Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Same Day Again

Propaganda Targets,

It's that day again, 9/11. 
18 years ago the global deep state, comprised of US and Israeli deep state elements, and high finance, complicit US military,  and shadow-president Dick Cheney at the command console, murdered 3000 people, and demolished the World Trade Center. The WTC contained massive evidence of financial fraud and criminal conspiracy (and a lot of gold in the basement). They also destroyed the area of the Pentagon where financial fraud investigation was taking place.
"Ragheads with box-cutters did it", was the official story, despite the laws of physics having been as violated as a 13 year old virgin visiting Epstein's island. 
No plane parts were found at the Pentagon, or Shanksville "crash sites". 
The Pentagon had a through-and-through hole, like cruise missiles with penetration warheads make, and so on.
Paul Craig Roberts has this:
​ ​Patrick Pasin, a French author, provides additional evidence of Mueller’s misuse of his office to protect an official lie. An English language translation of Pasin’s book, The FBI Accomplice of 9/11, has been published by Talma Studios in Dublin, Ireland.  https://www.amazon.com/FBI-Accomplice-11-Documents-ebook/dp/B07TRXKNG2/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Patrick+Pasin&qid=1567967650&s=books&sr=1-1
​ ​Pasin’s book consists of his organization of the known evidence, which has been suppressed in order to perpetrate a false story of 9/11, into a compelling account of how a false flag attack was protected from exposure.  He details the plan “through which the FBI tried to prove the government conspiracy narrative—no matter the cost.”  Keep in mind that Mueller is the one that the Deep State set on President Trump.  Dirty business is Mueller’s business.
​ ​Pasin collects the evidence and weaves it into a compelling story.  It is all there.  The insider trading in advance of the airliner hijackings, the impossibility of cell phone calls from airliners in 2001, the anthrax letters sent to senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy which paved the way for the PATRIOT Act, the effort to blame American military scientists for the letters once it emerged that the anthrax was unique to a US military lab, the total implausibility of finding an undamaged passport in the rubble of the twin towers where fires allegedly were so hot that they melted steel.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/09/09/9-11-after-18-years/  

Tom Luongo on John Bolton's dismissal (one day before 9/11):
​ ​Bolton was the height of the neoconservative ethos; an academic with no real world experience, daddy issues and a knack for getting close to the most influential people in the world to warp policy to their Trotskyite goals of permanent revolution.
​ ​Now, thankfully, he’s out of a job. Next up has to be Haspel at the CIA as well as Mike Pompeo. These people are a stain on the U.S. They diminish not only Trump, who doesn’t apparently need any help in this regard, but all of us as Americans.
​ ​It’s clear Trump made this move for re-election purposes. Bolton was a liability. If more heads don’t roll after three years of foreign policy blunders of epic proportions Trump’s second term will look just like his first, a shambolic mess long on bravado and short on consistency.

​Who will replace Bolton as National Security Adviser?​
​ ​At least seven people are believed to be in the mix. They include, according to multiple sources: the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell; U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook; Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun; the ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra; and Rob Blair, an aide to White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. A source close to the discussions said multiple senators called the White House on Grenell’s behalf on Tuesday.
​ ​Appearing on Fox News' "Special Report" on Tuesday, South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said Hook, Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and former deputy national security adviser Rick Waddell are under consideration.
"Those are three names that the president mentioned to me," Graham said. "There are others on the list."

​Bibi promises "Greater-er Israel" Vote Bibi:
​ During an address on 10 September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to annex the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea, if he is re-elected in the upcoming general election on 17 September, calling it the country's "defence wall".
 The prime minister further stated that more West Bank settlements will follow suit after the US President Donald Trump administration publishes its "deal of the century" peace plan in full.
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201909101076769664-israeli-pm-netanyahu-announces-intention-to-annex-jordan-valley-in-west-bank-after-election/ 

Eleni sends "Pipeline Wars Revisited", the most clear and concise assessment of the major battlefields that most people don't know exist.
Iran-Iraq-Syria (Friendship) Pipeline
In July of 2011, the Iran, Iraq, Syria (or Friendship Pipeline) pipeline agreement​ ​was signed, just subsequent to US State authorizing the CIA’s Timber Sycamore ‘dirty tricks’ operation, ie the US-Israeli inspired attempt to destabilize and destroy Syria.

T​he weapons superhighway into Northern Syria goes to where either the Saudi or the Iranian pipeline is supposed to pass. Funny... 
 Speaking at the Justice and Development Party's meeting in Eskişehir, a city in northwestern Turkey, Erdogan said he wouldn't sit back in the shadows anymore about a superhighway of weapons supplied by the US, amounting to more than 30,000 truckloads of weapons, equipment, and ammunition to northern Syria to support YPG terrorists.

​Idlib?  Hey Eleni, isn't that where ISIS and assorted mercenaries are bottled up, needing to get out or get killed by the Syrian army?
​ Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated on Saturday his threat to open the border to Europe for Syrian refugees, noting that Ankara alone cannot afford another potential migration flow from Syria.
 There is a “new migration threat” from the Syrian province of Idlib along the Turkish border, Erdogan said, urging the European Union to provide adequate financial assistance.
 “Either you will share this burden or we will open the border,” the Turkish president warned, reiterating that the EU has not yet fully fulfilled its promise of financial assistance under the 2016 Ankara-Brussels agreement.
https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2019/09/08/erdogan-eu-refugees-open-borders/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+KeepTalkingGreece+%28Keep+Talking+Greece%29  

Pepe Escobar has insights from Lula, about Obama, Hillary Clinton, the Iranian nuclear deal, and western politicians in general.
“It was fantastic, Obama’s capacity to deliver beautiful speeches, but the next day nothing happened, nothing, nothing. I think the United States was too big for Obama, he was too young, too inexperienced. And you know that the US State Department is very powerful…. I think Obama was a good man. When I went to visit him the first time … I left with a lingering doubt: there was no one remotely similar to him in the meeting. I said to myself, ‘This guy has no one matching him here.’  
http://thesaker.is/inside-story-of-the-first-iran-nuclear-deal/ 

Targeting the Tongass National Forest for Amazon-like Destruction​  
Ugh...

​Sick as Ever​
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Sunday, September 8, 2019

Freeing Truth

Analyzing structures,

​ ​This week, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth announced their partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in releasing a draft report of an in depth four-year study on what actually brought down WTC 7.
​ ​After conducting comprehensive modeling and studying countless scenarios, the study’s authors, J. Leroy Hulsey, Ph.D., P.E., S.E., UAF, Zhili Quan, Ph.D., Bridge Engineer South Carolina Department of Transportation, and Feng Xiao, Ph.D., Associate Professor Nanjing University of Science and Technology Department of Civil Engineering, concluded the following:
​ ​Fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that studied the collapse. The secondary conclusion of our study is that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.

