Oct 292019
 
 October 29, 2019  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  22 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Palm trees on Martinique 1887

 

 

A few -seemingly?!- contradictory items I noticed this morning. First, the oil the US is smuggling, stealing -take your pick- from Syrian oil fields.

On the one hand, we have U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper claiming that the revenue from the stolen oil goes to the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, which partly uses it “guard prisons that hold captured Islamic State fighters.”

US Military Envisions Broad Defense Of Syrian Oilfields (R.)

The United States will repel any attempt to take Syria’s oil fields away from U.S.-backed Syrian militia with “overwhelming force,” whether the opponent is Islamic State or even forces backed by Russia or Syria, the Pentagon said on Monday. The U.S. military announced last week it was reinforcing its position in Syria with additional assets, including mechanized forces, to prevent oilfields from being taken over by remnants of the Islamic State militant group or others. U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper offered some of his most detailed remarks to date about the mission at a news briefing on Monday.


“U.S. troops will remain positioned in this strategic area to deny ISIS access those vital resources. And we will respond with overwhelming military force against any group that threatens the safety of our forces there,” Esper told reporters at the Pentagon. Pressed on whether the U.S. military mission included denying any Russian or Syrian government forces access to the oilfields, Esper said: “The short answer is, yes, it presently does.” He noted that the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, relied on that oil income to fund its fighters, including the ones guarding prisons that hold captured Islamic State fighters. “We want to make sure that SDF does have access to resources in order to guard the prisons, in order to arm their own troops, in order to assist us with the defeat-ISIS mission,” he said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

But on the other hand, the Saker quotes “official representative of the [Russian] Defense Ministry” Igor Konashenkov saying “the income of smuggling goes to the personal accounts of US PMCs and special forces.” (PMC=Private Military Company)

Russian Defense Ministry Shows Evidence Of US Oil Smuggling From Syria (Saker)

As the official representative of the Defense Ministry Igor Konashenkov noted, the Americans are extracting oil in Syria with the help of equipment, bypassing their own sanctions. Igor Konashenkov: “Under the protection of American military servicemen and employees of American PMCs, fuel trucks from the oil fields of Eastern Syria are smuggling to other states. In the event of any attack on such a caravan, special operations forces and US military aircraft are immediately called in to protect it,” he said.


According to Konashenkov, the US-controlled company Sadcab, established under the so-called Autonomous Administration of Eastern Syria, is engaged in the export of oil, and the income of smuggling goes to the personal accounts of US PMCs and special forces. The Major General added that as of right now, a barrel of smuggled Syrian oil is valued at $38, therefore the monthly revenue of US governmental agencies exceeds $30 million.

You be the judge. Which of the two accounts is more credible? The Saker report also says the US has been stealing the oil for a very long time. At $30 million a month. So is it the benign “guarding ISIS prisoners” or the less benign Blackwater et al?

 

 

Secondly, Pelosi’s sudden shift towards legitimizing the 34 day old “impeachment inquiry”, which comes in a document that at the same time says it already is perfectly legit. So why the move? Is it to assure Trump is provided with his “due process rights”? Can he subpoena witnesses now, is that what this means?

Or does this have to do with the lawsuit former deputy to former national security adviser John Bolton, Charles Kupperman, filed on Friday, and on which a federal judge has yet to rule? Do the Dems have the idea they’ll lose that one?

Do note House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA) saying the vote would “ensure transparency and provide a clear path forward”. 34 days of operating in secret in a basement and then you have the gall to talk about transparency? 34 days of selective leaking to friendly media but now we’re getting a “clear path forward”? I would tend to agree with Kevin McCarthy that “this process has been botched from the start”. Nothing partisan about that, just imagine what the NYT and WaPo would be writing if the GOP would be doing secret testimonies of Obama-era FBI, CIA and White House staff.

Oh, wait a minute, Schiff may have opened the door to just that! Is that a factor in Pelosi’s 180º?

