SEC Slams “Ridiculous” Elon Musk “Reckless Conduct” In Contempt Motion Response

On Monday night, the Securities and Exchange Commission responded to Elon Musk’s “contempt” defense, shredding Musk’s arguments and making it clear that the regulatory agency will not back down in its attempt to get Musk held in contempt of court following a February tweet regarding Tesla’s production guidance. 

Musk had argued against the contempt of court motion days ago, with his well-paid lawyers bizarrely calling it an “unconstitutional power grab”. Musk’s lawyers argued, on his behalf, that production numbers – the lifeblood of the company’s relationship to Wall Street – were immaterial, also claiming that the Tweet “dutifully complied with the [settlement] Order”.

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The SEC made it clear in their response that they saw things very differently. They eviscerated the argument that production numbers were somehow not material, arguing:

“Musk’s recognition of the significance of Tesla’s vehicle production forecasts to investors is evidenced by the frequency with which he and Tesla highlight such forecasts in their public statements. For years and continuing through the company’s most recent earnings release, Tesla and Musk have prominently featured vehicle production forecasts in their public communications, including Tesla’s investor letters, Musk’s tweets, and the company’s filings with the SEC.

While some companies emphasize forward-looking guidance on financial metrics such as revenue and earnings per share, Tesla often highlights guidance regarding expected production rates and deliveries. Given this focus on Tesla’s production capabilities, Musk cannot credibly argue that his statement, as Tesla’s CEO, that the company ‘will make around 500k’ cars in 2019 could not have reasonably contained information material to Tesla and its investors.” 

The SEC continued, referring to Musk’s Tweet as “reckless conduct” and calling it “stunning” that Musk had not sought pre-approval for a single Tweets about Tesla since his settlement forcing him to do just that: 

“The pre-approval requirement was designed to protect against reckless conduct by Musk going forward. It is therefore stunning to learn that, at the time of filing of the [contempt] motion, Musk had not sought pre-approval for a single one of the numerous tweets about Tesla he published in the months since the court-ordered pre-approval policy went into effect. Musk reads this Court’s order as not requiring pre-approval unless Musk himself unilaterally decides his planned tweets are material. His interpretation is inconsistent with the plain terms of this Court’s order and renders its pre-approval requirement meaningless.”

The SEC did not request specific relief in its brief. Before the night was over on Monday, a letter from Musk’s attorneys hit the docket, requesting the court’s permission to file a sur-reply by March 22 to respond to the SEC as all signs point to Musk wanting to continue his fight, head on, with the regulatory agency. 

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The SEC has been looking to hold Tesla CEO Elon Musk in contempt for breaching a court ordered settlement that Musk slithered away with as a result of his fraudulent tweet from last summer claiming he had funding secured for the buyout of Tesla at $420 per share. After the SEC alleged that a recent Tweet from February 19 was in violation of Musk’s court order to have his social media posts pre-approved by a lawyer, Musk responded to the SEC action in late February by calling the agency “embarrassing”.

The SEC FOIA experts at Probes Reporter said that the agency’s contempt motion response shows that they are “playing for keeps” and will “crush Musk if needed”. 

The rest of Twitter, as usual, was vocal in its response to the filing.

The SEC requests that this court hold Musk in contempt and impose an appropriate remedy to ensure future compliance,” the filing concludes. 

At this point, the ball is in the court of U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, who has the authority to issue additional legal remedies such as additional fines and officer/director bars.

You can read the SEC’s full reply brief here.

Former Obama Officials Ordered By Judge To Answer Questions Over Clinton Emails

Via SaraCarter.com,

A federal judge ordered multiple senior Obama Administration officials, State Department officials and former Hillary Clinton aides Thursday to provide answers under oath to questions requested by Judicial Watch after a roughly four year court battle.

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Judicial Watch, a leading conservative non-profit watchdog group, announced the schedule of depositions in their case in a press release Thursday.  The Judicial Watch questions regard two separate cases regarding the Obama administration’s actions during the Benghazi terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA Annex in Libya, and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to send classified government emails.

“Judicial Watch is doing the heavy lifting on the ongoing Clinton email scandal, even as Congress dropped the ball and DOJ and State continued to obstruct our quest for the truth,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, in a press release Thursday.

“The Court in our case wants real answers on the Clinton email scandal which is why our request for basic discovery was granted.”

District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered senior officials — including Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Jacob Sullivan, and FBI official E.W. Priestap – to respond under oath and submit the answers in writing to the questions provided by Judicial Watch. The decision from Lamberth was made this past January.

Lamberth ordered the discovery from the watchdog’s July 2014 FOIA lawsuit,  which was filed after the State Department failed to respond to an earlier request made May 13, 2014.

Judicial Watch requests: 
  • Copies of any updates and/or talking points given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency concerning, regarding, or related to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

  • Any and all records or communications concerning, regarding, or relating to talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency.

Judicial Watch’s discovery will seek answers to:
  • Whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a non-government email system;

  • whether the State Department’s efforts to settle this case beginning in late 2014 amounted to bad faith; and

  • whether the State Department adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request.

The confirmed discovery schedule now includes:
  • March 12: State Department’s responses to interrogatories and document requests were due.

  • March 14: Deposition of Justin Cooper, a former aide to Bill Clinton who reportedly had no security clearance and is believed to have played a key role in setting up Hillary Clinton’s non-government email system.

  • April 5: Deposition of John Hackett, a State Department records official “immediately responsible for responding to requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act.”

  • April 16: Deposition of Jacob “Jake” Sullivan, Hillary Clinton’s former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff.

  • April 23: Deposition of Sheryl Walter, former State Department Director of the Office of Information Programs and Services/Global Information Services.

  • April 26: Deposition of Gene Smilansky, a State Department lawyer.

  • April 30. Deposition of Monica Tillery, a State Department official.

  • May 7: Deposition of Jonathon Wasser, who was a management analyst on the Executive Secretariat staff. Wasser worked for Deputy Director Clarence Finney and was the State Department employee who actually conducted the searches for records in response to FOIA requests to the Office of the Secretary.

  • May 14: Deposition of Clarence Finney, the deputy director of the Executive Secretariat staff who was the principal advisor and records management expert in the Office of the Secretary responsible for control of all correspondence and records for Hillary Clinton and other State Department officials.

  • June 11: 30(b)(6) Deposition, which will be designated by the State Department.

  • June 13: Deposition of Heather Samuelson, the former State Department senior advisor who helped facilitate the State Department’s receipt and release of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

To Be Determined
  • As yet to be determined is the deposition date for Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security Eric Boswell, who wrote a March 2, 2009, internal memorandum titled “Use of Blackberries on Mahogany Row,” in which he strongly advised that the devices not be allowed.

Written questions under oath are to be answered by:
  • Monica Hanley, Hillary Clinton’s former confidential assistant at the State Department.

  • Lauren Jiloty, Clinton’s former special assistant.

  • E.W. Priestap, who is serving as assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division and helped oversee both the Clinton email and the 2016 presidential campaign investigations. Priestap testified in a separate lawsuit that Clinton was the subject of a grand jury investigation related to her BlackBerry email accounts.

  • Susan Rice, President Obama’s former UN ambassador who appeared on Sunday television news shows following the Benghazi attacks, blaming a “hateful video.” Rice was also Obama’s national security advisor involved in the “unmasking” the identities of senior Trump officials caught up in the surveillance of foreign targets.

  • Ben Rhodes, an Obama-era White House deputy strategic communications adviser who attempted to orchestrate a campaign to “reinforce” Obama and to portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy.”

Fresh clashes as France’s yellow vests seek new momentum

March 16, 2019

PARIS (Reuters) – French police fired tear gas and arrested dozens on Saturday in clashes with protesters as the yellow vest movement sought to inject new impetus into its four-month old revolt against President Emmanuel Macron and his pro-business reforms.

Protesters threw cobblestones at riot police through clouds of tear gas in front of Paris’ Arc de Triumphed monument, which was ransacked at the peak of the protests in December. Bonfires were started in nearby streets, with at least one car in flames.

Police also used water cannons and had arrested more than 30 protesters by late morning as tensions flared at the top of Paris’ upmarket Champs Elysee avenue, where the windows of a high-end restaurant were smashed.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said thugs looking for trouble had infiltrated the demonstrations and gave the order to respond to “unacceptable attacks with the greatest firmness”.

“Let there be no doubt: they are looking for violence and are there to sow chaos in Paris,” Castaner said in a Tweet.

Protesters have promised to draw bigger numbers to mark the fourth month since the movement erupted in mid November, over since-scrapped fuel tax hikes and the high cost of living.

Named after the high visibility vests French drivers have to keep in their cars and worn by protesters, the revolt quickly swelled into a broader movement against Macron and his reforms.

However, the weekly demonstrations, held every Saturday in Paris and other cities, have been generally getting smaller since December, when Paris saw some of the worst vandalism and looting in decades.

After the spike in violence, Macron offered a package of concessions worth more than 10 billion euros ($11 billion) aimed at boosting the incomes of the poorest workers and most pensioners.

His government ordered police to crack down on the protests in January, leading to complaints of police brutality after a series of injuries.

The 41-year-old former investment banker also launched a series of national debates which are aimed at determining what polices people want the government to focus on.

Saturday’s protests coincide with the end of the debates.

($1 = 0.8829 euros)

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas, Emmanuel Jarry and Simon Carraud; Editing by Mark Potter)

EU: Telling Europeans What To Think

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

  • The above initiatives, of course, exist in addition to all the other measures that the EU has put in place to “guide” Europeans onto the path of proper thinking… which the untransparent and unaccountable online tech giants — Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla — signed in October 2018, and their 2019 “Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech online.”

  • In the same vein as China’s “reeducation camps” or the former Soviet Union’s “rehabilitation centers” that abused psychiatry for political purposes, Marine Le Pen in September was ordered to undergo psychiatric tests for tweeting the pictures, ostensibly to establish whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions”.

  • It is probably safe to say that the first victims of the EU’s media literacy policies will be diversity of opinion and free speech.

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Marine Le Pen (pictured at podium), the leader of France’s Rassemblement National (National Rally) party, posted tweets condemning the Islamic State terrorist group, including photos of their murdered victims. For this, she was charged with the crime of “disseminating violent images,” and ordered by a court to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions.” (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images)

The first European Media Literacy Week, an initiative of the European Union, will take place March 18-22 in various European cities. The week is a new initiative by the European Commission, putatively “to underline the societal importance of media literacy and promote media literacy initiatives and projects across the EU”. The European Commission explains its policy of strengthening ‘media literacy’ within the EU — which could have been a noble and useful initiative — the following way:

“With the rapid rise of digital technology and its increasing use in business, education and culture, it is important to ensure everyone can understand and engage with digital media.

“Media literacy is vital for economic growth and job creation. Digital technologies are a key driver of competitiveness and innovation in the media, information, and communication technology sectors.”

As part of its “Digital Single Market” strategy, the European Commission addsflimsily:

“Media literacy concerns different media (broadcasting, radio, press), different distribution channels (traditional, internet, social media) and addresses the needs of all ages… A high level of media literacy is a key factor to enable citizens to make informed decisions in the digital age. Media literacy is a pre-requisite for a vibrant, modern democracy.”

One does not have to scratch the surface much, however, before it appears that at least certain aspects of the European Commission’s Media Literacy policy are less about enlightening citizens, than about heavy-handedly guiding them on what to think. According to the European Commission, “a key stone in all possible definitions of media literacy is the development of critical thinking by the user.” The Commission, it would appear, has arrogated to itself the formidable task of “developing” that crucial faculty in EU citizens.

Furthermore, according to the Commission:

“Media literacy is also a tool empowering citizens as well as raising their awareness and helping counter the effects of disinformation campaigns and fake news spreading through digital media.”

The EU initiative against disinformation, according to which, “The exposure of citizens to large scale disinformation, including misleading or outright false information, is a major challenge for Europe,” contains “an action plan to step up efforts to counter disinformation in Europe and beyond…” The action plan is analyzed in more detail here.

The above initiatives, of course, exist in addition to all the other measures that the EU has put in place to “guide” Europeans onto the path of proper thinking. These measures include the Code of Practice on Disinformation, which the untransparent and unaccountable online tech giants — Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla — signed in October 2018, and their 2019 “Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech online.”

Europeans evidently now need the further indispensable guidance of the European Commission to learn how properly to navigate, read and interpret the news, whether the source is traditional or digital. How and why it became the business of the EU bureaucracy to teach Europeans what to read and think remains somewhat obscure.