​Carbyne has a system that hijacks all smartphones and other electronic sensors in any area, or any other related pattern, to create a complete space-time information and movement picture. The system will decide when to call in police, ambulances or military. 
People won't have to call 911 at all. Isn't that great? It's what Jeffrey Epstein and Ehud Barak were financial partners in. 
Your tax dollars at work for the Mossad.  Whitney Webb has the story:
​ ​As part of the partnership, Carbyne’s President of North American Operations Paul Tatro told Government Technology that the Carbyne platform would combine the data it obtains from smartphones and other Carbyne-connected devices with “what’s available through nearby Cisco-connected road cameras, roadside sensors, smart streetlamps, smart parking meters or other devices.” Tatro further asserted that “Carbyne can also analyze data that’s being collected by Cisco IoT devices … and alert 911 automatically, without any person making a phone call, if there appears to be a worthy problem,” and expressed his view that soon most emergency calls will not be made by human beings but “by smart cars, telematics or other smart city devices.”  ​...
​ ​In early August, in the wake of the shooting at an El Paso Walmart, President Trump called on big tech companies to collaborate with the Justice Department in the creation of software that “stops mass murders before they start” by detecting potential mass shooters before they can act.

The Pentagon Wants More Control Over the News. What Could Go Wrong?​  Matt Taibbi

​David Stockman predicts what will be the Subprime Mortgage CDOs of the next (big) reset:
 It’s the mother of all bond market bubbles. And it’s not just that speculators have driven the price of almost all sovereign debt way above par. It’s going to come back to par, either when the market corrects or when the bonds are redeemed—and somebody’s got a capital loss of large magnitude sitting right on their balance sheet at the moment.
​ ​That’s the crisis because it’s being done on leverage. Of course, there are some cash buyers, but all the smart money and the speculators are buying this low-yielding or negative-yielding debt on repo and collecting the capital gain. Let’s say the price moves 110 to 120 on 95% leverage, and they’re laughing all the way to the bank. This is big-time speculation.
​ ​When it reverses, they’re going to unwind these trades and all these elevated, insane prices in the bond market.
​ ​That’s what $16 trillion of negative yield means. It equals insanity.
​ ​So, the point is it’s going to correct, and when it does, it will correct hard. It will ricochet through the entire financial system.

​The main point of US trade war with China may just be making the US less dependent upon one big rival power. Rebuilding American manufacturing will take time, and it will take a cost adjustment. Too many costs like healthcare and retirement have been loaded onto the price of American labor. That can be reduced a whole lot, by (GASP!) socializing them, like everybody else does.​
​ ​It’s important to note that decoupling, even if the trend continues, isn’t necessarily a bullish force for the U.S. economy. It doesn’t mean there will be any increase in American jobs, as the expected Google moves to Vietnam and Thailand make clear. The tariffs on Chinese goods are also not making America richer or directly growing our economy, no matter what the White House says.  

 Russia and Ukraine have completed a long-awaited exchange of prisoners.
Those freed include 24 Ukrainian sailors and - controversially - a "person of interest" over the downing of flight MH17 which killed 298 people.
The swap is hoped to ease tensions between the two neighbours.
Greeting the Ukrainians at the airport, President Volodymyr Zelensky said: "We have to do all the steps to finish this horrible war." Russia said it was glad its citizens had returned home.

​Mish Shedlock's read is that the wording of the Benn Bill, which tells Boris Johnson exactlyy what he must do, removes his prerogatives of action, and therefore requires "The Queen's Consent". Johnson does not have to do as he is commanded by Parliament without The Queen's Consent. (Court decisions are implied. How long will that take? When? What triggers that?)​
The Benn Bill requires Johnson's approval. What do you think the odds of that are?
That's the long and short of it.
It's unclear if Benn knew this or not. It's possible he did and hoped Johnson would not catch it. More likely, the drafters of the Benn bill did not know.
Either way, the point is moot.There is no way to force Johnson to approve this. And he won't, even if Bercow demands.
https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/another-weird-brexit-turn-tories-vote-to-support-no-deal-bill-in-house-of-lords-mUB9gkhpJEWtrA9sXGNoOw/ 

Tom Luongo also figures Brexit Boris is on top, because he is fronting for the team within the power elites, which is destined soon to win.
If Brexit is locked-in as the absolute and unavoidable Halloween even, then, and only then, does Boris Johnson have negotiating power with the EU to toss out the Irish Backstop border closure. The Eurogroup has shown, in Greece, that it can do whatever it bloody-well pleases, after all.
 This week’s Brexit drama was vitally important for Boris Johnson. And intentional or not he has maneuvered events to a very interesting inflection point.
​ ​The random acts of vandalism performed by Remainers on all sides of the political aisle in the House of Commons were, I think, invoked by Johnson himself strategically...
If the vote succeeded the price for Brexit would be the validity of the British system of government. We have nearly reached that point...
​ ​He simply refuses to offer the bill to the Queen, which is within his Prerogative as he is in charge of treaty negotiations not Parliament, prorogues Parliament with the bill pending. It expires along with all the others outstanding.
 T​he clock restarts when they come back on October 14th. At that point there isn’t time for a General Election so reintroducing the bill would be pointless because Johnson can then run out the clock.
Parliament would then have to take whatever Johnson offers when he comes back from Brussels.​(And Brussels would have ​had ​to give him something.)

​Amber Rudd resigns from Johnson's cabinet. He's been making decisions without her. Looks like she couldn't be trusted, doesn't it?
​ Amber Rudd has claimed it is unclear who is running the country following her shock resignation from the government.
 The former work and pensions secretary said she did not think the cabinet was having “proper discussions about policy”.
 When asked who was running the country, if not the cabinet, she told The Andrew Marr Show: “If I knew that I would have perhaps had further conversations with the prime minister or them.”
 Ms Rudd, who announced her resignation from the cabinet on Saturday, said she quit because she had not seen enough evidence of planning for a no-deal Brexit.
 She claimed she was shown a “one-page summary” when she asked for evidence of the government’s work in negotiating a deal with the European Union.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-news-latest-amber-rudd-quits-boris-johnson-a9096251.html 

Mish has really done further homework, and he is sending some of it to Nigel Farage without public disclosure. 
He says Boris Johnson has 9 interwoven options. Interesting analysis.
https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/brexit-trap-set-but-who-is-the-trapee-ToX7FVKtcE2pNqEUwxyrHA/


Ah, BoJo will go to court about that newly voted (not yet final) Benn Bill tomorrow. Courts have favored Johnson's positions this past week.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-no-deal-boris-johnson-latest-court-challenge-dominic-raab-a9096246.html

Final Inning
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Thursday, September 5, 2019

