Diseases Of Our Rulers

Observing the Patients,

Jim Kunstler has this (and more) to say:

Remember, the “Resistance” is not going for impeachment, but rather Section 4 of the 25thAmendment. That legal nicety makes for a very neat-and-clean surgical removal of a whack-job president, without all the cumbrous evidentiary baggage and pain-in-ass due process required by impeachment. All it requires is a consensus among a very small number of high officials, who then send a note to the leaders in both houses of congress stating that said whack-job president is a menace to the polity — and out he goes, snippety-snip like a colorectal polyp, into the hazardous waste bag of history. And you’re left with a nice clean asshole, namely Vice President Mike Pence.

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/boomerangski/

Presidents Trump and Putin had another (previously unannounced) hour long talk at the G-20. This one was out in the open and off the record (kinda' like a golf course.). 

The US Deep State has to use their bugs and tricks to get a transcript, though, it might have been a secure room. 

Trump just went over and talked to Putin for an hour with Putin's translator. 

"Off the Reservation..." Good job, Mate!

"The White House confirmed that the meeting took place during the G-20 heads of state dinner, hours after Trump's formal bilateral sit-down with Putin. In that conversation, Trump spoke with the Russian leader for roughly an hour, joined only by Putin's translator. And while the meeting took place in the open in front of all other leaders, it had previously gone without mention by the White House."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-18/trump-and-putin-had-second-previously-undisclosed-conversation-during-dinner-g-20

"Murder" of 3 Green Berets, who were training alphabet-soup-named jihadis to overthrow the Syrian government, by a jihadi posing as a loyal member of the Jordanian army, opens a bag of worms. This was a foreseeable combat incident in the world where it is legal for the US to fund, supply and train terrorist armies. 

The Green Berets know. They despise this job they have been given by the CIA. Here is the story of what is going on in the Jordanian desert, one of the Obama-wars.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-18/murder-green-berets-jordan-exposed-secretive-cia-syria-program-details

Israel "rejects" cease fire agreement in Syria, between US and Russia, and Syrians and alphabet-soup-musical-chair-named jihadi mercenaries of all stripes. "More War in Syria" is the Israeli order to it's alphabet-soup-name Jihadi mercenaries in Syria.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-17/israel-rejects-cease-fire-deal-between-us-and-russia-south-syria

Israel's Crimes Against Humanity: Gaza will be unlivable next year, not 2020, as the UN claims. (These are the rightful owners of this land, being caged, bombed, shot, starved, arrested and tortured.)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/gaza-will-be-unlivable-next-year-not-2020-as-the-un-says/5599707

John Pilger, Pulitzer winning author of "Freedom Next Time", has spent time in Palestine again and again since the 1960s. Thanks Eleni:

Fatima and Nasser are a couple whose home stood in a village near Jerusalem designated “Zone A and B”, meaning that the land was declared for Jews only. Their parents had lived there; their grandparents had lived there. Today, the bulldozers are laying roads for Jews only, protected by laws for Jews only. It was past midnight when Fatima went into labour with their second child. The baby was premature; and when they arrived at a checkpoint with the hospital in view, the young Israeli soldier said they needed another document.  Fatima was bleeding badly. The soldier laughed and imitated her moans and told them, “Go home”. The baby was born there in a truck. It was blue with cold and soon, without care, died from exposure. The baby’s name was Sultan.

“Palestine,” said Nelson Mandela, “is the greatest moral issue of our time.” Palestine Is Still The Issue

https://off-guardian.org/2017/07/13/palestine-is-still-the-issue/

The UAE is reported to be behind the hacking of Qatari news site, inserting the pro Iranian and pro Israel statements, which were immediately acted upon by the Saudi regime, to justify the bullying sanctions by GCC states against little (but rich and talkative) Qatar. It's a pretty lame excuse, but it's all they wanted. Nobody had to find it plausible, and nobody did.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/16/united-arab-emirates-reportedly-behind-hacking-of-qatari-media-that-incited-crisis.html

The Senate will just vote to repeal Obamacare 2 years from now, with nothing to replace it, since their idea is at least as bad, which is saying a lot. (Medicare for All, y'all...)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/17/republican-health-bill-senators-oppose-vote

"A new study just released by The Commonwealth Fund found that the U.S., despite spending more money per capita than any other country on the planet, has the worst healthcare system in the developed world." 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-17/new-study-finds-us-healthcare-system-ranks-dead-last-compared-other-developed-nation

The pipeline that no refinery needs or wants anymore...