Even so, for some European leaders, this artillery battery of bureaucratic measures to guide the thinking of Europeans is still not sufficient. French President Emmanuel Macron recently gave a speech in which he proposed establishing the Orwellian sounding “European Agency for the Protection of Democracies”:

“We should have European rules banish all incitements to hate and violence from the Internet, since respect for the individual is the bedrock of our civilisation of dignity.” [Emphasis in the original]

As always, who defines what is perceived as “hate” was left blowing in the wind. Presumably, whatever EU leaders perceive to contradict their own preferred policies, as previous experience has shown — for instance herehere, and here. In Macron’s France, for example, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Rassemblement National (National Rally) party, formerly known as Front National, has been charged with circulating “violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity,” for tweeting images of atrocities committed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq in 2015, and that can be viewed by a minor. One of the images showed the body of James Foley, the American journalist beheaded by ISIS terrorists, while the others showed a man in an orange jumpsuit being driven over by a tank and another of a man being burned alive in a cage. “Daesh is this!” Le Pen wrote in the caption, which she tweeted a few weeks after the ISIS attack on Paris in November 2015, in which 130 people were killed.

“I am being charged for having condemned the horrors of Daesh,” Le Pen said. In the same vein as China’s “reeducation camps” or the former Soviet Union’s “rehabilitation centers” that abused psychiatry for political purposes, Le Pen in September was ordered to undergo psychiatric tests for tweeting the pictures, ostensibly in order to establish whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions.”

Warning against Islamic terrorism, according to the French judicial system, is not only criminal but apparently represents a psychological aberration. Le Pen could face up to three years in prison and a fine of €75,000 ($85,000). Also in September, parliament lifted the immunity of another Rassemblement National MP, Gilbert Collard, over similar tweets that contained ISIS images. Criminal prosecution is, of course, one way for governments to deal with political opponents, but it used to be limited to dictatorships, not parliamentary democracies, such as France.

One wonders if this form of European censorship is what Macron, with his Orwellian plan, would like to see exported to the rest of Europe.

Meanwhile, the upcoming media literacy week will launch with an opening conference hosted by the European Commission on March 19. So far, there are around 180 announced media literacy events throughout Europe for the month of March. In Slovenia, workshops such as “Media Literacy Workshop for Students: Fighting Fake News” and “Real Media Literacy for a Fake News World” are offered, and in London, Europeans are invited to a seminar on, “Fake News vs Media Literacy: Critical Thinking, Resilience, Civic Engagement,” where:

“Leading media literacy researchers from the US and UK will come together… with teachers, librarians, journalists, digital media producers and young people to tackle disinformation with media literacy… working to a collective aim – a practical strategy for harnessing media literacy to develop young people’s resilience to ‘fake news’, with a focus on case studies from both the UK and the US.”

It is probably safe to say that the first victims of the EU’s media literacy policies will be diversity of opinion and free speech.

Tesla unveils Model Y as electric vehicle race heats up, price starts at $39,000

March 15, 2019

By Alexandria Sage

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Tesla Inc unveiled its Model Y electric sports utility vehicle on Thursday evening in California, promising a much-awaited crossover that will face competition from European car makers rolling out their own electric rivals.

Chief Executive Elon Musk said the compact SUV, built on the same platform as the Model 3, would first debut in a long-range version with a range of 300 miles (482 km) priced at $47,000.

A standard version, to be available sometime in 2021, would cost $39,000, with a 230-mile range. The vehicles can be configured to include 7 seats for an additional $3,000.

After the event, Tesla’s website included a page to “design and order” the more expensive, long range version of the vehicle with rear-wheel drive, available next year. Ordering the car requires a $2,500 refundable deposit.

Musk unveiled the vehicle at a short 40-minute event at Tesla’s design studio in Hawthorne, outside Los Angeles, that was streamed live online. (https://www.tesla.com/modely).

Each of Tesla’s vehicles, from the Roadster to the latest Semi, were driven onstage before the blue Model Y appeared.

Small SUVs are the fastest-growing segment in the United States and China, the world’s largest auto market, where Tesla is building a factory, making the Model Y well positioned to tap demand.

Tesla has enjoyed little competition thus far for its sedans, but competition for electric SUVs is heating up as Tesla tries to master a new set of economics from the luxury line that made its reputation.

On Thursday, ratings company Fitch warned that, despite Tesla’s early lead, “incumbent carmakers have the ability to catch up … thanks to their capacity to invest and their robust record in product management.”

LOWER COST, LOWER RISK

Tesla’s targeted volume production date of late 2020 for the Model Y would put it behind electric SUV offerings from Volkswagen AG’s Audi, Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz and BMW.

“Twelve months from now we will have made about 1 million vehicles,” Musk said at the event, without specifying the breakdown of models.

Shares of Tesla are down 24 percent from an August high of $379.57, when Musk tweeted that he was taking Tesla private.

That plan – later scrapped – ushered in a period of turmoil at the company, from Musk’s public battles with regulators, a flurry of securities lawsuits, cost cutting and layoffs.

Tesla, two weeks ago, said it would close most stores and use savings to cut the price of most cars by 6 percent. But last week, Tesla reversed course and said it would leave many stores open and raised prices back by about 3 percent.

Musk has promised an easier production ramp of the Model Y as it shares about three-quarters of its parts with the Model 3 and would need only half the capital expenditures of the sedan.

The risk is “quite low” Musk told analysts in January. Tesla would “most likely” build the Model Y at Tesla’s battery factory in Nevada, he said at the time. Musk gave no new details about where the Model Y would be produced at Thursday’s event.

Still, the Model Y, like all Tesla models, has already seen pre-production delays. Suppliers were originally told production would start in November 2019, sources told Reuters last year.

In October, Musk said “significant progress” had been made on the Model Y and that he had approved the prototype for production in 2020. In January, he said Tesla had ordered the tooling needed to build the car.

(Reporting by Alexandria Sage; Editing by Peter Henderson, Greg Mitchell and Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

Italians Outraged After Court Rules Woman ‘Too Ugly’ To Be Raped

The Italian Justice Ministry has ordered a preliminary investigation into an appeals court ruling by all-female judges which overturned a rape verdict by arguing in part that the woman who was attacked was too ugly to be a credible rape victim, according to The Star.

The ruling has sparked outrage in Italy, prompting a flash mob Monday outside the Ancona court, where protesters shouted “Shame!” and held up signs saying “indignation.”

The appeals sentence was handed down in 2017 — by an all-female panel — but the reasons behind it only emerged publicly when Italy’s high court annulled it on March 5 and ordered a retrial. The Court of Cassation said Wednesday its own reasons for ordering the retrial will be issued next month. –The Star

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Two Peruvian men were initially convicted in 2015 of raping a 20-year-old Peruvian woman in Ancona – however the Italian appeals court overturned the verdict, absolving the men. In their decision, the judges ruled that the men “didn’t find her attractive,” and that “she was too masculine.

A lawyer for the victim, Cinzia Molinaro, said that the woman’s appeal to the Court of Cassation cited the “absolute unacceptability” of the Italian court’s decision to refer to the victim’s physical appearance. 

The appeals court quoted one of the suspects as saying he had listed the woman as a “Viking” on his cellphone, adding that the “photograph present in her file would appear to confirm this.”

The woman, who has since returned to Peru, required 14 stitches in her vagina after the attack. 

“She had confused memories of what exactly happened during the night because she was drugged,” said Molinaro, adding that doctors had confirmed the presence of a “date rape” drug in her blood. 

“I don’t remember how it all started, but I remember I shouted ‘enough, enough'” the woman reportedly told police. 

In 2016, one of the accused rapists was originally sentenced to five years in prison for the rape, while the other was sentenced to three years for standing guard. While the ruling was overturned in 2017, the reasons for the acquittal only became known last week after the Italian supreme court annulled the appeal and ordered a retrial. 

Italians Outraged After Court Rules Woman ‘Too Ugly’ To Be Raped

The Italian Justice Ministry has ordered a preliminary investigation into an appeals court ruling by all-female judges which overturned a rape verdict by arguing in part that the woman who was attacked was too ugly to be a credible rape victim, according to The Star.

The ruling has sparked outrage in Italy, prompting a flash mob Monday outside the Ancona court, where protesters shouted “Shame!” and held up signs saying “indignation.”

The appeals sentence was handed down in 2017 — by an all-female panel — but the reasons behind it only emerged publicly when Italy’s high court annulled it on March 5 and ordered a retrial. The Court of Cassation said Wednesday its own reasons for ordering the retrial will be issued next month. –The Star

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Two Peruvian men were initially convicted in 2015 of raping a 20-year-old Peruvian woman in Ancona – however the Italian appeals court overturned the verdict, absolving the men. In their decision, the judges ruled that the men “didn’t find her attractive,” and that “she was too masculine.

A lawyer for the victim, Cinzia Molinaro, said that the woman’s appeal to the Court of Cassation cited the “absolute unacceptability” of the Italian court’s decision to refer to the victim’s physical appearance. 

The appeals court quoted one of the suspects as saying he had listed the woman as a “Viking” on his cellphone, adding that the “photograph present in her file would appear to confirm this.”

The woman, who has since returned to Peru, required 14 stitches in her vagina after the attack. 

“She had confused memories of what exactly happened during the night because she was drugged,” said Molinaro, adding that doctors had confirmed the presence of a “date rape” drug in her blood. 

“I don’t remember how it all started, but I remember I shouted ‘enough, enough'” the woman reportedly told police. 

In 2016, one of the accused rapists was originally sentenced to five years in prison for the rape, while the other was sentenced to three years for standing guard. While the ruling was overturned in 2017, the reasons for the acquittal only became known last week after the Italian supreme court annulled the appeal and ordered a retrial. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom to stop death penalty in California, giving reprieves to 737 death row inmates

Source: Sophia Bollag

Gov. Gavin Newsom is putting a moratorium on the death penalty in California, sparing the lives of more than 700 death-row inmates.

Newsom plans to sign an executive order Wednesday morning granting reprieves to all 737 Californians awaiting executions – a quarter of the country’s death row inmates.

His action comes three years after California voters rejected an initiative to end the death penalty, instead passing a measure to speed up executions.

Newsom says the death penalty system has discriminated against mentally ill defendants and people of color. It has not made the state safer and has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, according to prepared remarks Newsom plans to deliver Wednesday morning when he signs the order.

“Our death penalty system has been – by any measure – a failure,” Newsom plans to say. “The intentional killing of another person is wrong. And as governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual.”

California has not executed anyone in more than a decade because of legal challenges to the state’s execution protocol. But executions for more than 20 inmates who have exhausted their appeals could have resumed if those challenges were cleared up, and Newsom has said he worried that it could happen soon.

Newsom has been a longtime opponent of the death penalty. While campaigning for a measure to repeal the death penalty in 2016, he told The Modesto Bee editorial board he would “be accountable to the will of the voters,” if he were elected governor.

“I would not get my personal opinions in the way of the public’s right to make a determination of where they want to take us” on the death penalty, he said.

The moratorium will be in place for the duration of Newsom’s time in office, the governor’s office said. After that, a future governor could decide to resume executions.

California is one of 31 states with capital punishment. In recent years, other states have abolished the death penalty and several other governors have placed moratoriums on executions. The California Constitution gives the governor power to grant reprieves to inmates, providing he reports his reasoning to the Legislature.

But Newsom’s action will anger death penalty proponents.

Duration 1:23
Gavin Newsom discusses Prop. 62 (death penalty) with Bee Editorial Board

Lt. Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, talks about Prop. 62 – the repeal of the death penalty – at the Modesto Bee offices in Modesto, Calif. He spoke to The Bee’s Editorial Board on Thursday, Sept. 15. (Brian Clark/[email protected])

“The voters of the State of California support the death penalty. That is powerfully demonstrated by their approval of Proposition 66 in 2016 to ensure the death penalty is implemented, and their rejection of measures to end the death penalty in 2016 and 2006, said Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, in a statement late Tuesday.

“Governor Newsom, who supported the failed initiative to end the death penalty in 2006, is usurping the express will of California voters and substituting his personal preferences via this hasty and ill-considered moratorium on the death penalty.”

Preventing executions through a blanket action is an abuse of the governor’s power, death-penalty supporter Kent Scheidegger told The Bee in an interview earlier this month. The governor’s clemency powers are designed to correct individual cases of injustice, said Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

“It’s not supposed to be a weapon for blocking the enforcement of the law that the people have passed just because the governor disagrees with it,” Scheidegger said.

In addition to the moratorium, Newsom’s order will also withdraw California’s legal injection protocol and close the execution chamber at San Quentin, where all death row inmates are imprisoned. Those on death row will remain in prison under the order.

His order also points to the 164 people who have been freed from death row after they were found to be wrongfully convicted.

It follows Newsom’s first executive action related to a clemency request last month, when he ordered additional DNA testing in the case of death row inmate Kevin Cooper.

Newsom told reporters last month that the prospect of executions resuming has been weighing on him.

“I’ve never believed in the death penalty from a moral perspective,” he said. “The disparities are really real and raw to me now, as I spend every week working on the issues of paroles and commutations and, substantively I see those disparities.”