Gray Champions

Odd Bedfellows,

With your leave, I will advance a thesis that we can look at "history rhyming" within a generational framework, which has periodic growth decay, crisis and restructuring, 4 seasons: summer, fall, winter and spring.
This is not a new model of looking at history, and any good model can have great utility going into a historical epoch.
The Bolshevik Economist, Nikolai Kondratiev postulated waves of economic/financial cycle, posthumously named "Kondratiev Waves"  ("K-waves") in his honor, after Comrade Stalin found them to be counter-revolutionary or something, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave

A more recent adaptation of generational cycles of history is that of American authors, Strauss and Howe, who wrote "Generations" and "The Fourth Turning" in the 1990s. 
Basically, there are 4-generational cycles of crisis, rebuilding, health, decay and again, crisis. 
I'm a "baby boomer", which is a "prophet generation". My kids are millennials, "hero generation". 
It is a little hard to find a likable explanation of this theory, but this guy does pretty well. 
https://medium.com/@moshemodeira/strauss-howe-generational-theory-is-the-closest-thing-we-have-to-a-crystal-ball-part-1-f9bc21e3fc75

Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Gray Champion (excerpted):
  The crowd had rolled back, and were now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street, while the soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The intervening space was empty--a paved solitude, between lofty edifices, which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly, there was seen the figure of an ancient man, who seemed to have emerged from among the people, and was walking by himself along the centre of the street, to confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark cloak and a steeple-crowned hat, in the fashion of at least fifty years before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand, to assist the tremulous gait of age.
​ ​When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly round, displaying a face of antique majesty, rendered doubly venerable by the hoary beard that descended on his breast. He made a gesture at once of encouragement and warning, then turned again, and resumed his way.
​ ​"Who is this gray patriarch?" asked the young men of their sires.
​ ​"Who is this venerable brother?" asked the old men among themselves...
​ ​Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in gray, but unbroken dignity. Now, he marched onward with a warrior's step, keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced on one side, and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other, till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man grasped his staff by the middle, and held it before him like a leader's truncheon.
​ ​"Stand!" cried he.
​ ​The eye, the face, and attitude of command; the solemn, yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be raised to God in prayer, were irresistible. At the old man's word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some old champion of the righteous cause, whom the oppressor's drum had summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and looked for the deliverance of New-England.
​ ​The Governor, and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but glancing his severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old man was chief ruler there, and that the Governor and Council, with soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of the Crown, had no alternative but obedience....
​ ​"Are you mad, old man?" demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh tones. "How dare you stay the march of King James's Governor?"
​ ​"I have staid the march of a King himself, ere now," replied the gray figure, with stern composure. "I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place; and beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to appear once again on earth, in the good old cause of his Saints. And what speak ye of James? There is no longer a popish tyrant on the throne of England, and by to-morrow noon, his name shall be a by-word in this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back, thou that wast a Governor, back! With this night, thy power is ended--to-morrow, the prison!--back, lest I foretell the scaffold!"
https://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/nh/gray.html 

Jim Quinn, on recent "Gray Champions":  
 In Part One of this article I laid out the reasons for Gray Champions arising to meet challenges during crisis periods in history. We are ten years into this Crisis and I have been pondering where we go from here. The plot line of the Game of Thrones has opened my eyes to the fact there isn’t just one Gray Champion during a Fourth Turning. During the Civil War, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were Transcendental prophet generation representatives of the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln and William Tecumseh Sherman were Gray Champions of the Union.
 These were men who would do anything to further their cause, from ordering thousands of men to their deaths on Cemetery Ridge, to burning down cities, to suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus, and seceding from the Union. They were destined to brandish their terrible swift swords in achieving total indisputable victory. But, we know only one side could win.
 During the World War II/Great Depression crisis FDR is known as the Gray Champion who took drastic measures on the economic front with his New Deal and sent 16 million young men into battle on a scale never seen in history. Douglass MacArthur commanded many of those men in battles to the death across the Pacific. What is less discussed is the fact Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin were also members of the Missionary prophet generation and were the Gray Champions of their nations...
Gray Champions are not necessarily good, admirable, or moral. Most have narcissistic tendencies and have at least as many enemies as allies. All of the men I’ve named were deeply flawed and in some cases malevolent. What they all had in common was tremendous confidence in their own abilities and an unbreakable determination to achieve the outcomes they desired. Winning was all that mattered to these men.​..

​Jim Quinn looked at prior Gray Champions in American history, and the complexity of their travails in critical times. 
They were fought, hated, and perhaps Lincoln and FDR were both murdered by their enemies. It's hard to know about FDR's death.​
"At each of these great gates of history, eighty to a hundred years apart, a similar generational drama unfolded. Four archetypes, aligned in the same order – elder Prophet, midlife Nomad, young adult Hero, child Artist – together produced the most enduring legends in our history. Each time the Grey Champion appeared marked the arrival of a moment of “darkness, and adversity, and peril,” the climax of the Fourth Turning of the saeculum." ​ ​– "The Fourth Turning" – Strauss & Howe

The "false recovery"​ is a narrative of manipulation of finance, by money conjuring at the top, and trickle down to the top 10%, at best. This has created the narrative of economic recovery, in an emperor's-new-clothes sort of fashion. Everybody believes that everybody believes there is a recovery, even though they have private knowledge that it's not including them, or that it is fake, but their stock valuations and house valuation are rising, so they are winners. Te Federal Reserve has been keeping stock "markets"​ propped up by massive buying of equity-index-futures, and CEOs and "activist investors" have been getting companies to borrow money at low rates to buy their own stock, which the CEOs and shareholders sell at personal profit, leaving Sears and other gutted companies to collapse. 
The Lehman Brothers crash marked the transition from private-knowledge of financial collapse, to common-knowledge, and the rush to the exits did the deed. 
What/when will it be this time?
For the vast majority of ordinary Americans, the 2008-09 great recession never ended...
Q II 2019 GDP was revised lower to 2.04%. “Manufacturing and oil and gas production are in decline.”
“Real new orders are in their worst contraction since the (2008-09) great recession.”
Construction spending fell to its lowest level since that period, the same true for freight activity...
Re-engineered US inflation to how it was calculated in the 1980s (by Williams) shows it exceeds 5.5%, not the phony sub-2% official number.
Rasmus asked “if 60% (of US workers) didn’t get any wage increase at all, how could wages be rising 3.1% or even 1.5%?”
If real US inflation exceeds 5.5%, average wages for working Americans declined, a further drag on the economy, compounded by record high consumer debt exceeding $13 trillion.
McKinsey Global Institute data show US “median wages have not risen at all since 2007,” Rasmus reported.
Adjusted for real inflation, they’ve fallen, exacerbating the widening US wealth gap, have and have not economic reality in the country.