"A federal judge ruled that the federal permits authorizing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock reservation, which were hastily issued by the Trump administration just days after the inauguration, violated the law in certain critical respects."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/in-victory-for-standing-rock-sioux-tribe-court-finds-that-approval-of-dakota-access-pipeline-violated-the-law/5599762

Fortunes of War

People's Clinic Veggie Garden In Local Paper

Doctor leads by example with garden at People’s Community Clinic

Dr. John Day does his bit to spread the news about healthy eating.

By Michael Barnes mbarnes@statesman.com

Dr. John Day shows off his healthy life garden at the People’s Community Clinic. MICHAEL BARNES/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Dr. John Day arrives for a day of work at People’s Community Clinic’s new facility on Camino La Costa.
MICHAEL BARNES/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Fresh as mint in an eco-green riding shirt, Dr. John Day steers his bicycle into the parking lot of the spacious new of›ices of People’s Community Clinic on Camino La Costa. You couldn’t tell it from his dry brow, but he commutes 22 miles round-trip daily from Far Northwest Austin in order to take care of patients.

It is clear right away that Day doesn’t stop his medical care with a scribbled prescription and some comforting words. A doctor who formerly delivered babies, he now seeks long-term, sustainable solutions for patients who, at this longtime nonprofit clinic, pay according to their means.

After giving a quick tour of the sparkling facilities — including the kitchen, where clients learn healthy cooking skills — Day exits a side door onto a concrete terrace that was designed to serve as a staff break area. There, the physician filled existing raised beds with dirt, and then tested and improved the soil in what were originally decorative garden beds.

This day, the beds overflow with heat-tolerant okra, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers, cucumbers, black-eyed peas, green beans and basil.

“Who wouldn’t want tomatoes and peppers?” he asks, shielding his eyes from the southwest sun while handing a tiny, tart tomato to this reporter. “Here, sweet potatoes and watermelon sprawl into a sea of green in the summer.”

This practitioner of family medicine possesses arestless mind that tends to refine big ideas down to basic prescriptions.

“To begin with, we are the critters who grow vegetables and cook them with ›ire,” he says. “Long ago, we were something that we aren’t any more — and that makes us unhealthy.”

Day worked at the old Brackenridge Hospital in 1977 while attending the Universit y of Texas. Around that time, he noticed people lining up by a church’s side entrance near Guadalupe Street. It was the ›irst location of People’s Community Clinic, founded in 1970 and staffed by volunteer nurses and doctors for the students, hippies and street folk of West Campus.

Almost two decades later, he became the clinic’s medical director for a few years. He has worked more recently at the clinic since 2008. He practiced for a while at the UT student health center.

One of Day’s more adventurous intervening medical gigs — he once took his wife and four kids on a tour of the world on bikes and with backpacks — was to serve as the only doctor on the thinly populated tip of the big island of Hawaii.

At home, Day tends a tall, verdant vegetable garden. Inspired by the World War II practice of planting “victory gardens,” he calls it his “Liberty Garden.” He has learned the tough task of rotating the crops to keep the soil healthy, a practice he transferred to the clinic’s gardens.

“We must find our place in a healthy nature by becoming stewards and not consumers,” he says. “You have to have living soil. We started here with no nitrogen and no organic matter. Dillo Dirt, made by the city from composted yard trimmings, helped take care of that. Now we’re having a good year.”