Trump Orders Grounding Of All 737 Max Planes

Update (2:50 pm ET): Boeing has issued a statement supporting President Trump’s decision to ground all 737 Max planes:

Boeing continues to have full confidence in the safety of the 737 MAX.  However, after consultation with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and aviation authorities and its customers around the world, Boeing has determined — out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft’s safety — to recommend to the FAA the temporary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 MAX aircraft.

“On behalf of the entire Boeing team, we extend our deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones of those who have lost their lives in these two tragic accidents,” said Dennis Muilenburg, president, CEO, Chairman of The Boeing Company.

“We are supporting this proactive step out of an abundance of caution. Safety is a core value at Boeing for as long as we have been building airplanes; and it always will be. There is no greater priority for our company and our industry. We are doing everything we can to understand the cause of the accidents in partnership with the investigators, deploy safety enhancements and help ensure this does not happen again.”

Boeing makes this recommendation and supports the decision by the FAA.

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Update (2:30 pm ET): President Donald Trump said the U.S. is grounding flights by Boeing Co.’s 737 Max aircraft “effective immediately” following the model’s second crash in five months on Sunday.

“Planes that are in the air will be grounded…upon landing at the destination…All airlines are agreeing with this.”

“The safety of the American people and all people is our paramount concern,” Trump said Wednesday at the White House.

“Hopefully they will very quickly come up with the answer but until they do the planes are grounded.”

Here are all the Boeing 737 Max planes in the air as of 230pm ET (6 Max 9, and 75 Max 8 planes)

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This has sent Boeing shares down to the post-crash lows…

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Update (1:25 pm ET): Having already noted that the US has quietly pushed to be the nation that analyzes the black boxes from the Ethiopian Airlines crash, an Ethiopian Airlines spokesman said flight recorders from the jet will be sent to a European country for analysis because Ethiopia lacks the technology to examine them.

However, AP reports that a spokesman for Germany’s Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation is telling The Associated Press that the agency was asked by Ethiopian authorities to analyze the black boxes from Sunday’s plane crash but declined because it lacked the necessary software.

Spokesman Germout Freitag said Wednesday that he doesn’t know where the black boxes will be sent next.

Liberty Blitzkrieg’s Mike Krieger summed up this fiasco best:

*  *  *

Update (12:10 pm ET)Reuters reports, citing an FAA official, that the FAA rejects as “inconclusive,” the new satellite data that Canada suggested as its reasoning for taking caution and grounding all Boeing 737 Max 8s from its airspace.

*  *  *

This is getting a little awkward.

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Following reports that Boeing asked Trump directly not to ground the 737 Max 8, Canada’s Transport Minister Marc Garneau is grounding all Boeing 737 Max 8 airplanes in Canada over safety concerns based on new information received this morning.

The “safety notice” means none of the aircraft can fly into, out of, or over Canada, he said:

“I will not hesitate to take swift action should we discover any additional safety issues.”

The move, he said was based on a review of newly available satellite tracking data that suggested similarities to last year’s crash of one of the planes.

“This new information is not conclusive,” Garneau told a news conference.

Garneau has faced a dilemma over the aircraft that has been ordered out of the skies for the time being by the European Union, China, New Zealand, and Australia, among other countries.

Canada and the United States had been notable outliers as more and more jurisdictions have restricted the use of the planes, but now that Garneau has folded, the FAA is alone among the world’s largest regulators in not banning the aircraft.

Most notable, however, is the fact that Garneau said evidence about multiple Boeing 737 Max 8 flights suggests a worrying correlation between the Ethiopian Airlines crash and another off Indonesia in October.

“Generally, one should always be erring on the side of caution when it comes to safety questions,” he said from Halifax.

“If there is enough evidence of a potential harm, and in this case I think there is evidence of potential harm, then the prudent thing is to ground those aircraft.”

Garneau reportedly told the FAA about his decision this morning.

Bloomberg’s Michael McDonough provides the best illustration of how this has affected worldwide air travel:

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U.S. Congress wants to know why the FAA waited so long to ground Boeing 737 jets

March 13, 2019

By David Shepardson and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congress plans to scrutinize why the United States waited so many days to ground all Boeing Co 737 MAX jets involved in Sunday’s crash in Ethiopia as other countries and airlines acted more quickly.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the order on Wednesday was the result of “new evidence collected at the site and analyzed today” and “newly refined satellite data” that Canada had cited earlier in its decision to halt flights.

The FAA did not disclose the new evidence at the scene but said it was “the missing pieces” that aligned the track of the two fatal Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashes since October.

For decades, the United States has led the world in aviation safety, often setting standards that were later adopted by other countries. The agency came under heavy criticism from U.S. lawmakers and others who questioned why the FAA waited so long to ground the Boeing 737 MAX.

FAA officials plan to brief lawmakers Thursday, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

While President Donald Trump announced the ban on television, acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell said he made the decision with the support of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

“We were resolute in our position that we would not take action until we had data to support taking action,” Elwell told reporters. “That data coalesced today and we made the call.”

Canada grounded the planes earlier on Wednesday while the European Union acted on Tuesday. China and some airlines ordered the planes not to fly within hours of the crash on Sunday.

As of Wednesday night, regulators in Argentina and Mexico had not grounded planes.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, a Democrat, said “it has become abundantly clear to us that not only should the 737 MAX be grounded but also that there must be a rigorous investigation into why the aircraft, which has critical safety systems that did not exist on prior models, was certified without requiring additional pilot training.”

Elwell said Wednesday he was confident in the 737’s certification.

The Senate Commerce Committee also plans to hold a hearing as early as April. Senator Ted Cruz said he plans “to investigate these crashes, determine their contributing factors, and ensure that the United States aviation industry remains the safest in the world.”

The grounding was an abrupt reversal as the United States had repeatedly insisted the airplane was safe to fly even as regulators and airlines around the world grounded the airplane.

Trump spoke to Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg on Wednesday before the announcement.

United Airlines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines Co all fly versions of the 737 MAX and immediately halted flights on Wednesday.

American, with 24 737 MAX airplanes, said it will be “working to re-book customers as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

Boeing said it supported the action to temporarily ground 737 max operations after it consulted with the FAA, NTSB and its customers. Boeing shares were down 2 percent.

The shift came less than a day after U.S. regulators had again insisted the plane was safe. Even Chao flew aboard a 737 MAX on Tuesday.

The FAA plans to mandate design changes by April that have been in the works for months for the 737 MAX 8 fleet. Boeing said late Monday it will deploy a software upgrade across the 737 MAX 8 fleet “in the coming weeks.”

The company confirmed it had for several months “been developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX, designed to make an already safe aircraft even safer.”

The FAA said the changes will “provide reduced reliance on procedures associated with required pilot memory items.”

Elwell said Wednesday he was hopeful software improvements “will be ready in a couple months” after testing and evaluation is completed by the FAA of what he called a “software patch.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Ginger Gibson; Writing by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Lisa Shumaker)

Australia, Singapore Ground Boeing 737 MAX 8s As Doubts About Safety Grow

Despite a reassuring (for some) statement from the FAA affirming that Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 planes remain “safe” for flight, more countries on Tuesday have opted to ground the planes, including Singapore and Australia, in a rare break with US air-travel regulators.

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Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority said on Tuesday that it had suspended the operation of all Boeing 737 MAX aircraft flying to or from the country. Since no Australian airlines fly the aircraft (though its Virgin Air recently ordered dozens of new MAX 8s), the decision only impacts the Singaporean airlines SilkAir and Fiji Airlines, according to the FT.

“This is a temporary suspension while we wait for more information to review the safety risks of continued operations of the Boeing 737 MAX,” said CASA’ chief executive and director of aviation safety, Shane Carmody, in a statement to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Meanwhile, Virgin Australia has 40 MAX aircraft on order, and said it was “closely watching the situation”, and hinted that it could change its order depending on the outcome of the investigation.

“With our first aircraft delivery not due until November this year, we believe there is sufficient time to consider the outcome of the investigation and make an assessment,” a Virgin spokeswoman said.

So far, more than half of the airlines flying the 737 MAX 8 have grounded the planes. Yesterday, China, Ethiopia and Indonesia grounded said they would wait for more details of Sunday’s crash to emerge, while a few Latin American countries followed suit. The plane only entered service in 2017, have grounded the aircraft, according to the New York Times.

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Though Southwest Airlines and American Airlines have continued to use the aircraft, following the FAA’s advice, they said they would be keeping an eye on events.

The planes are typically used for international flights, or covering long distances domestically:

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Boeing has delivered 350 of the aircraft since it entered service, and has a backlog of more than 5,000 orders.

Boeing shares closed off the lows on Monday, but appeared to be headed lower once again in pre-market trading.

Berners-Lee says World Wide Web, at 30, must emerge from ‘adolescence’

March 11, 2019

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – The fraying World Wide Web needs to rediscover its strengths and grow into maturity, its designer Tim Berners-Lee said on Monday, marking the 30th anniversary of the collaborative software project his supervisor initially dubbed “vague but exciting”.

Speaking to reporters at CERN, the physics research center outside Geneva where he invented the web, Berners-Lee said users of the web had found it “not so pretty” recently.

“They are all stepping back, suddenly horrified after the Trump and Brexit elections, realizing that this web thing that they thought was that cool is actually not necessarily serving humanity very well,” he said.

“It seems we don’t finish reeling from one privacy disaster before moving onto the next one,” he added, citing concerns about whether social networks were supporting democracy.

People who had grown up taking the internet’s neutrality for granted now found that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had “rolled that back”.

There was also a threat of fragmentation of the Internet into regulatory blocs – in the United States, the European Union, China and elsewhere – which would be “massively damaging”.

In an open letter to mark the anniversary, Berners-Lee said many people now felt unsure about whether the web was a force for good, but it would be defeatist and unimaginative to assume that it could not change for the better in the next 30 years.

“If we give up on building a better web now, then the web will not have failed us. We will have failed the web”, he wrote.

“It’s our journey from digital adolescence to a more mature, responsible and inclusive future”.

But he was optimistic because of a strong resolve among governments to avoid balkanization of the Internet, and a strong resolve among people in social networks who had – surprisingly – been shocked at people trying to hack elections.

He said the editorial power of Facebook’s algorithm was “scary”, but Facebook was clearly thinking about such questions a great deal, and that it and other social media firms backed the principle of letting users extract and move their data.

Amid the concern, Berners-Lee said the anniversary was something to celebrate, and warmly recalled how his boss ordered a computer model that CERN did not possess, a deliberate “plot” to enable his project under the guise of testing the interoperability of different computers.

The boss, Mike Sendell, had penciled in an assessment of his idea as “vague but exciting”.

“Thank goodness it wasn’t ‘Exciting but vague’,” Berners-Lee said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles, editing by G Crosse)

Geostrategy After the Deadlock in U.S.-North-Korean Relations

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

George Friedman, the head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor, issued a report on March 5th, “After Hanoi: North Korea, the US and Japan”, and it said:

The strategy since World War II, built on the assumption that U.S. conventional forces can defeat any foe and pacify the country, is being abandoned. And in the case of the Hanoi talks, the U.S. is following a new strategy of diplomatic deadlock without recourse to the insertion of force. …

The U.S. has decided to accept that North Korea is a nuclear state, so long as none of its nuclear weapons can reach the U.S. mainland. This completely destabilizes Japan’s strategy. Under that strategy, first imposed by the U.S. and happily embraced by Japan, the U.S. guarantees Japanese national security. The U.S., in exchange, has been able to use Japan as a base from which to project force across the Korean Peninsula, threaten China and block Russia’s Vladivostok fleet from accessing the Pacific Ocean. Japan, unencumbered by defense expenditures and any responsibility in American wars, could focus on the monumental task of its dramatic post-World War II recovery. Most important, the U.S. nuclear umbrella has guaranteed that any nation that might attack Japan with nuclear weapons would face retaliation from the United States. …

The Hanoi talks subtly shift that guarantee. The new U.S. position is that it cannot accept a North Korean nuclear program that threatens the United States. Implicit in that position is that it can tolerate one that threatens Japan.

His last sentence there is false, because it excludes the following important possibility, which now actually needs to become the reality, especially after this “deadlock” that he referred to:

The U.S. and North Korea can meet together in an entirely different discussion, of whether, in return for North Korea’s verifiable commitment never to possess or station any missile that can reach the United States, the U.S. will do the following three things:

1: Guarantee to Japan, and to South Korea, that any nuclear attack against Japan and/or against South Korea, will be met by a U.S. nuclear attack against the attacker (regardless of whom that attacking nation might be). The U.S. would then be taking Japan (as well as South Korea) entirely under its nuclear umbrella, so that an attack against Japan or against South Korea would be equivalent to an attack against the United States itself. No troops would need to be stationed in Japan (or South Korea) in order to be able to do this. America’s real nuclear umbrella for those two countries is precisely this (the nuclear intercontinental U.S. arsenal outside of Japan and South Korea, including the missiles at sea and including in mainland U.S.), and no stationing of either troops or weapons from the United States, inside either of those two countries, is necessary, at all, in order to achieve this. That’s the reality, notwithstanding George Friedman’s false assumption, to the exact contrary: that “Implicit in that position [“that it [[the U.S.]] cannot accept a North Korean nuclear program that threatens the United States”] is that it can tolerate one that threatens Japan.” Not at all is that presumption (America’s needing to station troops in Japan in order to protect Japan) by Friedman true. American troops there are superfluous for the protection of Japan — and also of South Korea. U.S. Troops aren’t needed in either country, for the protection of either country’s inhabitants.

