Nov 202019
 
 November 20, 2019  Posted by at 10:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Dorothea Lange Miserable poverty. Elm Grove, Oklahoma County, OK 1936

 

Australia’s Westpac Bank Slapped With 23 Million Money Laundering Breaches (R.)
UN Demands ‘Full Investigation’ After Sweden Drops Assange Rape Probe (RT)
Swedish Decision To Drop Rape Probe Comes Too Late To Help Assange (Szamuely)
Statement For Aaron Swartz Day 2019 (Chelsea Manning )
Massive ‘Dark-Money’ Group Boosted Democrats In 2018 (Pol.)
Another Congresswoman Lashes Out At The Hill (Pol.)
FBI CItes Strzok For Misconduct, ‘Exceptionally Poor Judgment’ (Solomon)
Beijing’s Angry Reaction To High Court Mask Ruling Sparks Concern (SCMP)
China Vows To Retaliate If Trump Signs Hong Kong Democracy Act Into Law (SCMP)
Reclaiming Your Inner Fascist (C.J. Hopkins)
Fossil Fuel Production On Track For Double The Safe Climate Limit (G.)

 

 

“The regulator is pursuing fines of up to A$21 million ($14 million) for every transaction Westpac failed to monitor adequately or report on time.”

How much is 23 million times $14 million?

Australia’s Westpac Bank Slapped With 23 Million Money Laundering Breaches (R.)

Regulators accused Australia’s Westpac of 23 million breaches of anti-money laundering laws, saying the banking giant ignored red flags and for years enabled payments from convicted child sex offenders and “high risk” countries. The oversight failure at Australia’s second-largest bank led to deep systemic non-compliance with anti-money laundering laws, financial crime watchdog AUSTRAC said in a civil court filing on Wednesday. The regulator is pursuing fines of up to A$21 million ($14 million) for every transaction Westpac failed to monitor adequately or report on time.


The lawsuit dwarfs a case AUSTRAC brought against larger Commonwealth Bank of Australia which agreed last year here to pay a record A$700 million penalty after admitting to allowing 53,750 payments that violated similar protocols. It also brings fresh scrutiny to an industry still trying to rebuild community trust after a bruising Royal Commission public inquiry. “These contraventions are the result of systemic failures in its control environment, indifference by senior management and inadequate oversight by the Board,” AUSTRAC said in the court filing.

Read more …

In case you forgot Melzer represents the UN. When he speaks, the UN speaks. When he is ignored, the UN is ignored.

UN Demands ‘Full Investigation’ After Sweden Drops Assange Rape Probe (RT)

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture has called for a “full investigation” into the role Sweden played in driving WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange into asylum and eventual custody, after the rape case against him was dropped. Swedish prosecutors announced on Tuesday that they would drop a dubious rape inquiry against Assange, as oral testimony against the publisher had “weakened,” and corroborating evidence was not strong enough to pursue a case. A Swedish arrest warrant was issued against assange in 2010, and a British court upheld a decision to extradite him in 2012. Threatened with what many saw as a politically motivated extradition, Assange sought refuge in London’s Ecuadorian embassy.

“Today’s collapse of Sweden’s #Assange investigation was inevitable,” rapporteur Nils Melzer tweeted on Tuesday. “Given its gross arbitrariness, there must now be a full investigation, and accountability & compensation for the harm inflicted on #JulianAssange.” Melzer had previously claimed that Assange was subjected to “psychological torture” and had his due process rights “systematically violated” by the governments of Britain and Sweden. The WikiLeaks founder is still languishing in a maximum security unit at Belmarsh prison, awaiting a hearing on extradition to the US, where he potentially faces 175 years behind bars for publishing leaked military documents. In a document tweeted by Melzer, the envoy accuses Sweden of “actively and knowingly” contributing to Assange’s torture, and accuses prosecutors there of working in tandem with Britain’s Crown Prosecutorial Service to keep the case against Assange alive in the face of exculpatory evidence.

With the rape case against him dropped, some commentators have warned that the path to extradition to the US may now be clearer. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson told supporters that their focus should now shift to the most important “threat” that Assange was “warning about for years: the belligerent prosecution of the United States and the threat it poses to the First Amendment.”

Read more …

Not the strongest piece by George Szamuely. I like this tweet of his better:

“The Ukrainian people are fighting Russia over there, so we don’t have to fight Russia over here”–thus Tim Morrison. There’s definitely a lunatic asylum in which these sick individuals dwell. I guess it’s the US national security establishment.”

Swedish Decision To Drop Rape Probe Comes Too Late To Help Assange (Szamuely)

The Swedish prosecutors’ decision to end the investigation of Julian Assange—for the third time—confirms that the sexual-misconduct accusations were always a cynical ploy to trap the publisher in a Kafkaesque legal proceeding. Swedish prosecutors today announced they were closing their nearly 10-year-old sexual-misconduct investigation of Julian Assange. The reason? The “evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question.” However, the prosecutor tendentiously added, “the complaint was credible” but that corroborating evidence was not strong enough to pursue the case.

Let’s focus on the verbiage. Note first the use of the word “investigation.” This is very important, because contrary to what innumerable media outlets have reported during the past decade, the Swedes never charged Assange with anything, least of all “rape.” Following Assange’s arrest on April 11 of this year, there was a plethora of media stories informing us that there are outstanding rape charges pending against Assange in Sweden. Human Rights Watch chimed in, saying that Assange was facing a “rape charge” in Sweden. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labor Party feminists urged the UK government to extradite Assange to Sweden to face “rape charges.”