​The military industrial complex swallowed Red-Riding-Hood's Grandmother and the economy. 
There's no way out, and the wolf is dying of peritonitis. The vast "hidden spending" is not even included here.
​ ​In the almost 12 hours of Democratic Party presidential primary debates on June 26-27 and July 30-31, the words “Pentagon budget” or “defense spending” were not uttered, except for a fleeting, unanswered comment from Senator Bernie Sanders.  (Hmmm, Tulsi Gabbard?)
C:\Users\Winslow Wheeler\Documents\1 President Campaigns and Politics\2020\PastedGraphic-3.png
... Fo​r 65 years the military budget’s inexorable expansion has not been controlled by the dramatic changes in America’s actual national security needs but by political and independent cash flow demands from inside the Pentagon, Congress, industry, and think tanks.
​ ​Secondly, we need to recognize that this inexorable money growth has shrunk our forces and weakened their capabilities so dramatically that today we would be utterly unready for and incapable of supporting–much less winning–Korean or Vietnam war sized campaigns. War with Iran would be disastrous according to insightful current military assessments.
​https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/30/bankrupt-and-irrelevant-the-presidential-debates-and-four-recent-studies-on-pentagon-spending/

The promises of a better future down this road are what politicians have to sell, no matter what they see themselves. I personally think the things Bernie Sanders proposes are dual-use, such as a government jobs program, which is currently needed, and will be needed worse in the next financial crisis, which won't be papered over. Bernie Sanders is an archetypal Gray Champion, focused more on building and protecting than on battle. I am coming to think that he could actually work well within the country, while Trump fights global trade war. Sanders has said a lot of bad things about Trump, but both men have long personal histories, which show that they don't dwell on such things when there are deals to make, neither of them... (Yeah, Biden is "gray", but he's a senile, corrupt pedophile, washed-up.)
A few highlights from the Democratic Climate Town Hall statements last night:
​ ​“The truth is it costs a lot more to build a new nuclear plant today than it does to build solar or wind,” said Sanders at the town hall. “I think it is safer and more cost-effective to move toward sustainable technologies like wind, solar and geothermal.” 
​(Nuclear reactor retirement and failure costs are infinite.)
​ ​Biden also noted that he plans to double the rate at which the U.S. is currently installing solar and wind. In 2018, according to Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, the U.S. installed about 10.7 gigawatts of solar, a decline of 2 percent from additions in the previous year. The wind industry is slated to install 11.9 gigawatts in 2019 and 14.6 gigawatts in 2020.
​ ​Several candidates, including Biden, Warren, Harris and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, also floated plans for drastically increasing electric vehicles and charging infrastructure.
​ ​The Green New Deal — which many candidates credited for the very existence of a televised climate-focused town hall — also featured prominently, with candidates promising millions of good-paying jobs and support for marginalized communities that have faced disproportionate impacts from pollution and climate change.

​Some initial details of the Sanders Plan are here. Note that it assumes that capitalism keeps going like the Energizer Bunny, as does Elizabeth Warren's plan, and that capitalists take orders from politicians, not the converse, and so on. Anything should be seen as a first adjustment to the reality-tsunami. It's just the tide sucking out so far.​
"The climate crisis is not only the single greatest challenge facing our country; it is also our single greatest opportunity to build a more just and equitable future," the plan stresses, "But we must act immediately."
 Sanders's plan aims to achieve 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030 and complete decarbonization by 2050.
https://www.wastedive.com/news/bernie-sanders-climate-plan-waste-recycling/562017/ 

Matt Taibbi raises a point about how standard political analysis fails in historic times of rapid historic change:
 At the Republican National Convention, I ran into a Democratic pollster who sat me down and said the favorability numbers just don't work. There aren't enough uneducated white males to deliver the election for Trump, because if you look at his favorability numbers, they never creep high enough to win a majority of registered voters.
​ ​But there was a huge flaw in that analysis: That Trump ended up doing extremely well with voters who considered both choices unfavorable. So roughly one in five registered voters in November 2016 disapproved of both Clinton and Trump. And Trump won those voters by nearly a two-to-one margin.
​ ​So people who disapproved of Donald Trump were one of his biggest constituencies, so that is kind of the problem going into this campaign that I see people making the same mistake. They say the numbers just don't add up. Whereas if you just go by what you see on the campaign trail, and the realities that I've seen recently say, if anything, he is doing better than he was doing at this stage in the race last time.

​Big Pharma has to go to trial over pushing addicitive drugs and killing people. 
(Can we also sue the CIA, please?)
​https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-opioids-litigation-idUSKCN1VO2AS

Don Quixote
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Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Political Changes

Imperial Subjects,

Charles sent this analysis of modern global financial capitalism as another form of imperialism, destined to drain all of the people and resources of the planet for the short term gain and "accumulation" of the elites. The New Imperialist Structure. 
 The capitalist format raises short term gain to the apogee of the value system, and the whole structure can only serve that master. 
It closes with explanation of the need for environmentalists to reject the capitalist model, as must any group of people, seeking to be free of peonage. Goof old Marxist Analysis (I dozed off 3 times...)
...By placing the debate on the terrain cleared by Marx—the analysis of capitalism—we are able to advance in analyzing the challenges. Yes, there will still be scientific discoveries in the future on the basis of which technologies for controlling the riches of nature might be derived. But what can be asserted without fear of contradiction is that as long as the logic of capitalism forces society to exercise its choices on the basis of short-term profitability (which is implied by the valorization of capital), the technologies that will be implemented to exploit new scientific advances will be chosen only if they are profitable in the short term. Consequently, this implies that such technologies will carry an increasingly higher risk of being environmentally destructive. It is only when humanity has designed a way of managing society based on prioritizing use values instead of the exchange values associated with the valorization of capital that the conditions for a better management of the relations between humanity and nature will come together...
 Environmentalists’ choice to debate these questions in a flawed theoretical context traps them, not only in theoretical, but above all in political impasses. This choice allows the dominant forces of capital to manipulate all the political proposals that result from it. It is well known that alarmism allows the societies of the imperialist triad to preserve their privilege of exclusive access to the planet’s resources and prevent the peoples of the peripheries from being able to deal with the requirements of their development—whether for good or bad. It is ineffective to respond to “antialarmist” views by pointing to the (incontestable) fact that they are themselves mere fabrications of the lobbies (for example, the automobile lobby). The world of capital always operates in this way: the lobbies that defend particular interests of segments of capital endlessly confront one another and will continue to do so. Lobbies for energy-intensive choices now  oppose lobbies for “green” capitalism.  