2: Withdraw all U.S. troops from both Japan and South Korea. Those troops are there only for possible uses against Russia and China (as Friedman himself acknowledges by saying “The U.S. … has been able to use Japan as a base from which to project force across the Korean Peninsula, threaten China and block Russia’s Vladivostok fleet from accessing the Pacific Ocean”). The U.S. has secretly continued the old “Cold War” after the Soviet Union’s end, though no longer on an ideological basis (since Russia is no longer communist). It’s been doing this secretly ever since 24 February 1990, purely with the aim of ultimately conquering the entire world. That, too (though secret), is the reality: America has been, and is, secretly trying to take over the entire world.

3: End all sanctions against North Korea. Under the stated conditions, there would be no realistic future possibility that that country could pose a national-security threat to the United States. North Korea’s nuclear weapons would then pose no more of a national-security threat to the U.S. than do Israel’s nuclear weapons (since those are only local threats). Any further aggression (including sanctions) by the U.S. against North Korea would therefore violate Article 2 of the U.N. Charter, because North Korea would no longer even prospectively constitute a threat to America. North Korea would, of course, expect the U.S. to end all sanctions against it if North Korea would no longer be able to pose a threat to the U.S., and it wouldn’t sign the deal otherwise. 

This arrangement that’s proposed here between the United States and North Korea would end the Korean War, and it would end the major international tensions which have prevailed in the Asia-Pacific region since the end of World War II. It would bring security to North Korea, U.S., South Korea, and Japan.

This deal would be an authentic quid-pro-quo between the United States and North Korea, which would greatly benefit the economies of the United States, Japan, and South Korea (removing the unnecessary financial burden of maintaining and arming those occupying U.S. troops — troops which are superfluous to everyone except America’s billionaires, who want to impose their corporate wills upon every nation — including upon Russia and China). It wouldn’t benefit merely North Korea (though it also would do that). It would also set the foundation upon which, ultimately, the two Koreas might finally agree to become again one nation, much as did East and West Germany; and, it would also protect both Japan and South Korea — and block any threat from North Korea against the U.S. itself. Consequently, this would also greatly serve the interests of the American people. It would serve EVERYONE’s interests (except approximately 2,153 people, as will subsequently be explained here).

Unfortunately, the world isn’t so democratic internationally, nor within the United States, for the security and welfare of the public anywhere to be actually a high priority of international policy-makers — especially not in the United States, which serves only the interests of its billionaires and extracts as much as it possibly can from its own public and from every other country on the planet. U.S. President Barack Obama even was so arrogant as to assert publicly — and he said it many times — that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation,” which was Obama’s version of Hitler’s “Deutschland über alles,” and means (like Hitler’s German version did) that every other nation in the world is “dispensable” — only the imperial nation is not. Any other nation which allies itself with a nation such as this, is being headed by a regime that has no patriotism, no national self-respect at all — it’s a mere vassal-nation, enslaved (in this case) to the tyrannical U.S. regime: “the one indispensable nation.”

If the United States really had ended its side of the Cold war after the 1991 termination of the USSR, and of its communism, and of its Warsaw Pact military alliance that had mirrored America’s NATO alliance, then the arrangement which has been described here would have been instituted long ago, in 1991, when the other side ended the Cold War, and NATO itself would simultaneously have been dissolved when the Warsaw Pact was, instead of being expanded right up to Russia’s borders (as it since has done), but the U.S. regime in 1990 secretly ordered its allies to continue the Cold War on America’s side, and that one-sided aggression continues by the U.S. and its allies, until now.

And that’s the real problem — America’s continuation of the (originally ideological) Cold War, now purely for aggressive purposes: global conquest. It’s permanent war, for permanent ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ and ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’, and other brazen lies, now against Venezuela and so many other countries.

Just a few years after the 1991 supposed end of the Cold War (when East and West Germany merged), Spokane Washington’s Spokesman-Review newspaper headlined on 2 November 1995, “U.S. Won’t Reduce Troops in Japan”, and opened: “Defense Secretary William J. Perry said here [in Tokyo] Wednesday that the United States has no plans to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Japan, despite a groundswell of local opposition” in Japan.

And as was reported, on 5 March 2006, from “Asahi,” by the U.S. Embassy in Japan, to the CIA, and to the Joint Chiefs, and to all top U.S. national-security officials, “Japan can expect to reduce the number of US troops in Japan and to alleviate the burden of base-hosting localities while maintaining deterrent capabilities against China and North Korea. Meanwhile, the United States can swing its reduced troops around the world with Japan’s backing. The two countries’ expectations coincided.” But it didn’t actually happen — the U.S. occupation still continues. The U.S. Government is dedicated to militarily occupying as many countries as it can. Getting rid of those occupying troops is strongly opposed by the occupying power, which continues its voraciousness to control Russia and China.

As of 2017, the U.S. had 38,818 troops in Japan, and 24,189 in South Korea. The U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC) refuses to end such military occupations in foreign countries, but the only real beneficiaries from this are the MIC itself, which controls the U.S. Government. Firms such as Lockheed Martin are 100% dependent upon the U.S. Government and its allied governments (especially the Saud family) for their sales, and selling more weapons is essential to their cancerous growth. Americans pay in taxes and many other ways, and so do the local foreign governments pay, where America’s troops are stationed. This is one of the reasons for the extreme inequality of wealth in today’s world: that inequality is enforced, by the U.S. international regime. The U.S. military enforces it around the world, in all of America’s vassal-nations. It’s supporting the local aristocracy there, but also (and above all) America’s aristocracy. The U.S. has over a thousand military bases worldwide, the vast majority of which are in foreign countries. It benefits only the billionaires, but the billionaires control the governments, and so this continues and even gets worse. George Friedman ignores that crucial fact. He needs to retain his customers, and they benefit from this barbaric status-quo. He’s not actually a free man. He (like millions of others) speaks for the billionaires; he’s one of their millions of agents. He’s a bought man, so he says “The new U.S. position is that it cannot accept a North Korean nuclear program that threatens the United States. Implicit in that position is that it can tolerate one that threatens Japan.” If this statement from him is not clearly and publicly rejected by the American Government, then all Japanese (except Japan’s billionaires, who depend so much upon America’s) must recognize that the U.S. Government is their enemy, and that Japan needs to find authentic friends, elsewhere — and kick out its existing regime.

Friedman says, approvingly, that the U.S. “has been able to use Japan as a base from which to project force across the Korean Peninsula, threaten China and block Russia’s Vladivostok fleet from accessing the Pacific Ocean.” All of those  — against North Korea, and against China, and against Russia; and implicitly against Japan itself as an American stooge-regime — are, in fact, international-war crimes, aggressions by the U.S. military. Regardless of which country (Japan or any other) allows occupying troops, as part of some “deal” between those two nations, neither of those two nations is allowed legally to do any of those things against any third nation (such as against China, Russia, North Korea, or any other). If two people agree to threaten or rob a third person, then no matter how much both of them say it’s a ‘legal’ agreement and only a matter between themselves, it’s not. It still remains a criminal arrangement, and it’s an illegal threat to their intended victim-nations. Of course, if the U.S. is an international gangster-nation, a country that ignores any international laws (except ones that it can cite against weaker nations, such as the U.S. and its allies routinely do do, as mere PR ‘justifying’ their many coups and invasions) — if the U.S. ignores international laws simply because no entity will enforce them — then, the U.N. has already been destroyed, effectively nullified, by the U.S. gangster-regime. But in that case no argument could even possibly be made that the U.S. is a democracy. No nation can be both a dictator abroad, and a democracy in domestic (or intra-national) matters. To presume to the contrary is simply to lie — even if only to oneself.

The U.N. Charter says: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” The American regime has been violating that with impunity, ever since the end of World War II (such as in its infamous 1953 coup against Iran — a coup which enjoyed the support of Iran’s mullahs). Most recently, it did so in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Ukraine, and a number of other countries, which it and its allies have destroyed, all in the name of advancing things such as ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’, so as to cover over their authentic, actually vile, motivations, which are insatiable greed, and a craving for even more power than they already possess. All of this is barbaric, and they cover over that reality by kind-sounding words, in order to fool the rubes, who, thus — via their irresponsibility by trusting those serial international invaders and coup-perpetrators — accept the rightfulness of what those international invaders and coup-perpetrators have been doing, such as invading Iraq in 2003 on the basis of sheer lies, etc.

RT — a reliable news-source, but one which America’s very unreliable major ‘news’-media instead call a source of ‘fake news’ because it reports truths they hide — reported on March 5th:

Washington is leading a “revolution against international law and against international order,” with its calls for regime change and efforts to oust President Nicolas Maduro in favor of pro-US opposition leader Juan Guaido, former UN rapporteur to Venezuela and professor of law Alfred de Zayas told RT.

Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Gutierrez should “remind” the Lima Group of Western Hemisphere countries that US actions in Venezuela violate “articles 3, 19 and 20 of the Charter of the Organization of American States” (OAS) and that the charter should be “rigorously observed,” De Zayas said.

The OAS charter holds that no state has a right to intervene “directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State.” Neither can any member state “encourage the use of coercive measures of an economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of another State.”

The violation of the charter has been “so crass and so obvious that you wouldn’t think that you would have to remind the Lima Group of it, but they seem to be caught in their own web,” de Zayas said.

Throughout the world, the reality is: peace, and equality of economic opportunity, are tied together and cannot survive apart from one-another, and both of them are resisted by the people in power, the few billionaires, who fund all of the real contenders for the U.S. Presidency and for Congress. And equality of economic opportunity can exist only where wealth is approximately equally distributed and where the necessities of life (such as education, adequate food, essential health care, and a safe environment) are supplied by the government equally to all, regardless of personal wealth. (The billionaires can pay extra if they want, but such basics need to be equally available to all, in order to have the most productive type of economy — one which takes the fullest advantage of each individual’s actual potential.) Making access to any of those basic things dependent upon how much wealth one already has is like pouring hydrochloric acid onto even merely the barest hope for equality of economic opportunity. The result of doing that is always a putrid mockery of ‘justice’, and any honest person would call that a dictatorship, no democracy, at all. (It certainly is  a dictatorship against the less-wealthy 90%, or even — such as in Saudi Arabia — dictatorship against the less-wealthy 99%, of the entire population.) If this corrupt aristocratic system which determines power isn’t soon replaced (stripping all billionaires of any and all types of political — i.e., governmental — influence and power that’s connected to their grossly excessive wealth), then things can (and will) only continue to go from bad to worse, throughout the world, in every way. This is out-of-control and racing inequality, but it can get even worse than it now is. The solution isn’t to have an international gangster-nation imposing its ‘democracy’ on the nations it targets for conquest. The solution is the exact opposite: a global public repudiation and rejection of that lying gangster-regime.

George Friedman happens to be part of that corrupt and rotten system, but he didn’t create it. He exploits it, instead of attacks it, but the system is the problem, and no solution to it can be achieved without replacing that entire system — replacing it by one that no billionaire wants, and that all billionaires will employ every subterfuge in order to prevent authentic democracy from coming into existence.

As regards Japanese national security: relying upon the United States’ military occupation is complicity in a crime not only against the public in Japan, but also against the publics in North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia — and every nation. Only billionaires and their retinues benefit from it. Heeding the advices of the billionaires’ agents (such as Friedman) will advance it, instead of end it and replace it with an improved world. Only the billionaires and their retinues benefit from the prevailing system. Money is power, and they have enough of it to control the governments. That desperately needs to change.

There is a very fundamental conflict-of-interests between the billionaires and all the rest of humanity; and the billionaires definitely control the United States and its allies. The reality is that there is no way in which billionaires, who have come to control not only their own countries but other nations, will tolerate a world which is more peaceful, more productive, more equalitarian, healthier, happier, and less polluting — a world that’s far better for the public. That wouldn’t be the type of world they control, and in which they possess obscene wealth. They not only cling to their billions but they demand to become even more obscenely wealthy. As Warren Buffett, of the U.S. aristocracy’s liberal (meaning hypocritical) wing, was quoted in the 26 November 2006 New York Times“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” And the statement is true. (Buffet’s condemnations of that class-warfare are the hypocritical part.) And it’s even more true now than it was in 2006. It needs to become false, but it becomes truer each year that passes. Here is how true it is, on a global scale, as reflected in the

Credit Suisse “Global Wealth Report 2018″:

p.20:

“Figure 1: The global wealth pyramid 2018”

Wealth%, Wealth$, %/World, Wealth-range

0.8%=$142T=44.8%=$1M+

8.7%=$124.7T=39.3%=$100,000 — $1M

26.6%=$44.2T=14.0%=$10,000 — $100,000

63.9&=$6.2T=1.9%=<$10,000

100%=$317.1T=100%

For example: The poorest 63.9% own $6.2 trillion, which is 1.9% of the total, and this is the wealth of everyone whose net worth is below $10,000.