‘We Will Not Legitimize The Sham Impeachment’ (ZH)

Update: House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) responded to Monday’s announcement, tweeting “It’s been 34 days since Nancy Pelosi unilaterally declared her impeachment inquiry. Today’s backtracking is an admission that this process has been botched from the start. We will not legitimize the Schiff/Pelosi sham impeachment.”

[..] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Monday that a vote will be held this Thursday “that affirms the ongoing, existing investigation that is currently being conducted by our committees” as part of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, according to the Washington Post. House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA) said the vote would “ensure transparency and provide a clear path forward” as their investigations continue. The resolution will authorize the disclosure of deposition transcripts as well as set forth due process rights for President Trump, according to Pelosi. It will also establish a procedure for open hearings.

[..] The announcement comes after former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman – who served as a deputy to former national security adviser John Bolton – filed a Friday lawsuit seeking guidance from a federal judge as to whether he should follow the advice of the executive branch, which has instructed him not to attend, or Congress, according to the Post. As the judge has yet to rule on his request, Kupperman declined to appear.

“House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), meanwhile, said that a former deputy national security adviser had “no basis in law” to skip a deposition Monday and that his failure to appear was further evidence of Trump’s efforts to obstruct Congress.” -Washington Post. Kupperman was on the line when President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky held a July 25 discussion in which Trump requested investigations into Democratic rival Joe Biden, as well as allegations of Ukrainian election meddling in 2016 to benefit Hillary Clinton.

There’s another case, that of former Trump lawyer Don McGahn, who is in the same legal split between the Dems subpoena and the White House order not to comply with it. Several people have testified in Adam Schiff’s secret basement despite the order. McGahn has his lawyers talking to the DOJ -for quite some time too-, and Kupperman’s lawsuit asking a judge to decide seems to make sense.

DOJ Negotiating With Democrats To Allow Don McGahn To Testify (RS)

According to Politico, lawyers from the Department of Justice have been in talks with the House committee responsible for drafting articles of impeachment, about the possibility of letting former White House Counsel Don McGahn testify — despite the fact that the current White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, has stated the administration will not cooperate with the investigation.


“In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the Executive Branch, and all future occupants of the Office of the Presidency, President Trump and his Administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances,” Cipollone wrote to House Democrats on October 8, in a letter that was loaded with political rather than legal arguments. But that same day, Justice Department lawyers were in talks with the House Judiciary Committee about McGahn possibly testifying. And they subsequently held four more meetings on October 11, 15, 21 and 24.

 

 

Lastly, a curious item from the Sydney Morning Herald. It notes that the Australian government has figured out that Julian Assange has “high-profile and loyal supporters”. But highly curiously, Australian officials told a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday that diplomats had not heard back from Assange’s lawyer since writing to her last week asking that she raise with him their offer of consular assistance.

What? Jennifer Robinson, the lawyer is question, has been banging on Australian political doors for years in order to get assistance. And now this statement? Who are these people? Some people over there are belatedly waking up, but it may all largely be posturing. Until we see actual help on its way, don’t believe a word they say.

Assange Legal Team Asks For Australian Government Help Amid Growing Health Fears

Julian Assange’s British legal team has requested Australian diplomatic help as fears grow for his health and mental state in a London prison. [..] Australian officials told a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday that diplomats had not heard back from Assange’s lawyer since writing to her last week asking that she raise with him their offer of consular assistance. The 48-year-old is fighting US attempts to extradite him to face 17 counts of spying and one of computer hacking in relation to WikiLeaks’ release of thousands of classified Pentagon files regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Barrister Greg Barns, an adviser to the Australian Assange campaign, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald his UK lawyers on Friday requested consular assistance following a recent inquiry from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. “Julian’s lawyers are asking for the Australian government’s assistance in dealing with their client’s inhumane conditions in Belmarsh prison which has led to, and is continuing to cause, serious damage to Julian’s health,” Mr Barns said. [..] The Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) passed a motion at its national conference on Saturday calling for the Australian government to do “all it can” to bring Assange home and resist US attempts to extradite him.

