, done her constituency a fascinatingly horrific disservice by failing to either comment or act on a company domiciled in her state that the FTC recently deemed as “misleading” and a “business opportunity that rewards recruiting at the expense of retail sales”. Ipso facto, the FTC seemed to call Herbalife a pyramid scheme without using the terms. Other Attorney Generals, like Illinois’ Lisa Madigan have already sought and received restitution for victims.

The bar is significantly higher and more important for Kamala Harris in California. Why?

States like Illinois have no previous history with the company, whereas the California Attorney General has failed to enforce and act on an injunction that has already been in place in her state for 30 years, barring Herbalife from doing specifically what the FTC complaint alleges it has done: misrepresent themselves, make misleading income and health claims, and run an endless chain business focused on recruiting.

But wait, there’s more.

The Attorney General has not only failed to comment on the company at all, but she has failed to comment on her potential conflict of interest and she certainly hasn't recused herself from her position – an action I would deem appropriate in order to fairly assess the 1986 injunction and perhaps take legal relief necessary to help victims in her state. Focus on California continues to get more prominent, as a recent consumer watchdog group wrote a letter trying to compel California to act on this injunction which was put in place 30 years ago specifically to prevent the harm that the company has caused over the last 30 years currently being addressed by the FTC.

But even that’s not the worst part.

As part of the recent FTC settlement, Herbalife needs to appoint an administrator to help audit their North American business and make sure that 80% of their sales are going to retail end users. This audit needs to be done by an objective body agreed upon by both the Federal Trade Commission and the company.

It was reported on Friday in the National Law Journal that there are many offices vying for the contract of independent administrator. Among those is once again – you guessed it – Venable, LLP. The same Venable that has been retained by Herbalife in the past, and the same Venable who has a partner married to the California Attorney General.

Now, I’ll state the obvious. By my standards, Kamala Harris has failed in her duties to enforce the 1986 permanent injunction and she has failed to remove the appearance of a massive conflict of interest. She could have shut this company down years ago, cutting the head off of a path of consumer harm detailed at length by the FTC’s recent complaint.

Choosing Venable, LLP as administrator to enforce the FTC’s recent settlement would be an inherently horrendous choice for the FTC because it is a firm that has been retained by the company in the past and it is clearly linked to the California Attorney General, whose inaction on this matter I can only describe as baffling and grossly negligent.

via http://ift.tt/2cnPjGi Tyler Durden

Submitted by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of retired Green Beret of US Army Special Forces) via SHTFPlan.com,

As written in previous articles, it is my firm conviction that we will be involved in a World War that will be initiated by an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapon detonated over the continental United States.

That being said, this piece summarizes recent events that reinforce such a conclusion, a conviction that is shared by world leaders, senior military personnel, and prominent analysts, as well as being a general consensus of opinion worldwide.  As of this writing, the German government has instructed its citizens to prepare for a forthcoming disaster by stockpiling at least 10 days-worth of food and 5 days of water.  In Berlin, they are considering bringing back mandatory conscription (a draft) in view of the influx of Muslim aliens entering Europe.

This concern is mirrored by Hungary and the Czech Republic who, in light of an influx of more than a million Muslims entering Europe are calling for an army in Europe representing the EU to be able to deal with this crisis affecting their borders.

“We must give priority to security, so let’s start setting up a joint European army.”

 

-Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban

Such words are not being spoken only in Europe.  In the United States, Obama recently gave a speech in June as an ominous, veiled warning of things to come for Americans to be “prepared for a disaster.”  He also stressed that all Americans are responsible for disaster preparation by “having an evacuation plan,” as well as “having a fully-stocked disaster supply kit.”  SHTFplan.com just released a report that revealed the DHS has ordered approximately $20 million of radiation detection equipment.

As most readers are aware, North Korea successfully test-launched an SLBM (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile) on August 24th that traveled approximately 300 miles.  Identified by the DOD as a KN-11 missile, the test launch confirms that it is feasible to strike the United States from a submarine launch off the West Coast, as the Chinese probably tested with the missile plume detected off of the California coastline in 2009.  With miniaturization of nuclear warhead capability, believed by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry to have already been obtained, the North Koreans do have the ability to launch an EMP strike against the United States.

The North Korean statements as reported by KCNA news agency pertaining to their test are as follows:

“A test-fire of strategic submarine-launched ballistic missile was successfully conducted under the guidance of [North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and he] appreciated the test-fire as the greatest success and victory…. The SLBM [Submarine-launched ballistic missile] test-fire was successfully carried out without any adverse impact on neighboring countries.”