The richest 0.8% own $142 trillion, which is 44.8% of the total, and this is the wealth of everyone whose net worth is above $1,000,000.

The richest 0.8% own 23 times more than the poorest 63.9% do.

On 5 March 2019, Forbes came out with their 2019 list of 2,153 billionaires in the world during 2018, and their combined wealth is $8.7 trillion, which is 40% more than the combined wealth of the poorest 63.9% of people in the world in 2018 as shown in the recently released Credit Suisse “Global Wealth Report 2018″. The richest 9.5% had 84.1% of the total wealth. So, since money is power, democracy can’t possibly exist, and so if you aren’t among the richest 10%, the government’s doing what you want it to do is practically impossible to achieve. This is what is meant by saying that it’s an aristocratic, not a democratic, world we live in.

And that’s why this is a world of permanent war for perpetual ‘peace’ and (in)’justice’. That’s (those lies are) the problem (both nationally and internationally), and it can’t be solved without conquering economic inequality — by ending obscene personal wealth, and by placing government under the control of the entire public, no longer under the control (if billionaires control it now) of only the richest 2,153 people divided by the current world population of 7.6 billion, or 0.000000283 of the world’s population, or in percentage terms, of only 0.0000283% of today’s population. That’s not democracy. It is aristocracy. It’s even an extreme case of that. Democracy would instead represent the other 7,599,997,847 people, the other 0.999999716 or 99.99997%. To pretend otherwise than this reality is to serve only that 0.0000283%, and to try to fool the remaining 99.99997%. It’s theft by lying. It is force that’s used against the mind (deceit), instead of force that’s used against the body (violence). Theft (either type) has enormous costs, especially when it’s the actual system, instead of violations of the actual system. And, now, it is the actual system. It’s the system itself. And that’s the real problem.

Rightfully, there is universal condemnation of bigotry — prejudice — against ethnic minorities, but there is no similar public outrage against bigotry against the poorer 99.99997%, who are the vast majority of the world’s people. This is sick, and is sustained only by constant deceits. It is a system that’s built upon deceit. Anyone who wants to know how this system functions within the U.S. itself can see that here.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Geostrategy After the Deadlock in U.S.-North-Korean Relations

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

George Friedman, the head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor, issued a report on March 5th, “After Hanoi: North Korea, the US and Japan”, and it said:

The strategy since World War II, built on the assumption that U.S. conventional forces can defeat any foe and pacify the country, is being abandoned. And in the case of the Hanoi talks, the U.S. is following a new strategy of diplomatic deadlock without recourse to the insertion of force. …

The U.S. has decided to accept that North Korea is a nuclear state, so long as none of its nuclear weapons can reach the U.S. mainland. This completely destabilizes Japan’s strategy. Under that strategy, first imposed by the U.S. and happily embraced by Japan, the U.S. guarantees Japanese national security. The U.S., in exchange, has been able to use Japan as a base from which to project force across the Korean Peninsula, threaten China and block Russia’s Vladivostok fleet from accessing the Pacific Ocean. Japan, unencumbered by defense expenditures and any responsibility in American wars, could focus on the monumental task of its dramatic post-World War II recovery. Most important, the U.S. nuclear umbrella has guaranteed that any nation that might attack Japan with nuclear weapons would face retaliation from the United States. …

The Hanoi talks subtly shift that guarantee. The new U.S. position is that it cannot accept a North Korean nuclear program that threatens the United States. Implicit in that position is that it can tolerate one that threatens Japan.

His last sentence there is false, because it excludes the following important possibility, which now actually needs to become the reality, especially after this “deadlock” that he referred to:

The U.S. and North Korea can meet together in an entirely different discussion, of whether, in return for North Korea’s verifiable commitment never to possess or station any missile that can reach the United States, the U.S. will do the following three things:

1: Guarantee to Japan, and to South Korea, that any nuclear attack against Japan and/or against South Korea, will be met by a U.S. nuclear attack against the attacker (regardless of whom that attacking nation might be). The U.S. would then be taking Japan (as well as South Korea) entirely under its nuclear umbrella, so that an attack against Japan or against South Korea would be equivalent to an attack against the United States itself. No troops would need to be stationed in Japan (or South Korea) in order to be able to do this. America’s real nuclear umbrella for those two countries is precisely this (the nuclear intercontinental U.S. arsenal outside of Japan and South Korea, including the missiles at sea and including in mainland U.S.), and no stationing of either troops or weapons from the United States, inside either of those two countries, is necessary, at all, in order to achieve this. That’s the reality, notwithstanding George Friedman’s false assumption, to the exact contrary: that “Implicit in that position [“that it [[the U.S.]] cannot accept a North Korean nuclear program that threatens the United States”] is that it can tolerate one that threatens Japan.” Not at all is that presumption (America’s needing to station troops in Japan in order to protect Japan) by Friedman true. American troops there are superfluous for the protection of Japan — and also of South Korea. U.S. Troops aren’t needed in either country, for the protection of either country’s inhabitants.

2: Withdraw all U.S. troops from both Japan and South Korea. Those troops are there only for possible uses against Russia and China (as Friedman himself acknowledges by saying “The U.S. … has been able to use Japan as a base from which to project force across the Korean Peninsula, threaten China and block Russia’s Vladivostok fleet from accessing the Pacific Ocean”). The U.S. has secretly continued the old “Cold War” after the Soviet Union’s end, though no longer on an ideological basis (since Russia is no longer communist). It’s been doing this secretly ever since 24 February 1990, purely with the aim of ultimately conquering the entire world. That, too (though secret), is the reality: America has been, and is, secretly trying to take over the entire world.

3: End all sanctions against North Korea. Under the stated conditions, there would be no realistic future possibility that that country could pose a national-security threat to the United States. North Korea’s nuclear weapons would then pose no more of a national-security threat to the U.S. than do Israel’s nuclear weapons (since those are only local threats). Any further aggression (including sanctions) by the U.S. against North Korea would therefore violate Article 2 of the U.N. Charter, because North Korea would no longer even prospectively constitute a threat to America. North Korea would, of course, expect the U.S. to end all sanctions against it if North Korea would no longer be able to pose a threat to the U.S., and it wouldn’t sign the deal otherwise. 

This arrangement that’s proposed here between the United States and North Korea would end the Korean War, and it would end the major international tensions which have prevailed in the Asia-Pacific region since the end of World War II. It would bring security to North Korea, U.S., South Korea, and Japan.

This deal would be an authentic quid-pro-quo between the United States and North Korea, which would greatly benefit the economies of the United States, Japan, and South Korea (removing the unnecessary financial burden of maintaining and arming those occupying U.S. troops — troops which are superfluous to everyone except America’s billionaires, who want to impose their corporate wills upon every nation — including upon Russia and China). It wouldn’t benefit merely North Korea (though it also would do that). It would also set the foundation upon which, ultimately, the two Koreas might finally agree to become again one nation, much as did East and West Germany; and, it would also protect both Japan and South Korea — and block any threat from North Korea against the U.S. itself. Consequently, this would also greatly serve the interests of the American people. It would serve EVERYONE’s interests (except approximately 2,153 people, as will subsequently be explained here).

Unfortunately, the world isn’t so democratic internationally, nor within the United States, for the security and welfare of the public anywhere to be actually a high priority of international policy-makers — especially not in the United States, which serves only the interests of its billionaires and extracts as much as it possibly can from its own public and from every other country on the planet. U.S. President Barack Obama even was so arrogant as to assert publicly — and he said it many times — that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation,” which was Obama’s version of Hitler’s “Deutschland über alles,” and means (like Hitler’s German version did) that every other nation in the world is “dispensable” — only the imperial nation is not. Any other nation which allies itself with a nation such as this, is being headed by a regime that has no patriotism, no national self-respect at all — it’s a mere vassal-nation, enslaved (in this case) to the tyrannical U.S. regime: “the one indispensable nation.”

If the United States really had ended its side of the Cold war after the 1991 termination of the USSR, and of its communism, and of its Warsaw Pact military alliance that had mirrored America’s NATO alliance, then the arrangement which has been described here would have been instituted long ago, in 1991, when the other side ended the Cold War, and NATO itself would simultaneously have been dissolved when the Warsaw Pact was, instead of being expanded right up to Russia’s borders (as it since has done), but the U.S. regime in 1990 secretly ordered its allies to continue the Cold War on America’s side, and that one-sided aggression continues by the U.S. and its allies, until now.

And that’s the real problem — America’s continuation of the (originally ideological) Cold War, now purely for aggressive purposes: global conquest. It’s permanent war, for permanent ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ and ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’, and other brazen lies, now against Venezuela and so many other countries.

Just a few years after the 1991 supposed end of the Cold War (when East and West Germany merged), Spokane Washington’s Spokesman-Review newspaper headlined on 2 November 1995, “U.S. Won’t Reduce Troops in Japan”, and opened: “Defense Secretary William J. Perry said here [in Tokyo] Wednesday that the United States has no plans to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Japan, despite a groundswell of local opposition” in Japan.

And as was reported, on 5 March 2006, from “Asahi,” by the U.S. Embassy in Japan, to the CIA, and to the Joint Chiefs, and to all top U.S. national-security officials, “Japan can expect to reduce the number of US troops in Japan and to alleviate the burden of base-hosting localities while maintaining deterrent capabilities against China and North Korea. Meanwhile, the United States can swing its reduced troops around the world with Japan’s backing. The two countries’ expectations coincided.” But it didn’t actually happen — the U.S. occupation still continues. The U.S. Government is dedicated to militarily occupying as many countries as it can. Getting rid of those occupying troops is strongly opposed by the occupying power, which continues its voraciousness to control Russia and China.

As of 2017, the U.S. had 38,818 troops in Japan, and 24,189 in South Korea. The U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC) refuses to end such military occupations in foreign countries, but the only real beneficiaries from this are the MIC itself, which controls the U.S. Government. Firms such as Lockheed Martin are 100% dependent upon the U.S. Government and its allied governments (especially the Saud family) for their sales, and selling more weapons is essential to their cancerous growth. Americans pay in taxes and many other ways, and so do the local foreign governments pay, where America’s troops are stationed. This is one of the reasons for the extreme inequality of wealth in today’s world: that inequality is enforced, by the U.S. international regime. The U.S. military enforces it around the world, in all of America’s vassal-nations. It’s supporting the local aristocracy there, but also (and above all) America’s aristocracy. The U.S. has over a thousand military bases worldwide, the vast majority of which are in foreign countries. It benefits only the billionaires, but the billionaires control the governments, and so this continues and even gets worse. George Friedman ignores that crucial fact. He needs to retain his customers, and they benefit from this barbaric status-quo. He’s not actually a free man. He (like millions of others) speaks for the billionaires; he’s one of their millions of agents. He’s a bought man, so he says “The new U.S. position is that it cannot accept a North Korean nuclear program that threatens the United States. Implicit in that position is that it can tolerate one that threatens Japan.” If this statement from him is not clearly and publicly rejected by the American Government, then all Japanese (except Japan’s billionaires, who depend so much upon America’s) must recognize that the U.S. Government is their enemy, and that Japan needs to find authentic friends, elsewhere — and kick out its existing regime.

Friedman says, approvingly, that the U.S. “has been able to use Japan as a base from which to project force across the Korean Peninsula, threaten China and block Russia’s Vladivostok fleet from accessing the Pacific Ocean.” All of those  — against North Korea, and against China, and against Russia; and implicitly against Japan itself as an American stooge-regime — are, in fact, international-war crimes, aggressions by the U.S. military. Regardless of which country (Japan or any other) allows occupying troops, as part of some “deal” between those two nations, neither of those two nations is allowed legally to do any of those things against any third nation (such as against China, Russia, North Korea, or any other). If two people agree to threaten or rob a third person, then no matter how much both of them say it’s a ‘legal’ agreement and only a matter between themselves, it’s not. It still remains a criminal arrangement, and it’s an illegal threat to their intended victim-nations. Of course, if the U.S. is an international gangster-nation, a country that ignores any international laws (except ones that it can cite against weaker nations, such as the U.S. and its allies routinely do do, as mere PR ‘justifying’ their many coups and invasions) — if the U.S. ignores international laws simply because no entity will enforce them — then, the U.N. has already been destroyed, effectively nullified, by the U.S. gangster-regime. But in that case no argument could even possibly be made that the U.S. is a democracy. No nation can be both a dictator abroad, and a democracy in domestic (or intra-national) matters. To presume to the contrary is simply to lie — even if only to oneself.