ALA national president Andrew Christopoulos said it was an important issue about the rule of law and protecting an Australian in a vulnerable position overseas. “This is about standing up for the rule of law, fairness and the freedom to expose wrongdoing,” he said. “The reported decline of Julian Assange’s physical and mental health heightens the need for urgent government intervention. The government has intervened in cases like this before and should do so in this circumstance.” If the case goes to a series of appeals, Assange could remain in a UK jail until at least 2025.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne last week acknowledged the publicity around the case and that Assange had high-profile and loyal supporters. She said it was important to let the legal process run its course. “He has been offered consular services … like any other Australian would,” Senator Payne told the Senate committee. “I think it’s important to remember that as Australia would not accept intervention or interference in our legal processes, we are not able to intervene in the legal processes of another country.”

 

 

 

Obviously, this map is far from complete.

 

 

 

 

 

Apr 232019
 


Eugène Delacroix Pietà 1837

 

Donald Trump Plans State Visit To UK In June (G.)
House Democrats Subpoena Ex-White House Counsel (G.)
The Nervous Here and Now (Kunstler)
Chelsea Manning To Stay In Jail After Federal Court Rejects Appeal (RT)
The Trump Administration’s Iran Policy Will Hasten Imperial Decline (Krieger)
When the Non-Rational Trumps the Rational (Crooke)
Lower Mortgage Rates No Relief for US Home Sales (WS)
Greece Will Demand Germany Pay $337 Billion For Nazi Occupation (SCMP)
Electric Vehicles Account For More CO2 Emissions Than Diesel Ones (BT)
‘Catastrophic’ Decline Threatening The Earth (NZH)

 

 

Excuse me, but do those protesting this not see many of their own MPs are at least as bad?

Bercow: “..our opposition to racism and to sexism and our support for equality before the law..” Have you followed May’s career at all, Mr. Speaker? Windrush, Hostile Environment?

Clean your own house first. Until you do, this is just cheap propaganda.

Donald Trump Plans State Visit To UK In June (G.)

Donald Trump’s postponed state visit to the UK is due to take place in June, it will be confirmed on Tuesday, prompting renewed calls for protests against the trip. Buckingham Palace is due to announce the visit will be timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings on 6 June, the Guardian understands. The move has renewed controversy over Theresa May’s decision to invite Trump for a full state visit when she met the president shortly after he took office. State visits are formal trip for heads of state involving considerable ceremony and time with the Queen. The invitation was extended by May when she became the first overseas leader to visit Trump in the White House after his inauguration.


When Trump travelled to the UK on an official but non-state visit in July 2018, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest and a four-metre-high orange Trump baby blimp was floated above Parliament Square. The policing operation for the visit cost an estimated £18m. The prospect of Trump being granted the honour of a carriage ride down the Mall appalls many MPs. It is unusual for a state visit to be announced at such short notice, and details of the visit have yet to be finalised with fewer than six weeks to go. It is unclear if Trump will be be invited, or allowed, to address to both houses of parliament. In February 2017, the Speaker John Bercow, said Trump should not be allowed to speak to parliament. He said: “I feel very strongly that our opposition to racism and to sexism and our support for equality before the law and an independent judiciary are hugely important considerations in the House of Commons.”

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I think we call this the Completion Backward Principle. First talk impeachment, then try and find evidence.

“I do think, if proven – which hasn’t been proven yet – if proven, some of this would be impeachable, yes,” Nadler said..”

House Democrats Subpoena Ex-White House Counsel (G.)

The Democratic chairman of the House judiciary committee has issued a subpoena ordering that the former White House counsel Don McGahn testify before Congress. The move came as the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, vowed to hold Donald Trump to account following the release of Robert Mueller’s report on Russian influence on the 2016 US election. The subpoena, issued on Monday, escalates the congressional investigations into Trump, his finances and accusations that he sought to obstruct justice, as Democrats debate how to proceed with the evidence contained in the special counsel’s 448-page report. McGahn cooperated extensively in the special counsel’s investigation and emerged as a key witness in several incidents at the heart of whether Trump obstructed justice.

