Jul 072025
 


Pablo Picasso Still life with fruit basket 1942

 

Trump Calls Musk A ‘Train Wreck’ (RT)
Some In GOP Say ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Will Only Cost $441 Billion By 2034 (JTN)
Bongino Drops a Truth Bomb Destroying the New York Times (Margolis)
Bongino Drops a Truth Bomb Destroying the New York Times (Margolis)
EU Trade Team Accepting Baseline Tariffs (CTH)
Zelensky’s Latest Call With Trump Was ‘Most Productive’ He’s Ever Had (ZH)
NATO Talk Becoming Toxic – Kiev (RT)
Moscow Outlines Why Zelensky Wants To Meet With Putin (RT)
NATO Chief ‘On Magic Mushrooms’ – Medvedev (RT)
Slovakia ‘Ready To Fight’ For Russian Gas – Fico (RT)
Superintelligence Will Never Arrive (Jim Rickards)
Fresh Obama-Biden Feud Details Are Here And They’re Delicious (Margolis)
Trump Lawsuit Exposes Uncomfortable Truths About Pulitzer Prizes (JTN)
When the Drones are Coming, They Turn Off the Internet (CTH)

 

 

https://twitter.com/MustangMedicX/status/1941590425879576811

Butler
https://twitter.com/TheGabriel72/status/1941925223411884368

 

 

 

 

Is this even a real feud?

Trump Calls Musk A ‘Train Wreck’ (RT)

US President Donald Trump has lashed out at Elon Musk over the tech billionaire’s plan to launch a new political party, accusing him of promoting “disruption and chaos” and undermining the stability of the American political system. In a post on Truth Social late Sunday, Trump criticized Musk for what he described as erratic behavior in recent weeks, calling the entrepreneur a “train wreck.” He claimed that Musk’s proposal to form a third party – dubbed the “America Party” – would fail and only serve to divide voters. “I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” Trump wrote. “He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States – the system seems not designed for them.”

“The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS,” the president added, accusing the Democratic Party for already bringing “enough of that.” Trump also defended his recently signed multitrillion-dollar spending package, dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which has drawn sharp criticism from Musk. The president claimed that the billionaire opposed the legislation only because it eliminated federal electric vehicle mandates that had benefited Musk’s business. Trump also took issue with Musk’s alleged attempt to have one of his associates appointed to run NASA, noting that the candidate was a Democrat and that the appointment would have raised concerns over a conflict of interest, given Musk’s ties to the space industry.

“My number one charge is to protect the American public!” Trump wrote. The remarks follow Musk’s announcement on Friday that he is moving ahead with the creation of the America Party, pledging to “give freedom back to the people” and attacking both major parties for “bankrupting” the country. The billionaire did not elaborate on how much progress he had made with the plan but briefly outlined his strategy and hinted that the first move could be expected “next year,” during the US midterm elections in November 2026, when 33 of the 100 Senate seats and all 435 House seats will be up for grabs. “The way we’re going to crack the uniparty system is by using a variant of how Epaminondas shattered the myth of Spartan invincibility at Leuctra: extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield,” Musk stated.

Musk previously insisted that his criticism of Trump and his policies was not about subsidies but was triggered by a sharp budget deficit hike he had been recruited to reduce. The tech billionaire was one of the key figures in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a much-hyped temporary organization established to cut budget costs and excessive federal spending. Since the honeymoon ended, Musk and Trump have been locked in a recurring war of words, with the US president accusing his former close ally of receiving more US government subsidies “than any human being in history,” threatening to sic DOGE on him, and even mulling a potential deportation of the South African-born entrepreneur.

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“..which budgetary baseline is used: the current law baseline, always used to calculate tax cut impact on the deficit, or the current policy baseline, always used to calculate federal spending impact on the deficit..”

Some In GOP Say ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Will Only Cost $441 Billion By 2034 (JTN)

Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” is under fire from budget watchdogs for permanently extending the bulk of the expiring 2017 tax cuts, a move that puts the total cost of the bill at $4.5 trillion and would lead to a primary deficit increase of $3.3 trillion by 2034. But Republican congressional leaders and the White House believe that a more accurate cost-analysis would zero out the impact of codifying the tax cuts, making the net cost of the budget reconciliation bill only $441 billion over the next decade. The drastic difference depends on which budgetary baseline is used: the current law baseline, always used to calculate tax cut impact on the deficit, or the current policy baseline, always used to calculate federal spending impact on the deficit.

Using the traditional current law baseline, however, would not allow Republicans to make the tax cuts permanent without having to find trillions more savings. So they adopted the current policy baseline in their version of the “big, beautiful bill,” breaking historical precedent. The Congressional Budget Office says this pivot merely papers over the true $3.3 trillion cost. Current law baseline assumes that extending tax cuts will directly cost the federal government however much taxpayers will save. But Republicans are arguing that maintaining existing tax rates should not be treated the same as a federal spending increase. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller noted in a social media post that “private money yet to be earned does not ‘belong’ to the government…CBO says maintaining *current* rates adds to the deficit, but by definition leaving these income tax rates unchanged cannot add one penny to the deficit.”

Miller and others also argue that the baseline disparity encourages fiscal irresponsibility by treating tax cliffs and spending cliffs differently. By using the current policy baseline for determining the cost of federal spending extensions, CBO assumes that perpetually reauthorizing expiring federal spending costs nothing, as it simply maintains the status quo. CBO also automatically accounts for inflation in appropriations spending, treating increased appropriations spending as an extension of current policy and thus having no impact on the deficit. The majority of budget analysts have countered that even if the scoring methods should be changed, it still won’t change the deficit impact of the “big, beautiful bill” and will set a dangerous precedent for future budget reconciliation bills.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget stated Wednesday that the Senate’s use of current policy baseline “poisons the environment for bipartisan budget and trust fund deals – by signaling that the majority party will unilaterally add to the debt by cutting taxes and pad their appropriations priorities.” House lawmakers are expected to vote on the Senate’s changes to the bill Wednesday. If they approve the Senate’s use of current policy baseline to score the tax cuts, they will open the door for any future majority party to use the same tactic.

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If so, name one reason why Ghislaine is in jail.

FBI Epstein Memo: No Clients, No Blackmail, Definitely Killed Himself (HUSA)

Deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein and his colleague, Ghislaine Maxwell, were both charged by the Justice Department with sex trafficking—and Maxwell was convicted. But according to the DOJ, the two apparently didn’t have any clients. In a bombshell FBI memo leaked to Axios and published Sunday night, officials said they’ve reviewed more than 300 gigabytes of Epstein evidence—and haven’t found any vast human trafficking or sexual blackmail operation. “This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’ There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” the unsigned memo said.

The FBI also reiterated its previous claim that Epstein did kill himself. In an attempt to demonstrate that Epstein’s cellblock was secure the night he purportedly killed himself, the FBI released footage from the once camera that was recording. However, the camera only showed a tiny sliver of a staircase leading to Epstein’s cell. According to a DOJ-OIG report released in 2023, only two cameras in Epstein’s housing unit were recording—and those cameras had numerous blind spots. The camera in Epstein’s cell block, which had at least three other inmates, wasn’t recording. Nor was the camera covering one of the elevator bays that led to Epstein’s floor. The DOJ-OIG report also revealed that prison officials actually knew about the malfunctioning cameras the day before Epstein died.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his staff interviewed an MCC technician, who started to repair the cameras on Aug. 8, 2019, but did not finish his work. The technician told the inspector general he had “no idea” why he did not stay at the facility to resolve the problem that day. Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide by hanging after he was found dead in his jail cell on August 10, 2019. But his lawyers contested that claim. Skeptics point to malfunctioning surveillance cameras, sleeping guards, and broken bones in Epstein’s neck as indications that his death was something other than suicide. Because of Epstein’s extensive fraternization with high-profile politicians and celebrities such as Bill Clinton, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, Prince Andrew and Bill Gates and many more, some claim that Epstein’s death was actually a hit job to silence him. Proponents of that theory include Epstein’s former partner, Maxwell, who’s serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.

“I believe that he was murdered. I was shocked, and I wondered, ‘How did this happen?’ Because I was sure he was going to appeal, and I was sure he was covered by the non-prosecution agreement,” Maxwell told British reporter Jeremy Kyle of TalkTV in 2023. The non-prosecution agreement referenced by Maxwell was a sweetheart deal Epstein signed with the Department of Justice in 2008, in which he pleaded guilty to a state charge of procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18. Epstein was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade, and was reportedly allowed to leave the jail on “work release” for up to 12 hours a day. After the Miami Herald published an expose on Epstein and his non-prosecution agreement in late 2018, Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York.

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From Bongino, whose office just released the Epstein memo: “..precisely why hard-working Americans simply do not trust the media.”

The media or the FBI?

Bongino Drops a Truth Bomb Destroying the New York Times (Margolis)

On Saturday, the New York Times editorial board published an article claiming that Trump’s “politicized FBI” has “made Americans less safe.” That’s rich. I’m old enough to remember when the Obama administration and the Biden administration actually did weaponize the FBI against Donald Trump. And I’m pretty sure everyone on the NYT editorial board is, too. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino wrote a scathing response to the article, calling it “precisely why hard-working Americans simply do not trust the media.” Bongino’s tweet, which quickly gained traction online, took direct aim at what he described as a “poorly thought out hit piece” that misrepresented the sweeping reforms he and Director Patel have implemented at the Bureau.

Bongino’s frustration was palpable as he laid out his case point by point, lambasting the Times for what he saw as a glaring lack of evidence to support their central claim. “The conclusion of the piece is so ridiculous that a child could debunk it,” Bongino wrote. He noted that the article’s authors “comically assert that you are ‘less safe’ because Kash and I have aggressively reformed the FBI. Yet, they produce NO evidence whatsoever to backup that claim. And the reason they don’t produced any evidence, is because the numbers tell the opposite story.”