The U.N. Charter says: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” The American regime has been violating that with impunity, ever since the end of World War II (such as in its infamous 1953 coup against Iran — a coup which enjoyed the support of Iran’s mullahs). Most recently, it did so in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Ukraine, and a number of other countries, which it and its allies have destroyed, all in the name of advancing things such as ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’, so as to cover over their authentic, actually vile, motivations, which are insatiable greed, and a craving for even more power than they already possess. All of this is barbaric, and they cover over that reality by kind-sounding words, in order to fool the rubes, who, thus — via their irresponsibility by trusting those serial international invaders and coup-perpetrators — accept the rightfulness of what those international invaders and coup-perpetrators have been doing, such as invading Iraq in 2003 on the basis of sheer lies, etc.

RT — a reliable news-source, but one which America’s very unreliable major ‘news’-media instead call a source of ‘fake news’ because it reports truths they hide — reported on March 5th:

Washington is leading a “revolution against international law and against international order,” with its calls for regime change and efforts to oust President Nicolas Maduro in favor of pro-US opposition leader Juan Guaido, former UN rapporteur to Venezuela and professor of law Alfred de Zayas told RT.

Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Gutierrez should “remind” the Lima Group of Western Hemisphere countries that US actions in Venezuela violate “articles 3, 19 and 20 of the Charter of the Organization of American States” (OAS) and that the charter should be “rigorously observed,” De Zayas said.

The OAS charter holds that no state has a right to intervene “directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State.” Neither can any member state “encourage the use of coercive measures of an economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of another State.”

The violation of the charter has been “so crass and so obvious that you wouldn’t think that you would have to remind the Lima Group of it, but they seem to be caught in their own web,” de Zayas said.

Throughout the world, the reality is: peace, and equality of economic opportunity, are tied together and cannot survive apart from one-another, and both of them are resisted by the people in power, the few billionaires, who fund all of the real contenders for the U.S. Presidency and for Congress. And equality of economic opportunity can exist only where wealth is approximately equally distributed and where the necessities of life (such as education, adequate food, essential health care, and a safe environment) are supplied by the government equally to all, regardless of personal wealth. (The billionaires can pay extra if they want, but such basics need to be equally available to all, in order to have the most productive type of economy — one which takes the fullest advantage of each individual’s actual potential.) Making access to any of those basic things dependent upon how much wealth one already has is like pouring hydrochloric acid onto even merely the barest hope for equality of economic opportunity. The result of doing that is always a putrid mockery of ‘justice’, and any honest person would call that a dictatorship, no democracy, at all. (It certainly is  a dictatorship against the less-wealthy 90%, or even — such as in Saudi Arabia — dictatorship against the less-wealthy 99%, of the entire population.) If this corrupt aristocratic system which determines power isn’t soon replaced (stripping all billionaires of any and all types of political — i.e., governmental — influence and power that’s connected to their grossly excessive wealth), then things can (and will) only continue to go from bad to worse, throughout the world, in every way. This is out-of-control and racing inequality, but it can get even worse than it now is. The solution isn’t to have an international gangster-nation imposing its ‘democracy’ on the nations it targets for conquest. The solution is the exact opposite: a global public repudiation and rejection of that lying gangster-regime.

George Friedman happens to be part of that corrupt and rotten system, but he didn’t create it. He exploits it, instead of attacks it, but the system is the problem, and no solution to it can be achieved without replacing that entire system — replacing it by one that no billionaire wants, and that all billionaires will employ every subterfuge in order to prevent authentic democracy from coming into existence.

As regards Japanese national security: relying upon the United States’ military occupation is complicity in a crime not only against the public in Japan, but also against the publics in North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia — and every nation. Only billionaires and their retinues benefit from it. Heeding the advices of the billionaires’ agents (such as Friedman) will advance it, instead of end it and replace it with an improved world. Only the billionaires and their retinues benefit from the prevailing system. Money is power, and they have enough of it to control the governments. That desperately needs to change.

There is a very fundamental conflict-of-interests between the billionaires and all the rest of humanity; and the billionaires definitely control the United States and its allies. The reality is that there is no way in which billionaires, who have come to control not only their own countries but other nations, will tolerate a world which is more peaceful, more productive, more equalitarian, healthier, happier, and less polluting — a world that’s far better for the public. That wouldn’t be the type of world they control, and in which they possess obscene wealth. They not only cling to their billions but they demand to become even more obscenely wealthy. As Warren Buffett, of the U.S. aristocracy’s liberal (meaning hypocritical) wing, was quoted in the 26 November 2006 New York Times“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” And the statement is true. (Buffet’s condemnations of that class-warfare are the hypocritical part.) And it’s even more true now than it was in 2006. It needs to become false, but it becomes truer each year that passes. Here is how true it is, on a global scale, as reflected in the

Credit Suisse “Global Wealth Report 2018″:

p.20:

“Figure 1: The global wealth pyramid 2018”

Wealth%, Wealth$, %/World, Wealth-range

0.8%=$142T=44.8%=$1M+

8.7%=$124.7T=39.3%=$100,000 — $1M

26.6%=$44.2T=14.0%=$10,000 — $100,000

63.9&=$6.2T=1.9%=<$10,000

100%=$317.1T=100%

For example: The poorest 63.9% own $6.2 trillion, which is 1.9% of the total, and this is the wealth of everyone whose net worth is below $10,000.

The richest 0.8% own $142 trillion, which is 44.8% of the total, and this is the wealth of everyone whose net worth is above $1,000,000.

The richest 0.8% own 23 times more than the poorest 63.9% do.

On 5 March 2019, Forbes came out with their 2019 list of 2,153 billionaires in the world during 2018, and their combined wealth is $8.7 trillion, which is 40% more than the combined wealth of the poorest 63.9% of people in the world in 2018 as shown in the recently released Credit Suisse “Global Wealth Report 2018″. The richest 9.5% had 84.1% of the total wealth. So, since money is power, democracy can’t possibly exist, and so if you aren’t among the richest 10%, the government’s doing what you want it to do is practically impossible to achieve. This is what is meant by saying that it’s an aristocratic, not a democratic, world we live in.

And that’s why this is a world of permanent war for perpetual ‘peace’ and (in)’justice’. That’s (those lies are) the problem (both nationally and internationally), and it can’t be solved without conquering economic inequality — by ending obscene personal wealth, and by placing government under the control of the entire public, no longer under the control (if billionaires control it now) of only the richest 2,153 people divided by the current world population of 7.6 billion, or 0.000000283 of the world’s population, or in percentage terms, of only 0.0000283% of today’s population. That’s not democracy. It is aristocracy. It’s even an extreme case of that. Democracy would instead represent the other 7,599,997,847 people, the other 0.999999716 or 99.99997%. To pretend otherwise than this reality is to serve only that 0.0000283%, and to try to fool the remaining 99.99997%. It’s theft by lying. It is force that’s used against the mind (deceit), instead of force that’s used against the body (violence). Theft (either type) has enormous costs, especially when it’s the actual system, instead of violations of the actual system. And, now, it is the actual system. It’s the system itself. And that’s the real problem.

Rightfully, there is universal condemnation of bigotry — prejudice — against ethnic minorities, but there is no similar public outrage against bigotry against the poorer 99.99997%, who are the vast majority of the world’s people. This is sick, and is sustained only by constant deceits. It is a system that’s built upon deceit. Anyone who wants to know how this system functions within the U.S. itself can see that here.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

China and Indonesia halt Boeing 737 MAX 8 after Ethiopia crash

March 11, 2019

By Aaron Maasho and Stella Qiu

ADDIS ABABA/BEIJING (Reuters) – China, Indonesia and Ethiopia grounded their Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 fleets on Monday while investigators found the black box from a crash that killed 157 people in the second disaster involving that airplane model in six months.

The Ethiopian Airlines jet bound for Nairobi came down minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa on Sunday, killing all on board. The victims came from 33 nations and included 22 United Nations’ staff.

The discovery of the black box with both the cockpit voice recorder and digital flight data, reported by Ethiopian state TV, should shed light on the cause of the crash.

At the scene, men in Red Cross jackets picked through the dirt, putting items in black paper bags, while investigators hunted for the black box voice recorders.

“Although we don’t yet know the cause of the crash, we had to decide to ground the particular fleet as extra safety precaution,” Ethiopian Airlines said. It has four other 737 MAX 8 jets, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.

The 737 line is the world’s best selling modern passenger aircraft and viewed as one of the industry’s most reliable.

CHINA’S ‘ZERO TOLERANCE’

China on Monday also ordered its airlines to suspend operations of their 737 MAX 8 jets by 6 p.m. (1000 GMT) following the second crash of a Boeing 737 MAX jet since one run by Indonesia’s Lion Air went down in October.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said it would notify airlines when they could resume flying the jets, after contacting Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

“Given that two accidents both involved newly delivered Boeing 737-8 planes and happened during take-off phase, they have some degree of similarity,” the CAAC said, adding the step was in line with its principle of zero tolerance of safety hazards. The 737 MAX 8 is sometimes referred to as the 737-8.

Indonesia also said it would temporarily ground Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft for inspection.

In October, a 737 MAX 8 operated by budget carrier Lion Air crashed 13 minutes after take-off from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on a domestic flight, killing all 189 on board.

Cayman Airways sad it had grounded both of its new 737 MAX 8 jets temporarily too, while India announced a safety review.

A senior U.S. official said it was too early to tell if there was any direct connection between the two accidents but assessing that was a priority for investigators.

By January-end, Boeing had delivered 350 of the 737 MAX family jets to customers, with 4,661 more on order.

Boeing shares slid almost 10 percent in early trading on Monday. The move, if maintained through normal trading hours, would be the biggest fall in Boeing’s stock in nearly two decades, halting a surge that has seen it triple in value in just over three years to a record high of $446 last week.

MOURNING

Ethiopia’s parliament declared Monday a day of mourning.

A global summit in Nairobi opened with a moment of silence as some wept for the U.N. members killed in one of the deadliest aviation accidents in the organization’s history.

The dead include a 28-year-old Norwegian Red Cross worker, three Austrian aid workers on their way to Zanzibar, a Nigerian-Canadian professor known for mentoring young colleagues, and an Italian archaeologist, employers and foreign ministries said.

The pilot Yared Getachew, who was a joint Ethiopian-Kenyan national, had a “commendable record” and more than 8,000 hours of flying experience, Ethiopian Airlines said.

Kenyan authorities had managed to contact the families of 25 of the 32 Kenyan passengers, cabinet secretary for transport James Macharia told journalists at the airport on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Jamie Freed in Singapore, Bernadette Christina Munthe in Jakarta, Katherine Houreld in Hereward Holland in Nairobi, Josh Horwitz in Shanghai, Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

Malaysia frees Indonesian woman accused of Kim Jong Nam’s VX murder

March 11, 2019

By Rozanna Latiff

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – An Indonesian woman accused in the 2017 chemical poison murder of the North Korean leader’s half-brother was freed on Monday after a Malaysian court dropped a murder charge in a case that drew suspicions of being a political assassination.

As the court announced its decision, Siti Aisyah, 26, turned to her Vietnamese co-defendant, Doan Thi Huong, 30, in the dock and the two women, who had been facing the death penalty together, embraced in tears.

They had been accused of poisoning Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with liquid VX, a banned chemical weapon, at Kuala Lumpur airport in February 2017.

Following the dramatic decision to release Siti Aisyah, a defense lawyer asked for an adjournment in the case against Huong in order to submit a request that charges be dropped against her too.

Defense lawyers have maintained that the women were pawns in an assassination orchestrated by North Korean agents.

Interpol had issued a red notice for four North Koreans who were identified as suspects by Malaysian police and had left the country hours after the murder.

During the trial, the court was shown CCTV footage of two women allegedly assaulting Kim Jong Nam while he prepared to check in for a flight.

Siti Aisyah, who had worked as a masseuse at a hotel in the Malaysian capital, and Huong, who described herself as an actress, had maintained that they believed they had been hired to participate in a reality TV prank show.

Once the court released her, Siti Aisyah, wearing a black traditional Malay dress and headscarf, was rushed to the Indonesian embassy, where she spoke briefly with journalists.

“I feel so happy. I did not expect that today I would be released,” Siti Aisyah said, adding that she was healthy and had been treated well in prison.

Prosecutors told the court that they had been instructed to withdraw the charge against Siti Aisyah. No reason was given.

While the court discharged Siti Aisyah from the case, it rejected her lawyer’s request for a full acquittal, as it said that the trial had already established a prima facie case and she could be recalled if fresh evidence emerged.

The defense had disputed whether the CCTV footage was clear enough to identify the Indonesian woman as an assailant, or establish what she had done to the victim.

Gooi Soon Seng, Siti Aisyah’s lawyer, said his client was “a scapegoat”.

“I still believe that North Korea had something to do with it,” Gooi said.

Kim Jong Nam had lived in exile in Macau for several years before the killing, having fled his homeland after his half-brother became North Korea’s leader in 2011 following their father’s death.