It took a while to ›ind a watering system that worked and also met the city’s water conservation code. He formerly used a dripper for two hours early on Fridays, but now he drips just a little before dawn every morning.

Day gets worked up when he shares his demonstration garden with the clinic’s staff.

“We’ve never seen a vegetable,” co-workers tell him. “At least not a growing vegetable.”

Besides helping people in need, Day concentrates on an extremely pared-down mission these days.

“To a ride abike,” he says. “And to grow vegetables.”

Contact Michael Barnes at 512-445-3970 or mbarnes@statesman.com. Twitter: @outandabout

Actions Speak Louder

Fellow Humans,

Artillery and bombing attacks on the large and densely populated city of Mosul had to continue for half a year before all of the families locked in buildings by ISIS could be saved, dead or alive.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iraq-mosul-isis-defeat-win-us-coalition-air-strikes-human-cost-great-a7841466.html

Pictures of Mosul from the air, before and after. It's not possible to get everywhere, since buildings are now street-blocking piles of rubble.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iraq-mosul-isis-defeat-win-us-coalition-air-strikes-human-cost-great-a7841466.html

War and Cholera destroy the children and families Yemen, the most starved country in the world, so the US helps Saudi Arabia with billions of dollars worth of bombs and advanced weapons systems.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/07/war-cholera-decimate-yemen-saudi-bombing-gets-us-help.html

Another "Arkancide"...

According to Miami-Dade’s medical examiner records supervisor, the official cause of death is “gunshot to the head.“ Eberwein’s death has been registered as “suicide” by the government. But not long before his death, he acknowledged that his life was in danger because he was outspoken on the criminal activities of the Clinton Foundation. 

Eberwein was due to appear on Tuesday before the Haitian Senate Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission where he was widely expected to testify that the Clinton Foundation misappropriated Haiti earthquake donations from international donors.

http://www.shtfplan.com/conspiracy-fact-and-theory/haiti-official-who-exposed-the-clinton-foundation-is-found-dead_07162017

Update on Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare, which has really barely begun, anyway. All of this stuff is comparing future promises made last year, but not started yet, replacing them with different future promises, which cannot be agreed upon, and will also not be kept. Increases in Medicaid funding will become decreases in Medicaid funding. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors, pieces still in motion. Ted Cruz is a particularly shifty lizard to watch. He specializes in slow poison that doesn't kill the patients until his friends get their money out of it all. The bottom line is that this rearranges the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic, but it guarantees insurance company profits...

http://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/senate-vote-gop-health-care-bill-details/

Senator Rand Paul won't vote for it. He figures it doesn't have the votes to pass, and is about the same crap with a different label. 

Now, I don't favor such a mandate. But if I were forced to choose between asking the taxpayer to fork over $200 billion to subsidize Big Insurance or mandating that insurance companies subsidize those with pre-existing conditions, I'd choose taking the money out of their profit, without question.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rand-paul-crony-capitalism-isnt-a-right-so-why-does-senate-healthcare-bill-give-insurance-companies-the-right-to-a-bailout/article/2628572

The Senate is delaying hearing on Republican health insurance remodel while John McCain gets over his most recent craniotomy. 

There was a 2 inch blood clot "above his left eye". "Craniotomy" means cutting open the skull. 

This blood clot was in, or in front of, McCain's left frontal lobe, a critical area for rational thought, but not near any of the speech centers. 

Senator McCain's minders will have to be more careful than usual when he gets back to speaking in public. 

Something made John McCain bleed in or just-in-front-of his brain. Wonder what. 

Could have been a bad faceplant. 

Anyway, he's got great insurance.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-16/senate-delay-health-vote-after-mccain-blood-clot-surgery

California Nurses won't shut up about this single-payer thing that Californians voted for. They just won't shut up. 

They say the legislature has to start working on it this session, and has until mid September. 

It's all Democrats running California. Why won't they get to work on the people's business?