Backing up his rebuttal with a barrage of statistics, Bongino offered a “small snippet of data points” that he says prove the effectiveness of the FBI’s new direction. Among the highlights, he touted the Bureau’s violent crime initiative, “Summer Heat,” which he notes has the murder rate “trending to be the lowest in U.S. history by a longshot.” He promised that “Summer Heat is coming to a city or town near you soon as we assist your community in removing criminal predators from the streets.” Bongino didn’t stop there. He detailed that the FBI’s renewed focus on violent crime has led to the arrest of 14,000 violent criminals—a 62% increase from the same period last year. “We rescued over one hundred children from being preyed on, while arresting over 825 violent child predators, and 140 human traffickers,” he added.

The numbers continued to pile up. Bongino reported that agents had “locked up 51 foreign intelligence operatives for spying and smuggling dangerous substances into our country.” He also highlighted the Bureau’s work with federal partners, stating, “we apprehended, imprisoned, and deported over 18,000 illegal aliens. Many of these illegal aliens had violent criminal histories. As a result, last month, again, ZERO illegals were admitted into our country. The same partners arrested nearly 800 rioters for attempting to stop enforcement operations.” Drug seizures were another point of pride: “We seized 44,000 kilos of cocaine, 3,500 kilos of meth, and 1,210 kilos of fentanyl in just the last few months. This is a 22% increase from the same time period last year.

“In addition, we locked up one of the most dangerous gang leaders in the county, and we dismantled gang operations in nearly every corner of the country, including the largest TDA gang takedown ever.” Bongino also noted progress on the FBI’s most wanted list: “We locked up 3 of the ‘Top-Ten’ most wanted FBI targets, and we’re closing in on another.” He hinted at further successes in counter-terrorism, stating, “I’d like to talk more about some of the incredible work being done by our counter-terror teams, but the information, as you would imagine, is classified. But I promise you, it’s happening.” The successes that Bongino reported are what happens when the FBI is focused on fighting crime, not settling political scores as it did under Obama and Biden. Yet the New York Times doesn’t care about facts, just their anti-Trump narrative.

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“There is no level of countervailing tariffs the EU can announce that impacts the position of Trump. Even if the EU were to end all trade with the USA, that only feeds into the goals and objectives of the Trump administration.”

EU Trade Team Accepting Baseline Tariffs (CTH)

The intransigent European Union are hitting a dead end with immovable Trump on the issue of tariffs. The resulting dynamic is what we would expect given 75 years of the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Plan) as part of the EU’s only point of reference. In order for the EU to maintain their socialistic form of government, they need to continue the economic benefits from one-way tariffs that exploits the American consumer market. President Trump’s plan to force reciprocity is against their entire economic foundation. The EU simply cannot fathom life without the status quo. In many ways the EU is in the same position as Canada. From their perspective, economic reciprocity is not sustainable; they would have to change their social compacts. This is the core of the conflict. The EU trade delegation hit a brick wall in Washington DC, as the U.S. trade team reiterated the baseline tariffs are not something within the negotiation dynamic.

BRUSSELS — “The European Union is weighing a provisional trade deal with the United States that would maintain a 10 percent tariff on most exports, the European Commission told EU ambassadors on Friday. The EU executive reported back after a crucial round of talks in Washington on Thursday, in which Trade Commissioner Mar os Sefkovic sought to head off a threat by President Donald Trump to impose a 50 percent tariff on all European goods from July 9 if no deal is reached.

In addition to the baseline tariff, conversations would continue on providing relief to specific industry sectors such as cars, two national officials cited top Commission officials as saying. The outcome fell short of expectations in European capitals after the Commission’s trade negotiating team had previously said the possibility of “up-front” tariff relief for some industries was under consideration. The U.S. levies 25 percent tariffs on cars and 50 percent on steel and aluminum. (read more)”

As we highlighted in term-1, these ongoing negotiations with the EU on the issues of trade are extremely challenging. However, in term-2 President Trump’s position is much simpler; why keep arguing about the same problem only to end up in negotiations of intransigence? Instead, if the EU is going to continue negotiations as a collective, President Trump is now favoring just sending the EU a letter informing them of the tariff rates applied to each of their industrial sectors. This is the most direct and impactful way to end the stalemate.

The EU cannot fathom the new level of ambivalence carried by President Trump, and by extension his trade team, toward the conversation. There is no level of countervailing tariffs the EU can announce that impacts the position of Trump. Even if the EU were to end all trade with the USA, that only feeds into the goals and objectives of the Trump administration. The EU has no power in this dynamic beyond their purchasing power, and if the EU doesn’t want to level the purchasing – thereby maintaining a trade deficit, then Trump will equalize the financial imbalance with tariffs. Canada is in the same position, hence their alignment with the EU.

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“..Trump said “It just seems like he wants to go all the way and just keep killing people. It’s not good. I wasn’t happy with it”..”

Zelensky’s Latest Call With Trump Was ‘Most Productive’ He’s Ever Had (ZH)

The White House rhetoric on Ukraine could be slowly shifting, after President Trump said he was “very unhappy” with a Thursday phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. After a single night’s record drone attack of some 500 UAVs sent on Ukraine, Trump said “It just seems like he wants to go all the way and just keep killing people. It’s not good. I wasn’t happy with it” – in reference to Putin. But it should be remembered that the White House just days prior halted some shipments of defense aid, which speaks louder than words. European allies are predictably upset and Kiev is now dealing very carefully with Washington, and handling Trump with kid gloves, given it is in a precarious situation on the battlefield. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, announced Saturday that his latest conversation with Trump this week was the best and “most productive” he has ever had.

“Regarding the conversation with the president of the United States, which took place a day earlier, it was probably the best conversation we have had during this whole time, the most productive,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “We discussed air defense issues and I’m grateful for the willingness to help. The Patriot system is precisely the key to protection against ballistic threats,” he added. Zelensky has also been asking Washington to slap more sanctions on Moscow, something Trump has so far resisted in order to give better space for peace negotiations to take off. Asked by reporters over whether Zelensky’s request for more Patriot missiles would be honored, Trump replied, “They’re going to need them for defense… They’re going to need something because they’re being hit pretty hard.”

Trump had further said of the Zelensky call, which happened Friday, “We talked about different things… I think it was a very, very strategic call.” This suggests that some new decision-making could be afoot regarding supplying Ukraine. There have been recent reports, however, that Trump is prioritizing defense of Israel, even diverting arms and ammo away from eastern Europe for that purpose. Trump has been expressing deep frustration at lack of momentum in US-backed peace efforts, for which he’s criticized both warring sides.

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Ukraine in NATO is a declaration of war.

NATO Talk Becoming Toxic – Kiev (RT)

Discussions with the West about NATO membership for Kiev have become increasingly tense and unproductive, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Georgy Tikhy has said, describing the talks as “toxic.” Western nations initially backed Kiev’s aspirations to join the US-led bloc, but Ukraine’s military struggles and shifting American policies have led to a decline in support. The dialogue with NATO partners has now reached a dead end, Tikhy lamented in an interview on the YouTube channel of journalist Aleksandr Notevsky on Friday. “All the arguments and counterarguments have already been presented, and each new round of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to NATO goes in circles,” he stated. The discussions “have become, to put it simply, very toxic,” he added.

Ukraine formally applied for fast-track NATO membership in September 2022, months after the escalation of the conflict with Russia. Although the bloc has consistently stated that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” it has never set a specific time frame for accession. At the 2023 NATO summit, the requirement for Ukraine to complete the Membership Action Plan was removed, thus simplifying the path to membership. However, the final communique only stated that an invitation would be extended “when allies agree and conditions are met,” without providing concrete timelines or criteria. Ukraine’s future membership was discussed at last year’s NATO summit and the joint communique explicitly reaffirmed that Kiev’s accession was inevitable.

Since then, however, a number of leaders of NATO countries have soured on the idea, weighing the risks of further escalation with Russia and the bloc’s long-term security priorities. US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has been more emphatic, stating that Kiev “can forget about” joining the NATO, noting that its attempts to do so were “probably the reason the whole thing started,” referring to the Ukraine conflict. At the recent NATO summit in June, Ukraine was barely mentioned in the final communique, while its leader, Vladimir Zelensky, failed to secure support for Kiev’s future membership. Russia has repeatedly characterized Ukraine’s attempt to join NATO as a red line and one of the root causes of the conflict. Moscow has demanded that Kiev legally commit to never joining any military alliance.

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It would solve his credibility issues.

Moscow Outlines Why Zelensky Wants To Meet With Putin (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is seeking a personal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to defend his claims to legitimacy and resist Western attempts to push him out of power, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Zelensky’s presidential term expired last year, and Moscow views him as illegitimate. In an interview with First Sevastopol TV released on Saturday, Zakharova was asked why she believes the Ukrainian leader is so insistent on meeting with Putin. “Because he needs to reaffirm his legitimacy, not through legal procedures, but by any other means to prove that he is in power,” she stated. Zelensky’s five-year presidential term ended in May 2024, but he refused to hold a new election, citing martial law.

Moscow has declared him illegitimate, insisting that under Ukrainian law, legal authority now rests with the parliament. According to Zakharova, Zelensky also seeks a meeting with Putin because he is driven by “a monstrous fear of being consigned to oblivion.” “He is insanely afraid of being forgotten, of becoming unnecessary for the West. That somehow the West will sideline him. And you can see he doesn’t step away from the microphones. I think he already sleeps with a webcam,” she said. Zelensky has on numerous occasions insisted that he wants to meet with Putin, describing this as a prerequisite for peace.