The news agency quoted Kim Jong Un as saying the following:

“The US vicious nuclear threat and blackmail against the DPRK only resulted in bolstering up its nuclear attack capability hour by hour and the US mainland and the operational theatre in the Pacific are now within the striking range of the KPA, no matter how hard the US tries to deny it.”

The actions of the North Koreans have been preceded by the deployment of the THAD anti-missile system in South Korea and the Sea of Japan, as well as the recent redeployment of nuclear-armed B-52 bomber aircraft by the U.S. to the island of Guam.  In addition, a total of 75,000 U.S. and South Korean troops have been engaged in military exercises in South Korea that have infuriated the North Koreans.  The exercises began shortly before the North Korean missile test.

A Sputnik News report says that Russian TU-22M3 long-range Backfire bomber aircraft will now be armed with the new Russian Kh-32 cruise missile.  The capabilities of this missile are astounding: it can fly at speeds of up to 600 mph to an altitude of almost 25 miles, and when it reaches the proximity of its target, fly downward at a speed of almost 3,000 mph with a total range of almost 600 miles.

We already know that the Russians have been constructing bunkers for their citizens numbering in the thousands since at least 2012 in and around Moscow and throughout Russia.  In addition to this, on August 27th All News Pipeline’s Stefan Stanford reported that some disturbing actions may be occurring at Russia’s “Doomsday Bunker” located beneath Yamantau Mountain in Russia.  Here is a brief excerpt:

We also recently read from an unconfirmed source that the Russians may be heading to these bunkers right now. If that report is correct, and we pray it’s not, we’re warned that this means war is very close. 

There is a corresponding video posted with the article that deserves viewing.  Stanford also added the following:

“As we hear in the final video below, there’s been a report that a ‘Hillary Clinton WW3’ is unavoidable and top Russian leaders are high-tailing it to their bunkers at Yamantau Mountain. We stress here that ANP cannot confirm this story at this time. If we do receive confirmation, we will update this story immediately. If it’s true, the American people should know – as we all know, we certainly won’t find this out from our mainstream media nor government.” 

This report deserves continuous monitoring, especially in light of last week’s military maneuvers and movements conducted by Russia’s infantry and airborne forces, as well as their naval assets and air force in and around the borders of the Baltic nations, primarily Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as Ukraine and Poland.  Recent reliefs of command (and/or purges) of several senior members of the Kremlin and the Russian military suggest (as can be read in detail in other articles) that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may be clearing out any of his advisors that may oppose future military operations in Europe.

To increase tensions further, it has been reported that on Wednesday, August 24th, Turkish military forces have invaded Syria.  The offensive has been comprised of Turkish armored units, special forces teams, and aircraft supported by “coalition” aircraft of the U.S.  The purported objective was to dislodge ISIS from proximity to the Turkish border and to stem advances made by Kurdish militia.  The actions were strongly condemned by the Foreign Ministry of Syria who also stated that Syria’s borders and national sovereignty have been violated.

This proposes a major dilemma that escalates by the day, as the Turks are backed by NATO and the U.S., and the Syrians are backed by Russia.  Sputnik News also reported another disturbing piece of information regarding this situation:

“Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, recently-appointed US Commander of American Forces in Iraq and Syria has told reporters that the coalition forces have officially informed Moscow and Damascus of possible countermeasures should the US forces ‘feel threatened’ by Syrian forces.”

This is alarming, as the U.S. has been playing an indirect cat-and-mouse game with Russia since the Russian bombing campaign to aid Assad’s government commenced and closed, with a subsequent withdrawal of most of the Russian units.  Most.  There is still a sizable contingent of Russian forces based in Syria in support of the Damascus government and the ability to deploy forces rapidly into the area by Russia at a moment’s notice exists without question.

So there we have it.  The overall situation: the world’s economies are cascading, there is civil unrest throughout Europe, civil unrest is developing in the United States, the U.S. government and the nations’ governments are preparing for disaster and war, and powder-kegs exist in Syria, Ukraine, and with North Korea that can be touched off at any time.  As everyone watches these developing scenarios, keep in mind that time is of the essence for preparing yourselves and your families.  Possibly…and probably…we don’t have much time between now and the U.S. election, an event that may or may not occur in light of a world on the edge of a precipice, and World War III.

via http://ift.tt/2cwZk56 Tyler Durden

Out of the world's 50 most violent cities, 41 are in Latin America including 21 in Brazil. As Statista's Nial McCarthy write, The Mexico Citizens Council for Public Security releases its findings on the homicide rate in cities with populations over 300,000 every year.

The infographic below shows the world's top 20 cities, with Caracas, in the socialist utopia Venezuela, in first place with 119.87 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2015. 

San Pedro Sula, Honduras (111.03 homicides per 100,000) came second with San Salvador, El Salvador (108.54 homicides per 100,000) rounding off the top three. The majority of the violence in Latin America can be attributed to drug trafficking, gang warfare and political instability.