“The special counsel’s report, even in redacted form, outlines substantial evidence that President Trump engaged in obstruction and other abuses,” said Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House judiciary committee, which has the power to launch impeachment proceedings. [..] This is the second subpoena issued by Nadler since the release of the report: on Friday he demanded that the justice department turn over an unredacted version of the report as well as the underlying evidence by 1 May, when the attorney general, William Barr, is due to testify before Congress. Nadler, a New York Democrat, has also invited Mueller to testify before his committee next month. Republican congressman Doug Collins, the ranking member of the House judiciary committee, called the subpoenas “premature” and criticized Democrats for seeking delicate information that the justice department believes should remain confidential.

“Instead of looking at material that Attorney General Barr has already made available, Democrats prefer to demand more documents they know are subject to constitutional and common-law privileges and can’t be produced,” he said. Barr offered to brief a select, bipartisan group of lawmakers on a version of the report that was less redacted than the copy made public. Democrats refused the offer arguing that Congress is entitled to the full, unredacted report. Trump has maintained that the report represents a “total exoneration” and has insisted repeatedly that there are no grounds for impeachment. After the subpoena was issued, he tweeted: “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT.”

This weekend, senior Democrats blanketed TV talkshows and refused to rule out impeachment. However, they remained firm that there was more to investigate before making a final determination. “I do think, if proven – which hasn’t been proven yet – if proven, some of this would be impeachable, yes,” Nadler said NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “Obstruction of justice, if proven, would be impeachable.” [..] Nancy Pelosi cautioned Democrats against hastily moving toward impeachment, making clear that their immediate focus would be on investigating the president and that those inquiries would guide their actions. “This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans,” Pelosi told her colleagues, according to multiple officials on the call. “It’s about saving our democracy.”

Read more …

“These internal problems of the USA point in the direction of states and whole regions stealthily seceding from a federal system that can’t run itself competently at scale anymore.”

The Nervous Here and Now (Kunstler)

Before we get to Medicare-for-all, I’d like to see congress pass one simple law requiring all medical service “providers” in the land to publicly post the price of all their services, from the cost of heart transplants down to those $90 Tylenols they dispense. Let’s see how that affects the lawless hocus-pocus of insurance companies “negotiating” their payments with the medical corporatocracy before we go whole-hog for a nationalized health service. The colleges have already destroyed themselves intellectually, and thereby the value of their overpriced credentialing services. The smaller colleges are already folding, and many more will follow now until higher education becomes a boutique industry.

The pension funds are truly big, ominous bombs, because when they fail, they will set up unresolvable fiscal problems that will turn ugly and political. Even if the federal government attempts some kind of “one-time” bail-out, it will not solve the embedded Ponzi problem of a system that has to pay off an ever-expanding pool of claims with an ever-diminishing stream of revenue. It will only be another swipe of the blade cutting off the legs of the US dollar so that it in end every pensioner will receive his-or-her promised payout in dollars that are increasingly worthless. We may even discover that the opioid epidemic has been the only thing keeping the immiserated denizens of Flyover-land from resorting to violent insurrection.

These internal problems of the USA point in the direction of states and whole regions stealthily seceding from a federal system that can’t run itself competently at scale anymore. The process has already begun in such acts of defiance as “sanctuary states” and the burgeoning marijuana industry. Unlike the calamity of 1861, though, there may be no way to even attempt to hold the old Union together, even by force. Instead, as is the case with all foundering empires, the end will be a sickening slide into a new and strange disposition of things. One of the last successful acts of the American empire may be to send the RussiaGate instigators to jail.

Read more …

Evil empire. Meanwhile, Assange has been in max security prison for 2 weeks with no access to anyone, including his lawyers. For violating his bail?!

Your governments have set out to break your brightest and bravest. Where are you?