In May, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested that a meeting between Putin and Zelensky could be possible, but only after negotiations between Moscow and Kiev reach “specific arrangements” on various diplomatic tracks. This year, Russia and Ukraine held two rounds of direct talks, which did not result in a breakthrough with regard to ending the conflict, but led to several prisoner exchanges.

In June, Putin said he was open to meeting with Zelensky, but suggested that the Ukrainian leader lacks legitimacy for signing binding agreements. “I am ready to meet with anyone, including Zelensky. That’s not the issue – if the Ukrainian state trusts someone to conduct negotiations, by all means, let it be Zelensky. The question is different: Who will sign the documents?” In autumn 2022, Zelensky signed a presidential decree banning talks with the current Russian leadership, after the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye voted in referendums to join Russia. Though Zelensky has not canceled the decree, he has since insisted that it only applies to other Ukrainian politicians, not to himself.

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“..these are simply attempts to create an artificial external enemy in order to justify such a militaristic line to militarize Europe.”

NATO Chief ‘On Magic Mushrooms’ – Medvedev (RT)

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has mocked NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte for suggesting that Beijing might ask Moscow to attack NATO territory in Europe as a diversion if China decides to make a move on Taiwan. Rutte, speaking to the New York Times on Saturday, said Chinese President Xi Jinping may tell his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin: “I’m going to do this, and I need you to keep them busy in Europe by attacking NATO territory.” He also urged stronger NATO defenses, warning that “if we don’t, we’ll have to learn Russian.” “SG Rutte has clearly gorged on too many of the magic mushrooms beloved by the Dutch,” Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on X on Saturday.

“He sees collusion between China & Russia over Taiwan, and then a Russian attack on Europe. But he’s right about one thing: he should learn Russian. It might come in handy in a Siberian camp,” Medvedev joked, hinting at the harsh conditions at the region’s remote prison camps. Beijing, which considers Taiwan its own territory under its One China policy, has repeatedly demanded that the US and its allies stop interfering in China’s internal affairs. Washington, however, continues to supply weapons to Taiwan. Russia supports the Chinese position, condemning Western arms sales and diplomatic visits to the island. Moscow has also repeatedly dismissed claims that it plans to attack NATO, calling such statements baseless and part of Western scaremongering.

The Kremlin has maintained that “these are simply attempts to create an artificial external enemy in order to justify such a militaristic line to militarize Europe.” Russian officials have also argued that European NATO countries are using the supposed Russia threat to deflect from their own domestic problems. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the “old horror story about the Russian bear” an easy excuse in light of economic stagnation and falling standards of living in Europe. At its recent summit, NATO members discussed increasing defense spending targets to 5% of GDP, though no formal agreement was reached. Some European nations expressed concern that such a level would be a heavy financial burden, potentially straining domestic budgets and public support for defense policies.

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“..the phase-out means “fighting for our households and businesses” so they won’t bear the costs of “harmful ideological decisions” from Brussels..”

Slovakia ‘Ready To Fight’ For Russian Gas – Fico (RT)

Slovakia is “ready to fight” for its right to import Russian gas and will continue to block Brussels’ proposals to phase out Russian energy, Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Saturday. Fico stressed that energy security is a strategic priority for Slovakia, and that EU efforts to change its supply mix threaten national sovereignty. Slovakia vetoed the EU’s 18th round of sanctions on Russia for the second time on Friday, citing concerns over the RePowerEU plan, which seeks to cut Russian energy imports by 2028. The plan is being discussed alongside sanctions targeting Russia’s energy and financial sectors. Brussels is seeking to pass the phase-out as trade legislation – requiring only a qualified majority.

Fico insists, however, that the plan amounts to sanctions and must be unanimously approved. He previously warned that the move could jeopardize energy security, raise prices, and trigger costly arbitration with Gazprom over Slovakia’s long-term energy contract. Speaking during celebrations for Slovakia’s Saints Cyril and Methodius Day, Fico called the phase-out plan a “disruption” of Slovakia’s national interests.“We refuse to support another sanctions package against the Russian Federation, unless we know who will protect us, and how, and compensate for the damage that will be caused to Slovakia by the ideological proposal of the European Commission to stop supplies of Russian gas,” he said. “Slovakia wants to be sovereign and self-determined. And we must answer whether we are ready to fight for it. I am ready to fight this difficult battle. We are going to get through it.”

Fico added that vetoing the phase-out means “fighting for our households and businesses” so they won’t bear the costs of “harmful ideological decisions” from Brussels. He went on to say that Slovakia is at a crossroads – between giving in to pressure from “bureaucratic structures” in Brussels and defending its interests. He urged the public to choose the latter and accused the EU of ignoring national interests and violating international law by forcing harmful policies onto member states. Fico argued that Slovakia must pursue cooperation “based on equality and mutual benefit,” not external political agendas.

Hungary has also blocked the Russian energy phase-out plan, with Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto warning that it would “destroy Hungary’s energy security” and cause price spikes. Moscow has condemned the Western sanctions as illegal and counterproductive, particularly those targeting energy, noting that energy prices in the EU surged after the initial sanctions on Russia were introduced in 2022. Russian officials warn that the EU’s rejection of Russian supplies will push it toward more expensive imports or rerouted Russian energy via intermediaries.

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“.. I use the HiPerGator in connection with my work for the Florida Institute of National Security, which uses AI to explore kinetic and financial war fighting scenarios. I have built extensive neural networks that will be running on the HiPerGator.”

Superintelligence Will Never Arrive (Jim Rickards)

Readers know at least two things about artificial intelligence (AI). The first is that an AI frenzy has been driving the stock market higher for the past three years even with occasional drawdowns along the way. The second is that AI is a revolutionary technology that will change the world and potentially eliminate numerous jobs, including jobs requiring training and technical skills. Both points are correct with numerous caveats. AI has been driving the stock market to record highs, but the market has the look and feel of a super-bubble. The crash could come anytime and bring the market down by 50% or more. That’s not a reason to short the major stock indices today. The bubble can last longer than anyone expects.

If you short the indices, you can lose a lot of money being wrong. But it is advisable to lighten up on equity allocations and increase your allocation to cash in order to avoid the worst damage when the crash does come. On the second point, AI will make some jobs obsolete or easily replaceable. Of course, as with any new technology, it will create new jobs requiring different skills. Teachers will not become obsolete. They’ll shift from teaching the basics of math and reading, which AI does quite well, to teaching critical thinking and reasoning, which computers do poorly or not at all. Changes will be pervasive, but they will still be changes and not chaos.

Artificial Intelligence is a powerful force, but there’s much less there than meets the eye. AI may be confronting material constraints in terms of processing power, training sets and electricity generation. Semiconductor chips keep getting faster and new ones are on the way. But these chips consume enormous amounts of energy, especially when installed in huge arrays in new AI data centers. Advocates are turning to nuclear power plants, including small modular reactors to supply the energy needs of AI. This demand is non-linear, which means that exponentially larger energy sources are needed to make small advances in processing output. AI is fast approaching practical limits on its ability to achieve greater performance.

This near insatiable demand for energy means that the AI race is really an energy race. This could make the U.S. and Russia the two dominant players (sound familiar?) as China depends on Russia for energy and Europe depends on the U.S. and Russia. Sanctions on Russian energy exports can actually help Russia in the AI race because natural gas can be stored and used in Russia to support AI and cryptocurrency mining. It’s the law of unintended consequences applied to the short-sighted Europeans and the resource-poor Chinese.

Another limitation on AI, which is not well known, is the Law of Conservation of Information in Search. This law is backed up by rigorous mathematical proofs. What it says is that AI cannot find any new information. It can find things faster and it can make connections that humans might find almost impossible to make. That’s valuable. But AI cannot find anything new. It can only seek out and find information that is already there for the taking. New knowledge comes from humans in the form of creativity, art, writing and original work. Computers cannot perform genuinely creative tasks. That should give humans some comfort that they will never be obsolete.

A further problem in AI is dilution and degradation of training sets as more training set content consists of AI output from prior processing. AI is prone to errors, hallucinations (better called confabulations) and inferences that have no basis in fact. That’s bad enough. But when that output enters the training set (basically every page in the internet), the quality of the training set degrades, and future output degrades in sync. There’s no good solution to this except careful curation. If you have to be a subject matter expert to curate training sets and then evaluate output, this greatly diminishes the value-added role of AI.

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“That’s all Biden ever was in that ticket: window dressing for a green senator trying to look presidential.”

Fresh Obama-Biden Feud Details Are Here And They’re Delicious (Margolis)

It’s no secret anymore that Barack Obama and Joe Biden were hardly the BFFs that the latter claimed them to be. According to reports, Obama was a key player in the coup to force Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 election, and Biden is naturally very bitter about it. But the latest revelations about their toxic dynamic during the campaign go beyond personal bitterness. They expose a level of dysfunction within the Democratic Party that’s so raw and chaotic, it would make even veteran political insiders wince. A forthcoming book about the 2024 election has exposed what many conservatives suspected all along: Obama never really believed Biden was fit for a second term, and he wasn’t shy about letting everyone know it.

When the two met for lunch at the White House in 2023, Obama walked away “slightly incredulous” that Biden was even attempting another run, according to a report from The Guardian, which received an advance copy of the book. But here’s where it gets really good: Obama didn’t just keep his doubts to himself. After that lunch, the former president made a beeline for Biden’s senior staff, many of whom had previously worked under him, and delivered a brutal assessment that should have ended Biden’s campaign right there. “Your campaign is a mess,” Obama told them, cutting through any pretense of unity or support. This wasn’t constructive criticism from a concerned party elder—this was a public execution disguised as friendly advice.