Some South Korean lawmakers said the North Korean regime had ordered the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, who had been critical of his family’s dynastic rule. Pyongyang has denied the accusation.

NOT OVER YET FOR HUONG

Left to stand trial by herself after Siti Aisyah’s release, Huong was still sobbing as she prepared to take the stand on Monday at the start of her defense. But the court agreed to resume proceedings on Thursday instead, pending a reply from the attorney-general to the request that charges against her also be withdrawn.

“Where is the principle of equality? Both of them were charged on the same evidence, the defense was called on fairly the same grounds,” said Salim Bashir, one of Huong’s lawyers.

“Until today, we do not know what were the exceptional circumstances that were needed for the attorney-general to review the charge against Siti Aisyah. The prosecution never advanced a single ground for the withdrawal.”

Although the two women were being tried together, the cases against them were separate, and the court had asked the Indonesian woman to present her defense first.

Siti Aisyah’s trial was suspended in December as her lawyers argued with prosecutors over access to statements made by seven witnesses.

Prosecutor Muhammad Iskandar Ahmad told Reuters the decision to withdraw the charge against her was made based on “several representations”, without elaborating.

Siti Aisyah flew back to Jakarta on Monday, accompanied by Indonesian Law Minister Yasonna H. Laoly.

Laoly said Siti Aisyah’s release, after over two years in prison, was the result of high-level diplomacy by his government, including meetings with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and the attorney-general.

“After studying the case thoroughly, we sent letters to the Attorney-General of Malaysia and met with him and Prime Minister Mahathir last August,” Laoly told reporters with Siti Aisyah shortly after landing in Jakarta.

Laoly had written to Malaysia’s attorney-general, laying the blame on North Korea.

“Miss Aisyah was deceived and had no awareness whatsoever that she was being used as an intelligence tool of North Korea,” he wrote.

(Additional reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa in JAKARTA; writing by Joseph Sipalan; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Nick Macfie)

It Begins: China Orders Carriers To Ground Boeing 737s After Ethiopian Airlines Crash

China has ordered all domestic carriers to ground their Boeing 737 MAX 8s after one of the jets seemingly dropped from the sky southeast of Addis Ababa just six minutes after taking off on Sunday. That accident – which killed all 157 people on board – was the second involving one of the jets in five months, and has led to speculation that Boeing might order all of the jets to be grounded pending further inspection.

Chinese media outlet Caijing was the first to report the decision, citing sources within China’s domestic airline industry. Thee 737 MAX, the fourth generation of Boeing’s narrow-body 737 line, was first flown in 2016, making the string of crashes – two in five months – unprecedented and, according to some analysts, extremely suspect.

The first crash occurred in late October when a 737 MAX operated by Lion Air crashed into the Java Sea, killing the nearly 200 people on board. Before the crash, the crew had reported unusual activity in the jet, including the nose of the plane unexpectedly tipping lower, which was blamed on a faulty data system. That crash is still under investigation.

Though its possible the two accidents could be a coincidence, the fact that they both involved brand new planes is particularly concerning. Yet, airlines have been reluctant to ground flights without a cue from Boeing, or some more evidence unearthed by investigators that the crashes could have been the result of some wider flaw in the plane’s design. Ethiopian Airlines, which operated the ill-fated flight ET302 destined for Nairobi, has the best safety record of any carrier in Africa, and its CEO said at a Sunday press conference that its 737 MAXs would remain airborn.

As aviation analyst Alex Macheras pointed out during a series of appearances on cable news shows, the fact that two Boeing 737s have crashed in such a short period is truly unprecedented, and it is surprising that Boeing hasn’t already ordered all of the planes to be grounded pending a review.

As airlines slowly wake up to the fact that the lives of hundreds of passengers may be at risk, they might opt to ground the planes on their own,.

Already, futures have dipped on the news out of China. If the groundings become a trend, Dow component Boeing could drag down the broader market on Monday.

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Report: Decommissioned F-117 Nighthawks Were Used In Syria, Iraq In 2017

Scramble, a Dutch aviation magazine, has reported on Facebook that four now decommissioned Lockheed F-117 Nighthawks were secretly deployed to the Middle Esat in 2017 to launch surgical strikes.

According to the aviation magazine, the stealth attack aircraft were conducting bombing missions over Iraq and Syria using GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs.

One of the planes was even forced to make an emergency landing far away from its home base.

Scramble indicates that the jets were likely deployed to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or Qatar.

There has not been an official response by the US Department of Defence on the confirmation of this story. 

“Back in 2017, and not published by any other source so far, Scramble received very reliable information that at least four F-117s were deployed to the Middle East as an operational need emerged for the USAF to resurrect the stealth F-117 for special purposes. One of the deployed aircraft was involved in an in-flight emergency and landed far away from its temporary home base that was likely located in Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Qatar.

During this extremely covert deployment the four Nighthawks flew missions over Syria and Iraq with Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs),” wrote Sramble.

So, why was first-generation stealth technology deployed to a sophisticated and modern aerial battlefield like Syria? The answer is straightforward.

Russia and Syria had shut down the country’s airspace by mid-2016. The U.S.-led coalition understood there was an elevated risk of losing a fifth-generation aircraft due to Russia’s deployment of S-400 missile systems.

So, with all this in mind, the resurrection of the F-117 was to fill an urgent gap in the Pentagon’s ability to secretly strike targets in the disputed airspace.

The U.S. Air Force retired the Nighthawks in August 2008, according to some reports due to the fielding of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and other fifth-generation fighters.

Congress had ordered that all F-117s mothballed were to be maintained “in a condition that would allow recall of that aircraft to future service” as part of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act. The 2017 National Defence Authorisation Act ordered the “demilitarising” of four F-117s each year, meaning some of them are still capable of participating in bombing missions.

Still, there is no evidence that four F-117s were resurrected for secret combat missions in Syria and Iraq. At the same time, it is not entirely impossible to believe that stealth jets were sent to the Middle East, due to the National Defence Authorisation Act demanding the Air Force to keep a small number of these planes in operational order.

The Health Risks of Mobile Phones: Italian Court Orders Public Safety Campaign

In a victory for advocates of precaution, an Italian court has ordered the government to launch a campaign to advise the public of the health risks from mobile and cordless phones.

The information campaign must begin by July 16.

The …

The post The Health Risks of Mobile Phones: Italian Court Orders Public Safety Campaign appeared first on Global Research.

When The Winter Of Our Discontent Meets Fyre Festival

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something–anything–before it is all gone.” ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Sometimes I wonder about strange coincidences. In an email exchange with Marc (Hardscrabble Farmer) in the Fall, he mentioned he had begun reading Steinbeck’s Winter of Our Discontent and planned to write an article about it. Coincidentally, I had just bought a used copy of the same novel at Hooked on Books in Wildwood. I didn’t plan on buying it, but I’ve read most of Steinbeck’s brilliant novels and felt compelled by the title and our national state of discontent to select it from among the thousands of books in the store.

Marc had posted his Steinbeck-esque article in December, but I didn’t read it until I had finished the novel. Marc’s perspective on the value of money and his diametrically opposite path from Ethan Hawley, the discontented anti-hero of Steinbeck’s final novel, was enlightening and thought provoking. I’m sure it impacted my consciousness as I wrote this article.

Steinbeck’s title was taken from Shakespeare to reflect the unhappiness of Ethan Hawley at the outset of the novel. The quote, “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York”, is the first line of Shakespeare’s Richard III, written in 1594. Shakespeare was using the summer/winter weather as a metaphor for the fortunes of the English House of York and its rivalry with the Plantagenets for the English throne. The ‘sun of York’ was a comment on the ‘son of York’ Edward IV, a harbinger of better times ahead. This theme of discontent was true in 1594, in 1961 when Steinbeck published his final novel, and is true today, as discontent blows across the land like a deadly polar vortex. At this point, it is difficult to see better times ahead.

The reason Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize winning novel still resonates today is because humans do not change. The human condition, our frailties, foibles, moral shortcomings, greed, avarice, narcissism, ability to forgive and seek redemption has remained constant through the ages. Steinbeck wrote the novel to address the moral degeneration of American culture during the 1950s and 1960s. The game show scandals, nativism and plagiarism of the 1950’s was representative of the decay.

Twenty-two years before, in 1939, Steinbeck addressed man’s inhumanity to man and the greed of evil men creating the suffering of the common man during the Great Depression in his classic novel Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck’s characters have biblical aspects, as the battle between good and evil is always a subplot. If Steinbeck thought American culture had degenerated in 1961, I wonder what he would think today.

The definition of discontent is dissatisfaction with the prevailing social or political situation. If ever a word defined the current state of our world, it would be discontent. And it so happens, we are also in the depths of a bleak tumultuous winter season. The social and political discontent is reflected in the epic struggle between far-left treasonous Deep State operatives and the deplorables supporting Trump’s battle to retain the presidency.

An open coup has been in progress for two years as the Obama/Clinton surveillance state cronies, fully supported by the left-wing fake news propaganda outlets, attempt to remove a democratically elected president. This is truly a dark moment in our history and could mark a turning point in the demise of our Republic.

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Steinbeck’s story about the moral decline of Ethan Hawley was a parable about the human condition set in the 1950s, but applicable throughout human history, and as relevant today as it was then. Ethan was a war hero whose integrity and honesty were the noble standards he lived by every day. His father recklessly lost the family fortune and he was left as a lowly grocery store clerk working for a foreigner.

It is a story of how easy it is for a good man to be corrupted through societal expectations, the opinions of prominent people, and the disapproval of family for their status in the community. The love of money is the root of all evil, as presented by Steinbeck. Ethan Hawley’s fall from grace was self-imposed as he allowed his darker nature to control his actions in order to regain his once prominent station in the community. The opinions of others considering him a failure led to his fall from grace.

“Men don’t get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure.” ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

He sacrificed his self-respect, life long friendships, and the lives of two men, in order to climb the social ladder and regain the wealth and influence his father had squandered. Ethan’s ego and sense of self worth led him down a path paved with evil intentions. He had his boss deported, provided the means for his best friend to commit suicide, planned to rob a bank, and eventually came to the realization his own disregard for morality had been passed on to his son, who saw no problem with cheating to get what he wanted in life.

Ethan knew right from wrong. He was well read. He had killed Germans fighting for his country. He willfully chose to manipulate, lie and scheme in order to achieve his materialistic ambitions. The difference between Ethan and the materialistic, delusional, dishonest masses inhabiting our country today, is his sense of guilt impelled him to take his own life. But the unwavering love of his daughter convinced him to soldier on and redeem himself.

Our society is now infinitely more materialistic, narcissistic, and greedy than it was in the 1950s. Moral degeneration has reached new lows, unthinkable during the relatively innocent 1950s. But the common theme is human failings, foibles, and fallacies. Whatever a culture values you get more of. Our culture values achievement, wealth and power, at any cost.

Achieving success through hard work, intellectual accomplishment, or a superior product is antiquated and passé. Success is achieved through regulatory capture, bribing politicians, financial engineering schemes, monopolization of markets, and the power of propaganda. As Ethan cynically expounded, strength and success, even if achieved through criminal means, is all that matters in the end. The victors write the history books.

“To most of the world success is never bad. I remember how, when Hitler moved unchecked and triumphant, many honorable men sought and found virtues in him. And Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Vichy collaborated for the good of France, and whatever else Stalin was, he was strong. Strength and success—they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn’t seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.” ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

A modern-day parable of moral degeneration presented itself to me shortly after finishing the Steinbeck novel. I happened to stumble across a documentary about the Fyre Festival fraud on Netflix. The protagonist of this illustration of discontent and delusion was Billy McFarland. He is representative of the modern-day Ethan Hawley, except with no redeeming qualities or conscience.

He conned investors, entertainers, super models, the media, employees, and gullible millennials. His ultimate purpose was no different than Ethan Hawley’s, to be wealthy and admired by his peers. His outrageously criminal exploits were detailed in the documentary as he lied, falsified, and conducted a ponzi scheme until it all blew up in a shocking display of hubristic folly. The story is a reflection of our shallow, narcissistic, gullible, low IQ society.

What leaps off the screen is how businesses are created out of thin air delivering no value to society. It’s all smoke, mirrors, and superficial virtue signaling designed to lure intellectual lightweights to pretend they are a mover and shaker in their social media driven world. The entire festival was designed to promote some ridiculous music booking app. These frivolous social media-based companies are built upon false narratives, self-absorbed millennials, easy money, and celebrity worship. They have zero value.

After watching how easily young people could be lured into handing over tens of thousands of dollars to this shyster because he paid some super models to do a bikini video and tweet falsehoods about the fake festival, you realize how they can believe socialism can work. Alexandrea Ocasio-Cortez is a perfect role model for these dullards and sycophants. Young people appear incapable of thinking for themselves, critically assessing situations, or going against the crowd. They want to be told what to believe and what to do.