The Swedish case was a fraud. The prosecutors’ goal all along was to use their powerful coercive tools in order to trap Assange within a slow-moving legal proceeding from which he would be unable to escape, while the US prepared its criminal charges against him. Sadly, despite today’s announcement, the Swedes’ mission has been accomplished.

Read more …

Chelsea rocks.

Statement For Aaron Swartz Day 2019 (Chelsea Manning )

Good Evening Folks, I wish I could be there in person, but I appreciate this opportunity to summarize for you my letter to the court that ordered me to be confined, explaining why grand juries are so dangerous. I am not alone in objecting to the grand jury as a dangerous relic that has evolved in ways that increase its power without increasing its protections. I refuse to participate in a process that has clearly transformed into something that violates the spirit, if not the letter of the law. I am certainly not alone in thinking that the grand jury process, which at one time acted as an independent body of citizens along the lines of a civilian police review board, has slowly transitioned into an unbridled arm of the police and prosecution in ways that run contrary to its originally intended purpose.

Early grand juries acted independently, as investigations by citizens, ostensibly to protect citizens, not only from unjust indictments, but from unjust laws. In 2019, the federal grand jury exists as a mockery of the institution that once stood against the whims of monarchs. It guts the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantees of due process. Today’s grand juries do not safeguard such fundamental rights and are easily subject to abuse. The tradition of using grand juries to jail political dissidents and activists is long. The ability of grand juries to be abused or used for political ends is entrenched and perpetuated by the fact that jeopardy doesn’t attach with a grand jury, so prosecutors can repeatedly bring the same charges.

Despite laws that require prosecutors to show new evidence or that it is in the public interest to extend or reconvene a grand jury, this is hardly an obstacle. For instance, Thomas Jefferson had to convene three separate grand juries in order to indict Aaron Burr for sedition – but he was able to continue to convene those grand juries until he obtained his desired indictment. During the McCarthy era, when people were publicly interrogated about their beliefs and associations, the public was eventually outraged, and the McCarthy hearings are widely seen as a disgraceful episode of modern history. However, these kinds of interrogations have now returned, and happen routinely, under the modern grand jury system.

Read more …

Business as usual.

Massive ‘Dark-Money’ Group Boosted Democrats In 2018 (Pol.)

The “green wave” of campaign cash that boosted Democrats and liberal causes in 2018 included an unprecedented gusher of secret money, new documents obtained by POLITICO show. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a little-known nonprofit headquartered in Washington, spent $141 million on more than 100 left-leaning causes during the midterm election year, according to a new tax filing from the group. The money contributed to efforts ranging from fighting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other Trump judicial nominees to boosting ballot measures raising the minimum wage and changing laws on voting and redistricting in numerous states. The spending was fueled by massive anonymous donations, including one gift totaling $51.7 million.

That single donation was more than the group had ever raised before in an entire year before President Donald Trump was elected. Most of the group’s funders are likely to remain a mystery because federal law does not require “social welfare”-focused nonprofits to reveal their donors. The group’s 2018 fundraising surpassed any amount ever raised by a left-leaning political nonprofit, according to experts, who pointed to the Koch network and the Crossroads network as rare right-leaning groups that posted bigger yearly fundraising totals at the height of their powers. The Sixteen Thirty Fund’s rise last year is a sign that Democrats and allies have embraced the methods of groups they decried as “dark money” earlier this decade, when they were under attack from the money machines built by conservatives including the Kochs.

“In terms of the size of dark money networks, there are only a few that have gone into the $100 million-plus range,” said Robert Maguire, the research director for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and an expert in political nonprofits. “These kinds of totals aren’t unheard of,” Maguire added. “I do think they’re unheard of on the liberal side. I think that’s what’s so striking about this.”

Read more …

@RepMikeTurner : Did he ever say to you that he was not going to allow aid with the US to go to Ukraine unless there were investigations into Burisma, the Bidens or the 2016 election?

VOLKER: No he did not.

It’s open season on John Solomon. By the way, Marie Yovanovitch has denied the existence of a Don’t Prosecute list, and all kinds of people say Lutsenko denied it too. Solomon says he did not.

Another Congresswoman Lashes Out At The Hill (Pol.)

Florida Congresswoman Val Demings questioned Tuesday whether the The Hill is “fair and unbiased” during an exchange with a reporter from the publication, the second of such incidents in recent days. California Rep. Jackie Speier, who is also a Democrat, told a Hill reporter on Friday that it was “reprehensible” that the paper published columns by John Solomon, a conservative journalist who helped ignite the Ukraine scandal and whose work has been promoted by President Donald Trump and his allies. Demings said Tuesday she had “not heard good things recently” about The Hill in response to tech policy reporter Emily Birnbaum identifying herself before asking a question about a short-term funding bill to avoid a government shutdown, according to audio of the exchange reviewed by POLITICO.

“Recently, I have not heard good things about The Hill being fair and impartial and unbiased… and that concerns me because any story we’re telling needs to be fair and unbiased and impartial,” Demings told Birnbaum during the exchange in the speaker’s lobby, which was witnessed by other reporters. Demings answered Birnbaum’s question and agreed it was fair. Though Demings did not mention Solomon specifically, the former employee’s work has come under increasing scrutiny and has put The Hill under the media spotlight. ProPublica recently explored Solomon’s relationship with associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and CNN looked Monday night at the connection between The Hill’s owner, Jimmy Finkelstein, and Trump, Giuliani and Solomon.