The organizational chaos Obama identified was glaring. Biden’s team had split their operations between Washington and Wilmington, a decision that even Biden himself privately admitted was problematic. The Wilmington base was supposed to showcase Biden’s everyman appeal and Delaware roots, but Obama recognized it for what it really was: a logistical nightmare that would hamstring any serious campaign effort. The attempted fix reveals just how dysfunctional things had become. They shuffled Jen O’Malley Dillon to Wilmington as campaign manager while keeping Mike Donilon in Washington as chief strategist. This geographic split epitomized the kind of amateur-hour decision-making that Obama was calling out, and predictably, it solved nothing.

What makes this story particularly delicious is how Biden’s staff reacted to Obama’s intervention. According to the book, some of them thought Obama was being a “prick” and felt he “disrespected and mistreated Biden.” The irony is palpable—these same staffers who spent eight years watching Biden serve as Obama’s “loyal” vice president were now discovering what many had suspected: Obama’s respect for Biden was always conditional and largely performative. Let’s be honest—conservatives saw this coming back in 2008. Joe Biden was a non-factor in the Democratic primary, barely registering in the polls and flaming out after a humiliating finish in Iowa. He wasn’t chosen for his political prowess or popular appeal—he was picked because Obama needed an “elder statesman” to paper over his lack of experience. That’s all Biden ever was in that ticket: window dressing for a green senator trying to look presidential.

And that’s precisely what makes this behind-the-scenes drama so revealing. It underscores the same glaring weakness that’s followed Biden from the moment he sought the presidency. Even his own party’s most prominent figure couldn’t pretend he was up to the job—because deep down, they all knew he never was.

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The Pulitzer Prize will never be the same.

Trump Lawsuit Exposes Uncomfortable Truths About Pulitzer Prizes (JTN)

President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board is forcing into the public eye uncomfortable revelations about how the news industry’s top prize giver handled the unraveling of Russia collusion allegations, exposing conflicts in testimony and an admission that people other than Trump complained about its 2018 awards to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of the now-discredited scandal. While the litigation in an Okeechobee County, Florida courthouse makes its way to the Florida Supreme Court, new admissions by the intelligence community have undercut the factual basis underlying some of the stories that won the two newspapers the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting.

One of those stories was a December 2017 report by The Washington Post that accused Trump of ignoring or trying to downplay U.S. intelligence claims that Putin tried to help him win the 2016 election. “Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy and supported his run for the White House,” the Post’s award-winning story declared. While there remains widespread consensus inside U.S. spy agencies that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton, the narrative the news stories spawned — namely, that Russia’s intent was to help Trump win the election — is disputed.

The claim that Putin was specifically trying to help Trump was included in a December 2016 Obama administration intelligence community assessment (ICA), but in fact there were concerns about that claim and the way that review was done inside the intelligence community, according to new evidence made public this month. CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealed last week that the two top career CIA officials for Russia directly objected to former Director John Brennan’s inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Obama-era ICA and that its conclusion that Russia’s intent was to help Trump was not strongly supported by the evidence. Ratcliffe’s new report directly assailed the Obama-era Russia assessment that anchored the Post’s December 2017 story, concluding it suffered from significant failures of spy tradecraft and other irregularities.

“The procedural anomalies that characterized the ICA’s development had a direct impact on the tradecraft applied to its most contentious finding. With analysts operating under severe time constraints, limited information sharing, and heightened senior-level scrutiny, several aspects of tradecraft rigor were compromised—particularly in supporting the judgment that Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win,” the Ratcliffe report concluded. [..] The new admissions by U.S. intelligence last week aren’t the only ones undercutting entries in the Times’ and Post’s award-winning submissions. Just the News reported in April that newly released FBI interviews with former National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers, a Navy admiral, show that the former spy chief directly refuted a Post article submitted in the Pulitzer-winning package that claimed Trump had “asked intelligence chiefs to push back against the FBI collusion probe” after former FBI Director James Comey “revealed its existence.” Rogers called the article’s assertions “wrong.”

“The interviewing team read to Rogers a quote from a media source that stated ‘President Trump urged [Rogers] to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election’ and ADM Rogers responded that the media characterization was wrong, and the President had asked about the existence of SIGINT [signals intelligence] evidence only,” the FBI report quoted Rogers as saying. Former Special Prosecutor John Durham concluded there was never any evidence that Trump colluded with Russia or Putin to hijack the 2016 election, and that the FBI engaged in significant wrongdoing in pursuing the case, including falsifying evidence and misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get permission to spy on Trump advisers.

Despite Durham’s findings and the newly released FBI and intelligence documents, the Pulitzer Prize Board has stood by the Times’ and Post’s reporting and its decision to honor them as examples of journalistic excellence. In 2022, it issued a statement saying two separate reviews found no problems with the winning articles. “Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other,” the Pulitzer Board stated. “The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes. The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.”

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“Can Russia beat Europe in modern warfare? Well, turn off the electricity, turn off the internet and see what happens to social society in Prague, Rome or any region in Europe when the sirens start.”

When the Drones are Coming, They Turn Off the Internet (CTH)

Some thoughts on what I would call ‘modern warfare’ for citizen preppers. Some of this experience may pertain to urban areas, some perhaps pertinent overall. Dimitri’s wife is grabbing her purse to go to the grocery store, when he casually says “it’s 5:45.” She just as ordinarily replies, “I’ve got cash.” Dimitri sees the slightly puzzled look on my face and flippantly notes, “they turn off the internet at six thirty now,” shrugs, and goes back to reading his paper. Perhaps similar to London life during the blitz. Various municipal govts coordinated the shut down of lights and people wait. Others got about doing what they needed to do, sirens notwithstanding. There is a familiar life amid modern drone warfare, and with the similar control of electricity comes the need to add internet. When the drones are coming they turn off the internet.

As I contemplate the contrasts in social resilience, my most familiar reference point is life after a hurricane. In Florida when we are dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane, no power, no water, no internet, etc., you adapt to life without modern technological conveniences. If you’ve ever lived amid the aftermath of natural disasters, you understand the need for a plan and quick adaptation. Do it a few times and adaption becomes ordinary. Horrible in ways, yes; awkward, certainly. But you take things in stride; overcome, figure out the optimal solution and keep moving. However, not everyone is prepared to consider a disruption an ‘inconvenience’ and many people who need consistency to retain stability end up in panic. I think long term readers well understand the reference. As Dimitri goes back to the paper my mind shifts to stuff I’ve heard in bits and pieces but never given context before.

I think about this U.S. ‘Space Force’ thing, and now realize there are people who have gamed out modern warfare more than we discuss as a western technological society. My mind also thinks about those reports I read a few years ago about various western govt offices concerned about the ability of Russia to target U.S. satellites. Suddenly I realize cell phone and telecommunication is not their concern. There’s no internet; the problem is bigger than a temporary outage of Uber. I wonder how the commercial air traffic between Kazan, Moscow and St Petersburg is not disrupted. Old school stuff applies. Meanwhile, the kids, lots of them are playing outside as kids do – apparently life amid modern drone warfare is resilient. No one is staring at the sky.

It is very odd to see how quickly a non-technology driven society can adapt to no electricity and no internet as an ordinary part of daily life. An entire nation just figures out the optimal solution, in part because their time between analog and digital has been short. Russians have a totally different context of dependency. I’m also starting to realize how the flexibility within a non-technological society is an asset in modern warfare. Turn off the internet in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or any major metropolitan area – how would life be impacted? I can only imagine the reactions from a generation who has never known life without wi-fi. It would be a very good intellectual exercise to think carefully about what your life would be like without cell phone coverage or internet services. There are more than a few people who have never learned to read a clock with hands.

In Russia when the drones are coming they turn off the internet and sometimes the electricity. Stores stay open; people do the ordinary things people do, the trains still run, the busses stay on schedule and you can still get a hot coffee and a sandwich just about anywhere, albeit sans Starbucks. Private taxis, Uber equivalents, switch seamlessly to line up at pick-up points without issue. Try to duplicate that rapid on/off precision in Boston, Miami or St Louis… see my point? Then extend those thoughts to Paris, Frankfurt, Warsaw or Helsinki. Dimitri is thinking about ordering a pizza, while I’m starting to realize why NATO countries are going bananas. Can Russia beat Europe in modern warfare? Well, turn off the electricity, turn off the internet and see what happens to social society in Prague, Rome or any region in Europe when the sirens start. Yeah, NATO is going bananas as Putin’s best non-discussed weapon just looms quietly.

Putin’s strongest weapon is essentially a social infrastructure akin to a nation full of people who can live in the aftermath of a hurricane without needing a digital screen to provide directions to the next six hours of their life. Again, somewhere, in some office complex deep in the bowels of some agency or bureaucracy, someone has ran models of this and yet I cannot find a reference anywhere to ordinary people talking about it. In the glovebox of every taxi in Russia you will find a paper map; when was the last time you saw one in the USA? When the drones come, they always turn off the internet and sometimes the electricity. How would we deal with that… Think about it.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Never

Renz

dog

Angels

Henry

https://twitter.com/TheFigen_/status/1941920348775010790

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 022018
 
 October 2, 2018  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Pieter Bruegel the Elder Children’s games 1560

 

US Gross National Debt Hits $21.5 Trillion in Fiscal 2018 (WS)
Average Stock Is Overvalued Somewhere Between Tremendously And Enormously (MW)
A Three-Way Train Wreck Is About to Derail the Markets (Rickards)
China Says Its Economy Is Slowing. PBOC May Be Preparing To Intervene (CNBC)
China Blocks Bad Economic News As Economy Slumps (ZH)
Real Estate Rage Signals Turn in Chinese Housing Market (IICS)
Di Maio Accuses EU Of Market ‘Terrorism’ Over Italy Budget (R.)
Greece Tests Creditors And The Markets With Its 2019 Spending Plans (CNBC)
Iran “Finalizing” Mechanism To Bypass SWIFT In Trade With Europe (ZH)
Alex Jones Sues Paypal For Infowars Ban (ZH)
The Woman Who Accuses Ronaldo of Rape (Spiegel)

 

 

They are only boom times BECAUSE the debt rises so fast.

