Swamp Drains Trump

Exposed to Toxins,

About a year ago Seymour Hersh presented the evidence that Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton arranged for Syrian "rebels" to be entrusted with captured Libyan chemical weapons (which were never taken from them under UN oversight).

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/04/28/seymour-hersh-hillary-approved-sending-libya-sarin-syrian-rebels.html

American Everyman has the evidence (yet again) of this Sarin attack in Syria being a false-flag, at just the right time, and maybe using a bunch of civilians, captured by ISIS for occasion. Same old cookbook pretext-for-war crap... Thanks Tom.

https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/evidence-suggests-syria-gas-attack-is-false-flag/

WW-3 Begins, Alexander Dugin (Russian, brilliant):

"The formal decision to attack was taken by Donald Trump. In doing so, he stopped being Trump, and became Hillary disguised as a man, a kind of transvestite. Everything that Trump fought against over the course of the election campaign and which he promised to change – he put his signature underneath all of this today. Therefore, it was not he who took the decision. He simply showed that he is henceforth in no state to decide anything... The Swamp (three manifestations – CFR, the neocons, the Deep State) drained Trump... Maybe Trump will try to “become Trump again,” but this is unlikely."

http://www.defenddemocracy.press/third-world-war-the-beginning/

The White House on Friday declined to respond to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s comments that US President Donald Trump broke a campaign promise by launching a cruise missile strike in Syria without informing Congress.

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201704071052419416-wh-medvedev-syria-strike-campaign/

Congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard: 

“It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government. This escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia."

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2017/04/06/rep-tulsi-gabbard-trumps-military-strikes-in-syria-are-reckless-and-short-sighted/

Chinese President Xi Jinping got to see President Trump's winter palace at Mar-a-Lago, eat dead cow for dinner, then got a ringside seat to cruise missile attacks on Syrian airbase, based on flimsy pretext for American domestic consumption. The clear message was that the bar is extremely low for using American military might, and might-makes-right. 

"Now, we need to talk about North Korea, who kills who, and how we are going to do business." (Later, Xi went back to his hotel room. What I read of body language is that Xi is tolerating the boorish Trump, and both men are trying to read each other. No trust at all. Adversaries. Each seeks dominance.)

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-fg-trump-china-20170407-story.html

This article about the Euro, by expat Limey in France, John Ward depicting it as the Titanic, has a lot of clear factual information

"German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble decided to steer SS Eutanic towards a second iceberg by refusing to cancel the order placed by Greece with Germany (under NATO pressure) for two submarines costing €150bn."

https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/getting-real-the-raging-fire-in-the-hold-of-ss-eutanic/

Greece is agreed to have the final crushing contraction of the coils by EU boa-constrictor, taking the last bit of breath, the pensions to the elderly. Pensions feed extended families on beans to make it through the grinding weeks and months and years without work and paychecks. This is the only form of welfare" in Greece.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/07/greece-course-avoid-debt-default-athens-agrees-pension-cuts/

IMF tutors governments on how to gradually remove cash, without engendering public discourse or creating strife: 

"A targeted outreach program is needed to alleviate suspicions related to de-cashing; in particular, that by de-cashing the authorities are trying to control all aspects of peoples’ lives, including their use of money, or push personal savings into banks. The de-cashing process would acquire more traction if it were based on individual consumer choice and cost-benefits considerations."

http://norberthaering.de/en/32-english/news/808-imf-anti-cash-guidelines

Wikileaks reveals CIA cookbook for infecting Windows-based computers.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/wikileaks-just-dropped-the-cias-secret-how-to-for-infecting-windows/

The Arctic Ocean is becoming more like the Atlantic Ocean, writes a researcher. It's not just the ice disappearing in summer. The entire ecosystem is changing.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-arctic-ocean-is-becoming-more-like-the-atlantic-ocean/

Charles Hugh Smith looks at the bug-out-hideaway option for affluent city dwellers. There are problems. This is not an off-the-shelf lifestyle purchase.

"Remote and secret" means "easy to steal": nobody around, plenty of time to take the whole darn thing.

