Sunday, November 20, 2016

Societal Winter

Deeply Chilled,

Arkancide never sleeps. 
A young anti-human-trafficking investigator, Monica Peterson, with a strong history of hard investigation, is dead in Haiti, with no details for her bereaved family.
She was investigating the Clinton Foundation Pedophile sex-ring. 
Thanks Eleni, and for the next 3 stories, too.

Norway, one of the largest contributors to the Clinton Foundation, after Saudi Arabia, just slashed donations by 87% (Trending?)

Speculation (from Moon of Alabama) Trump promotes NSA chief Rogers to DNI to return favor of Podesta email leaks. (Not proof. Speculation)

Winter, the fourth generational season, the Fourth Turning, is upon us again, as it was in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and Depression/WW-2. There is a Grey Champion who arises to the occasion in such times, and he's as reviled as he is loved as he does his work (always "he" so far). "Champion" isn't a compliment, but a job description. Read on. We just got Donald Trump for this round of societal winter. 
We'll all have lots of work to do. I'm doing it. You probably are, too. there's more and different to come.

Obama has overruled the Pro-Nusra faction of his government. (Assad-must-go policy is obsolete. Ashton Carter is a short-timer.)

Report from Rojava, on Kurdish forces in the Syrian-Turkish border area, their home. Village after village is liberated from ISIS.
I hope that the DOD plans to do a thorough study of the YPG/YPJ. This a remarkably successful, self-trained and self-organized force. Although it possesses  a small number of mortars, armored vehicles and other supporting arms, it is overwhelmingly a very lightly armed infantry force that can move rapidly on foot or in their fleet of light pickup trucks. The individual units enjoy tremendous freedom of action and display remarkable battlefield initiative down to the company equivalent sized force. 
The all female YPJ units seem to be far more than some new age publicity gimmick. They are effective against an enemy that is apparently terrified of dying at the hands of a woman. The YPJ fighters are also very effective in handling refugees and civilians in liberated villages.

Who is Steve Bannon, and why is he about to be a Chief Adviser to the next President?

Under new ethics rules, 3 lobbyists drop out of Trump transition team, rather than give up good-paying work.

Why fighting Donald Trump on climate change is a waste of time. (He'll do the same nothing as everybody else. It doesn't matter what he really believes. He's a politician building a constituency base among voters. The actions are the same. The talk is different.) 

Trump-Care is probably coming. (Medicare for All would work better and cheaper and more fairly, and burst the medical-business bubble.)
There is a spectrum of plans, all about the same as Obamacare, but with different cost-shift weightings.(This won't work. Still too expensive and parasitic.)   "Premiums for a 24-year-old would decline from $2,800 to $2,100. But premiums for a 64-year-old would rise from $8,500 to $10,600."

In Donald Trump’s first four years as president, he will not only choose three judges for the Supreme Court, he’ll also pick five of the seven members on the Fed Board of Governors. (Well, that seems to be important.)  Thanks Tom and Eric. http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/18/trump-prepares-to-takeover-fed/

Italian banks have 40% bad loans, which have been marked down by 50%, but are only marketable at 25% of face value. That much markdown will bankrupt the banks. It is inevitable. Other European banks are variously better or worse. (tick, tick, tick...)

Your iPhone owns you, and tells on you constantly.
The logs surreptitiously uploaded to Apple contain a list of all calls made and received on an iOS device, complete with phone numbers, dates and times, and duration.

Seeking to cut dependence on companies such as Google, Microsoft, and LinkedIn, Putin in recent years has urged the creation of domestic versions of everything from operating systems and e-mail to microchips and payment processing. Putin’s government says Russia needs protection from U.S. sanctions, bugs, and any backdoors built into hardware or software. “It’s a matter of national security.”

Warning: Santa Clause, The North Pole is 36 degrees warmer than usual. 
(Yeah, OK, just Fahrenheit, but still...)

Laughing Siberian

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