After SB 562 passed the California Senate in early June, California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon unilaterally blocked the bill from advancing before a single hearing could be held or a single amendment could be considered.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/national_nurses_united_wont_back_dow_single-payer_california_20170714

Where is the America of Sharing? A WW-2 Marine looks back and remembers. Thanks Jada.

"My family of seven lived in a three-decker house with no bathrooms and just one toilet on the first floor that served all three families. We survived because families helped each other. If anyone had a few extra potatoes or apples they were given to the family that had the least..."

"Back in my time as a Marine in World War II we fought for a country and we were guided by principle and concern for each other. As I grow old all the events of those few years spent as a combat Marine crowd my remembrance. I remember boys seeking their fill of life and adventure. I recall their courage and sacrifice. I keep a personal tally of the precious price they paid for their noble dreams of glory. Their sense of duty and willingness to die for beliefs carried the day of yesteryear. Yet, today I feel that we, as a nation, have chosen to disregard the actions of those courageous young boys. We have failed to recognize and honor the benefaction of their victory. The country I live in today is foreign; it is so oblivious of my disappointment."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/14/a-world-war-ii-marine-looks-back-and-wonders-wheres-the-america-of-sharing-4/

Former President, Jimmy Carter (about same age as Marine above) gets heat exhaustion and dehydration helping build a house for a poor Canadian family.

A Habitat volunteer told CBC News he saw Carter, 92, collapse after he'd been working in the sun for about an hour, using a handsaw to cut wood for a staircase.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-habitat-humanity-jimmy-carter-1.4202220

Lending a Hand

Uninhabitable Earth

Inhabitants,

Ray sent this article from a climate scientist, published in New York Magazine, which is well written, well organized, factual and well supported. Our minds are living in the past, which is far more comfortable. Our bodies are moving into a future where the heat and the air and the lack of food-plants kills... us, but first the oceans.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

Individuals are very weak, especially in the face of sudden change. Our strength as a species, and we are not a bad species, but misunderstood winning the fossil fuel lottery. Polar bears would have done the same thing in our situation... Our strength is in working together, which we have always done in small working groups, and larger communities, up to about 200 people. That's where our strengths lie. Our sweet spot. It is approaching test time again. Nicole Foss spends 20 well edited minutes here, with a sincere smile and caring tones, telling how we can do our best together, as we enter the great transformation of our planet.

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/07/nicole-foss-on-life-after-complexity/#post-34996

We do These Things Because they are Easy. Charles Hugh Smith points out our current predicament.

If you believe that going from a total debt burden (government and personal debt) per household being 79% of median household income to debt per household being 584% of median household income doesn't matter and will have no consequences, you believe in magic.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly17/whats-easy7-17.html

David Stockman reminds us that our finances are tied up in a big, ugly bubble. It isn't real. It's the fake solution to the 2008 financial crisis. Everything has been getting worse in the future, while we suck all the spending and resources into the present. (Fancy trick, that...)

https://dailyreckoning.com/donald-trump-financial-bubble/

Articles of Impeachment are filed against Donald Trump. This would put Mike Pence in the Presidency. 

(Pence is more like Dick Cheney and less like Liberace on crack.)

https://dailyreckoning.com/donald-trump-financial-bubble/

On another note, China includes Syria in it's One Belt One Road initiative, which is true to history, even before the gas pipeline from Iran (and now Qatar, I speculate) gets built.

http://www.atimes.com/article/new-silk-road-will-go-syria/

Lew Rockwell has this translated piece on "peace in Syria" from Thierry Meyssan. Israel and Turkey get all the spoils and Palestinian and Kurdish people get less than nothing for their deaths and contributions. (I don't like it, but it is rational, and this is the power structure behind the wars...) Thanks Eleni.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/07/thierry-meyssan/peace-in-syria/

Turkey has agreed to purchase and build-under-contract, Russian S400 missile batteries. These are the best antiaircraft missile systems, and they don't identify friend or foe. They can be used against anything in the air, including NATO planes and drones. (Naw, that would never matter...)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-13/turkey-is-said-to-agree-to-pay-2-5b-for-4-russian-s-400-sams

Hey, talk about  global warming threat!