US Gross National Debt Hits $21.5 Trillion in Fiscal 2018 (WS)

But wait — these are the Boom Times!

The US gross national debt jumped by $84 billion on September 28, the last business day of fiscal year 2018, the Treasury Department reported Monday afternoon. During the entire fiscal year 2018, the gross national debt ballooned by $1.271 trillion to a breath-taking height of $21.52 trillion. Just six months ago, on March 16, it had pierced the $21-trillion mark. At the end of September 2017, it was still $20.2 trillion. The flat spots in the chart below, followed by the vertical spikes, are the results of the debt-ceiling grandstanding in Congress: These trillions are whizzing by so fast they’re hard to see. What was that, we asked? Where did that go?

Over the fiscal year, the gross national debt increased by 6.3% and now amounts to 105.4% of current-dollar GDP. But this isn’t the Great Recession when tax revenues collapsed because millions of people lost their jobs and because companies lost money or went bankrupt as their sales collapsed and credit froze up; and when government expenditures soared because support payments such as unemployment compensation and food stamps soared, and because there was some stimulus spending too. But no – these are the good times.

Over the last 12-month period through Q2, the economy, as measured by nominal GDP grew 5.4%. “Nominal” GDP rather than inflation-adjusted (“real”) GDP because the debt isn’t adjusted for inflation either, and we want an apples-to-apples comparison. The increases in the gross national debt have been a fiasco for many years. Even after the Great Recession was declared over and done with, the gross national debt increased on average by $954 billion per fiscal year from 2011 through 2017.

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Katsenelson.

Average Stock Is Overvalued Somewhere Between Tremendously And Enormously (MW)

Here’s another, called the “Buffett Indicator.” Apparently, Warren Buffett likes to use it to take the temperature of market valuations. Think of this chart as a price-to-sales ratio for the entire U.S. economy, that is, the market value of all equities divided by GDP. The higher the price-to-sales ratio, the more expensive stocks are.

This chart tells a similar story to the first one. Though I was not around in 1929, we can imagine there were a lot of bulls celebrating and cheerleading every day as the market marched higher in 1927, 1928, and the first 10 months of 1929. The cheerleaders probably made a lot of intelligent, well-reasoned arguments, which could be put into two buckets: First: “This time is different” (it never is). Second: “Yes, stocks are overvalued, but we are still in the bull market.” (They were right about this until they lost their shirts.)

I was investing during the 1999 bubble. I vividly remember the “This time is different” argument of 1999. It was the New Economy vs. the old, and the New was supposed to change or at least modify the rules of economic gravity. The economy was now supposed to grow at a much faster rate. But economic growth over the past 20 years has not been any different than in the previous 20. Actually, I take that back — it’s been lower. From 1980 to 2000 the U.S. economy’s real growth was about 3% a year, while from 2000 to now it has been about 2% a year.

Finally, let’s look at a Tobin’s Q Ratio chart. This chart simply shows the market value of equities in relation to their replacement cost. If you are a dentist, and dental practices are sold for a million dollars while the cost of opening a new practice (phone system, chairs, drills, x-ray equipment, etc.) is $500,000, then Tobin’s Q Ratio is 2.0. The higher the ratio the more expensive stocks are. Again, this one tells the same story as the other two charts: U.S. stocks are extremely expensive — and were more expensive only twice in the past hundred-plus years.

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China foreign reserves under threat.

A Three-Way Train Wreck Is About to Derail the Markets (Rickards)

The U.S. trade war with China and China’s daunting debt problems are well understood by most investors. Coming U.S. sanctions on Iran and Iran’s internal economic problems are also well understood. What is not understood is how these two bilateral confrontations are intimately linked in a three-way tangle that could throw the global economy into complete turmoil and possibly escalate into war. Untangling and understanding these connections is one of the most important tasks for investors today. Let’s begin with the China debt bomb. As is apparent from the chart below, China has the largest volume of dollar-denominated debt coming due in the next 15 months.

The chart shows China with almost $100 billion of external dollar-denominated liabilities maturing before the end of 2019. But this debt wall is just the tip of the iceberg. This chart does not include amounts owed by financial institutions nor does it include intercompany payables and receivables. China’s total dollar debt burden is over $200 billion and towers over other emerging-market economy debt burdens. This wall of maturing debt might not matter if China had easy access to new finance with which to pay the debt and if its economy were growing at a healthy clip. Neither condition is true.

China has entered a trade war with the U.S., which will reduce the prospects of many Chinese companies and hurt their ability to refinance dollar debt. At the same time, China is trying to get its debt problems under control by restricting credit and tightening lending standards. But this monetary tightening also hurts growth. Selective defaults have already emerged among some large Chinese companies and certain regional governments. The overall effect is tighter monetary conditions, reduced access to foreign markets and slower growth all coming at the worst possible time.

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Yeah, sure, the PBOC may cut reserve requirement ratios, but there’s a reason for those requirements: shaky banks.

China Says Its Economy Is Slowing. PBOC May Be Preparing To Intervene (CNBC)

Beijing will likely take steps to mitigate the impact of the trade war with the U.S. as recent economic indicators from China point to a slowdown, an economist said on Monday. “We were calling for some slowdown, but the degree is much more than what we expected,” said Jeff Ng, chief economist for Asia at Continuum Economics, a research firm. Over the weekend, a private survey showed growth in China’s factory sector stalled after 15 months of expansion, with export orders falling the fastest in over two years, while an official survey confirmed a further manufacturing weakening. The official manufacturing index fell to a seven-month low of 50.8 in September, from 51.3 in August and below a Reuters poll forecast of 51.2.

That index has stayed above the 50-point mark for 26 straight months. A reading above 50 indicates expansion, while a reading below that signals contraction. But the Caixin/Markit Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell more than expected to 50.0 in September, from 50.6 in the previous month. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 50.5 on average. “I think we are expecting some more triple-R cuts by the end of the year … I think one more triple-R cut by end of the year,” Ng said, referring to possibility that the People’s Bank of China may cut reserve requirement ratios for banks in order to boost liquidity and growth.

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That should help.

China Blocks Bad Economic News As Economy Slumps (ZH)

China’s Shadow-banking system is collapsing (and with its China’s economic-fuel – the credit impulse), it’s equity market has become a slow-motion train-wreck, its economic data has been serially disappointing for two years, and its bond market is starting to show signs of serious systemic risk as corporate defaults in 2018 hit a record high. But, if you were to read the Chinese press, none of that would be evident, as The New York Times reports a government directive sent to journalists in China on Friday named six economic topics to be “managed,” as the long hand of China’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ have now reached the business media in an effort to censor negative news about the economy.

The New York Times lists the topics that are to be “managed” as: • Worse-than-expected data that could show the economy is slowing. • Local government debt risks. • The impact of the trade war with the United States. • Signs of declining consumer confidence • The risks of stagflation, or rising prices coupled with slowing economic growth • “Hot-button issues to show the difficulties of people’s lives.”

The government’s new directive betrays a mounting anxiety among Chinese leaders that the country could be heading into a growing economic slump. Even before the trade war between the United States and China, residents of the world’s second-largest economy were showing signs of keeping a tight grip on their wallets. Industrial profit growth has slowed for four consecutive months, and China’s stock market is near its lowest level in four years. “It’s possible that the situation is more serious than previously thought or that they want to prevent a panic,” said Zhang Ming, a retired political science professor from Renmin University in Beijing. Mr. Zhang said the effect of the expanded censorship strategy could more readily cause people to believe rumors about the economy. “They are worried about chaos,” he added. “But in barring the media from reporting, things may get more chaotic.”

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The Chinese think their property should hold value or gain. And of not, Beijing should make it.

Real Estate Rage Signals Turn in Chinese Housing Market (IICS)

Chinese homebuyers have demanded to return their housing in 2008, 2011 and 2014: each time the market price declined, but real estate rage first appeared in 2011. There was a report of real estate rage in Shanghai. The developer had slashed prices by one-third and homebuyers who purchased days or weeks responded by smashing up the sales office. “My house’s value has dropped by as much as one-third, and we have lost some 10,000yuan,” a homeowner surnamed Yang told Shanghai Daily. Real estate rage returned in early 2014. Angry homeowners in Hangzhou were upset for the same reason as those in Shanghai: the developer slashed prices. They flooded the developer’s office, but police were quickly on the scene.

“In 2008, 2011, 2014, there were three rounds of very obvious check-outs in the country. As long as the house price fell, the pre-purchasers began to reduce their prices.” Chongyuan Real Estate pointed out that the phenomenon of price reduction “rights” It has appeared from time to time, with 2011 being the most typical. According to public information, since September 2011, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Ningbo and other places have continued to reduce prices and defend their rights. The sales offices of various projects such as Vanke, Longhu and Hesheng have been destroyed, and some project owners have also physical conflict with security guards.

In September, there were several reports of “real estate rage” across the country. Instead of smashing offices, homeowners are protesting outside to “protect their rights” but the cause of their anger is the same: developers slashing prices to move inventory. While this evidence is anecdotal, there have been many reports about developers moving inventory to recoup cash. More importantly, both the 2011 and 2014 “real estate rage” incidents were coincident indicators of a housing market top.

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He’s at least partly right.

Di Maio Accuses EU Of Market ‘Terrorism’ Over Italy Budget (R.)

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio on Monday accused European Union officials of deliberately upsetting financial markets by making negative comments about Italy’s budget plans. “Some European institutions are playing … at creating terrorism on the markets,” said Di Maio, who is the head of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. He specifically took aim at European Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, saying he had deliberately “upset the markets” with earlier comments on Italy.