A local news story some years ago illustrated the point: some luckless outsider’s entire bug-out cabin was stolen: not the contents, the entire cabin. The "owner" returned to a bare concrete slab.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr17/bug-out4-17.html

How to Start Farming without Ruining Your Life, Part 2:

https://medium.com/@cnative100/episode-2-how-to-start-farming-without-ruining-your-life-451de2db77f6

Growing Real Tomatoes

WW-1 Centenary Day Despair

Realizing and Retching,

Moon of Alabama has the story well encapsulated. Here are excerpts. 

(I feel terrible about this neocon resurgence of power at all levels in my country. We are so easily mind-controlled.)

The U.S. airstrike delivers a message to al-Qaeda. Whenever under military pressure al-Qaeda can now stage or fake a "chemical attack" and the U.S. will act to destroy its enemy, the Syrian government. Acts as the one last night are then direct military support by the U.S. on al-Qaeda's request... It severely damaged the main support base for Syria's fight against the Islamic State in eastern Syria. The event will possibly lead to a much larger war... A similar scheme had earlier been established on the Golan heights. Al-Qaeda, fighting against Syrian government positions, would launch a mortar round that would land within Israeli controlled territory. Israel would then launch artillery strikes against Syrian government positions because "the Syrian government is responsible for what happens in the area". Al-Qaeda then used the battle field advantage created by the Israeli strike... 

[Regarding gas-attack 4/4/17] For a release incident of powerful chemical weapons the casualty numbers were low, lower than the casualty numbers of recent conventional U.S. air strikes in Syria and Iraq. Despite that fact a huge international media attack wave, seemingly prepared in advance, against the Syrian government was released... 

U.S. president Trump "responded" to the incident by ordering the launch of 59 cruise missiles on the Syrian military airport Al Syairat (vid). The cruise missiles were launched from sea in a volley designed to overwhelm air defenses. According to the Syrian and Russian military only 23 cruise missiles reached the airport. The others were shut down or failed. According to the Syrian and Russian military only 23 cruise missiles reached the airport. The others were shut down or failed. Six Syrian soldiers were Killed, nine civilians in a nearby village were killed or wounded and nine Syrian jets were destroyed. The airport infrastructure was severely damaged. 

The Syrian and Russian governments had been warned before the strikes hit and evacuated most men and critical equipment. (Was the warning part of a deal?) The air attack coincided with an Islamic State ground attack east of the airport.

The Trump presidency had been held hostage by unfounded allegation of "Russian interference" in the U.S. elections in support of the Trump candidacy. The air strikes on Syria might have been the ransom that was demanded for the release of the hostage. His opponents are now gushing about him... 

Trump is the third U.S. president in a row who promised less belligerence during his campaign only to deliver more after the election.

Open U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria will now cease.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/syria-us-creates-new-air-support-request-scheme-for-al-qaeda.html#more

On April 3rd, 2017, an anti-Assad journalist tweeted that the next day he would be launching a media campaign to cover airstrikes on the Hama countryside, including the use of chemical weapons. It is not clear how the reporter was able to know that chemical weapons would be used an entire day before the attacks occurred.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-06/evidence-calls-western-narrative-about-syrian-chemical-incident-question

Neocons are creating Trump-their-chump, by getting rid of all those who resist them in the halls of power. 

It's just a little delay. Donald can be Hillary.

"The two sides: The Bannonites believe the liberals staged a coup and will turn Trump into a conventional squish who betrays the very voters who brought him to power. The Jared wing thinks the Bannonites are clinically nuts.

Killing Bannon won't be easy: His staunchest ally is one of Trump's closest confidants — Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Kellyanne Conway will go to the mat for him, as will policy advisor Stephen Miller. He's also built strong relationships with other cabinet secretaries including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. In the end, though, family matters most and all but dad are done with Bannon and his politics."

https://www.axios.com/steve-bannon-to-associates-i-love-a-gunfight-2347592148.html

The Washington Establishment has reasserted control. First Flynn and now Bannon. All that are left in the Trump administration are the Zionists and the crazed generals who want war with Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea... The Syrian conflict is set to be reopened. That is the point of the chemical attack blamed by Washington on Syria despite the absence of any evidence. It is completely obvious that the chemical attack is a Washington orchestrated event... The removal of Assad allows Washington to impose another Washington puppet on Muslim peoples, to remove another Arab government with an independent policy from Washington, to remove another government that is opposed to Israel’s theft of Palestine, and for Exxon’s Tillerson and the neoconservative hegemonists to cut Russian natural gas off from Europe with a US controlled gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe via Syria.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/04/06/trump-surrendered-will-putin-next-surrender/