A lot of US military installations would be eliminated by 10 feet of sea level rise. Wiped Out! 

Congress declares a threat to national security. 

Whew, we'll surely be saved now...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/14/in-landmark-move-gop-congress-calls-climate-change-direct-threat-to-security/

Saved by the Problem

Vegetable garden at People's Community Clinic break patio 7/10/17, with gardener tending it, as taken by Mrs Gardener.

What It's Worth

Energetic Consumers,

I make a long scientific article short here by showing the two most important graphics. Cheap energy enabled all of the wonderful and creative things we humans credit ourselves for discovering in the last 400 years or so. Our industrial and "information" economy cannot afford expensive energy, and it needs lots of liquid fuels, too. Of course, global warming is now baked-in, and liquid fuels are much more expensive, taking a lot of the energy per barrel to get the next barrel, transport it and refine it. We can't keep putting it in cars. We need the plastics, and drugs,  and we need the diesel trucks and trains to run. What will be the politics of that existential reality? Trump is denying climate change. Why acknowledge what is unavoidable and pretend to address it with the toothless Paris Accord lie? Lie differently. Just deny it. You and I need to work out our own micro solutions. That may be all that there is in 200 years. Pass-on something useful. Industrial civilization will burn coal. It will burn oil and gas while they are cheap, then use them for synthetic materials and fighter-jet fuel when they are costly. Forget tar sands and biodiesel. There is no more hydroelectric to build... Wind can build out more, but the best spots are rapidly taken, and wind farms change the wind patterns by extracting energy. Solar panels will be with us as long as we have the fossil fuels, mining and factories to make them. Can we live without air conditioning? Really? How about no internet? You can't get fuel, electricity and groceries without the internet these days. It all stops. Everything stops.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856

Pepe Escobar presents "The G20 from Hell" (Lots of dysfunction detailed here)

“We take note of the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris Agreement."

“The Leaders of the other G20 members state that the Paris Agreement is irreversible."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/11/the-g20-from-hell/

Israel will kill anybody it sees fit to kill in Syria, no matter what Trump and Putin, and everybody else agree to.

http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/07/10/527974/Israel-USRussian-truce-Syria

Saudi Arabia already kills whoever it sees fit to kill within it's borders, whole towns, "citizens", with white phosphorous, whatever works. None of your business. Thanks Eleni.

http://geopoliticsalert.com/saudis-bombing-people-nobodys-talking

The American Police State's Answer to Free Speech is Brute Force", Thanks Bill. 

Wearing black, and body armor, and covering your face, and having powerful guns, all make a person use the gun and the club more, lots more. Nothing else is possible...

https://www.sott.net/article/356083-The-American-police-states-answer-to-free-speech-is-brute-force

"The false reality constructed for Americans parallels perfectly the false reality constructed by Big Brother in George Orwells’ dystopian novel 1984. 

Paul Craig Roberts points out more lies from our wholly-oligarch-controlled free media. Our owners will protect us from Muslim terrorists and Vladimir Putin and North Korea, no matter how poor it makes us, or how much more security they need to hire for our protection.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/07/10/ever-official-lies-us-government/

Mish Shedlock: "The Clinton Foundation received actual monetary donations. Trump received useless information from Russians hoping to switch the conversation to something else." "Fox News dropped a bombshell report officially confirming, via anonymous FBI sources, what many had suspected for quite some time, that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was the WikiLeaks source for leaks which proved that the DNC was intentionally undermining the campaign of Bernie Sanders." 

 https://mishtalk.com/2017/07/11/love-it-smoking-gun-hype-vs-reality/

Here is the link to 28,882 emails from Hillary Clinton's private server, when she was Secretary of State, and killing Libyans, and so on. Thanks Eleni.

https://mega.nz/#F!N2YjFCzQ!dP66-Chxpr7jM-KCho04Dw

Kim Dotcom

Life On Earth

Fleeing Death,

80% of refugees fleeing to Europe are fleeing war, famine, the destruction of their countries, not just looking for handouts in a nice welfare-state. This is a large study. Can we stop slaughtering people and destroying their homes and crushing their economies? 