You will find more statistics at Statista

But 'Exceptional America' is not left out out – St.Louis and Baltimore are right up there (and New Orleans and Detroit close behind) as their homicide rates rival some of the worst in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela.

via http://ift.tt/2cgO2NV Tyler Durden

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

Do you smirk when you hear someone question the official stories of Orlando, San Bernardino, Paris or Nice? Do you feel superior to 2,500 architects and engineers, to firefighters, commercial and military pilots, physicists and chemists, and former high government officials who have raised doubts about 9/11? If so, you reflect the profile of a mind-controlled CIA stooge.

The term “conspiracy theory” was invented and put into public discourse by the CIA in 1964 in order to discredit the many skeptics who challenged the Warren Commission’s conclusion that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was assassinated while in police custody before he could be questioned. The CIA used its friends in the media to launch a campaign to make suspicion of the Warren Commission report a target of ridicule and hostility. This campaign was “one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.”

So writes political science professor Lance deHaven-Smith, who in his peer-reviewed book, Conspiracy Theory in America, published by the University of Texas Press, tells the story of how the CIA succeeded in creating in the public mind reflexive, automatic, stigmatization of those who challenge government explanations. This is an extremely important and readable book, one of those rare books with the power to break you out of The Matrix.

Professor deHaven-Smith is able to write this book because the original CIA Dispatch #1035-960, which sets out the CIA plot, was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Apparently, the bureaucracy did not regard a document this old as being of any importance. The document is marked “Destroy when no longer needed,” but somehow wasn’t. CIA Dispatch #1035-960 is reproduced in the book.

The success that the CIA has had in stigmatizing skepticism of government explanations has made it difficult to investigate State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD) such as 9/11. With the public mind programmed to ridicule “conspiracy kooks,” even in the case of suspicious events such as 9/11 the government can destroy evidence, ignore prescribed procedures, delay an investigation, and then form a political committee to put its imprimatur on the official story. Professor deHaven-Smith notes that in such events as Kennedy’s assassination and 9/11 official police and prosecutorial investigations are never employed. The event is handed off to a political commission.

Professor deHaven-Smith’s book supports what I have told my readers: the government controls the story from the beginning by having the official explanation ready the moment a SCAD occurs. This makes any other explanation a “conspiracy theory.” This is the way Professor deHaven-Smith puts it:

“A SCAD approach to memes assumes further that the CIA and other possibly participating agencies are formulating memes well in advance of operations, and therefore SCAD memes appear and are popularized very quickly before any competing concepts are on the scene.”

The CIA’s success in controlling public perception of what our Founding Fathers would have regarded as suspicious events involving the government enables those in power positions within government to orchestrate events that serve hidden agendas. The events of September 11 created the new paradigm of endless war in behalf of a Washington-dominated world. The CIA’s success in controlling public perceptions has made it impossible to investigate elite political crimes. Consequently, it is now possible for treason to be official US government policy.

Professor deHaven-Smith’s book will tell you the story of the assassination of President Kennedy by elements of the US military, CIA, and Secret Service. Just as the Warren Commission covered up the State Crime Against Democracy, Professor deHaven-Smith shows why we should doubt the official 9/11 story. And anything else that the government tells us.

Read this book. It is short. It is affordable. It is reality preparation. It will innoculate you against being a dumbshit, insouciant, brainwashed American. I am surprised that the CIA has not purchased the entire print run and burned the books. Perhaps the CIA feels secure from its success in brainwashing the public and does not believe that American democracy and accountable government can be restored.

via http://ift.tt/2c1piur Tyler Durden

A job’s a job, right?

 

h/t @myLife_40NoneK

via http://ift.tt/2bWTDZb Tyler Durden

Authored by Pepe Escobar via Strategic-Culture.org,

There’s way more in common between Wall Street and Silicon Valley than meets the untrained eye

Wall Street and Silicon Valley are two of the key strategic hubs of hyperpower global domination. The others are the industrial-military-surveillance-security complex – of which Hollywood and corporate media are the soft power extensions – and the petrodollar racket/tributary system.

Silicon Valley has been relentlessly constructed and idolized as a benign myth; technology breaking the ultimate frontiers and reaching Utopia At Last. Not really. A joyride of a book – Chaos Monkeys: Inside the Silicon Valley Money Machine, by Antonio Garcia Martinez – argues it’s all about, what else, money. As in cold, hard cash, stock options and, just like in Wall Street, bonuses.

Martinez tells it like an American Dream insider. He’s a son of Cuban exiles, born in Southern California, with an almost PhD in Physics at Stanford, and a detour across Goldman Sachs that taught him how the casino system works. Then, back in California, he built a start-up with two friends whose embryonic product was a code-grounded method to target and boost electronic advertising. Secret revealed; electronic ads happen to be the real Holy Grail of the much lauded IT Revolution.