Chelsea Manning To Stay In Jail After Federal Court Rejects Appeal (RT)

A federal appeals court has struck down whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s bid to be released from jail, where she has been held indefinitely after refusing to testify to a grand jury probe into WikiLeaks. Judges from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed the charges against Manning on Monday and denied her request to be released. “The court finds no error in the district court’s rulings and affirms its finding of civil contempt,” the court said in its decision. “The court also denies appellant’s motion for release on bail.” Manning is likely to pursue further appeals. Manning was arrested in March when she refused to provide grand jury testimony related to her disclosures of classified material in 2010 and her interactions with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.


She is to be held for the duration of the grand jury, or until she agrees to answer prosecutors’ questions. She has been in jail for 45 days. Assange was arrested in London on April 11, after spending nearly seven years in Ecuador’s embassy there. The court hearing on his extradition to the US is scheduled for May 2. Manning’s lawyers argue her rights were violated by the grand jury proceedings, and that federal prosecutors used a subpoena to “entrap” her. The lawyers added that Manning had already given authorities all the information she had during her previous court-martial investigation, and that her confinement is needlessly cruel, as the jail cannot provide proper medical care.

Read more …

An empire in decline always emphasizes loudest that it’s an empire. At its heyday, it doesn’t have to; it’s understood.

“The U.S. is telling China, the second largest economy in the world and home to over one billion people, that it lacks the sovereign authority to buy oil from Iran if it so desires.”

The Trump Administration’s Iran Policy Will Hasten Imperial Decline (Krieger)

A primary focus of my writing of late centers around the idea that the policies of the Trump administration, and the neocons in control of it, will hasten the decline of U.S. imperial power and more rapidly usher in a multi-polar (and possibly bifurcated) world. Today’s news regarding the elimination of waivers on Iranian oil imports provides another perfect example. Specifically, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced earlier today that waivers which allowed eight countries to import Iranian crude oil without being subject to U.S. sanctions would expire on May 2 without extension. The eight countries included are China, India, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Greece, Italy and Taiwan.

This move is an extraordinarily foolish and reckless act which illustrates the extreme hubris and short-sightedness of those running American foreign policy under Trump. What the U.S. is decreeing to the entire world with this action is that the U.S., and the U.S. alone, decides who gets to trade with who. The U.S. is telling China, the second largest economy in the world and home to over one billion people, that it lacks the sovereign authority to buy oil from Iran if it so desires. If the U.S. can unilaterally play boss on the trade decisions of foreign countries, national sovereignty does not exist in practice anywhere on the planet. There is only empire.

As such, this goes beyond aggressive foreign policy. It’s more or less an assertion by the Trump administration that the world is in fact a global dictatorship run by a single nation (empire) that has granted itself the authority to arbitrarily decide which countries get to participate in global trade, and which ones do not. Now that the true nature of U.S. power is so completely out in the open, countries will have to decide to either bend the knee or resist, which seems to be the point. What do you think China’s going to do?

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Religious extremism in a declining empire. Read your history.

When the Non-Rational Trumps the Rational (Crooke)

Professor of Religious Studies, Andrew Chesnut tells us that Christian Zionism has become the “majority theology” among white US Evangelicals. In a 2015 poll, 73% of evangelical Christians said events in Israel are prophesied in the Book of Revelation. For Christian Zionists, achieving a ‘Greater Israel’ is one of the key preconditions for ‘Rapture’. It is a belief, known as pre-millennial dispensationalism or Christian Zionism, Chesnut says. “Trump himself embodies the very opposite of a pious Christian ideal. Trump is not a churchgoer. He is profane, twice divorced, who has boasted of sexually assaulting women. But white evangelicals have embraced him, writes Julian Borger.

“Some leading evangelicals see Trump as a latter-day King Cyrus, the sixth-century BC Persian emperor who liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity. The comparison is made explicitly in The Trump Prophecy, a religious film screened in 1,200 cinemas [last year], depicting a retired firefighter who claims to have heard God’s voice, saying: “I’ve chosen this man, Donald Trump, for such a time as this … “Cyrus is the model for a nonbeliever, being appointed by God as a vessel for the purposes of the faithful,” said Katherine Stewart, who writes extensively about the Christian right. She added that they welcome [Trump’s] readiness to break democratic norms, to combat perceived threats to their values and way of life.