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jul/07/war-and-violence-drive-majority-of-people-fleeing-to-europe-by-sea-not-economics

Putin, Lavrov, Trump and Tillerson talked for over 2 hours Friday. They agreed to a broad cease-fire in Syria, among all of the warring parties, and they agreed to the integrity of the state of Syria (someday, I guess)  Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that the ceasefire agreement clearly states that “Russia, Jordan, and the United States are committed to Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as UN Security Council resolutions that pave the way to political reconciliation”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-09/us-russian-ceasefire-deal-goes-effect-southwest-syria

Pepe Escobar figures the Putin-Trump meeting was win-win, albeit modest, but some people will not be murdered, as a result. Diplomacy is better than pretending there is a demon you must kill... Thanks Elani.

http://www.atimes.com/article/putin-trump-stage-manage-win-win-meeting/

John Helmer has an update on the Russian economy, the most self-sufficient and diversified in the world, and growing a bit this year, despite sanctions and high Russian central bank interest rates. Helmer critiques another article, which creates a good back and forth between glowing positives and the counterpoints of practical business analysis and more mundane ground-level realities. This economy is well dug in and proceeding very cautiously.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/07/john-helmer-russian-economy-looks-arent-wearing-nato-night-fighting-goggles.html

The US intends to force Europe to pay more for gas and get less gas, in order to hurt Russia, which the US wants. Europe says "it hurts us not them". The US is fighting to control the gas supply to Europe, because that will be good for power and good for American business. Europe would just ignore the US if it were not a patchwork of militarily-occupied countries (since WW-2) and debt-serf-tributary-states. Sputnik figures this can't work, and should be negotiated amicably all around.

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201706301055121126-washington-berlin-collision-course/

Nothing personal, but... Russia has not had diplomatic compound  property in Maryland returned after US government theft last December, and there has been no formal apology or recompense for that, or the diplomats being expelled, so it has come to tit-for-tat...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-11/we-are-forced-strike-back-russia-set-expel-30-us-diplomats-seize-us-assets

Interview with The Saker on US "policy" in Syria.

"I'm not convinced there is a US strategy. I think there is a CIA strategy, a Pentagon strategy, a State Department strategy. There used to be a White House strategy. Right now, I am not even sure. We should go deeper into who is doing what inside the Pentagon and the military. I mean, there is chaos. There has been chaos since at least Obama because he was an extremely weak president. When a superpower like the United States is ruled by more or less an absent man in the White House, the agencies themselves start implementing their own policies. This is happening now under Trump, who was elected under specific platform and now is basically giving it up. There has been a coup against him by the neo-cons who basically got him under control. He wanted to drain the swamp, but the swamp basically drowned him... The Saudis and the Israelis have the same exact interest for the Arab Muslim world, which is to keep it in chaos and weak. That allows them to rule it. It's that simple... I'm convinced the neocons are not American patriots. They have their ideology. They have their agenda. They are just like parasites sitting in the United States and using that country for their own petty ideological interests... By patriot, I simply mean a person who loves his country. Through that lens, Americans should immediately see that Russia and the United States have no conflict... Both the Democratic party and the Republican party don't let the people who are for a non-aggressive foreign policy -- like someone like Ron Paul -- get anywhere near power. "

https://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/109641/saker-syrian-powderkeg

Paul Craig Roberts says Trump is now unable to affect American Foreign Policy, to make peaceful common cause with Russia.