Academic Michael Brenner defined Chaos Monkeys as Divine Comedy as anthropology. Not quite. We’re not in the presence of Virgil guiding Dante here, more like a Benzedrine-boosted neo-Kerouac let loose on the (techno) road.

Right on page 25 Martinez captures Silicon Valley’s business logic, something that I learned myself three decades ago when I was crisscrossing the Valley – with a later stint on MIT – doing a special report on the Brave New Digital World ahead. At the time, I heard from the late great Marvin Minsky that the future would be a cross between artificial intelligence (AI) and genetic engineering. We are almost there. Martinez notes that in the future, it’s all about «computers talking to one another, with humans involved only in the writing of the logic itself».

Wall Street, of course, saw it before anyone else. Then came transportation (Uber), the hotel business (Airbnb), food delivery (Instacart), a massive array of services. We are smack on the road towards humans merely filling the gaps in a sanitized, non-stop computer workflow.

The world all that fabulous concentration of engineers, code writers, product managers, venture capitalists, key word filters, metadata and algorithms Silicon Valley is shaping is for all practical purposes a Consumer Holy Grail. We are all «free», but essentially free as extremely, precisely defined targets with a ton of features and preferences supplied to the digital workflow every time we click for a post, a comment, a search. Then, in a few minutes of digital life, we will be hit by a pop-up offer to buy something, anything.

Martinez also concisely explains the basics of search engine marketing. Marketers curate keyword lists «like a bonsai tree»; «If the revenue generated by postclick sales outpaces cost, up go the bid and the budget». This in a nutshell is how «Google makes more than some European countries produce in a year».

Monetize those bits, baby

What is a chaos monkey, really? That’s a software tool created and open-sourced by Netflix. One uses it to test a website’s resiliency against that proverbial nightmare; a server failure.

That leads Martinez to conceptualize tech entrepreneurs as society’s chaos monkeys wreaking havoc on traditional industries; «One industry after another is simply knocked out via venture-backed entrepreneurial daring and hastily shipped software. Silicon Valley is a zoo where the chaos monkeys are kept, and their numbers only grow in time. With the explosion of venture capital, there is no shortage of bananas to feed them. The question for society is whether it can survive these entrepreneurial chaos monkeys intact, and at what human cost».

The Silicon Valley zoo is predictably populated by hordes of talent –Ants? Bees? – all invariably fixated on monetizing their data brokerage skills, for their companies and especially for themselves. An extra cast of characters revolves around the geeks – from venture capitalists to an army of lawyers and the odd «angel investor» doubling as spiritual guide.

For the geek hordes, the base salary may not be exceptional, but there is prestige, perks and in a few cases stock options involved. Hotel California this ain’t; you can’t check out any time you like, because then you will lose all those perks and the lifestyle associated with them. You can always leave (or get fired) – and in this case you will always miss what you will never have elsewhere. Very few – essentially founders and CEOs – touch serious «f**k you money» and enter the billion-dollar league.

Startup life is usually hell; «backroom deals negotiated via phone calls to leave no legal trace, behind-the-back betrayals of investors or cofounders, seductive duping of credulous employees so they work for essentially nothing». It’s an extremely closed system, as I saw it for myself. In San Francisco, an extension of the Valley, everything is concentrated between First and Eight Streets, and between King and Market, in the SoMa (South of Market) district. That’s where you find, among others, Twitter, Airbnb and Uber, once startups, now enjoying Masters of the Universe status.

The ecosystem is also an apotheosis of juvenilia – in thesis the best and the brightest from the US’s elite schools all striving purposely towards an open, transparent, hyper-connected Brave New World, a never-before-tested original human experience. Well, the goals are not that lofty. A telling episode is that when Facebook faced a mortal challenge from Google in the social network front, it was pure war, Rome against Carthage-style. The standard psychological profile across the Valley would reveal an empathy-deprived Narcissus Drowned. Mature adults are extremely hard to find.

It’s quite telling that Martinez spends the last stretch of the book deconstructing his experience as a Facebook product manager, developing what would be the ineffable ad targeting mechanism. Silicon Valley after all is about how to monetize technology.

Facebook is actually going one step beyond, exploring the monetization of users’ news feeds and expanding a dominant role in the news business itself. A June study by Oxford University determined that 44% of internet users already get their news through Facebook. There are no less than 1.7 billion Facebook users around the world – and counting. Its algorithms will progressively rule content published on news sites. Computers talking to computers – with humans just filling the gaps.

via http://ift.tt/2bIYSLd Tyler Durden