Thursday, June 1, 2017

Still Guessing

Playing Poker,

"Today President Trump must decide whether to renew a presidential waiver, signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, that expires on June 1. The six-month waiver delays implementing a law passed by Congress in 1995 that requires the US to recognise occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocate its embassy there from Tel Aviv."  Thanks, Eleni.

This Just In: He didn't do it

"Should I stay or should I go?" muses Donald Trump, as announcement about commitment to Paris Climate Change Accord is due at 3:00 PM Eastern Time...
(In my opinion, the accord is a ruse. Only economic collapse has been proven to reduce CO2 emissions. CO2 and economy are inseparably coupled in our current world. All the easy-oil will get burned and global economy will collapse, and hopefully reorganize less wastefully. Grow vegetables!)

2000 square miles of the Larsen-C Ice Shelf is about to "calve" into the Southern Ocean. Thanks Ray.

The Middle Class is Now the Company Store Class, Michael Hudson
"Although money and banking textbooks say that all interest (and fees) are a compensation for risk, any banker who actually takes a risk is quickly fired. Banks don’t take risks. That’s what the governments are for. (Socializing the risk, privatizing the profits.) Anticipating that the U.S. economy may be unable to recover under the weight of the junk mortgages and other bad debts that the Obama administration left on the books in 2008, banks insisted that the government guarantee all student debt. They also insisted that the government guarantees the financial gold-mine buried in such indebtedness: the late fees that accumulate. So whether students actually succeed in becoming wage-earners or not, the banks will receive payments in today’s emerging fictitious “as if” economy. The government will pay the banks “as if” there is actually a recovery."

"When the 'fix' increases systemic fragility, things fall apart: Charles Hugh Smith  (we're there...)

Russian lawmaker mentions that Russia would have to use nuclear weapons early in the war if attacked by NATO. Crimea was the Russian region being discussed. Russia is surrounded by 3/4 of global military spending, which comprises NATO.

Mish Shedlock looks at the EU's itemized Brexit bill. Nothing is omitted. No single item was missed. "Just walk out", he advises.

Pub-hopping-Brexiteer, Nigel Farage is "a person of interest" in FBI investigation of Russian-influence on Trump Campaign. (Cue laugh-track...)

Teresa May, Tory PM continues to slip in polls, now 42:39 against Labour-Party's Jeremy Corbyn.
During the debate, Green party leader Caroline Lucas said: “You don’t call a general election and say it is the most important election in her lifetime and then not even be bothered to debate the issues  at hand." (It's better to shut up and be thought an idiot, than to speak and remove all doubt.)

A local reporter in Plymouth meets Teresa May at dawn, at the fish market down by the docks to get "3 minutes of nothing". Transcript included.

John Pilger asks, "What did the Prime Minister know?" Pilger then goes through the imperial conquests of Iraq and Libya in painful detail. Must read...
The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy. Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review”... Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a “terrorist watch list” and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a “political target” in Britain. Why wasn’t he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May? These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the “lone wolf” spin in the wake of the 22 May attack – thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump’s apology.

U
​S Secretary of Defense, James Mattis says that the period of shuffling ISIS fighters from one battle to another is over, that the new objective is to kill them all, so they can't take their bad habits home with them. He figures that a lot of civilians (AKA "families") are going to get killed as all the ISIS guys get killed, because that's just what happens...

Ray McGovern: "By dunning NATO nations to chip more money into the military alliance, President Trump may inadvertently cause some Europeans to rethink the over-the-top anti-Russian propaganda" ("a Russia too clever to rise to the bait – a Russia patient enough to wait for the Brussels bureaucrats and generals to fall of their own weight, pushed by financial exigencies in many NATO countries.")

George Soros says the EU is in an existential crisis, has become the opposite of what was intended, must reorganize, faces a "hostile power" in the Trump administration, and that Brexit should be done slowly and properly to minimize damage to all parties. That might take about 5 years.

Paul Craig Roberts asks if Bitcoin is taking the role of Gold. Gold prices are manipulated through markets in "paper gold", which is at least 10X the trade in physical gold. Bitcoin is not that way. One bitcin is one bitcoin. (What is mentioned is that other crypto-currencies are now proliferating. Will they dilute Bitcoin?)

Bitcoin surges back above $2450 as China eases capital controls. (There is also speculation that the Fed is jacking Bitcoin up into a big bubble, and may burst it to dissuade it's use, by burning speculators. The Fed can bid it up and take the loss. It makes the monopoly-money, for now...)

People are Grizzly Food...  Christopher Ketcham reviews a natural food chain that includes other predators, worms, bacteria and fungi...

Cashing in Chips

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