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Pension cuts may not be needed, but the IMF demands them regardless.

Greece Tests Creditors And The Markets With Its 2019 Spending Plans (CNBC)

Greece could be about to start another fight with its creditors and the financial markets. The government unveiled last evening the first draft of its 2019 budget plan in which two scenarios were put forward for its spending plans and economic targets for the coming year. One of them included planned and pre-legislated pension cuts, in line with its creditors’ expectations. The other spending plan does not include pension cuts, however, indicating that the Greek government is willing to make changes to reforms that it had previously agreed with its creditors.

The pension cuts were due to start in January and were one of the most difficult reforms to come to an agreement. Potential changes to pensions, or to other reforms, could spark confrontations with European institutions and the IMF. The IMF said last month that the 2019 pension cuts are part of the reforms that the Greek government agreed to, and that Greece needs to show it is investor-friendly. The 2019 budget is the first in nearly a decade without Greece being subject to a bailout program. Nonetheless, Athens promised on Monday to stick to fiscal targets that had agreed with its creditors. In fact, Greece has said it will over-deliver when it comes to its primary budget surplus.

Read more …

Iran gets desperate. But this may still work.

Iran “Finalizing” Mechanism To Bypass SWIFT In Trade With Europe (ZH)

Just days after Europe unveiled a “special purpose vehicle” meant to circumvent SWIFT and US monopoly on global dollar-denominated monetary transfers – and potentially jeopardizing the reserve status of the dollar – Iran said it was finalizing mechanisms for the oil trade to bypass US sanctions against the country, said Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. According to RT, Araghchi said that Tehran is not ruling out the possibility of setting up an alternative to the international payments provider SWIFT to circumvent sanctions imposed by Washington. “As we know, Europeans are also trying to see how SWIFT can continue working with Iran, or if a parallel [financial] messaging system is necessary… This is something that we are still working on,” Araghchi said.

According to the Iranian diplomat, the independent equivalent of the SWIFT system that was earlier suggested by the EU to protect European firms working in Iran from US sanctions will be available for third countries. “This is the important element in SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) that it is not only for Europeans but other countries can also use this. We hope that before the re-imposition of the second part of the US sanctions [from November 4], these mechanisms can be in place and be functional,” said the official. One can see why: the Iranian economy has been hit hard in recent days, and the Rial has plunged to all time lows, amid fears that the sanctions will cripple Iran’s most valuable export resulting in a shortage of hard currency, eventually leading to a replica of Venezuela’s economic collapse.

Read more …

Points also to Paypal’s de facto monopoly.

Alex Jones Sues Paypal For Infowars Ban (ZH)

Alex Jones’s company, Free Speech Systems, LLC, has sued PayPal for the its ban of Infowars because the controversial website “promoted hate and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions.” In the complaint filed by Jones’s lawyers, Marc Randazza Legal group, they accuse PayPal of banning Infowars “for no other reason than a disagreement with the message plaintiff conveys” and call ban “unconscionable” because PayPal has never advised users that “it might ban users for off-platform activity.”

“It is at this point well known that large tech companies, located primarily in Silicon Valley, are discriminating against politically conservative entities and individuals, including banning them from social media platforms such as Twitter, based solely on their political and ideological viewpoints,” Jones’ lawyers claim in the 15-page complaint. Jones claims PayPal’s decision was based purely on “viewpoint discrimination.” He also says the decision was made based on conduct that “had nothing to do with” the PayPal platform, which purportedly violates Infowars’ contract with the payment-processing giant. If PayPal’s decision were allowed to stand, it would set “a dangerous precedent for any person or entity with controversial views,” the lawsuit alleges.

Read more …

A few days old, and an odd one out for a Debt Rattle, I know. But Las Vegas police have yesterday involved re-opened the file. This comes after Ronaldo called the Spiegel article fake news, and one of the journalists posted 24 tweets detailing their investigation, saying they worked on it with 20 people for a long time, and have a strong legal team. Spiegel first opened the case in 2009, but the woman didn’t want to talk. She refused to name Ronaldo to police at the time as well.

The Woman Who Accuses Ronaldo of Rape (Spiegel)

She was supposed to be invisible, damned to silence. Forever. Nobody was to ever learn about that night in Las Vegas back in 2009, especially not her version of events. She even signed a settlement deal and received a payoff ensuring that she would never give voice to the accusations. She signed, she says, out of fear for herself and her family. And out of impotence, the inability to stand up to him. And out of the hope that she could finally put the incident behind her. But, says Kathryn Mayorga, she was never able to close that chapter. The American is a slender 34-year-old with long, dark hair and green eyes. Until recently, she worked at an elementary school. But she quit, she says, “because I need all my strength now.”

She needs the strength to stand up to the man who she accuses of having raped her nine years ago — accusations that he denies. The man isn’t just anybody. It is Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably the best soccer player in the world, with vast amounts of success, money and adoration from the fans. An anonymous woman versus Ronaldo — the discrepancy could hardly be greater. They met on June 12, 2009 in a Las Vegas nightclub. Ronaldo was there on vacation with his brother-in-law and cousin. It was the summer when the star, then 24, would transfer from Manchester United to Real Madrid for a then-record sum of 94 million euros.

Read more …

Apr 122018
 


The marine and the kitten, Korean War, 1952

 

It’s Pure Math – We’re Headed for a Train Wreck (USAW)
Licence to Kill (Le Monde Diplomatique)
It’s No Longer Advertising – It’s Behaviour Modification (BBC)
Zuckerberg’s Answer To Facebook’s Problems: More Facebook (Ind.)
The Uncomfortable Question: Is Facebook A Monopoly? (MW)
UK Economic Growth Has Fallen By Half (G.)
More Than 100,000 British Households Set To Be Homeless By 2020 (Ind.)
US Interest Payments Will Outpace Military Spending by 2023 (BBG)
The Deep State Closes In On The Donald, Part 1 (Stockman)
James Comey Is About To ‘Shock The President And His Team’ (MW)
Warrant for Catalan Minister Details ‘Violent Revolt’ (BBC)
New Zealand Bans All New Offshore Oil Exploration (G.)
Climate Change Could Trigger Volcanic Eruptions Across The World (Ind.)
Cities Around The World Should Prepare For Running Out Of Water (CNBC)
Gulf Stream Current At Its Weakest In At Least 1,600 Years (G>)

 

 

”What happens when the world figures out that three billion ounces of physical silver cannot and will not be delivered to the buyers? ”

It’s Pure Math – We’re Headed for a Train Wreck (USAW)

Financial writer and gold expert Bill Holter says China has a lot of weapons to fight a trade war with the U.S. China could stop buying Treasury bonds (as it reportedly already has done). It could sell Treasury bonds. It could slash the value of the Yuan, or something much simpler could happen such as a failed delivery of physical precious metals. Holter says, “If what has happened so far in the first three months of the year were to continue for the full year, you would be over three billion ounces (of silver). That is not deliverable.”What happens when the world figures out that three billion ounces of physical silver cannot and will not be delivered to the buyers?

Holter explains, “That’s called an old fashion run on the banks. “It will be a run on the entire system. You would have a run on every metals exchange, and you would probably have runs on many physical commodities. Confidence throughout the whole system would break. You would basically show the western fractional reserve system is a fraud and has been for many, many years. . . . Can London deliver a billion ounces, or two billion ounces or three billion ounces of silver? The answer to that is no.” So, when does this all blow up? Holter says, “I think this whole thing has a very good chance of blowing this year.”

There are a variety of financial trip wires, according to Bill Holter, such as thousands of sealed criminal indictments that will be unsealed in 2018. Holter also points out the explosion of global debt. Holter charges, “It’s now $237 trillion. The amount of debt grew by $21 trillion globally over the last 12 months. That’s roughly 10 %. How much did global GDP grow? 2% or 3%, I mean that is totally unsustainable.” The biggest worry for Holter right now is escalating military action in Syria. Holter warns, “This is so, so dangerous. Obviously, you worry about a hot war because with the weapons you have today, you could have WWIII start in a heartbeat. But look at the market today. It’s up 400 or 500 points. You have talk of trade wars. You have talk of hot wars. It’s amazing the markets can hold together and ignore potential annihilation.”

Read more …

These people are all the same.

Licence to Kill (Le Monde Diplomatique)

British police say their investigation into the poisoning of former Russian army colonel Sergei Skripal in Salisbury may take many months, yet prime minister Theresa May has already identified the guilty party, claiming the order came from the Kremlin. Foreign secretary Boris Johnson, sees the incident as ‘part of a pattern of reckless behaviour by President Vladimir Putin,’ which is the ‘common thread that joins [the poisoning] with [Russia’s] annexation of Crimea, the cyberattacks in Ukraine, the hacking of Germany’s parliament … interference in foreign elections’ and ‘indulgence of Assad’s atrocities in Syria’. The reasoning goes: if Putin is capable of doing it, then he must be guilty.

From Leon Trotsky, killed with an ice pick in Mexico, to Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with polonium in London, Russia’s security services have undoubtedly liquidated many opponents of the Kremlin living abroad. Other countries have resorted to such measures without triggering the same diplomatic uproar. France, Germany and the US have been involved in the kind of state-sponsored assassination that has so offended Johnson, yet this has not stopped them joining him and May in railing against Russia. Israel has taken great care to avoid commenting, perhaps because it is one of the countries that most frequently ‘carry out this kind of operation, known as an “extraterritorial elimination”’.

The list of Palestinians, including official representatives, killed by Israel’s secret service abroad makes the Russians look like amateurs: at least half a dozen in Paris alone, without serious consequences. Moroccan opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka also disappeared in Paris; the African National Congress’s chief representative in France, Dulcie September, and more recently three Kurdish activists, were assassinated there. Across the Atlantic, Orlando Letelier, a minister under former Chilean president Salvador Allende, was killed in Washington DC by agents of Augusto Pinochet, which did not stop Ronald Reagan from feting Pinochet; and Margaret Thatcher was happy to drink tea (without polonium) with the dictator and present him with a silver dish.