Solomon’s work has come up several times during impeachment testimony. Former U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch on Friday denied an allegation from Ukraine’s former top prosecutor that she gave Ukraine’s then-top prosecutor a list of who not to prosecute. “Yovanovitch says John Solomon’s columns were used to push false allegations,” read a headline in The Hill. Solomon, who left The Hill in September and his now a contributor for Fox News, where he was a frequent guest this past year, has repeatedly defended his reporting. “I stand by each and every one of the columns that I wrote and that The Hill (both editors and lawyers) carefully vetted,” Solomon told POLITICO on Friday. “All facts in those stories are substantiated to original source documents and statements.”

Read more …

So the best thing Solomon can do is do his job: report.

FBI Cites Strzok Cited For Misconduct, ‘Exceptionally Poor Judgment’ (Solomon)

This summer, ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok filed a lawsuit suggesting his firing was political retribution for having run the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation into the now debunked allegations that Donald Trump and Russia colluded to hijack the 2016 election. The Justice Department has responded to the lawsuit in a big way, releasing to the court presiding over the civil case Strzok’s official misconduct file that concluded the former FBI supervisor exhibited “a gross lack of professionalism and exceptionally poor judgment.” It shows the FBI substantiated that Strzok had engaged in dereliction of duty, had committed misconduct through the expression of anti-Trump bias on his official FBI phone and committed security violations by performing official government work on personal email.

The records show one official recommended termination, and another recommended suspension for 60 days without pay. The bureau leadership chose the more severe of the two penalties, terminating Strzok last year. The dereliction of duty citation involved Strzok’s failure, according to the FBI, to quickly follow up in fall 2016 after the belated discovery of a trove of Hillary Clinton emails on a laptop belonging to former Congressman Anthony Weiner and his wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Strzok was supervising the investigation of whether Clinton’s use of personal email for classified State Department matters created a security risk, and his failure caused an unnecessary delay to evaluate the new evidence just weeks before Election Day, the FBI concluded.

The disciplinary file included testimony from one of Strzok’s colleagues, a fellow agent, about the failure to respond to the discovery of emails. “The crickets I was hearing was making me uncomfortable because something was going to come crashing down,” the agent testified. “….I still to this day don’t understand what the hell went wrong.” The agent testified he feared “somebody was not acting appropriately, somebody was trying to bury this” discovery of new Clinton email evidence, the files show. Strzok offered a bevy of excuses for his inaction, including he was busy working the Trump-Russia case at the time. All were rejected. “The investigation reveals that there is no reasonable excuse for the FBI’s delay in following up on this matter,” the disciplinary file concluded.

Read more …

Why does Hong Kong still have courts?

Beijing’s Angry Reaction To High Court Mask Ruling Sparks Concern (SCMP)

There was a swift response from Beijing when the High Court ruled on Monday that the Hong Kong government’s anti-mask law was unconstitutional. Central government officials criticised the court for failing to support the government in its efforts to end more than five months of increasingly violent social unrest. For the first time, they suggested that the city’s courts do not have the power to declare a local law invalid by checking it against the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution. China’s top legislative affairs body argued that only the national legislature had the right to decide on issues of constitutionality.


Beijing’s reaction left its critics in Hong Kong fearing for the erosion of the city’s independent judiciary. They also feared that Beijing would decide to hand down its own interpretation of the Basic Law and overturn the court ruling. But members of the pro-establishment camp dismissed those concerns, saying Beijing was only reiterating its position. What are the key issues in the controversy over the court ruling?

Read more …

Remember: Hong Kong won’t become Chinese until 2037.

China Vows To Retaliate If Trump Signs Hong Kong Democracy Act Into Law (SCMP)

China summoned a senior United States diplomat on Wednesday as it warned it would retaliate if US President Donald Trump signed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act into law, after the act was passed by the US Senate. In a statement, the Chinese foreign ministry said Foreign Vice-Minister Ma Zhaoxu had summoned William Klein, the US embassy’s Minister Counsellor for Political Affairs. “China will take strong opposing measures, and the US has to bear all the consequences,” the statement said, after Congress’ upper chamber passed the act – which could pave the way for diplomatic action and economic sanctions against Hong Kong’s government.


It was the second time China had summoned a US diplomat since anti-government protests in Hong Kong began five months ago, triggered by a now-withdrawn extradition bill that would have allowed the transfer of criminal suspects to mainland China’s opaque legal system. In June, Robert Forden, Deputy Chief of Mission at the US embassy in Beijing, was summoned by Foreign Vice-Minister Le Yucheng. Klein was summoned after foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that any attempt by the US to interfere in China’s internal affairs would be in vain. “We call on the US side to take a clear look at the situation and take steps to stop the act from becoming a law, and stop meddling in the internal affairs of China and Hong Kong, to avoid setting a fire that would only burn itself,” Geng said in a statement. “If the US sticks to its course, China will surely take forceful measures to resolutely oppose it to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interest.”

Read more …

If the treatment of Assange shows you anything, it’s that you live in a fascist world.