​Ellen Brown revisits Michael Hudson's work on debt jubilee in the ancient world, which I posted Christmas 2017. 
https://michael-hudson.com/2017/12/he-died-for-our-debt-not-our-sins/
​ We are again reaching the point in the business cycle known as “peak debt,” when debts have compounded to the point that their cumulative total cannot be paid. Student debt, credit card debt, auto loans, business debt and sovereign debt are all higher than they have ever been. As economist Michael Hudson writes in his provocative 2018 book, “…and forgive them their debts,” debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid. The question, he says, is how they won’t be paid.
 Mainstream economic models leave this problem to “the invisible hand of the market,” assuming trends will self-correct over time. But while the market may indeed correct, it does so at the expense of the debtors, who become progressively poorer as the rich become richer. Borrowers go bankrupt and banks foreclose on the collateral, dispossessing the debtors of their homes and their livelihoods. The houses are bought by the rich at distress prices and are rented back at inflated prices to the debtors, who are then forced into wage peonage to survive. When the banks themselves go bankrupt, the government bails them out. Thus the market corrects, but not without government intervention. That intervention just comes at the end of the cycle to rescue the creditors, whose ability to buy politicians gives them the upper hand.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-key-to-a-sustainable-economy-is-5000-years-old/ 

That's not a bug, it's a feature...
MarketWatch recently published a piece about the soaring U.S. CEO-to-worker pay ratio, which hit 278-to-1 in 2018 (up from just 58-to-1 in 1989 and 20-to-1 in 1965) -​ ​Nice work if you can get it.
...my research has found​ ​that it is a byproduct of central banking and fiat (i.e., "paper") currency rather than capitalism. To make a long story short, the Federal Reserve has excessively inflated the financial markets in its attempt to create an economic recovery from the Great Recession. This excessive asset price inflation has pushed U.S. household wealth far out of line with its historic relationship to the GDP, as the chart below shows.

​Charles Hugh Smith (aka "Charles") and I are not in the favored capitalist class...​ So what's "Plan-B"?
Labor Day Reflections on Retirement and Working for 49 Years
What happens when these monstrous speculative bubbles pop?
​ ​Let's start by stipulating that if I'd taken a gummit job right out of college, I could have retired 19 years ago. Instead, I've been self-employed for most of the 49 years I've been working, and I'm still grinding it out at 65.
​ ​By the standards of the FIRE movement (financial independence, retire early), I've blown it. The basic idea of FIRE is to live frugally and save up a hefty nestegg to fund an early comfortable retirement. As near as I can make out, the nestegg should be around $2.6 million--or if inflation kicks in, maybe it'll be $26 million. Let's just say it's a lot.

​I am re-posting a couple of Bernie Sanders stories that I sent out February 2016, when he was becoming a major threat to President Hillary. 
He's still the Democratic candidate with the best chance of beating Trump. Everybody knows that, even the billionaires.​ 
I'm including more on the proposed political framework of Murray Bookchin , "Libertarian Municipalism".
How to look geeky when getting arrested in Chicago in 1963, for protesting segregation. Yeah, Bernard Sanders demonstrates. (Hey, is that Bill Buckley with the cigarette and detached look of superiority?)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-bernie-sanders-1963-chicago-arrest-20160219-story.html
Aug. 13, 1963: Bernie Sanders arrested

Murray Bookchin was an Eco-Anarchist, really the prototypical Eco-anarchist, by the time he moved to Burlington, Vermont in 1971 to work with his commune on the nuts and bolts of how humans can live and work and eat together with responsibility to nature, so as to live sustainably and in harmony, without dominating each other or nature.1971 was probably the peak of that sort of post-scarcity (also his term) type of adaptation. You know how things were by Reagan's second term, a lot damned different. 
Murray Bookchin (65 y/o @ the time) wrote this critique of a younger Mayor Bernard Sanders of Burlington in 1986, recalling the 1981 Sanders campaign which got him elected, and contrasting it with performance in office, which involved a lot of caving to wealthy people and their interests, and being accessible, still autocratic, though also fairly kind. 
He was not a Socialist. He had run on "Burlington Is Not For Sale", and was mainly reduced to getting a better price for it. 
Sanders is older now, and Bookchin died 10 years ago at 85. We are all at a different phase of our lives than ever before. We're moving into a world which is at least partly of our own making, and we have learned from experience.
http://mosquitocloud.net/murray-bookchin-the-bernie-sanders-paradox-when-socialism-grows-old

Here is Murray Bookchin's Libertarian Municipalism in a nutshell, from Murray.
 Perhaps the greatest single failing of movements for social reconstruction — I refer particularly to the Left, to radical ecology groups, and to organizations that profess to speak for the oppressed — is their lack of a politics that will carry people beyond the limits established by the status quo.  
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-libertarian-municipalism-an-overview  

I Feel Sorry For President Trump​ , ​Paul Craig Roberts
​ ​Yes, I know.  I am lining up on the wrong side.  You are supposed to hate him. The presstitutes hate Trump.  So does the Democratic Party, part of the Republican Party, the military/security complex, the entirety of the liberal/progressive/left, the universities, feminists, and Washington’s vassal states.  No one likes him but the “racist, white supremacist Trump deplorables.”
​ ​Nevertheless, I feel sorry for him.  I started feeling sorry for him when he announced he would run for President of the United States.  You see, I had inside information. I had held a presidential appointment from a President of the United States.  I ended up fighting battles for him against entrenched interests who opposed his policies to end stagflation and the cold war.  I helped to win the battles for him, as his accolades to me testify, but my success ended any career for me in government.

​Al Jazeera on the Battle of Brexit drama. Sorry, I can't find anything very good. Nobody knows. Boris Johnson looked quite calm in video I saw.
​ "The only explanation is that Johnson's chief aide Dominic Cummings is pursuing the 'tear it all down' strategy," speculated Lucas. "That is, 'I'm going to tear down this entire party and rebuild it, shifting it into this very hardline territory, so even if no-deal is blocked, we now have this new hard-right party.'"
 As the result became more likely, Steve Baker, the leader of the hardline "no-deal," Europe Research Group faction of the Conservative party, called for an electoral alliance with Nigel Farage's Brexit Party in order to boost the Tories' chances of electoral success.
 "This is a vision of the future where you could see Farage in the cabinet," said Lucas.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/alliance-defeats-johnson-key-deal-brexit-vote-190903195017835.html  