Responding to Trump's unexpected military attack on Syria in which 59 cruise missiles were launched (of which only 23 allegedly hit their target), Russian President Vladimir Putin "regards the strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, noting that the president believes the strikes were carried out “in violation of international law, and also under an invented pretext.” The Kremlin spokesman insisted that “the Syrian army doesn’t have chemical weapons,” saying this had been “observed and confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a special UN unit.” “This step deals significant damage to US-Russian ties, which are already in a deplorable state,” Peskov said and added that the US has been ignoring the use of chemical weapons by terrorists and this is dramatically aggravating the situation, in Putin’s opinion... Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said the US missile attack on a Syrian airbase is an act of aggression under a far-fetched pretext and is reminiscent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq... "It is regrettable that all these causes do more harm to the already damaged relations between Russia and the United States. Hope remains that these provocations will not entail irreversible effects." .. Moscow suspended its memorandum of understanding on flight safety in Syria with the US following the missile strike, calling the attack “a demonstration of force.” The Russian military has supported the Syrian government’s version of the events in Idlib, saying that Damascus attacked an arms depot where chemical weapons had been stockpiled by Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front militants...

“Without bothering to investigate anything, the US went forward with a demonstration of force, a military confrontation with a country that is fighting international terrorism,” the Foreign Ministry’s statement reads. “Obviously, the cruise missile attack was prepared beforehand. Any expert can tell that the decision to strike was made in Washington before the events in Idlib, which were used as a pretext for a demonstration."  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-07/putin-responds-syria-strikes-cripple-us-russia-relations-deploys-cruise-missile-frig

Damage from US strike was less than "militarily efficient" for the very high expense of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Pictures and details, here:

"Russia says Syrian air defense systems will be bolstered after 6 jets and the radar system was destroyed in the airstrike. 4 Syrian military are reported dead and 2 missing after strike."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-07/first-images-aftermath-inefficient-us-missile-strikes-emerge

Tom sends this update on Russian response: 

Last night the Russians canceled the memorandum of understanding they had with the U.S. which made them share information with us on flights and locations of their attacks on the CIA’s moderate terrorists. Today they are carpet bombing al Qaeda and the other “moderates” in Idlib... When they stopped sharing information with the U.S. they prevented the Pentagon from warning the terrorists about impending Russian airstrikes.

https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/russia-is-currently-bombing-the-shit-out-of-the-cias-moderate-al-qaeda-terrorists-in-idlib/

Ilargi at The Automatic Earth adds this, which occurred to me, too.

"There’s another element in all this that deserves more scrutiny. Sort of linked to the Putin-Assad connection. That is, why was the attack launched at the very moment that Xi Jinping was sitting down for dinner at Mar-a-Lago? Trump had reason to show the world that he’s willing to use his strength.

I don’t believe for a second that the attack taking place while Xi is at the ‘Winter White House’, is a coincidence. That, too, is a symbol... Kim fired a bunch of rockets recently... Get your boy under control or we soon will have no choice but to do it for you. And we don’t want to do that, because you will lose face if we do, and if that happens the two of us may get into a conflict, on opposite sides. Which neither of us should want. It would be bad for business."  

 https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/04/symbols-of-strength/#post-33559

Feed The Starving? Guns are the True Cause of Hunger and Famine:  [So just who is funding and supplying all of this war in Africa and the rest of the world, and why?]

Last year, the World Bank revised its position on conflict – upgrading it from being one of many drivers of suffering and poverty, to being the main driver... Right now a place called Koch, where Mercy Corps works, is in what the famine early warning systems network calls a “level 4 emergency phase”... This means that people will start to die of hunger in a matter of months if they don’t receive enough aid. Until recent years, Koch was a thriving community with fertile land. It has been destroyed in armed clashes since conflict broke out in South Sudan in December 2013. Families have had to move time and time again and disease is rampant due to the lack of clean water. As one father of five told our team in Koch: “My house was burnt, everything was looted and I do not know how to rebuild my life.”  Hunger is not some freak environmental event; it is human-made, the result of a deadly mix of conflict, marginalisation and weak governance.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/apr/06/solving-hunger-famine-feeding-the-starving-simon-o-connell-mercy-corps