"Trump has zero authority over “his” government. He can be contradicted at will by his own appointees. The President of the United States is a joke. You can find him on Twitter, but nowhere else, not in the Oval Office making foreign or military policy...The Trump administration was destroyed when the weak Donald Trump allowed the neoconservatives to remove his National Security Advisor, General Flynn. Trump has never recovered. "

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/07/09/trump-cannot-improve-relations-russia-trumps-government-us-media-oppose-improved-relations/

In the Saudi-Qatari staring match, Qatar and Iran are winning since the Gulf-Gang threats have come to nothing, Qatar is still a working economy, and they seem to have played all their cards, except for war, which they are rightly afraid of.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/07/the-saudi-qatar-spat-qatar-and-iran-are-winning-while-mbz-and-mbs-lose-face-.html

Secretary of State Tillerson has landed in Kuwait, on his mission to defuse the political situation between Qatar and Suaudi Arabia. He figures this will take months, will have to be a two-way-street, and he wants to find out who is pissed-off about what, and how badly...

Al Jazeera has the story, since it is not shut down yet...

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/07/tillerson-heads-kuwait-resolve-gcc-crisis-170710042532771.html

Charles Hugh Smith says American political parties just obsoleted themselves. 

(He goes easier on the Republicants)  "It's unclear what the Republican Party stands for: it's for Small Government, except when it's for Bigger Government, which is 95% of the time; it's for more law enforcement and the militarization of local police, and more intrusion into the lives of the citizenry; it's for stricter standards for welfare, except for Corporate Welfare; it's for tax reform, except the thousands of pages of give-aways, loopholes and tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations all remain untouched, and so on." "Political parties arose to consolidate centralized control of the central state.We have now reached the perfection of this teleology: the political elites and the financial elites are now one class." "Those who have gotten rich inside the bloated machinery of the parties will never accept their era has ended." The citizens who just awakened to the truth: the legacy parties have no solutions; their game plan is to milk the system as long as they can before it collapses."

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.gr/2017/07/our-political-parties-are-obsolete.html

Keynsian economic interventions have not worked right since 1990, and worse and worse. Those formulas are still being followed, and it is worse than futile. This is yet another analysis of the economics of exponential growth, which show it to be completely broken. We need an economics of steady state and shrinkage of monetary/financial economy.

https://realinvestmentadvice.com/the-breaking-point-death-of-keynes/

The Sixth Mass Extinction of Life on Earth is way ahead of our perceptions. We have taken no action to mitigate it. None, just press releases...

“a biological annihilation occurring globally, even if the species these populations belong to are still present somewhere on Earth”.

 “When considering the frightening assault on the foundations of human civilisation, one must never forget that Earth’s capacity to support life, including human life, has been shaped by life itself,” the paper stated.

Mr Ehrlich said: “We are losing species at an extraordinarily rapid rate compared to the background rate in which we lost them between the previous five great extinctions —a couple of species a year disappearing. It turned out to be 10 to 100 times as fast as it happened in the past.” 

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/world-facing-annihilation-species-extinction-animal-population-proceedings-of-the-national-academy-a7834531.html

Nowhere to Run

Tulsi 2020

Registered Voters,

Happy 4th of July, for all that overtly and covertly symbolizes...

This article about Congresswoman and US Army Reserve Major, Tulsi Gabbard being the best candidate for President in 2020 is quite informative (the author fawns a bit, but sincerely). Our shadow government has to collapse first, of course.

https://medium.com/@bonannyc/meet-tulsi-gabbard-future-president-of-the-united-states-111c1936f03d

Destroyer USS Fitzgerald: What the Hell happened? Nobody is talking about how a huge damned freight ship tried for 15 minutes to warn a US Navy vessel with advanced electronic systems, to avoid a collision, but they collided. Hubert said they are really interested in this in the Netherlands, where he's from.