Mike Pompeo and Vice-President Pence are strongly of this Evangelical orientation. It is something that has real import for foreign policy: During his tenure as CIA director, and before that as a member of the House of Representatives, Pompeo has consistently used language that casts the war on terrorism as a cosmic, divine battle of good and evil. He has referred to Islamic terrorists as destined to “continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray, and stand and fight, and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior, and is truly the only solution for our world”. The proscription of Iran’s IRGC, by Pompeo was couched in exactly this language of terrorism, with the clear connotation that Iran is the cosmic ‘evil’. This style of Apocalyptic or Rapture language has been adopted wholesale by Trump, and his Administration.

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The Fed should have stayed away from -mortgage- rates. It has now guaranteed uncontrolled demolition.

Lower Mortgage Rates No Relief for US Home Sales (WS)

Across the US, hot and cold housing markets all thrown into one bucket: Sales of “existing homes” (single-family houses, townhouses, condos, and co-ops) in March dropped 5.4% from March last year, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.21 million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors, after having dropped 2.3% year-over-year in February, 8.7% in January, 10.1% in December, and 8.9% in November (data via YCharts):

“The impact of lower mortgage rates has not yet been fully realized,” the NAR report said, as the drop in sales volume is occurring despite the fact that mortgage rates had fallen sharply from the November highs. “According to Freddie Mac, the average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage decreased to 4.27% in March from 4.37% in February,” the report said. The average Freddie Mac 30-year fixed rate bottomed out in the reporting week ended March 28 at 4.06%, the lowest since January 2018, and down from 4.94% in November. But it has since risen every week. For the week ending April 18, it ticked up to a still low 4.17%:

[..] “The lower-end market is hot while the upper-end market is not,” according to the NAR report. “The expensive home market will experience challenges due to the curtailment of tax deductions of mortgage interest payments and property taxes.” Alas, in many markets, even the “lower end,” after years of price surges, has become very expensive. So, with all markets across the US thrown into one bucket, the median price in March rose 3.8% from March last year to $259,400. Prices are subject to seasonality, as the chart below shows. Median price means half the homes sold for more, and half sold for less:

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“For matters of this kind there is international justice,” he said. “In all disputes the EU abides by it, on principle. Germany may say it has been resolved but what counts is international law.”

Greece Will Demand Germany Pay $337 Billion For Nazi Occupation (SCMP)

Greece is poised to send Germany a formal diplomatic note detailing its demand for billions of euros in wartime reparations after MPs voted overwhelmingly for the emotive issue to be raised officially. In a move bound to stir sentiment ahead of crucial European parliament elections, Athens vowed to pile pressure on Berlin, taking legal and diplomatic steps that will throw the spotlight on crimes committed during the brutal Nazi occupation. “It is an open issue that must be resolved,” Greece’s deputy foreign minister, Markos Bolaris, told The Guardian, hitting back at German insistence that compensation claims had been conclusively settled.


“For matters of this kind there is international justice,” he said. “In all disputes the EU abides by it, on principle. Germany may say it has been resolved but what counts is international law.” Greeks suffered hugely at the hands of Hitler’s forces, enduring what Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, recently described on a visit to Greece as “unimaginable” horrors. Tens of thousands were killed in reprisals as Greeks mounted what historians would later hail as a heroic resistance against the Wehrmacht [German army], with entire villages being wiped out between 1941 and 1944. By the time the occupation ended, an estimated 300,000 people had died from famine and the country’s Jewish community had been almost entirely obliterated.

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All energy use produces waste. The only way to prevent this is not using the energy.

Electric Vehicles Account For More CO2 Emissions Than Diesel Ones (BT)

Electric vehicles in Germany account for more CO2 emissions than diesel ones, according to a study by German scientists. When CO2 emissions linked to the production of batteries and the German energy mix – in which coal still plays an important role – are taken into consideration, electric vehicles emit 11% to 28% more than their diesel counterparts, according to the study, presented on Wednesday at the Ifo Institute in Munich. Mining and processing the lithium, cobalt and manganese used for batteries consume a great deal of energy. A Tesla Model 3 battery, for example, represents between 11 and 15 tonnes of CO2. Given a lifetime of 10 years and an annual travel distance of 15,000 kilometres, this translates into 73 to 98 grams of CO2 per kilometre, scientists Christoph Buchal, Hans-Dieter Karl and Hans-Werner Sinn noted in their study.