Reclaiming Your Inner Fascist (C.J. Hopkins)

OK, we need to talk about fascism. Not just any kind of fascism. A particularly insidious kind of fascism. No, not the fascism of the early 20th Century. Not Mussolini’s National Fascist Party. Not Hitler’s NSDAP. Not Francoist fascism or any other kind of organized fascist movement or party. Not even the dreaded Tiki-torch Nazis. It’s the other kind of fascism we need to talk about. The kind that doesn’t come goose-stepping up the street waving big neo-Nazi flags. The kind we don’t recognize when we’re looking right at it. It’s like that joke about the fish and the water … we don’t recognize it because we’re swimming in it. We’re surrounded by it. We are inseparable from it. From the moment we are born, we breathe it in.

We are taught it by our parents, who were taught it by their parents. We are taught it again by our teachers in school. It is reinforced on a daily basis at work, in conversations with friends, in our families and our romantic relationships. We imbibe it in books, movies, TV shows, advertisements, pop songs, the nightly news, in our cars, at the mall, the stadium, the opera … everywhere, because it is literally everywhere. It doesn’t look like fascism to us. Fascism only looks like fascism when you’re standing outside of it, or looking back at it. When you are in it, fascism just looks like “normality,” like “reality,” like “just the way it is.”

We (i.e., Americans, Brits, Europeans, and other citizens of the global capitalist empire) get up in the morning, go to work, shop, pay the interest on our debts, and otherwise obey the laws and conform to the mores of a system of power that has murdered countless millions of people in pursuit of global-hegemonic dominance. It has perpetrated numerous wars of aggression. Its military occupies most of the planet. Its Intelligence agencies (i.e., secret police) operate a worldwide surveillance apparatus that can identify, target, and eliminate anyone, anywhere, often by remote control. Its propaganda network never sleeps, nor is there any real way to escape its constant emotional and ideological conditioning.

The fact that the global capitalist empire does not call itself an empire, and instead calls itself “democracy,” doesn’t make it any less of an empire. The fact that it uses terms like “regime change” instead of “invasion” or “annexation” makes very little difference to its victims. Terms like “security,” “stability,” “intervention,” “regime change,” and so on are not meant for its victims. They are meant for us … to anesthetize us. The empire is “regime-changing” Bolivia currently. It has “regime-changed” most of Latin America at one time or another since the Second World War. It “regime-changed” Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, Indonesia … the list goes on. It very much wants to “regime-change” Iran, which it “regime-changed” back in the 1950s, before the Iranians “regime-changed” it back. It would love to “regime-change” Russia and China, but their ICBMs make that somewhat impractical.

Read more …

Lip service.

Fossil Fuel Production On Track For Double The Safe Climate Limit (G.)

The world’s nations are on track to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas as can be burned in 2030 while restricting rise in the global temperature to 1.5C, analysis shows. The report is the first to compare countries’ stated plans for fossil fuel extraction with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, which is to keep global heating well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for 1.5C. It exposes a huge gap, with fossil fuel production in 2030 heading for 50% more than is consistent with 2C, and 120% more than that for 1.5C. Scientists have warned that even the difference between 1.5C and 2C of heating will expose hundreds of millions of people to significantly higher risks of extreme heatwaves, drought, floods and poverty.

The report was produced by the UN Environment Programme and a coalition of research organisations. It complements an earlier UN analysis showing the current Paris agreement pledges to cut emissions would still lead to a catastrophic 3-4C rise. “We’re in a deep hole – and we need to stop digging,” said Måns Nilsson, executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), which was part of the analysis. “Despite more than two decades of climate policymaking, fossil fuel production levels are higher than ever.” Most action to tackle the climate crisis involves reducing emissions, but Inger Andersen, head of the UN Environment Programme, said a focus on fossil fuel production was long overdue.

Most of the action pledges made by countries under the Paris deal do not even mention changes to production. The UK is a “striking” example of this mismatch, said Cleo Verkuijl, at the SEI’s centre in Oxford, UK. It was the first major economy to commit to net zero emissions by 2050, she said, but also subsidises fossil fuel production at home and abroad and intends to extract “every drop of oil and gas” from its North Sea fields.

Read more …

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 20 2019

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 15 total)
  • Author
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  • #51463

    Dorothea Lange Miserable poverty. Elm Grove, Oklahoma County, OK 1936   • Australia’s Westpac Bank Slapped With 23 Million Money Laundering Breac
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 20 2019]

    #51464
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Dorothea Lange Miserable poverty. Elm Grove, Oklahoma County, OK 1936
    A devastating view of poverty in America…

    If the treatment of Assange shows you anything, it’s that you live in a fascist world.

    Indeed. Some of us know this already…and there’s not one damn thing we can do about it!
    So, basically eat shit and die mofo’s…

    #51466
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Shorpy has very green living. Isn’t that perfectly environmental, in a wood tent, under the trees, just as the Green New Deal and Agenda 2030 has outlined for us?

    “In the early 1990’s the Club of Rome published a book called ‘The First Global Revolution’. In it they state:

    “In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes. and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.”

    “at the same time ‘The First Global Revolution’ was being published, UN assistant secretary general Robert Muller was publishing his manifesto which is now collected on a website called ‘Good Morning World’. Muller argues that global governance must be achieved using the idea of “protecting the Earth” and environmentalism as the key components. Through fear of environmental Apocalypse, the public could be convinced to accept global government as a necessary nanny state to keep society from destroying itself.”