No Appetite Today

Watching TV Reruns

Dissecting Plots,

Ron Paul says that he sees "zero chance Assad would have deliberately used chemical weapons" on civilians just ahead of global negotiations regarding the fate of his country. Congressman Paul strongly suspects false-flag to benefit neocon agenda in the region. He minces no words.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-06/ron-paul-zero-chance-assad-behind-chemical-weapons-attack-syria-likely-false-flag

Same conclusion here: "This would suggest that on the eve of upcoming peace negotiations, terrorist forces have once again created a false flag scenario. This bares resemblance to the Ghouta chemical weapons attack in 2013 where the Syrian Army was accused of using the weapons of mass destruction on the day that United Nations Weapon’s Inspectors arrived in Damascus. Later, in a separate chemical weapon usage allegation, Carla del Ponte, a UN weapons inspector said that there was no evidence that the government had committed the atrocity. This had however not stopped the calls for intervention against the Syrian government."

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/jumping-conclusions-something-not-adding-idlib-chemical-weapons-attack/

The Syrian troops on the ground were moving fast enough after the air assaults to find this:

Russia has reported that the Syrian military has destroyed a warehouse where chemical weapons were produced and stored before exportation to nearby Iraq. The warehouse was in the same town targeted by a chemical gas attack early yesterday morning. 

http://www.mintpressnews.com/russia-reports-discovery-rebel-held-chemical-weapons-site-idlib-gas-attack/226633/

Autopsies on 3 bodies show evidence of sarin and chlorine gas, according to Turkish authorities. 

Also:  "Assad argued his government has no chemical weapons after agreeing to have them destroyed in 2013...The Russian Defense Ministry said early Wednesday the airstrike near Khan Shaykhun was carried out by Syrian aircraft, which struck a terrorist warehouse that stored chemical weapons slated for delivery to Iraq." 

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201704061052364032-turkey-sarin-bodies/

Meanwhile, at the negotiations, US says it may have to take unilateral action against Syria. France says it can't get involved with a militaristic blood rush to President Trump's head. Britain says Russian support of Syria is "defending the indefensible" (which is not a statement about what the actual facts may be...)

Russia condemns the attack, after collecting proof it was the rebel's chemical weapons depot involved (ownership point omitted from this UK story)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4385538/US-UK-France-delay-vote-probe-gas-attack.html

Former Commander in charge of US Military Police in Iraq says President Trump's new National Security Adviser, General HR McMaster ordered criminal abuse of hundreds of Iraqi detainees in 2005. (Thanks Dan)

“Detainees were abused at Tal Afar under orders and command and control of H.R. McMaster,” said Col. Arnaldo Claudio, a retired senior U.S. Military Police officer who served as 18th Airborne Corps Provost Marshal and Chief of Police of the Multinational Coalition Forces in Iraq in 2005.

Col. Claudio was unable to find Col. McMaster after he and his team surveyed the facilities. When pressed by Horton as to whether or not he would have arrested McMaster if he had been found, Claudio responded, “I would have asked him nicely to come with me. Because it never happened, I’m not going to speculate, but I’m pretty sure I would have done that.”

To the best of Claudio’s knowledge, nothing ever became of the Inspector General’s investigation.

Col. McMaster was promoted to brigadier general in August 2009, by his friend, Gen. David Petraeus.

President Donald Trump appointed Gen. McMaster as his National Security Advisor in February 2017.

https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/foreign-policy/us-army-investigator-accuses-national-security-adviser-mcmaster-war-crimes-iraq/

Recurring Character

Dirtbag Leftist Jumble

Internally Conflicted,

Brace Belden is a 27 year old Jewish San Franciscan, whose mother killed herself when he was 6. He was a troubled teen, in 5 schools, a punk band and drugs. He is a member of the dirtbag-left, who has read Hemmingway's writings from the Spanish Revolution. He has just returned from being a YPG "terrorist" in self-determining Rojava, a bad-smelling grunt on the ground against ISIS, saved by a land mine that just went "click". He tweeted and got a following of 33,000. It's different from cyber-bullying rightwing-internet-nurds. What now? (You can scroll down about 40% of the way to get from San Francisco to the war zone.)