In the early morning hours of 17 June 2017, the ship was involved in a collision with the container ship MV ACX Crystal, seriously damaging the destroyer. Seven of Fitzgerald's crew were killed. Several others were injured, including the commanding officer, Commander Bryce Benson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Fitzgerald

I'm purely speculating here. Do you recall how in 2011 Iran forced a US drone to land fairly smoothly by manipulating it's GPS coordinate feeds, "spoofing" it into landing, by telling it that it was going straight?  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident

In 2014 a Russian fighter jammed the electronics of the USS Donald Cook, freezing everything up as it made a show of force in the Black Sea (how embarrassing!)  http://www.voltairenet.org/article185860.html

As of 2 years ago, before all the revealations about backdooors into software and chips, the US Navy was still using Windows XP for (classified) things. http://fortune.com/2015/06/24/navy-microsoft-windows-xp/

Happy Fourth of July from North Korea! The country that the US bombed into the stone age, killing about one of every five people, has just successfully tested an ICBM capable of reaching all of Alaska, though not the rest of the US. North Korea really wants to be free from the ongoing American threat of total destruction. PTSD country.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/07/-and-the-rockets-red-glare-north-korea-wishes-a-happy-4th-of-july.html

China has engaged blockchain engineers to set up a digital Renminbi. Vladimir Putin was having talks with the creator of Ethereum last month, interested in creating a Russian digital currency. (China has also been suspected of heavily buying Bitcoin this year, perhaps as a means to control the fact that so many Chinese are using it to circumvent capital controls. They can now be threatened by the state with collapse of Bitcoin's value, now that the state has doubled it's price.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-03/pboc-hires-blockchain-engineers-who-will-oversee-creation-digital-rmb

Russia and China called on all involved parties "to support the efforts of the OPCW and the United Nations in investigating the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria." Additionally, in the document Russia and China both "strongly condemn any use of chemical weapons anywhere and by anyone." (Trump didn't want to investigate, even after he was sure enough to fire 59 cruise missiles to show he's a strong president.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-04/china-joins-russia-calling-official-probe-use-chemical-weapons-syria

"Israel is doing everything to prevent Syria from prevailing against terrorists."

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/395002-syria-israel-military-terrorism/

Total Oil of France is about to sign a $4.8 billion contract with Iran to develop the Iranian part of the huge South Pars gas field, shared with Qatar. (France seems to think that some gas pipeline will cross Syria and Turkey to Europe. Maybe Qatar and Iran agreeing on the Iranian pipeline route is what has the house of Saud so aggressive towards them lately.)

https://www.rt.com/news/394968-iran-gas-deal-total/

Jeremy Corbyn gives an interview with Al Jazeera, covering Brexit, Yemen and Qatar/Saudi crisis. His answers are principled, and he is often careful to point out the length of time he has held his positions. It's nothing recent. That may be the most important point he makes, is that he holds the same positions he held 25 years ago. He's against supporting wars, and hes clear on the human-rights abuses of Saudi Arabia. (Bernie Sanders never took foreign policy positions on much of anything, nothing like this.)

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2017/06/jeremy-corbyn-uk-policies-gcc-crisis-170629133822910.html

Austria sends troops and armored vehicles to border with Italy, to forestall a rerun of massive migrant flood of 2015. Italy is offended, summons ambassador.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-04/italy-furious-after-austria-deploys-troops-armored-vehicles-border

French Fries Kill, as do potato chips and hash browns. Thanks Eleni.

"McDonald’s has sold millions more fries each year with the simple question, “Would you like fries with that?”8 Also known as an upsell, this simple technique has contributed to ever increasing waistlines for their customers. Now, researchers have found those who eat fried potatoes two or more times each week may double their risk of death from all causes.9"

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/07/joseph-mercola/fries-with-that/

You can now legally buy and smoke pot while gambling, drinking and whoring in Las Vegas. Good for bidness, I'm sure.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nevada-legal-marijuana-20170701-story.html

Tylenol reduces headache pain. It turns out that it also reduces the pain a person shares in compassion. 

Tylenol/acetaminophen reduces empathy. 

(I'm not sure how much, and I'm not sure this will turn out to explain anything I have noticed in the world so far.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/12/this-popular-painkiller-also-kills-kindness/?utm_term=.913b86fa71bc

Comfortably Numb