‘Extraterritorial elimination’ is also a fitting term for the US practice of killing presumed terrorists abroad with drones. Barack Obama officially authorised more than 2,300 such killings during his presidency. For his part, François Hollande has admitted to ordering extrajudicial killings of ‘enemies of the state’ when he was president (an average of one a month during his term), though none of his political allies reproached him for it during the Socialist Party primaries in January 2017. François de Rugy, who has since become president of France’s National Assembly, even said at the time: ‘Yes, it is sometimes necessary.’

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Core: “..it can no longer be called advertising any more – it has turned into behaviour modification.”

It’s a moot discussion anyway. People pay for their phone + subscription. Why wouldn’t they pay for social media too? Few bucks a month?!

Point is, Facebook make their money off of ads AND added benefits (sell data). They don’t want to be an ad-less platform. That would take away the benefits.

It’s No Longer Advertising – It’s Behaviour Modification (BBC)

An influential tech evangelist has called at the TED 2018 conference for an overhaul of Facebook and Google’s business models. Jaron Lanier, who is often referred to as a “father of virtual reality”, told the Vancouver event that the two firms should let users pay for their services as an alternative to relying on ads. “These companies need to change,” he said. But on Tuesday, Facebook’s chief suggested this would not be popular. “A number of people suggest that we should offer a version where people can not have ads if they pay a monthly subscription, and certainly we consider ideas like that,” Mark Zuckerberg told a panel of senators in Washington.

“But overall, I think that the ads experience is going to be the best one. “I think in general, people like not having to pay for a service. A lot of people can’t afford to pay for a service around the world,” Mr Zuckerberg added. Mr Lanier was a frequent TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) speaker during the 1980s. But, he said, even then he had realised that “the technology we needed and loved could also be our undoing”. “We made a very particular mistake in the 90s when early digital culture had this lefty, socialist mission, which meant that everything on the internet must be available for free,” he added. That decision led directly to the advertising model that allows Google and Facebook to flourish, he explained.

“In the beginning it was cute but as computers became more efficient and algorithms got better, it can no longer be called advertising any more – it has turned into behaviour modification.” It was, he said, a “tragic mistake” rather than a “wave of evil”, pointing out that he knew and loved many people working at the two tech empires. But, he explained, the advertising model had led to addictive social media platforms that rewarded people for sharing their information with “likes”. He also claimed that Google and Facebook had become as “hooked and trapped” on the advertising model as their users. “It is time to turn back the clock and remake that decision. Many people would pay for search and social networks,” Mr Lanier said.

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“..using data to target and shape behaviours is an integral part of social media.”

Zuckerberg’s Answer To Facebook’s Problems: More Facebook (Ind.)

As this hearing made painfully clear, using data to target and shape behaviours is an integral part of social media. It is the potential use of our data that is of real value. Data informed targeting is woven into Facebook’s DNA; the only way to change that is to change its structure and purpose. Under questioning Zuckerberg suggested that Facebook is going through a “broader philosophical shift”, taking them from simply producing tools for “empowering” people to the need now to take a “more proactive role” in “policing the ecosystem”. This implies that they seek an even more powerful position – both as producers and regulators – and a larger roll-out of their particular ideals and philosophies.

The answer to the problems of Facebook, it seemed to be suggested, is more Facebook and more of its current business model. The account was of a purer Facebook that gives you connectivity, voice and control of your information, untainted by any issues, missteps or unwanted players. An enhanced version of what we already have is what was being proposed as the solution. Putting the obvious problems to one side for the moment, the other question is whether we really share the ideals of Facebook.

The tone of this hearing was apologetic, but it leaves us to question if change is actually possible. We might trust Zuckerberg to be responsible, this doesn’t mean that we need to accept the ideals that are wrapped up in these media and the type of world that is being imagined. The problems clearly need attention, but we might also wonder about the ideals that will play such a powerful part in our collective future. The ideals and models of Facebook will continue to expand unless we think a little more about the future that we want to bring into existence.

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How is that a question?

The Uncomfortable Question: Is Facebook A Monopoly? (MW)

Asked by Graham if he felt Facebook had a monopoly, Zuckerberg replied, “It certainly doesn’t feel like that to me.” Senator Kamala Harris, the only Democrat to mention monopoly power during the hearing, noted later that Zuckerberg never really answered Graham’s question. “Every monopolist tries to enlarge the market definition such that his own share of it is insignificant,” said Marshall Steinbaum, the research director at the Roosevelt Institute, the nonprofit partner to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. “But the fact that he couldn’t name his competitors spoke volumes: Facebook controls the network over which information is proliferated, and it decides who sees what–always to its own benefit. That is a textbook monopolist and it is a company that in its current form cannot be allowed to exist.”

Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, noted that Zuckerberg told Graham that he didn’t think Facebook was a monopoly. “You’re obviously a big player in the space. That might be an area for competition, correct, if somebody else wants to create a social platform that allows a user to monetize their own data?” Johnson asked. Yes, says Zuckerberg. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, asked Zuckerberg if Facebook was too powerful. “All — really all over the world, the Facebook — 2 billion users, over 200 million Americans, 40 billion in revenue. I believe you and Google have almost 75% of the digital advertising in the U.S. Is — one of the key issues here, is Facebook too powerful? Are you too powerful? And do you think you’re too powerful?” asks Sullivan.

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Gee, what a surprise.

UK Economic Growth Has Fallen By Half (G.)

Economic growth in the UK is expected to have fallen by half in the opening months of the year, one of Britain’s leading forecasting bodies has said, amid renewed concerns for the health of the economy. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said growth was set to fall to 0.2% in the first quarter of 2018 from 0.4% in the final three months of last year, when the economy enjoyed a mini-recovery despite an overall slowdown in 2017 triggered by the Brexit vote. Amit Kara, head of UK macroeconomic forecasting at the thinktank, said the main reason for the weakness was severe weather in March, dubbed the “beast from the east” in the media, which was likely to have disrupted activity in all major sectors of the economy.

The estimate, which comes ahead of official figures from the Office for National Statistics later this month, followed news that Britain’s factories recorded a surprise fall in production in February, in the first drop in activity in the sector for almost a year. Confirming fears of a slowdown in the UK economy so far this year, figures from the ONS showed manufacturing output declined by 0.2% in February, falling well behind economists’ expectations for growth of 0.2%. There was also a sharp drop in construction output, suggesting continued pain for the industry amid the fallout from the collapse of Carillion. Monthly output unexpectedly fell by 1.6% in February, as builders were hit by the snow at the end of the month.

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One might think May et al have bigger things on their minds than going to war.

More Than 100,000 British Households Set To Be Homeless By 2020 (Ind.)

Tens of thousands more families will be trapped in temporary accommodation across England over the next two years if current homelessness trends continue, a report has warned. More than 100,000 households will be living in B&Bs, hostels and other forms of temporary housing by 2020, as rising housing costs and insecure work continue to “lock” people into poverty, according to research commissioned by Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). The annual Homelessness Monitor shows that 70% of local authorities in England are struggling to find any stable housing for homeless people in their area, while a striking 89% reported difficulties in finding private rented accommodation.

As a result, many councils have found themselves forced to place ever more homeless people in emergency housing, including B&Bs and hostels, leading to urgent calls for more permanent and genuinely affordable homes to be built. Government figures published last month revealed almost 79,000 families were staying in temporary housing in the last three months of last year because they didn’t have a permanent home, compared with 48,010 in the same period eight years before. There had been a significant reduction in families living in such conditions before the coalition government came into power, with the number having fallen by 52% between 2004 and 2010 under the Labour government.

But the figure has crept up in each of the past seven years, from 69,140 in the last quarter of 2015, to 75,740 in the same period in 2016 and 78,930 at the end of last year. The new report warns that if current trends continue, with housing supply “dwindling” and rents outstripping wages and benefits, more than 100,000 such households will fall into this trap by 2020.

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Unless they go to war.

US Interest Payments Will Outpace Military Spending by 2023 (BBG)

The head of the Congressional Budget Office warned lawmakers that the U.S. government is on track to pay more to its creditors than on its own military, as interest rates and debt levels continue to climb. CBO chief Keith Hall told the Senate Budget Committee Wednesday that America’s net interest payments will triple over the coming decade, outpacing military expenditures. He called the data point “one of my favorite figures” used to highlight the challenges posed by the country’s ballooning debt. His office’s budget and economic forecasts, published Monday, show net interest payments first outstripping defense outlays in fiscal 2023 and reaching $915 billion five years later.

The increase will come as debt held by the public almost doubles to $28.7 trillion in fiscal 2028 from this year, according to the CBO, a non-partisan arm of Congress. “My point is that the interest cost is just starting to swamp things like defense spending,” Hall said. “Whatever the fix is going to be, it needs to be something that’s pretty big.”

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“..when you consider the broader context and what the Russian side is now saying, it is just plain idiotic to own the S&P 500 at 24X.”