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/brace-belden-pisspiggranddad-syria-isis.html

Murray Bookchin is Ocalon's mentor, and Ocalon is Rojava's egalitarian prophet.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syrian-kurds-murray-bookchin_us_5655e7e2e4b079b28189e3df

Libertarian Municipalism is Bookchin's populist/localist form of self-governance. It addresses the human group size limits of self-governance as well as anything can. (We just have these limits. We can work with about 150 other people before it is too much and things fracture further.)

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

Russia/Turkey rapprochement. Turkey aligning with Russia potentially recreates Byzantium, if it happens. Thanks, Eleni

http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/04/vatans-congress-of-victors-and-russia.html

Erdogan says Turks in Europe should defy grandkids of Nazis and vote for him to be Hitler, er Ataturk, sorry... (What's his Plan-B?)

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-referendum-europe-erdogan-idUSKBN17517P

Trump parrots line that Assad-gassed-his-people, and Putin says that's (again) not true. (I think Trump may have knuckled-under to the deep-state. Look for other signs.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-05/trump-collision-course-putin-after-moscow-denies-syria-behind-chemical-attack

Pentagon considers broadening war in Yemen to support House of Saud monarchy against starving peasants who threaten American interests and so on.

https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-generals-are-considering-a-wider-war-in-yemen/

Paul Craig Roberts and "the real Russiagate": "Former MI6 freelancer Christopher Steele “was hired as an opposition researcher last June to dig up derogatory information on Donald Trump.” Unvetted and unverified information by so-called informants somehow found its way into U.S. intelligence agency reports. These reports were then leaked to Democrat-friendly media. This is where the crime lies. Obama regime and DNC were using these agencies for domestic political use, KGB style."

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/04/03/real-russiagate-obamas-stasi-state-michael-hudson-paul-craig-roberts/

Not-Susan-Rice, Steve Bannon is off NSC: 

Bannon said in a statement: “Susan Rice operationalized the NSC during the last administration. I was put on to ensure that it was de-operationalized. General McMaster has returned the NSC to its proper function.” 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-05/steve-bannon-kicked-trumps-national-security-council

WSJ: "Susan Rice was not alone in unmasking Trump Team", so it was a criminal-conspiracy...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-04/wsj-least-one-more-previously-unnamed-member-team-trump-has-been-unmasked

Start farming without ruining your life, chapter 1 (Don't start with Bison.)

https://medium.com/invironment/episode-1-how-to-start-farming-without-ruining-your-life-b55aedb99696

Doing Something Constructive

Partisan Death Race

Optimizing Drownings,

"The Italian navy used to run patrols near the Libyan coast. Their operation, called Mare Nostrum — “our sea” in Latin — involved a large mobilization of ships, planes, and helicopters in international waters close to Libya, where boats carrying refugees regularly capsized and sank. Mare Nostrum was enormously successful — in the year it ran, it saved over 150,000 people... Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, took over with an operation called Triton... Since 2014, the European Union has deliberately chosen to keep their coast guard patrol boats far from where the shipwrecks happen, a decision detailed in an internal letter obtained by The Intercept and other leaked documents. Saving more lives, the logic goes, will only encourage more refugees to come. The result is that rescue boats are kept away from where rescues are actually needed... An average of 3,500 people have died each year while trying to make the journey to Italy from North Africa since 2014."

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/01/europe-keeps-its-rescue-ships-far-from-the-coast-of-libya-where-thousands-of-refugees-have-drowned/

"The European Union on Friday offered Spain a right of veto over the future relationship between Gibraltar and the EU after Britain leaves the bloc." 

"Ruh-Roh" This little appendix hanging off the south tip of Spain, looking at Morocco, and standing sentry over the only way in and out of the Mediterranean (until Suez Canal) has been a bone of contention since the British Empire wrested it from the Spanish Empire in 1713, with the Treaty of Utrechet (not the EU "Treaty of Utrecht"). The EU can do divide-and-conquer on the UK, just as UK seeks to play the same game in the EU. Spain now supports Scottish independence and Scottish EU membership. Spain has it's own separatist worries withBasque and Catalan movements, which have held it's support of separatist movements until now, but THIS is DIFFERENT!