    Like I said, you don’t have to be a genius, just semi-literate. Just read what they say in their white papers. It’s not a secret. However, “reading stuff” is too hard for reporters to understand.

    So anyway, if you’d all like to live as green, environmental, light-on-the-land, meat-free as the folks of Elm Grove, Oklahoma, 1936, jump on board! We’ve got Oklahoma and 20 other states almost to that level already.

    UN Demands ‘Full Investigation’ After Sweden Drops Assange Rape Probe (RT)”

    You mean he wants to investigate why the torture was inadequate, hasn’t worked, and is applied only to a handful of wrong-thinkers instead of whole ethnic groups like their hero China? And, the U.N. has legal jurisdiction over SWE, UK, US, and AUS? I for one wouldn’t approve since they’re the guys how oversee torture, rape, and trafficking with troops and aid workers in Africa, but since my nation already stopped funding them, maybe we’re even.

    P.S. poor Sweden is now the bomb-and-grenade capital of the world and Denmark and Norway are building walls. Nice! Maybe if you’d stood for the law-and-order back then, this wouldn’t have happened.

    Oh, and P.S. “rape”? This was consensual sex by adults, confirmed 100% of the time by all interviewed, as opposed to, say, the sex lives of the Duke of York and the Governor of New Mexico. So guess who’s free?

    Statement for Aaron Swartz Day 2019 (Chelsea Manning)”

    Speaking of who’s free, like Martin Armstrong, a life sentence for mere contempt of court. …And that for questions she’s already been asked, already answered, and already doesn’t have to answer under the 5A, a 230 year-old law.

    “Massive ‘Dark-Money’ Group Boosted Democrats in 2018 (Pol.)”

    That’s easy: you ship $5B in MY tax money to Ukraine, then let it leak out by the millions with 100 different frauds, only to recollect in the DNC coffers to pay bribes and interference for the next $5B you send and re-collect. This is why we must have eternal war, ever-increasing, forever. And should anyone stop the money and corruption, that blackmail won’t get paid and everyone goes down, so if you stop corruption, the corrupt are going to – will have to – go nuts.

    …In theory. Nothing like that ever happens in United States, and certainly not lately.

    “John Solomon, …whose work has been promoted by President Donald Trump”
    Whoops! That’s enough! “Are you now, or have you ever, been Donald Trump?” The End. All ears shut, no discussions can be had. Stop bothering my truth with your facts. …No, really: I wish I were kidding; major networks literally say you must not talk about, must not talk with, must not even HEAR the opinions of ANYONE other than yourself. In The Cult™ What else could you call it? What other type of group is prohibited from even SPEAKING to outsiders?

    “Reclaiming Your Inner Fascist (C.J. Hopkins)”

    We (i.e., Americans, Brits, Europeans, and other citizens of the global capitalist empire) get up in the morning, go to work, shop, pay the interest on our debts, and otherwise obey the laws and conform to the mores of a system of power that has murdered countless millions of people in pursuit of global-hegemonic dominance. It has perpetrated numerous wars of aggression. Its military occupies most of the planet. Its Intelligence agencies (i.e., secret police) operate a worldwide surveillance apparatus that can identify, target, and eliminate anyone, anywhere, often by remote control. Its propaganda network never sleeps, nor is there any real way to escape its constant emotional and ideological conditioning.

    …We know this is happening. We can google this stuff. We know “where the trains are going,” as it were.

    And yet, we do not see ourselves as monsters.”

    Sounds familiar. Like I say this Every. Day. Answer: “Well I’m not in the cattle car, so whaddya want?” Very moral of you. I’m sure it’ll help when: YOU’RE NEXT.

    Speaking of, however, both Vindman AND Schiff say they have no idea who the Whistleblower is, yet 100% of the time they know EXACTLY whose name not to say. How odd! You see if I didn’t know who he was, me, I’d have to say nobody’s name, or name everybody I told and hope for the best. …And in the world of lies, this is when the (non)Whistleblower has no right, only a modest courtesy, to anonymity.

    So…how long before we can expect Solomon in jail, or his children killed? ‘Cause, like Epstein, that story isn’t going to kill itself.

    “Why does Hong Kong still have courts?”

    Why do we? To create the illusion of Justice, of course, in service of lawless overlords who do as they will, with open slavery and Droight de Signeur. I mean, that’s why Weinstein paid Cuomo and the Manhattan D.A. a couple mil in “donations”, and why the press has never mentioned it again, right? Who knew you could get a NY open-rape license so cheap?

    …But we’re mad at Solomon. Yup, sounds like our inner fascist, bootlicking power wherever it’s found.

    China Vows to Retaliate If Trump Signs Hong Kong Democracy Act into Law (SCMP)”

    They knew we did this kind of thing. We haven’t even really escalated to hardball yet. Maybe they should sign a fair deal before it gets worse. Oh wait, I forgot: we have no leverage. We can only surrender.

    “Fossil Fuel Production on Track for Double the Safe Climate Limit (G.)”

    News is in: earliest snow and coldest October in 100+ years in Sweden, some glaciers rebuilding and snowiest October in Nunavut and Baffin Island, cold down to the Gulf of Mexico, again. Record snowstorms and cold twice across the whole farm belt, snow doesn’t leave the North for weeks, they’re harvesting in the snow and mud trying to get a little more out, but soybeans won’t be salvageable.