​One of the stories below is real and one is humor. Which is which?​

The Pentagon has declared war on memes as DARPA launches a new program to fight “polarizing viral content” before it spreads.
​ ​The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is seeking to create software with the capability to “automatically detect, attribute, and characterize falsified multi-modal media to defend against large-scale, automated disinformation attacks.”
​ ​The software will scan news stories, photos and videos to identify “polarizing viral content” and stop its spread to eliminate “malicious intent” entirely.
​ ​Titled Semantic Forensics, the program will run content through a myriad of algorithms to identify inconsistencies and identify a story or a meme as inauthentic or fake. The system will also pinpoint the origin of the meme, the intent behind it and predict the impact of its spread.
​ (​Given that the program doesn’t take into account the fact that so-called “trusted sources” in the mainstream media have been responsible for some of the biggest fake news stories in modern history, such as Trump-Russia election collusion, the software will only succeed in eliminating dissident narratives.​)​
https://summit.news/2019/09/03/pentagon-launches-new-program-to-fight-viral-internet-content/  

HONOLULU, Hawaii — Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) was surprised with deployment orders to Antarctica earlier today, her presidential campaign confirmed.
​ ​The Democratic presidential candidate has been a unique critical voice against American military imperialism, drawing national attention to the issue during the first two rounds of Democratic primary debates, much to the chagrin of foreign policy hawks on both sides of the political aisle...
​ ​Gabbard will be deploying to Antarctica within the week, and is expected to return next summer, shortly after the Democratic National Convention has concluded.  

​Frozen Out​
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Monday, September 2, 2019

Comforting With Words

On the Upswing,

The Saker Blog has an updated assessment on the Russian economy, which was deeply decayed by the 1990 dissolution of the USSR, then parasitized by vulture capitalists and oligarch toadies under Yeltsin. 
In 2001 the western empire was alarmed to discover that Putin was a competent and resolute Russian nationalist.
Russia is now the most self reliant industrial nation, with the lowest level of imports, and it's economy further diversified after sanctions were imposed in 2014. 
Russian debt is the lowest of any industrialized country. That includes government, business and personal. Russian economy has been growing with absolutely minimal lending. Sanctions did not succeed in smothering Russia's economic recovery, but did prevent it from depending upon debt. 
The expansion of domestic economy, fed by domestic industries, makes Russia less dependent upon exports and imports. 
Russian oil, natural gas and forest products remain in demand, assuring export revenue, though Russia can get by with a lot less export revenue.
The Russian government runs a budget surplus, and has large reserves of foreign currency and gold.
This is a unique position among large economies, going into the credit reset in global finance, which is broadly anticipated, and has been since it almost happened in 2008-2009.
This article anticipates the collapse of the ailing artist previously known as "new-world-order", and notes that Russia is positioned to thrive and possibly help shape the rebuilding of world economy, based upon recent experience, and learned efficiencies.
http://thesaker.is/new-world-order-in-meltdown-but-russia-stronger-than-ever/  

It was the US that broke the Syrian-Russian cease-fire, and successfully killed a bunch of "Syrian rebel" military leaders at a big meeting they were having to coordinate their plans for looming defeat. (Maybe surrender.) The US has not sought propaganda spotlighting of this. (Maybe those guys know too much and needed to be permanently silenced, before explaining what their support system has been for the last 5-6 years.)
​ ​The Russian Defence Ministry's Centre for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria said in a statement on Saturday that the US had launched an air strike in the northwestern province of Idlib without notifying Russia or Turkey, in violation of all previous de-escalation agreements. 
​ Earlier, the Pentagon confirmed that the US-led coalition had conducted strikes against the leaders of an al-Qaeda*-linked militant group in Syria’s Idlib province.  
“There are numerous casualties and destruction in the [Idlib] villages affected by the American strike,” the statement pointed out.

​This article was written a couple of days ago, just before Hezbollah responded to Israeli military strikes on some offices in Beirut, Lebanon, in violation of agreements. It lays out the political and military considerations going into what is expected to be another Israeli war against Lebanon.
https://ejmagnier.com/2019/08/28/hezbollah-will-respond-to-israel-but-when-how-and-at-what-cost/ 

 The Israeli military launched mortar, artillery and air strikes against multiple targets in southern Lebanon on Sunday, responding to a Hezbollah anti-tank missile attack targeting Israel Defence Force positions along the border. Lebanon’s prime minister has called on the United States and France to intervene to calm the crisis.

​Wealthy Americans quite spending much a few months ago, and are "saving more", protecting their assets. That is one of many indicators that recession won't be staved off much longer. (The real economy never recovered after 2008, as you may be personally aware.)
​https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/the-wealthy-arent-spending-signaling-a-recession-looms_08302019

My read on "canceling bad medical debt" is that it appears populist, but will clearly serve as a bank bailout, making lenders whole(ish) on bad debt that they would otherwise have to write off. "Cancel" means "pay". Shades of Obama's bank bailout, Bernie knows how to play this game...
​ ​U.S. presidential contender Bernie Sanders proposed a plan on Saturday to cancel $81 billion in existing past-due medical debt for Americans, but offered no details on how it would be financed.
​ ​Sanders, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont, said in a statement that under his plan, the government would negotiate and pay off past-due medical bills that have been reported to credit agencies. The proposal, he said, would also repeal some elements of the 2005 Bankruptcy reform bill and allow other existing and future medical debt to be discharged.

​A Society is Only As Free as it's Most Troublesome Political Dissident, 
Caitlin Johnstone on the imprisonment and psychological torture of Julian Assange​
You wouldn’t know it from any western mass media reporting as of this writing, but musician Roger Waters is about to perform the iconic Pink Floyd song “Wish You Were Here” in front of the office of British Home Secretary Priti Patel in order to draw attention to the persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange...
 The persecution of Julian Assange tells us about the real function of the mass media. The discrepancy between the news media coverage of the Assange benefit event and Richard Branson’s regime change propaganda party are just one of many, many examples we could discuss about the way those outlets reliably slant their coverage in favor of agendas which just so happen to align with the interests of the CIA and the US State Department. Every time Assange’s plight makes headlines, social media lights up with ambitious blue-checkmarked media aspirants posting snarky quips about him in an attempt to show the operators of the billionaire media just how far they’ll go to defend the status quo...
  The persecution of Julian Assange tells us about the mechanics of empire. Assange was pried out of the embassy and imprisoned by an extremely obvious collaboration between the US, UK, Sweden, Ecuador, and Australia, yet they each pretended that they were acting as separate, sovereign nations completely independently of one another. Sweden pretended it was deeply concerned about rape allegations, the UK pretended it was deeply concerned about a bail violation, Ecuador pretended it was deeply concerned about skateboarding and embassy cat hygiene, the US pretended it was deeply concerned about the particulars of the way Assange helped Chelsea Manning cover her tracks, Australia pretended it was too deeply concerned about honoring the sovereign affairs of these other countries to intervene on behalf of its citizen, and it all converged in a way that just so happens to look exactly the same as imprisoning a journalist for publishing facts.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/09/02/a-society-is-only-as-free-as-its-most-troublesome-political-dissident/  