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/01/eu-offers-spain-veto-right-over-gibraltar-after-brexit-talks.html

Michael 
Fallon, the Defence Secretary, suggetsed that Britain is ready to go to war to defend the sovereignty of Gibraltar. He vowed to go “all the way” to protect the territory.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/02/theresa-may-would-go-war-defend-sovereignty-gibraltar-says-michael/

Yanis Varoufakis, who had some unpleasantly enlightening experience negotiating with the EU, offers Theresa May advice in her exit negotiations. She was right to take hard-Brexit as the baseline, since it cannot be used as a threat. He details that he found EU negotiators NOT to negotiate in the best interests of the EU, but each for hidden personal agendas, making a utilitarian solution very unlikely. He advises Britain to close off the EU options and play a long game, by calling for a pay-to-participate arrangement, which Norway has. He says the EU "cannot refuse" this request. (This would certainly be practical, since the current EU budget runs almost 2 years beyond the Brexit date, and the UK is a net contributor to that budget. Nobody else can take up that slack...)

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/theresa-must-change-brexit-avoid-10142898

The Turkish economy is tanking, Turkish Lira tanking, unemployment up, political arrests of businessmen are following after political arrests of military, civil service and educators. Outside investors are totally spooked and Turkey may default on well over $270 billion of (non-Lira) debt, largely held by sick and nervous European banks, like Spain's ($87 billion). Erdogan's imperial-presidency vote comes up April 16, and he seemed to have the votes when the economy was better, but not now... (Backed into a corner. What will he pull next week?)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/turkish-economy-heading-toward-crisis-under-erdogan-a-1141363.html

The Turkish army, pretty much completely loyal to Erdogan, has become an incompetent meat-grinder for Turkish soldiers, since the officer corps got politically purged last year, following a decade of political purges. The US, Russia, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah have marginalized Turkish forces, so they've had to declare "success", if not victory, and are either camping-out or withdrawing home.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/why-the-pentagon-doesnt-want-turkeys-help-in-syria/article/2619038

"How North Korea Could Kill 90% of Americans", Ambassador R. James Woolsey was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1993-95. Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, served in the House Armed Services Committee and the CIA. 

"A single warhead delivered by North Korean satellite could blackout the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for over a year—killing 9 of 10 Americans by starvation and societal collapse." 

[Oh, very bad. This smells like justification for preemptive nuclear war!]

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/defense/326094-how-north-korea-could-kill-up-to-90-percent-of-americans-at-any

Bernie Sanders is not dead yet. “Medicare-for-all,” single-payer health insurance system for all Americans would be fulfilling the dream of those who created the Medicare system in the first place in 1965.

https://theintercept.com/2017/03/31/bernie-sanders-wants-to-expand-medicare-to-everybody-exactly-what-its-architects-wanted/

(Heh, heh, heh...) "Without a viable health care agenda of their own, Republicans now face a choice between two options: Obamacare and a gradual shift toward a single-payer system. The early signs suggest they will choose single payer." 

The way health-insurance laws have been wrangled out over the decades leaves socialism-in-medicine, Medicare and Medicaid, well-defended from political attack. 

Cutting out the fines-if-uninsured by the IRS, which has been done in practice now, kills the insurance companies. Obamacare is poison to them without forced conscription of young, healthy workers. 

The ratchet-effect will tend to expand Medicaid and Medicare at the margins. 

Most Americans like Medicare, and it is as effective a health plan as can be found in the US (faint praise...) 

What's a politician to do when popularity starts to sag?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/opinion/republicans-for-single-payer-health-care.html

Reagan's OMB Director, David Stockman explains why Trump can't cut taxes, and can't do other nice things he's promised, because the US is already entering a debt crisis. That's why the Fed is raising interest rates with a lame economy and a few cherry picked and manipulated statistics, forced to get off zero before "it" hits the fan.

http://bonnerandpartners.com/reagan-adviser-why-trump-wont-cut-taxes/

"Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice was the official responsible for the 'unmasking' of the incoming Trump team during 'incidental' surveillance... Also of note is the claim that New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman has been sitting on the Susan Rice story for at least two days." (Trump is Hitler. Trump loves Putin. Trump is racist. Trump is sexist. Trump is uncouth. Trump lies...)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-03/confirmed-susan-rice-unmasked-trump-team

 

Rice-A-Roni

CIA April Foolery

Wedgied in Hallway,

Wikileaks "Marble" data release: The CIA can put Russian, Chinese, North Korean or Iranian digital fingerprints on any data cache, without leaving any fingerprints of its own, and make it look like there was an imperfect attempt to conceal the false fingerprints. A budget digital forensics analysis would surely blame whoever was the intended patsy.