    ““There will in no more snow by 2016” -Al Gore

    “According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”

    Well he should know now since Anglia is buried in it. Again. 3rd(?) year in a row?

    Maybe he didn’t notice. …You know, after the 20 year (!!!) pause in warming they also didn’t notice, or edited out then destroyed the raw data, and lied about it in emails, which Anglia is now infamous for. Science™!!!

    …Sounds like they should quadruple the CO2 quick before we can’t grow or harvest corn at all. Oh and exactly as predicted by MY science, and exactly erasing the theories of THEIR science. …But when your theory fails, just ad hominim and change the data, amirite?

    #51467
    J.A.Kosmos
    Participant

    Dr.D: If you read the whole book though you will see the part you quote comes from two conclusions the Club Of Rome claims to believe are true. First that those threats are real and second that you keep large goals in focus for mankind through common enemies. The logical conclusion is to solve the first problem with the second problem. There is nothing in that book that indicates faking environmental problems is the way to go. Might be the case anyways but that quote taken out of contexts does not mean much.

    #51468
    J.A.Kosmos
    Participant

    Lets take another quote from The First Industrial Revolution and see how evil a white paper it seems to you just from that small part.

    “What
    is needed is a reformulation of the appropriate levels of decision-making so as
    to bring the points of decision making as near as possible to those who enjoy
    or suffer their consequences. There appears to be a common human need fot
    ethnic identity, whose roots arc deeply buried in the past of the human race
    Equally, there appears to be a widespread tendency among people, even In
    ethnically homogeneous communities, to be identified with the affairs,
    prosperity and environment of their community. It is suggested that a greater
    number of points of decision making are necessary, ranging from the strictly
    local to the international. This could ease the load on central governments and
    help to humanise the system.”

    #51470
    Dr. D
    Participant

    It doesn’t really follow. It’s like saying because OxFam HAS done charity work, it’s impossible that they were just exposed as covering up for terrible, serial, overseas crimes, and protecting the abusers at the highest level. It doesn’t matter that MOST policemen shoot no one if A policeman shoots someone.

    At the same time, there have been books advising people to love their neighbors, give to charity, and forgive, yet the same words are quoted to commit genocide. That’s why, even if they’re not written by people with bad motives, hidden interests fund a Club of Rome and get their ideas publicized worldwide, while Economics schools that would restrain them those billionaire funders are shut down and replaced, or Assange can’t say a word. That is, the same with all pirates: they hijack the ship and plunder others for their own ends. ESPECIALLY when those people are naive and credible.

    I don’t happen to believe it in this case as we have dozens of environmentalists saying that in their meetings they were saying EXACTLY this to each other since the 70’s: “The world is burning, the people won’t react: MAKE IT ALL UP IF YOU HAVE TO.” In fact, I believe we saw that in the East Anglia emails, and certainly last month when the creator of the New Green Deal said in effect, “Yeah, it’s really not an environmental bill, it’s just the wish-list for Socialism we had lying around.” He says it. It’s published. “…We know this is happening. We can google this stuff. We know “where the trains are going,” as it were.” All you have to do is read their words and credit that they actually believe themselves.

    Nobody does. Despite every possible evidence to the contrary, day after day forever, they just think other people are honest as themselves. They’re not. They’re murderous self-serving weasels who would kill your mother in the NIH for a tuppence or torture publishers to death on live T.V. for the sheer amusement of it.

    So for the above quote, they’ve spend multi-trillions over the years supporting the kill all humans/environmental panic narrative. Yet when they do that, every plan these same Club of Rome people create is the diametric OPPOSITE of your quote. They want, not more local and distributed power, but always and everywhere more centralized, unrestrained, “non-ethnic” power. Even when it bites them, as with the present EU, it doesn’t deter them a whit: with every obstacle they demand MORE power, MORE concentrated and centralized, further from the people and accountability “for the sake of the planet emergency.” Just as my pirate theory would predict. And yes, if they DID distribute power and leave the people alone, it WOULD re-“humanize the system”, so why is every move, every breath of every leader, of everyone quoting the Club of Rome the direct opposite for 50 years?

    Because they’re murderous self-serving weasels who would plan to kill your mother in the NIH for a tuppence or AND torturing publishers to death on live T.V. right nowfor the sheer amusement of it.to save the planet.

    “Don’t you know deniers must be imprisoned and killed?” — The Cult™ (Wish that were hyperbole, I can find the quotes.)

    “We had to kill 6 billion animals on the planet to save the animals on the planet.” –Mai Lai revisited.

    Is a shovel evil? Doesn’t really matter if they’re using it to kill everyone in the room. We name it and stop it anyway.

    #51471
    zerosum
    Participant

    Why read fiction?
    A person could spend a lot of time looking and trying to follow the “dark money”
    I went to the search function, entered “John Solomon” and found the following which I thought you might enjoy.

    https://www.propublica.org/article/how-a-veteran-reporter-worked-with-giuliani-associates-to-launch-the-ukraine-conspiracy

    How a Veteran Reporter Worked with Giuliani’s Associates to Launch the Ukraine Conspiracy
    Lev Parnas, recently indicted for foreign influence in U.S. elections, collaborated closely with The Hill’s John Solomon to fuel spurious allegations involving the Bidens and Ukraine.
    by Jake Pearson, Mike Spies and J. David McSwane

    #51472
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    There once was a man named Frank. Really. He’s dead now. He was a fine mechanic, with a special affinity for diesel engines. He knew how to use machinery. When he bought a new house in the country, he rented equipment and drilled his own well, ran the plumbing, etc. He knew how to use machinery.