The Chinese Lunar-Rover has come across something that seems impossible on the dark side of the moon. The lunar day-night cycle is 26 Earth days. With daytime temperatures 260F/123C, and nighttime temperatures to -280F/-173C. What could possibly be a gel at - 173C, that would not disappear into space at +123C?
​ ​T​​he mission's rover, Yutu-2, came across a "gel-like" substance on its 8th day - which caused scientists to put a full stop on its planned schedule and try to figure out what exactly the goo is.
​ ​On July 28, the Chang'e-4 team was preparing to power Yutu-2 down for its usual midday "nap" to protect the rover from high temperatures and radiation from the sun high in the sky. A team member checking images from the rover's main camera spotted a small crater that seemed to contain material with a color and luster unlike that of the surrounding lunar surface.
​(​O​h, the little rover didn't step in it yet, just peeked at it. Calling it a "gel" seems premature. 
It could just be glass from the heat of a meteor impact.​ ​)​

THE PENTAGON — Starting in fiscal year 2021, the Department of Defense will reduce waste. by banning all single-use plastic explosives.​ ​In lieu of such environmentally harmful weapons, the DoD will being to employ more ecofriendly options such as sustainably sourced, small-batch, artisanal gunpowder.
​ ​“It’s about the big picture,” Harber said. “When you’re trying to blow something up, it’s imperative that you don’t also needlessly cause lasting damage to the ecosystem in the process.”...
 ​Retired Army explosives ordnance disposal technician Billy James has started an online petition claiming that recycling explosives is “fucking stupid. How do you recycle something that just blew up?” ...
 “Focus on your recycling goal. Claims that ‘we just can’t recycle this’ are always absurd and typically made by non-specialists. These petitioners simply don’t understand how recycling works.”

​Can-do Attitude​
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Sunday, September 1, 2019

Big One Approaches

Blown Away,

Hurricane Dorian has been upgraded by the National Hurricane Center to a 'catastrophic' Category Five, the highest on its five-point scale.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-09-01/hurricane-dorian-reaches-catastrophic-category-5  

Trade war between US and China is flaring up again. China takes about 60 seconds to respond to new US sanctions, with counter-attack.
The 15% U.S. duty hit consumer goods ranging from footwear and apparel to home textiles and certain technology products like the Apple Watch. A separate batch of about $160 billion in Chinese goods - including laptops and cellphones - will be hit with 15% tariffs on Dec. 15.  China, meanwhile, began applying tariffs of 5 to 10% on U.S. goods ranging from frozen sweet corn and pork liver to bicycle tires on Sunday.  ​(I can't believe China imports bike tires from the US. Prove it!)​
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-09-01/us-slaps-new-tariffs-china-one-minute-later-china-retaliates  

Kyle Bass interviews exiled Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui. Tom K. summarizes here. Video is about an hour.
This is a video interview of a Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui AKA Miles Kwok who is here in the US for asylum lest he be killed by the CPC. Aside from the quality of the veracity of the information  he presents (I have no way of knowing), what he claims is a fascinating insider’s view of the Chinese economy and how it is run by the iron fisted oligarchs of the Chinese Communist Party. As such, he presents an alternative model as to how China works financially, and it makes sense. Much the same way that western financial oligarchs can print unlimited money to corrupt our systems with, in China, due to strict party control of everything, this principal operates on steroids with gargantuan corruption being the result. And not only of top party officials but, the money is spread all around the world to influence what is said and done about China.
Miles Kwok is wanted in China and there are many US moguls writing to the president asking him to end Kwok’s asylum here. Why is that Miles asks? Why aren’t these letters coming from waiters in restaurants but rather from American billionaires? Because China has corrupted them with hot money, monopolistic deals and blackmail (every hotel room for westerners in China is under surveillance).
Viewing this video is a truly worthwhile effort. It will open your eyes as it makes China look much more like the corruption of Imperial Rome then some kind of “economic miracle”. Including the Imperial summons to return to Rome, the ancient death sentence meted out to political and economic rivals throughout the empire. Today China is summoning prominent Chinese citizens “back to Rome” where they can be stripped of their assets, jailed, killed or disappeared.
The Chinese need US currency because their money is worthless to them outside of China therefore much of Chinese international banking operations are a money laundering systems for China’s party elites. Kwok is one of these Chinese people who were useful in developing the Chinese economy and he became a billionaire while doing so but his loyalty is to China and the Chinese people and not the CCP so he is a man with a price on his head. He tells of how his ilk, the developers of Chinese industry, are being brought into party HQ and are being forced to sign over all the stock in their companies to unnamed party officials. After that he says there are only two options, going to jail or being killed. This has just happened to the Chinese entrepreneur who developed their social media system Alibaba. A year ago Kwok predicted this outcome for another of his fellow entrepreneurs: That within a year the man would be killed. 363 days later the man fell off of a two foot wall on Province France and died. All the French authorities have zipped up everything about the death and have confiscated all the surveillance tapes. All because of the massive Chinese hot money corruption. Kwok sent over a private security group made up of former NYPD professionals and everyone was ordered not to talk to them.
Normally I would view an interview like this as CIA propaganda, however things have gone on long enough now and the corrupt, unfair policies of China are so evident now that Kowk’s model makes a great deal of sense. The American and European public is forced to subsidize the Chinese appetite for technology because China just steals it rather than pays for it. This alone is a huge burden on us.
Kwok’s evangelical enthusiasm is infections. He as a happy warrior who is facing death everyday but, as an entrepreneur, he has gone as far as he is allowed to go. He wants to go further but he cannot so he is appealing to the west where such entrepreneurial spirit is supposed to be held in higher esteem. He paints a picture of China’s corruption being so pervasive, that the mafia that runs the country is in a very precarious position. You won’t get this from the fake news because its owners are all part of this system and have long ago been bought off by it. Far from the economic colossus that is about to eat our lunch, a point of view held by many, including some in this salon, Kwok paints a picture of an ironfisted oligarchy desperate to keep the party going, something that is getting more and more difficult to do all the time. Forget about the South China Sea, it’s all about the (US) money. Half the loans on China’s books are “non performing”. Trump’s tariffs are going to be a big turd in the Chinese punch bowl. Look to the PRC to get on the “block Trump in 2020 bandwagon” bigtime.
I found this interview to be riveting, not just because of the information being given but also because of Kwok’s indomitable spirit in the face of death. Kwok’s Chinglish is difficult to understand, a fact that he brings up laughingly several times, but he wants to be understood so he paid for an interpreter to sit there and translate the more complex questions to him. Additionally the video features valuable subtitles which help cut through Kwok’s Chinglish.  I urge you to view this and consider adding Kwok’s point of view into the mix of models that you personally use to try and understand China with. You will be glad that you did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cwXifDaCjE  