Why did the FBI exclusively use the outside (low budget) forensics analysis, when it could have done a better job? Why make it public? etc...

"With it now public knowledge that the CIA is capable of making cyber attacks appear as though they originated in another country, will any amount of evidence be sufficient without an admission of guilt by Russia? Despite the issue, the FBI says they are still conducting an investigation into Russian “hacking” of the U.S. election and possible collusion by Trump administration members with Russian officials."

http://www.inquisitr.com/4108189/wikileaks-vault-7-marble-framework-what-do-new-cia-documents-reveal/

"We could forgive Crowdstrike, but we could not forgive the head of the FBI who said they never got direct access to DNC computers. That is a very poor admission to make", says former CIA officer Ray McGovern... The CIA possesses a tool for disguising the source of its hacks, that's according to the latest release of classified documents from Wikileaks, called "Marble"... At the same time, the agency is also believed to have a program, called UMBRAGE, which allows it to mimic all sorts of hacking techniques, and can leave traces that will point to foreign sources instead of the US.

Ray McGovern: "It is genuine. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have a 100 percent record on authenticity. That matters. I am an intelligence analyst. This is the kind of unadulterated evidence after which I lust. After which any investigator or newsman should lust. Because Julian Assange doesn’t change anything. It is documentary. And what does that mean? And that means that as an intelligence analyst, I can analyze and interpret it. And there is no way other to interpret this than the poor people from the Crowdstrike, the computer company that the DNC hired to look into who was hacking into their computers, it was beyond its capability to determine who had this virus in there." (Thanks for the McGovern link, other Ray.)

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/382987-cia-nsa-fbi-marble/

The Washington Post carries water for the CIA, and Stars and Stripes (US military lovingly call "Stars and Lies") copies the story.

The agency responded angrily. “Dictators and terrorists have no better friend in the world than Julian Assange, as theirs is the only privacy he protects,” spokesman Dean Boyd said, without commenting on the authenticity of the release. “The American public should be deeply troubled by any WikiLeaks disclosure designed to damage the intelligence community’s ability to protect America against terrorists and other adversaries,” Boyd said. “Such disclosures not only jeopardize U.S. personnel and operations but also equip our adversaries with tools and information to do us harm.’’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/wikileaks-latest-release-of-cia-cyber-tools-could-blow-the-cover-on-agency-hacking-operations/2017/03/31/63fc3616-1636-11e7-833c-503e1f6394c9_story.html?utm_term=.3341634e06f9

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/wikileaks-latest-release-of-cia-cyber-tools-could-blow-cover-on-agency-hacking-operations-1.461670#.WN_4Rm_yvIV

The EU appears ready to take a very reasonable stance on Brexit negotiations, at least according to paper released by EU President, Donald Tusk. They have sounded considerably more rigid and punitive than this looks.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-31/eus-draft-brexit-guidelines-look-anything-punitive

The EU is One Big, Fatal Flaw, says Ilargi. Thanks for the heads-up, Eleni. (I suspect that Brexit is a big enough model for the transition of the EU to something that is more limited, like the common-market was, before common currency.)

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/03/the-eu-is-one-big-fatal-flaw/

The Big Contraction, and interview with Jim Kunstler (by a somewhat clueless interviewer :-)

"The crux of the matter is the falling Energy Return on Investment (EROI). In the 1950s you got 100 barrels of Texas crude for every equivalent barrel of energy you sunk into the project. That’s 100 to 1. Shale oil gives you about 5 to 1. Tar sands are a little worse. The worldwide average EROI these days is 17 to 1 (including Arabian oil, deep water, etc.). We can’t run all the systems of our “advanced” society at those ratios, and that is why we have been running up the debt so dramatically — borrowing from the future to cover the cost of living as we do."  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-contraction-interview-james-howard-kunstler-erico-matias-tavares

Solar Powered Vegetarian 

(pictured with son Steve and granddaughter Tyler April Fool's Morning)