The CO2 given off to produce the electricity that powers such vehicles also needs to be factored in, they say. When all these factors are considered, each Tesla emits 156 to 180 grams of CO2 per kilometre, which is more than a comparable diesel vehicle produced by the German company Mercedes, for example. The German researchers therefore take issue with the fact that European officials view electric vehicles as zero-emission ones. They note further that the EU target of 59 grams of CO2 per km by 2030 corresponds to a “technically unrealistic” consumption of 2.2 litres of diesel or 2.6 litres of gas per 100 kms.

Read more …

“Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.”

‘Catastrophic’ Decline Threatening The Earth (NZH)

They’re the things that often bug us the most — quite literally. But with warnings insects could disappear within the century, suddenly the critters we first think to squish have made us think differently. A global scientific review of insect decline has warned insects will “go down the path of extinction” in a few decades, with “catastrophic” repercussions for the planet’s ecosystems. The biodiversity crisis is said to be even deeper than that of climate change, reports news.com.au. Scientists have already warned the earth’s sixth mass extinction event is under way through biological annihilation. “Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions,” researchers wrote in 2017.


They said decimation needed to be addressed immediately. “Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions. “Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume. “The massive loss of populations is already damaging the services ecosystems provide to civilisation. When considering this frightening assault on the foundations of human civilisation, one must never forget that Earth’s capacity to support life, including human life, has been shaped by life itself.”


Dragonflies are a protective and resilient insect. Photo / Getty Images

Read more …

You’re on Earth.

There’s no cure for that.

– Samuel Beckett

 

 

Aug 202018
 
 August 20, 2018  Posted by at 1:05 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  22 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Science and Charity 1897

 

I thought I’d make list of things we can expect to emanate from the White House over the coming year or so. I’m sure you will agree, wherever you stand on the political roller coaster, that there’s little chance things are going to be boring going forward. Here goes:

 

Trump will end the ‘monopolies’ of Facebook, Google, Twitter et al. The intelligence community will hate this, but they already hate him anyway, so why bother? And besides, it’s the only thing to do that makes any sense. The AT&T model might be useful, essentially creating Baby Bells, though the international reach of the companies may add a layer or two of complications.

But you simply can’t have a few roomfuls of boys and girls ban and shadowban people with impunity from networks that span the globe and reach half of the world’s population on the basis of opaque ‘Terms and Conditions’ that in effect trump the US constitution the way they are used and interpreted. Whether they are private companies or not will make no difference in the end.

At some point an ‘entity’ becomes a ‘utility’. Twitter and Facebook already are the most efficient way to alert people in cases of emergency. To throw people out of such systems is indefensible.

The CIA and FBI will protest like there’s no tomorrow, but they have to realize that spying on Americans the way they do at present in conjunction with Alphabet and Facebook is just as indefensible as throwing people off these services. The judicial system will at some point be forced to curtail these powers. Better for the executive power to be ahead of that. Baby Bells it is.

 

Trump will tell his people to open up to Mueller . He’s already done this, but will do it again, loudly and publicly, citing the need to wrap up the Mueller investigation ASAP. That will be the target: stop the ‘inquisition’. Mueller has talked for 30 hours over the past nine months to White House lawyer Donald McGahn II, and at some point enough is enough.

As I cited a few days ago, Trump’s legal team has given Mueller until September 1 to talk to the president, and that’s it. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, Giuliani again said he doesn’t want to rush Trump into a perjury trap, but Mueller has had plenty time to have that talk. The investigation risks being used as a political tool in the midterms, and that can’t happen.