Of course, this sickness is not confined to only young people. Our entire society is permeated with greed, narcissism and lemming-like behavior. Keeping up with the Kardashians has replaced keeping up with the Joneses. Ethan Hawley’s desire for status and respect among his peers in small town America during the 1950s is no different than the social climbing happening in our high-tech social media crazed world of today. Human nature does not change.

The Netflix documentary brought a term to my attention I had not heard before – “influencers”. The shallowness and trivial nature of our culture is captured perfectly by the essence of the importance of “influencers” to marketing products and events.  The Fyre Festival was promoted on Instagram by “social media influencers” including socialite and model Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, and model Emily Ratajkowski, who did not disclose they had been paid to do so.

“In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind–but he must get there first.” ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Rather than make up our own minds about what we like, what we wear, where we eat, or what entertainment we enjoy, we need to be influenced into our decisions by famous people who are famous for being famous. These “influencers” generate their influential power through the number of social media followers they have accumulated by posting pictures of themselves in their underwear, leaked sex tapes, nude selfies, or generally being attractive.

Most of them are low IQ mouth breathers who can’t do basic math or write a comprehensible paragraph. But those 36DD breasts and pouty lips classify them as a grade A influencer. I can’t decide whether these narcissistic icons are more pathetic or the feeble-minded wretches who are actually influenced by these vacuous bimbos. Moral degeneration of society seems to have reached a new low.

Billy McFarland used any means necessary to maul his way to the top. He figured if he pulled off this spectacular social media extravaganza, his new music app demand would skyrocket and he would become a superstar music business mogul like Jay-Z. As his lies and debt continued to pile up, he double downed and used his dynamic personality to convince naïve rich women into “investing” millions into his doomed to failure venture.

Ultimately, thousands of suckers landed on a Caribbean island expecting luxurious accommodations and dozens of A list entertainers, but experienced mass confusion, flimsy tent accommodations with soaked mattresses, little to no food, and a canceled concert as unpaid bands pulled out. The disaster was reported in real time through the same social media that promoted this festival farce.

“In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms” ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

In the case of Billy McFarland we know the consequences of his actions. Lawsuits totaling $100 million were filed against him. He was charged with the Federal crime of wire fraud and convicted. He is currently serving six years in a Federal prison and was ordered to forfeit $26 million. Based on the warped personality I witnessed in the documentary, he will resume scamming people the second he walks out of that prison, and more suckers will eagerly hand him their money. You can’t cure stupid.

The future of fictional character Ethan Hawley is left to your imagination. He had been a moral upstanding citizen who faced a crisis of conscience and fell prey to the darker side of his nature. His boss had been deported and his best friend was dead. At the end of the novel he was left with ill-gotten wealth, a loving wife, a son who felt no guilt in cheating, and a daughter who saved his life.

I want to believe Ethan spent the rest of his life redeeming himself through his actions by doing good for the town, helping his friends achieve success, teaching his son right from wrong, using his wealth to benefit humanity, and proving to his daughter his life was worth saving. Ethan’s struggle is the existential crisis we all face as human beings. The love of money is the root of all evil. Whether we are poor, middle class or rich, when our priorities become warped by greed, narcissism, envy, or worldly desires, it only leads to discontent.

We see the discontent revealed by the billionaire crowd who rig markets to pillage more of the nation’s wealth. We see it among corrupt politicians being bought off by crooked corporate CEOs. We see it when media pundits broadcast fake news to push their agenda. We see it exhibited by the blatant coup attempt against a duly elected president by arrogant treasonous men who consider themselves above the law. We see it play out in office politics all over America. We see it with cheating on our taxes or lying to our spouses. We see our youth plagiarizing and cheating on tests. It seems we are a society of scammers, liars, and dishonest discontents.

Steinbeck was not one for happy endings. He pondered morality and the human condition and found it wanting. A battle between the good and evil is fought within the conscience of every human being. An inner dialogue takes place regarding every moral decision we make. The continuation of a civilized society is dependent upon more human beings choosing the path of good versus the path of evil.

We can be the most technologically advanced civilization in history, but if we allow moral degeneration to dominate our culture, our civilization will be doomed. It feels as if our society is leaning towards the dark side and this realization is leading to an epic showdown between good and evil. We are truly experiencing a winter of discontent. The winner of this battle will determine the future course of our country.

“We can shoot rockets into space but we can’t cure anger or discontent.” ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Vietnam’s Bamboo Airways to buy 10 Boeing planes during Trump-Kim summit

February 24, 2019

By Khanh Vu

HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnamese carrier Bamboo Airways will sign a deal with Boeing Co to purchase 10 planes on the sidelines of this week’s Trump-Kim summit, an airline executive said on Sunday.

The carrier, which is owned by property and leisure company FLC Group and made its first flights in January, placed a provisional order last year for 20 Boeing 787 widebody jets worth $5.6 billion at list prices.

“We will sign with Boeing a deal to buy 10 more Boeing 787s. This is different from the deal signed earlier for 20 Boeing planes,” said the executive who declined to be named due to the confidentiality of the matter.

“That means we will have ordered 30 Boeing 787s. The deal will be signed during the summit,” the executive said.

It is unclear whether this is a firm or provisional order by Bamboo, which is currently operating 10 Airbus planes.

Boeing did not provide an immediate comment.

Bamboo is aiming to open routes to the United States after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration declared Vietnam complied with international aviation standards, in a move that would allow Vietnamese carriers to fly there for the first time and codeshare with U.S. airlines.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will hold their second summit in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Feb. 27-28.

Bamboo’s first 787 is set to arrive in the third quarter of 2020 and the airline is preparing to launch flights to the United States from late 2019 or early 2020 with leased jets unless Boeing can deliver them earlier, Bamboo’s chairman Trinh Van Quyet had earlier told Reuters.

“Direct flights between Vietnam and the U.S. will not only push tourism activities, but also further facilitate bilateral trade and investment,” he said. “We are receiving huge support from Boeing to deploy our flights to the U.S.”

Rivals Vietnam Airlines JSC and VietJet Aviation JSC also have ambitions to fly to the United States, although the latter carrier has yet to place an order for widebody jets.

VietJet is also expected to sign a major jet deal with Boeing on the sidelines of the Trump-Kim summit, according to sources familiar with the matter.

VietJet, while not government-owned, increasingly uses state visits to showcase major plane orders balanced between Boeing and Airbus SE. It signed a deal to buy 100 Boeing 737 MAX narrowbody jets when former U.S. President Barack Obama visited Hanoi in 2016.

The airline is likely to finalize next week a separate provisional deal agreed last year at the Farnborough Airshow to buy another 100 Boeing 737 MAX jets worth almost $13 billion at list prices, sources said on condition of anonymity.

(Reporting by Khanh Vu in Hanoi; Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Writing by Jamie Freed; Editing by Keith Weir)

Lawsuit Filed In 25th Amendment Coup, ‘Gang Of Eight’ Knew

The attempt to overthrow a sitting president can amount to treason, and independent government watchdog, Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit to find out exactly how far they went after Andrew McCabe admitted that the ‘gang of eight’ knew.

Source:

Not only did the “Gang of Eight” know that Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe were plotting a coup against a sitting president, Judicial Watch has announced that it has filed a lawsuit to get to the bottom of the treasonous attempt.

According to statements made by former acting FBI Director McCabe, top Justice Department officials considered asking Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment against President Donald Trump in order to remove him from office.

McCabe said Tuesday “that none of the top eight congressional leaders objected when he briefed them in 2017 on the bureau’s decision to open a counterintelligence investigation.”

“The purpose of the briefing was to let our congressional leadership know exactly what we’d been doing,” McCabe claimed.

McCabe admitted that he ordered the investigation, but said others were involved, notably Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

“And I told Congress what we had done,” he said.

“No one objected,” he added in the interview. “Not on legal grounds, not on constitutional grounds and not based on the facts.”

However, independent government watchdog, Judicial Watch, wants the truth.

The group filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for all records of communication of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the Office of the Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or the Office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussing how to remove President Trump from office based on ‘unfitness.’

“Additionally, the lawsuit seeks all recordings made by any official in the Office of the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General of meetings in the Executive Office of the President or Vice President.

“The suit was filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests dated September 21, 2018 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-00388)). The lawsuit seeks all written and audio/visual records of any FBI/DOJ discussions regarding the 25th Amendment and plans to secretly record President Trump in the Oval Office.”

President Trump recently tweeted: “The biggest abuse of power and corruption scandal in our history, and it’s much worse than we thought. Andrew McCabe (FBI) admitted to plotting a coup (government overthrow) when he was serving in the FBI, before he was fired for lying & leaking.”

“It is no surprise that we are facing an immense cover-up of senior FBI and DOJ leadership discussions to pursue a seditious coup against President Trump,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This effort to overthrow President Trump is a fundamental threat to our constitutional republic so Judicial Watch will do everything it can in the courts to expose everything possible about this lawlessness.”

The “Gang of Eight” included, at the time, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), then-Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Rosenstein has denied that he was involved with the plot, or that he suggested wearing a wire to entrap the president for the coup, saying McCabe’s claim is “inaccurate and factually incorrect.”

McCabe later walked back his remarks, with a spokesperson issuing a statement that he did not “participate in any extended discussions about the use of the 25th Amendment, nor is he aware of any such discussions.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham vowed to conduct oversight over “those who watch us.”

“It’s one of the most significant moments in American history if it’s true,” Graham said. “You had the acting head of the FBI talking to the deputy attorney general about replacing the president. So what I’ll do — oversight is part of my job. We do have checks and balances, so the Congress will watch those who watch us. I’ll try to find out who was in these meetings and talk to all of them, and figure out who is lying because somebody’s lying.”

Many people agree. They want to know who’s lying too, who tried to oust a sitting president, and why the government has repeatedly denied requests under the FOIA law.

North Carolina elections board orders new U.S. House election

February 21, 2019

By Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) – North Carolina’s elections board on Thursday unanimously ordered a new election for a U.S. House seat after officials said corruption surrounding absentee ballots tainted the results of last November’s vote.

The bipartisan board’s 5-0 decision came after Republican candidate Mark Harris requested a new vote, telling the panel that evidence of possible ballot fraud had undermined confidence in the election.

In the televised hearing, board Chairman Bob Cordle said “the corruption” and “absolute mess” with the election’s absentee ballots had cast doubt on the fairness of the contest.

“It certainly was a tainted election,” Cordle said ahead of the vote. “The people of North Carolina deserve a fair election.”

Harris’ request for a new vote came as a surprise. For months, he had said he should be declared the victor in the 9th Congressional District after he led Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes out of 282,717 ballots cast on Nov. 6. Elections officials, however, had refused to certify him as the winner due to allegations of irregularities in the vote.

“Through the testimony I’ve listened to over the past three days, I believe a new election should be called,” Harris said at a hearing in Raleigh.

It was unclear whether Harris would run in the new race. He told the board he was recovering from an infection that led to sepsis and two strokes and he was not prepared for the “rigors” of the hearing.

During this week’s hearing, Harris’ son said he had warned his father of potential illegal activity in the election by one of his political operatives, Leslie McCrae Dowless.

North Carolina’s Democratic Party said the hearing had laid bare the Harris campaign’s “illegal scheme to steal an election.”

“This saga could only have ended in a new election,” the state Democrats said.

Harris’ statement came on the fourth day of a hearing on whether his campaign benefited from what state investigators called illegal election manipulation by Dowless.

Earlier on Thursday, Harris said he had known Dowless was going door to door on the candidate’s behalf to help voters obtain absentee ballots, a process that is legal. Harris said Dowless assured him he would not collect the ballots from the voters, which would violate state law.

But residents of at least two counties in the district said Dowless and his paid workers collected incomplete absentee ballots and, in some instances, falsely signed as witnesses and filled in votes for contests left blank, according to testimony at the hearing.

Harris campaign officials said they did not pay Dowless to do anything illegal, and Dowless maintained his innocence.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Hay; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Dan Grebler and James Dalgleish)

Stone Gagged Again As Judge Threatens Jail During ‘Death Threat’ Court Hearing

Former Trump adviser Roger Stone was given an epic slap on the wrist by a D.C. judge on Thursday after Judge Amy Berman Jackson slapped him with another gag order following an Instagram ‘death threat’ levied at the Judge. 

Stone posted a photo to Instagram featuring Berman Jackson with a crosshair next to her head, for which he was ordered to explain himself in court on Thursday.  

Apologizing for violating her previous gag order, Stone said on Thursday: “I abused the order for which I’m heartfully sorry,” adding “I’m kicking myself over my own stupidity but not more than my wife is kicking me.”

Stone then blamed one of his five volunteers for downloading the image he posted. 

Mr. Stone, I’m not giving you another chance. I have serious doubts about whether you’ve learned any lesson at all,” said Berman Jackson, who added that she wasn’t buying Stone’s apology – and would throw him in jail if he violates the new gag order. 

In short, much ado about nothing.  

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