    This did not prevent him from thinking in stark black<>white terms. When he bought a new camera, a first generation digicam, he turned the setting all the way to bright, took a picture. It was a snowstorm in a sunny day, a white blur. He turned the setting the other way. It was a foggy twilight in the woods.

    “Bah,” he said, chucking the expensive item into the trash. “This camera’s no good.” (His son retrieved it later and used it happily for many years.)

    I see the same polarized reasoning in global climate debate. The world is getting warmer; the world is getting colder. Changes in global climate patterns are entirely natural; global climate changes are entirely anthropogenic. Bah! Throw the notion away!

    Record early cold/snow in some regions. Record blistering summer temps happening at the end of spring elsewhere. The glaciers are a fraction of what they were (true). Glaciers are currently making a comeback (I trust this to be reliable haven’t researched it myself.) etc. etc. etc.

    It’s nonsense on both sides, often orchestrated by the usual sociopathic ruling suspects to aid their need for power and wealth. A plethora of misguided but neatly expensive “green” proposals are proffered and often funded via taxation. Meanwhile, alternative approaches that would help us conserve energy (always a wise thing) are mostly ignored, probably because they don’t make the Usual Suspects (US) rich enough, plus they’d actually work to reduce per capita energy consumption, often without requiring constant maintenance and replacement, both of which concepts offend US, since reduced energy consumption reduces profits from energy sales and our dependence on those who claim ownership of energy resources, while things that don’t require constant replacement offend US because they go against the sacred cow of Planned Obsolescence (PO, in case I need that acronym in a bit).

    Newsflash: whatever is causing the current erratic climate, it takes ENERGY to deal with the consequences. Another reason to conserve energy now, regardless of carbon footprint politics, one’s sense of energy entitlement, or one’s desire to share the wealth with, say, poor Africans, etc.

    So we are wise to move toward lower energy lifestyles for reasons so plainly obvious that they are virtually invisible t us, because we largely ignore fundamental reality and instead focus on text and virtual talking heads to tell us what is real and what isn’t.

    Who the fuck cares what Al Gore said? AL Gore is a schmuck who gleefully plundered Russian resources when he and Clenis were in the catbird seat and the former USSR was not yet modern Russia, and deeply vulnerable to such meddling.

    Who the fuck cares what extravagant claims some nerd with a Ph.D. said 20 years ago about snowfall becoming a rare miracle? He probably said it for political reasons, which is to say that he probably made the more arrestingly dire remark he could make without going into horror overdrive like ‘your grandkids are likely to die of thirst, exposure, starvation, blah blah blah. People like nice soundbites not too crunchy but not too mushy.

    Who cares how much of the verified, indisputable Global Climate Disruption (GCD) is anthropogenic or ‘merely’ natural? We know that rogue asteroids are not at all anthropogenic but we also know that the only thing that will stop the next inevitable globally significant impact is wee(sic) humans. It’s our problem and we have to either fix it or someday experience global catastrophe to put nuclear winter to shame.

    Even if we really can start colonies on mars, the problem exists there to. Asteroids don’t care. Get in their way, they’ll smack you.

    If people insist on discussing these very real and genuine problems in terms handed down to them by politicians and talking heads, they deserve to eat their words, or have their children eaten by their grandchildren. Especially when they do so while mocking the very talking heads and politicians from whom they take their conceptual formats for apprehending and discussing this problem.

    Newsflash: the climate is going nuts, there are 7-going-on-8 billion human souls vulnerable to these effects, and the very largeness of said population (the triumph of humanity! we rule de earth! woohoo!) makes the size and scale of the catastrophe too large, too hot/cold, to handle, that is, mitigate somewhat, which is all we can expect, without at least *some* surplus energy at our disposal.

    But all we seem able to do is fling poo at each other in opposing camps while somehow managing to avoid doing anything even remotely practical or effective. Soon, we will wish we at least had poo to fling, because a) the ability to poop means you’re being fed, not starving, and b) poo makes good fertilizer for growing food.

    The sole saving grace I see in any of this comes from that notoriously brilliant crankhead, Dimity Orlov, who informs us that Rosatom has nuclear powetr tech that actually work, is reasonably safe, and can run for a decent while, providing a time in which we might, just might, pull our collective head out of our communal asshole and work to gradually scale down our population and per capita energy consumption to a point where our descendants might live on a level higher than wearing furskins and trading dried fish and slaves.

    Political solutions are dead. Politics is an extension of war by other means (Clausewitz must’ve been dyslexic.) There is war ahead. Beyond that, the usual digging out of the rubble to greet a new kind of bleak terrain.

    But please, let’s fling more poo. It’s what we *do*.

    #51473
    zerosum
    Participant

    How many lawyers how may accountants, did the bank need to set up his system.

    https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/swedbanks-high-risk-secrets

    Russian oligarch Mikhail Abyzov built a complex network of offshore companies that were used to move a fortune out of Russia, according to a Swedbank internal draft report obtained by Swedish national public TV channel Sveriges Television (SVT) and shared with OCCRP.
    Today he’s charged with defrauding the Russian government and investors of US$60 million, money laundering, and running a criminal organization.
    The web of 70 offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, Singapore, and Belize had accounts in Swedbank Estonia, where a client manager once responsible for monitoring the transactions helped move suspicious funds, according to the internal report.