Syria - Coordinated Foreign Airstrike Kills Leaders Of Two Al-Qaeda Aligned Groups
​ ​Some three hours ago an air- or missile strike in Syria's Idleb governorate hit a meeting of leaders of the al-Qaeda aligned Haras-al-Din and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) aka Jabhat al-Nusra. Both were killed. It is likely that leaders of other Jihadist groups were also present. The hit completely destroyed a Haras al-Din guesthouse or headquarter. The Syrian Observatory says that more than 40 people were killed in the strike. The hit will make it much easier for the Syrian army campaign to liberate Idleb governorate...
​ ​The strike might have been carried out by either the U.S. or by Turkey. It is likely Turkey that has the better on-the-ground intelligence insight on these groups as Turkey has for years directly supplied them with weapons, munitions and other goods. The Turkish President Erdogan changed his position on Idleb after his recent visit to Moscow. He stopped the supplies to the 'rebels' to allow the Syrian campaign against them to succeed. The so called 'rebels' Turkey has long supported now turn against it...
​ ​The current unilateral ceasefire, which I presume was only announced to allow for today's hit, will end again soon. It was likely the last one before the real big fight to liberate Idleb governorate begins. As the 'rebels' and Jihadis no longer have access to fresh supplies the speed and the progress of the campaign will likely be impressive.  
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/08/syria-coordinated-foreign-airstrike-kills-leaders-of-two-al-qaeda-aligned-groups-.html#more  

Helen of DesTroy, writing for RT:
US-bound AFRICAN migrants clash with police at southern Mexican border (VIDEO)
​ ​Migrants from Africa demanding the right to travel to the US and Canada clashed with Mexican military police after Mexico cracked down on free migration in response to US threats of economic retaliation.
​ ​Nationals of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Angola, Senegal, Cameroon, and several other African countries, stuck in southern Mexico after the government clamped down on northward migration in response to US pressure, are protesting for the right to continue their journey. They are demanding travel documents and government support, so that they can enter the US. On Tuesday, their demonstrations turned violent.
https://www.rt.com/news/467417-migrants-africa-clash-mexico/ 
 
This from Greek correspondent, Eleni T. in Athens, regarding Helen's migrant (how'd they get THERE?) story.
  The Zodiacs (to be destroyed on arrival with strong knives able to do so, also expensive) so as to claim shipwreck under Law of the Sea, the engines, petrol and 550 life jackets
....this is also very expensive and we are referring only to ONE DAY. In 2015 between 600 and 1000 of these boats were been launched weekly to Lesvos, Samos, Kos, Chios etc.
 And ever since. At first old men gathered to rescue the engines but these have lost all value....there is also the cost of the new smartphone plus a 200 euro note per adult.
 Furthermore there is the cost of bringing the migrants to the Turkish coast. Just like the cost of your caravan. Much more than the final launch.
 I have been writing here the countries of origin for the last 3 years, almost all are not only at peace but many prospering. And if you sit on the islands it is striking that many of these people 
are actually well dressed. Though, not all. 
 Nobody asks about the fairy tale of "smugglers" and how these people HAVE between $2000 and $5000 in their pockets to pay smuggling fees.
Meanwhile a lot of money is being made. Not only the fabulously overpaid NGOs, their staffs equipped with eye-waveringly expensive SUVs, staying in well equipped rented houses etc.
While the "refugees" they house have miserable conditions.
But also black market locally. 
 My travel agent confessed he has been smuggling migrant families out of Greece for $20k-$30k each. There is a thriving drug smuggling too but the biggest is 
arms smuggling. And everyone assumes on the islands that organ harvesting, child and human trafficking is going on too. 
How is that arranged. 
Easy. 
 The "refugees" must immediately enter NGO camps who will process them. The NGOs are beyond national law or entry or inspection. Only if invited can firemen or police enter a camp, only in an emergency. (However despite the NGOs being "medical" every case of normal intervention i.e. beyond a bandaid or aspirin, is sent to the overburdened local hospital where they have priority status and everything must be provided free by the Greek state). Thus the nation states do not know who has arrived and is forbidden from knowing that until they are released for the state to take over.
 On the islands the camps are all on the water and the NGOs have their own high powered speed boats and NGO helicopters can also be called. Neither the coast guard or Frontex is permitted to interfere with these boats or helicopters nor the ports / helipads where they land. There they are picked up by another NGO and so on.
 Thus it is advantageous to deliver to the Greek islands rather than the main land.
Where they do enter by land it is by crossing the Evros dividing Turkey from Greece in the NE. This places migrants in the river valley system going north into the heart of Europe.
 Migrants are bussed and flown to embarkation points. Concerning Africa what do you think many of the US AFRICOM bases are there for? Concerning MEK and ISIS etc, there are training camps for both in Albania and Kosovo....Camp Bondsteel on the Kosovo / Macedonia border has 4. Bosnis and Georgia also have camps.
 A lot of money is being spent on this engineered migration but a lot of money is being made too. All under a banner of liberal humanitarianism.

Brexit appears locked-in now. Time is short, and Boris Johnson has shortened it to the point that the only action which Parliament can take against no-deal-Brexit, will paradoxically assure no-deal-Brexit. This changes the equation from Europe having the upper hand in negotiation pressure, to an equality of shared panic before the bomb goes off.
If the EU can possibly agree to leave the Irish border open, and keep everything else the same, then everybody will agree easily. That will pass. Otherwise, the EU guarantees no-deal-Brexit, which will hurt the EU a lot.
Mish Shedlock has the story and update.
https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/boris-johnson-s-deviously-clever-brexit-strategy-unfolds-t9P1o3wFqECjhrH2bAD0lA/ 
https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/brexit-gloves-come-off-let-the-massacre-begin-says-eurointelligence-CGYcgmgGfEKf9YZkZJB87g/

The Democratic Presidential candidates who have been the most backed by billionaires have not been doing well in the polling thus far, and this fact greatly disturbs the billionaires. They know that the Democratic nominee will be chosen in the final round of primaries, and they have always wanted Pete Buttigieg to be in that final round. Therefore, they have backed him more than any of the other candidates. But what worries them now is that his opponent in that round might turn out to be Bernie Sanders, whom they all consider to be their nemesis. They want to avoid this outcome, at all costs. And they might have found a way to do it: Elizabeth Warren.​..
​ Her record in the US Senate is consistently in support of US invasions, coups, and sanctions against countries that have never invaded nor even threatened to invade the US, such as Venezuela, Palestine, Syria, and Iran; she’s 100% a neocon (just like G.W. Bush, Obama and Trump were/are); and, to billionaires, that is even more important than her policy-record regarding Wall Street is, because the Military Industrial Complex, which she represents, is even more important to enforcing and spreading the US megacorporate empire than the investment-firms are.
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