The Deep State Closes In On The Donald, Part 1 (Stockman)

Perhaps we have missed something: Like the possibility that the canyons of Wall Street are actually located on another planet several light years from earth! Otherwise, how can you explain the equipoise of a stock market sitting at the tippy-top of a nine-year bubble expansion and confronted with the potential outbreak of World War Three? Folks, like some alien abductors, the Deep State has taken the Donald hostage, and with ball-and-chain finality. Whatever pre-election predilection he had to challenge the Warfare State has apparently been completely liquidated. Trump’s early AM tweet today, in fact, embodies the words of a man who had more than a few screws loose when he took the oath, but under the relentless pounding of the Imperial City’s investigators, partisans, apparatchiks and lynch-mob media has now gone stark raving mad. To wit:

“….Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it! Yes, maybe Wall Street has figured out that the Donald is more bluster than bite. Yet when you consider the broader context and what the Russian side is now saying, it is just plain idiotic to own the S&P 500 at 24X. After all, earnings that have been going nowhere for the past three years (earnings per share have inched-up from $106 in September 2014 to $109 in December 2017), and now could be ambushed by a hot war accident in Syria that would rapidly escalate. Indeed, did the robo-machines and boys and girls down in the casino not ponder the meaning of this message from the Kremlin? It does not leave much to the imagination:

#Russian ambassador in beirut : “If there is a strike by the Americans on #Syria , then… the missiles will be downed and even the sources from which the missiles were fired,” Zasypkin told Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, speaking in Arabic. Sure, the odds are quite high that the clever folks in the Pentagon will figure out how to keep the pending attack reasonably antiseptic. That is, they will bomb a whole bunch of places in Syria where the Russians and Iranians are not (after being warned); and also deploy stand-off submarine platforms to launch cruise missiles and high-flying stealth aircraft to drop smart bombs, thereby keeping American pilots and ships out of harm’s way. Then, after unleashing the Donald’s version of “shock and awe” they will claim that Assad has just received the spanking of his life and that the Russians and Iranians have been messaged with malice aforethought.

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How to sell a book.

James Comey Is About To ‘Shock The President And His Team’ (MW)

‘How strange is it for you to sit here and compare the president to a mob boss?’ That’s the question ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked James Comey in a teaser for an interview set to air Sunday night at 10 p.m. as a “20/20” special. A source told Axios that what the former FBI director had to say during that interview is “going to shock the president and his team” and “certainly add more meat to the charges swirling around Trump.” The source added that the interview included information that’s never been divulged before and left people in the room “stunned.” Comey apparently answered every question. The five-hour interview was taped Monday at his Washington-area home ahead of the release of his book, “A Higher Loyalty,” which comes out Tuesday.

Comey is about to go on a promotional media blitz, according to Politico, including a live interview with CNN on April 19, a visit to MSNBC the same day, an interview on Fox News on April 26 and one with PBS NewsHour on April 30. The book, already topping Amazon’s best-seller list, is expected to reveal details about Trump pressuring Comey to shut down at least part of the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the election and other related issues. Separately, Dana Boente, the FBI’s general counsel who had led the Russia investigation in the early days of the Trump administration, has been asked to testify by Mueller, according to a letter obtained by MSNBC.

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A sick joke.

Warrant for Catalan Minister Details ‘Violent Revolt’ (BBC)

A former Catalan minister fighting extradition from Scotland to Spain faces charges of causing widespread violence against police. BBC Scotland has obtained a copy of the European arrest warrant for former education minister Clara Ponsatí. The St Andrews University professor is wanted in Spain on charges of rebellion and misappropriation of public funds. Ms Ponsati’s lawyer Aamer Anwar said: “My client Clara Ponsati utterly refutes the charges.” He added: “Clara is an esteemed University professor who has never committed a criminal act in her life.

As an education minister for just over two months along with her government she promoted a peaceful referendum, yet if extradited and convicted could face a sentence of up to 33 years, thus facing the real prospect of spending the rest of her natural life in prison. “We are instructed to submit that this warrant is a desperate and politically motivated prosecution by the Spanish authorities. Across Europe lawyers have already successfully challenged the credibility of the charges of violent rebellion. “Now in Scotland Clara is accused of orchestrating violence, yet the warrant fails in over 19 pages to ever specify a single act of violence or incitement attributable to her.” The warrant includes lengthy details of violent confrontations at polling stations across the region.

Prof Ponsatí is being pursued by the Spanish government over her involvement in last year’s Catalan independence referendum, which was ruled illegal by Spanish courts. She handed herself in to police in Edinburgh in March, and was subsequently released on bail following a preliminary hearing. The case is due to call in the Scottish courts again on Thursday. The arrest warrant says that the more serious crime of rebellion applies to those “who revolt violently and publicly” for purposes including “declaring the independence of a part of the national territory.”

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“Half the world’s whale and dolphin species visit or live in New Zealand waters..”

New Zealand Bans All New Offshore Oil Exploration (G.)

The New Zealand government will grant no new offshore oil exploration permits in a move that is being hailed by conservation and environmental groups as a historic victory in the battle against climate change. The ban will apply to new permits and won’t affect the existing 22, some of which have decades left on their exploration rights and cover an area of 100,000 sq km. The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said her government “has a plan to transition towards a carbon-neutral future, one that looks 30 years in advance”. “Transitions have to start somewhere and unless we make decisions today that will essentially take effect in 30 or more years’ time, we run the risk of acting too late and causing abrupt shocks to communities and our country.”

The Labour coalition government was elected last year and made tackling climate change one of the cornerstones of its policies, committing to transition to 100% of electricity generation from renewable sources by 2035 and making the economy carbon neutral by 2050. Greenpeace New Zealand said the government’s announcement was a “historic moment” for the country and “a huge win for our climate and people power”. Last month Ardern accepted a 50,000-strong Greenpeace petition calling for an end to offshore oil and gas exploration. “The tide has turned irreversibly against big oil in New Zealand,” said the Greenpeace New Zealand executive director, Russel Norman.

[..] the Forest & Bird conservation group said the ban was a “huge step forward” for the country and sent a message to the oil and gas industry that New Zealand waters were no longer “their playground”. “Half the world’s whale and dolphin species visit or live in New Zealand waters, from the critically endangered Maui’s dolphin to giant blue whales,” said the group’s chief executive, Kevin Hague.

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Instability.

Climate Change Could Trigger Volcanic Eruptions Across The World (Ind.)

Besides having a disastrous impact on sea levels and weather, a warming climate could also trigger catastrophic volcanic eruptions across the planet Volcanic eruptions alter the climate by spewing smoke and ash into the atmosphere, but scientists now also think the opposite might be true – changes in climate could actually cause volcanic eruptions. According to Gioachino Roberti, a PhD student at the University of Clermont Auvergne, glaciers can suppress volcanic eruptions by providing mountains with structural stability. As the climate becomes warmer, ice melting from these mountains removes support from their slopes, potentially leading to landslides and collapse.

“Imagine the ice like some sort of protective layer – when the ice melts away, the mountain is free to collapse,” said Mr Roberti. “If your mountain is a volcano you have another problem. “Volcanoes are a pressurised system and if you remove pressure by ice melting and landslide, you have a problem.” Presenting his work at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly, Mr Roberti explained a case study he and his collaborators had investigated in Canada. Though not famous for its volcanic activity, Canada is home to hundreds of potentially active volcanoes. The scientists chose to focus on Mount Meager, a glaciated volcano north of Vancouver.

Mount Meager’s last eruption was over 2000 years ago, but Mr Roberti chose to focus on Mount Meager for a more recent natural disaster that took place there. In summer 2010, the largest landslide in Canadian history occurred on the southern part of the volcano. “The glacier base of the slope retreated and during the hottest part of the summer, the slope catastrophically failed – the whole mountain started to move at a very high velocity,” said Mr Roberti. This was followed in 2016 by the formation of ice caves in the glacier as hot volcanic gases seeped out of the volcano. “This is the first time this has happened there – so the equilibrium of the mountain is changing,” said Mr Roberti.

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They won’t until it’s too late.

Cities Around The World Should Prepare For Running Out Of Water (CNBC)

It’s called “Day Zero”: when Cape Town, South Africa’s bustling port city, sees its water taps run dry, and its population thrust into a perilous situation. Originally projected for this year, the impending crisis has been delayed in part by severe measures — the city instituted restrictions that amount to less than one sixth of an average American’s water consumption. Yet despite that effort, “Day Zero” is still projected to arrive next year. And when it comes, the crisis will see the government switching off all the taps and rationing the resource through collection points. That future isn’t just Cape Town’s. It’s a scenario cities around the globe may face, experts say.

It may be hard to fathom just how cities could be at risk of a water scarcity crisis when approximately 70% of the world is made up of the resource. The stark reality, however, is that the percentage of fresh water probably only amounts to about 2.5 percent, according to often-cited assessments. Even then, a significant supply is locked up in ice and snow, which means just 1 percent of all fresh water is easily accessible to the global population. Inequality in access to water is also quickly becoming a problem. While the affluent can find ways to get access to water— through deliveries or in-built tanks — poorer populations are left to their own devices. That situation oftentimes leads to water theft — for profit, for survival, or for both.

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A longtime fear. Slowing of the thermohaline circulation will turn Western Europe into a very cold place.

Gulf Stream Current At Its Weakest In At Least 1,600 Years (G>)

The warm Atlantic current linked to severe and abrupt changes in the climate in the past is now at its weakest in at least 1,600 years, new research shows. The findings, based on multiple lines of scientific evidence, throw into question previous predictions that a catastrophic collapse of the Gulf Stream would take centuries to occur. Such a collapse would see western Europe suffer far more extreme winters, sea levels rise fast on the eastern seaboard of the US and would disrupt vital tropical rains. The new research shows the current is now 15% weaker than around 400AD, an exceptionally large deviation, and that human-caused global warming is responsible for at least a significant part of the weakening.

The current, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc), carries warm water northwards towards the north pole. There it cools, becomes denser and sinks, and then flows back southwards. But global warming hampers the cooling of the water, while melting ice in the Arctic, particularly from Greenland, floods the area with less dense freshwater, weakening the Amoc current. Scientists know that Amoc has slowed since 2004, when instruments were deployed at sea to measure it. But now two new studies have provided comprehensive ocean-based evidence that the weakening is unprecedented in at least 1,600 years, which is as far back as the new research stretches.

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