    #51474
    J.A.Kosmos
    Participant

    Dr.D: I like and agree with your pirate analogy. I do not agree with you on the climate question. I just react to that tired quote taken out of context from that book. I have actually caught one person, who used that quote as if he had read the book, of guard, by reading the book myself and then asking him to debate it with my since the book obviously is not saying anything similar to what most apcc deniers are saying it is. At that point he admitted to never having read it and wrote a mile long name drop e-mail of rouge scientist online all of whom I could easily connect with various right wing think tanks. Both sides of this question are infected with evil elite opportunists trying to twist it their way.
    I really enjoy your writing, gives me new perspectives but just had to call that cliché quote.

    #51475
    John Day
    Participant

    http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/11/extra-rich-people.html
    Peter Turchin has set up analysis, based on Complexity Theory, that predicts periods of political discord. When the ratio of rich people to working people rises, it eventually leads to fighting among the elites and aspiring elites, which somehow involves regular people killing each other in droves. The severity of the die-off is one of the ways of grading mild, moderate or severe. The 2020s are poised to be one of those periods for the US. These are the transcript and slides of an hour lecture, given in Utrechet, Netherlands, earlier this month. The transcript link doesn’t work for me today, but the slides tell the story.
    Rich people are very expensive to keep, and are inclined to lie, cheat and steal when playing with others on a good day…

    A History of the Near Future: What history tells us about our Age of Discord


    http://peterturchin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/MPF2019.pdf

    Charles Hugh Smith:
    All the status quo “fixes” only hasten the collapse of the status quo.
    That economic, social and political conflict is accelerating is self-evident.
    What’s open to debate are the core drivers of conflict / disorder /unraveling.
    https://www.oftwominds.com/blognov19/confict-accelerating11-19.html

    “​Algorithmic Feudalism”​
    ​ ​Google has the power to shape your mind by limiting what you have access to, while at the same time wielding the power to destroy your livelihood with a tweak of an algorithm. Although a lot of the most nefarious stuff is still being conducted at the margins so the masses don’t realize what’s happening, stealth censorship will continue to be rolled out until the internet most people use becomes for all practical purposes an information gulag where nothing but shameless propaganda is pumped onto screens by hidden algorithms tweaked (for your own good) by billionaires.
    ​ ​A perfect example of this can be seen in how YouTube hides ones of the most popular videos ever made regarding the attacks of September 11, 2001. The short clip made by James Corbett, is titled 9/11: A Conspiracy Theory, and has over 3.2 million views. Nevertheless, here’s what YouTube spits out if you search by the exact title of the video.
    ​ ​https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2019/11/18/algorithmic-feudalism/
    ​ ​Keep scrolling and you still won’t find it. This isn’t YouTube helping users find the information they want, it’s YouTube hiding content from its users. Moreover, the only reason I’m aware of the censoring of this particular item is because I’m familiar with the video from years ago. You can be certain this sort of thing is more common than you realize and will only get worse.

    Do The World’s Energy Policies Make Sense?, Gail Tverberg​
    (The reset will be into a world of less fossil fuel, less, manufacturing, less “wealth”)​
    ​ ​In order for coal production to grow as much as the higher emission scenarios assume, there needs to be a major turnaround in the situation. World coal prices would need to rise substantially. In fact, coal in very difficult locations for extraction, such as under the North Sea, need to become profitable to extract. This situation seems very unlikely.
    ​ ​It seems to me that climate modelers should be considering more realistic scenarios regarding CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. One scenario which should be considered is the possible near term collapse of several governmental organizations, such as the European Union, World Trade Organization, and the governments of several oil exporting countries.
    Do the World’s Energy Policies Make Sense?

    #51477
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Call me Seymour

    That said, I’ve never the Constitution from beginning to end. I’ve read enough to know that it has become something more like suggested Guidelines rather than rule of law, and gah, what a bore. Best I can tell, it was over when Washington and Hamilton pulled that Whiskey Rebellion stung and let it be known that only the rich are entitled to reliably prosper.

    Uncle Sam Always Wants Something From You

    #51478
    J.A.Kosmos
    Participant

    Hehe! True. A text that is probably equally often or more often misrepresented than The Third Industrial Revolution by both detractors and fanatics. But when a single detached quote that so obviously doesn’t represent the work in question gets thrown around as much as that one it gets a bit tedious.

    #51481
    zerosum
    Participant

    Well this is an interesting development. The Biden family is corrupt trash, just like most professional politician families in this country…

    How can you believe this story.
    Its coming from a corrupt country.
    /s

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukrainian-indictment-reveals-hunter-biden-group-made-165-million-mp#comment_stream

    Ukrainian Indictment Claims $7.4 Billion Obama-Linked Laundering, Puts Biden Group Take At $16.5 Million

    #51482
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/press-conference/625831.html

    KYIV. Nov 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian members of parliament have demanded the presidents of Ukraine and the United States, Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, investigate suspicions of the legalization of $7.4 billion by the “family” of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych through the American investment fund Franklin Templeton Investments, which they said has ties to the U.S. Democratic Party.

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