 

Moreover, since US District Court Judge Amit Mehta has ruled that the FBI must release documents pertaining to what it knew about the ‘veracity’ of the Steele dossier, the most consequential reason to start the Special Counsel investigation in the first place may well soon be going going gone.

The FBI offered to pay Steele $50,000 for evidence that what was in his report was true, and they never paid that money. Ergo, it is reasonable to conclude that he never delivered the evidence. This points to huge potential problems for the FBI, the DNC -which financed the dossier-, Steele himself, and various other parties. How about James Comey?

Since the judge’s ruling was a direct effect of Trump declassifying the Nunes and Schiff memos in February, count on one thing: Trump will declassify many more documents . Judge Mehta ruled in January that the FBi didn’t have to “disclose the existence of any records containing the agency’s efforts to verify the dossier”, but now says that after Trump declassified the memos ‘the ground shifted’.

In other words, once docs are declassified, intelligence services no longer have a place to hide. Trump is thinking: why didn’t I do this much more and much sooner? Note: it still took 6 months for the judge to rule on the FBI and the memos, but next time this could go much faster. And there are thousands of files that could be de-classified.

 

Trump will revoke the security clearance of many former FBI and CIA agents whose names have come up in connection with Russiagate. He needs to do this so they can’t get in the way of the Second Special Counsel he’s going to initiate. By now, there are many more reasons for the second counsel than there ever were for the first.

Mueller is going after George Papadopoulos, a nobody, because he’s the only person who allegedly ever mentioned Russians. Everyone else he’s focused on has only ever been indirectly -at best- connected to Russia. But Papadopoulos was allegedly caught saying the R-word when he was drunk, to some never properly identified ‘professor’.

And that’s the only ‘link’ between Russia and the Trump campaign that we’ve ever seen. It is at times like this that we can see how shaky and shady the entire Mueller file was from the get-go. And why that Second Special Counsel will become reality. If you’d like to read a very long and detailed report on this, I recommend Barbara Boyd’s damning Fish Stinks From the Head Down for LaRouchePAC:

In the past week, we have learned that Steele was being paid as a human source by the FBI early in as of February 2016, if not sooner, based on a release of his highly redacted FBI file to Judicial Watch in a FOIA suit. After he was fired as an official FBI human source in October 2016, based on the obvious fact that he was using his FBI relationship as coinage in the information warfare operation he was running against Donald Trump for the British government, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, his relationship to the FBI was continued through a back channel.

That channel was the Number Four attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Bruce Ohr, whose wife, Nellie, worked for Steele’s American employer, Fusion GPS, on the Trump Russiagate project. According to documents finally released to Congress by the Justice Department, Ohr would meet with Steele, who would convey new “information,” and then meet with the FBI to convey Steele’s findings.

This relationship lasted through May 2017, if not later. Ohr’s meetings with the FBI were meticulously recorded on formal FD 302s by the FBI agents, the Deputy Associate Attorney General of the United States having become, in effect, an FBI informant in order to circumvent Christopher Steele’s firing as an informant for egregious violations of FBI Guidelines. Steele sought Ohr’s intervention when Senators Lindsay Graham and Chuck Grassley referred him to the Department of Justice for prosecution because of lies he told the FBI. Steele also sought Ohr’s help in getting placed on Robert Mueller’s investigative team.

Boyd provides a lot of additional details of a part of the Mueller investigation that has so far barely been mentioned: the involvement of British intelligence. And on the link between Christopher Steele and Victoria Nuland.

 

Finally, Trump will push for Julian Assange to testify -with immunity- to probably the Senate Intelligence Committee (but there are alternative options) on what he knows about -potential- Russian involvement in US election meddling and hacking of DNC or RNC servers and computers. There’s no-one who know more on this than Assange, and he has evidence.

That his deal with the DOJ was killed by James Comey will be all the more impetus for Trump to hear what he has to say. For many people, it will appear ironic, but this may be Assange’s best bet to regain freedom.

The one person who can prove that there was never any collusion between Trump and Russia is locked up in a tiny embassy in London. And the one person who can get him out of there lives in the White House.