The National Socialist Party died in 1945, at the same time its leader Adolph Hitler was escorted to Argentina. Following the show trials at Nuremberg, some of the last Nazi leaders were sentenced to death. Others were rewarded by being ushered into America under the CIA’s Operation Paperclip, where they helped establish NASA.

Although the Nazis themselves have been gone for more than half a century, the term “Nazi” itself has a universal appeal, and a staying power that appears to be immortal. When someone is called a “Nazi” now, those affixing the label don’t mean a literal member of the National Socialist Party. They mean, instead, whatever they want it to mean. It is the slur that fits all sizes; leftists routinely paint anyone who doesn’t believe in 57 genders with it, and conservatives use it almost as freely.

Alex Jones, de-platformed guru of the conspiracy world, talks about Adolph Hitler and the Nazis more than he talks about Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and every “globalist” in the universe combined. Others on the right resort to it regularly. Donald Trump, Jr. and right-wing author Dinesh D’Souza both compare today’s liberals to actual Nazis. Conservative Jonah Goldberg’s 2008 book Liberal Fascism opined that Hitler and Mussolini merely held more extreme versions of the philosophy of Hillary Clinton and other modern liberal icons.

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Since the election of Donald Trump, the disastrous two-party system has become emboldened, as those who irrationally hate or love him dig their heels into partisan Democrat or Republican rhetoric. Alex Jones, Dinesh D’Souza and others have taken to…

Ogossagou massacre exposes rising bloodshed in European-occupied Mali

By
Stéphane Hugues and Alex Lantier

30 March 2019

The horrific massacre in the central Malian village of Ogossagou is exposing the brutal realities of the war in Mali launched by Paris in 2013. Under French and German military occupation, this country—one of the poorest in the world—is being torn apart by a rising wave of ethnic bloodshed.

Just before dawn on March 23, a band of approximately 100 fighters dressed in ethnic Dogon garb and bearing firearms arrived in Ogossagou, a Peul (or Fulani) village in the region of Bankass, near the border with Burkina Faso. They proceeded to shoot or kill everyone they could find, from the elderly down to the smallest infants. Approximately 160 people were killed and 55 wounded.

Eighteen people sought refuge in the house of the village marabout (healer), Bara Sékou Issa, who is known across West Africa, hoping the gunmen would not attack a marabout’s house. Sékou Issa had already welcomed a number of refugees from nearby villages into his home, offering them room and board. However, the attackers set Sékou Issa’s house on fire and gunned down anyone fleeing the house to escape the flames. All of Sékou Issa’s religious students reportedly perished in the flames inside his house.

The attackers slit the throat of the village chief, Amadou Barry, in front of his mother, aged 90, and then executed her, as well.

The village was left devastated, with houses and buildings burnt down and even livestock and domestic animals killed. Ismaïla Cissé, one of the Malian army’s few Peul officers, told the press: “They want to wipe us off the surface of the earth. Otherwise, how can one explain that they killed children, the elderly, and even livestock?”

As…

On this date in 2018, the Wikileaks publisher was cut off from the work of journalism, reports Elizabeth Vos. 

By Elizabeth Vos
Special to Consortium News

One year ago Thursday, Ecuador’s government under President Lenin Moreno silenced Julian Assange.

WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter Wednesday: “… March 28, marks one year that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has been illegally gagged from doing journalism—any writing that expresses a ‘political opinion’? even on his own treatment, after pressure from the U.S. on Ecuador.”

On this date in 2018 Moreno imposed on Assange what Human Rights Watch’s legal counsel Dinah Pokempner described as looking “more and more like solitary confinement.” Moreno cut off Assange’s online access and restricted visitors to the Ecuador embassy in London where Assange has had legal political asylum since 2012. 

Moreno cited Assange’s critical social media remarks about Ecuador’s allies, the U.S. and Spain. Assange’s near-total isolation, with the exception of visits from legal counsel during week days, has been augmented by the Ecuadorian government’s imposition of a complex “protocol,” which, although eased slightly in recent months in respect of visits allowed, has not improved Assange’s overall status over the last 12 months. In some respects, it seems to have worsened.

Truck in D.C.,March 28, 2019. (Pamela Drew, Twitter)

WikiLeaks’ Courage Foundation described the terms of the protocol:

“Explicit threats to revoke Julian’s asylum if he, or any visitors, breach or are perceived to breach, any of the 28 ‘rules’ in the protocol. The ‘protocol’ forbids Julian from undertaking journalism and expressing his opinions, under threat of losing his asylum. The rules also state that the embassy can seize Julian’s property or his visitors’ property and hand these to the UK police, and report visitors to the UK authorities. The protocol also requires visitors to provide the IMEI codes and serial numbers of electronic devices used inside the embassy, and states that this private information may be shared with undisclosed agencies.”

The protocol does not spell out all the…

US Christian right “fundamentalists” linked to the Trump administration and Steve Bannon are among a dozen American groups that have poured at least $50 million of “dark money” into Europe over the last decade, according to a new analysis by openDemocracy.

Between them, these groups have backed ‘armies’ of ultra-conservative lawyers and political activists, as well as ‘family values’ campaigns against LGBT rights, sex education and abortion – and a number appear to have increasing links with Europe’s far right.

They are spending money on a scale “not previously imagined,” according to lawmakers and human rights advocates, who have called our findings “shocking.” Reacting to openDemocracy’s findings, a cross-party group of more than 40 MEPs has called on the EU’s transparency tsar Frans Timmermans to look into the influence of “US Christian fundamentalists… with the greatest urgency” ahead of May’s European Parliament elections.

Among the biggest spenders is a group whose chief counsel is also Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow. Another organization has collaborated with a controversial Rome-based ‘institute’ backed by Steve Bannon. And a number of the groups are connected to the World Congress of Families: a network of ultra-conservative activists which has links to far-right politicians and movements in several European countries, including Italy, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Serbia.

None of these American groups discloses who its donors are – though at least two have links to famous conservative billionaires, such as the Koch brothers (who helped bankroll the Tea Party Movement) and the family of Trump’s education secretary.

The increasing ties between some of these US Christian conservative groups and the European far right will be on display this weekend at a summit of the World Congress of Families (WCF) in Verona, Italy.

Right-wing…

An investigation into the leaking of Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’ private phone data has revealed that Saudi Arabia hacked his phone, possibly because of the Post’s coverage of the state-sponsored murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The finding was announced by Gavin de Becker, a security consultant and long-time associate of Bezos, who was recently commissioned by him to find out how his text messages and photos had been obtained by American Media Inc (AMI), the publisher of the tabloid National Enquirer.

“Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information,” de Becker wrote in an article for The Daily Beast website on Saturday.

On its front page in January, the National Enquirer said Bezos had been “caught cheating on his wife of 25 years with the spouse of a Hollywood mogul!”

A month after the…

Daily Caller
March 29, 2019

CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter had a unique explanation Wednesday night for why CNN and MSNBC’s ratings are plummeting since the conclusion of the Mueller investigation.

Stelter wrote in his newsletter “Reliable Sources” Wednesday night that viewers aren’t tuning in to CNN and MSNBC because “there hasn’t been much news” since special counsel Robert Mueller delivered his report on Russian collusion to Attorney General Bill Barr. Fox News has not been affected by the alleged slow news week, Stelter reasoned, because Barr’s letter on the Mueller findings is “being celebrated like a sequel to election night.”

Brian Stelter’s “Reliable Sources” Newsletter (Screenshot)

Joe Concha, media reporter for The Hill, explained on Fox News that there have been plenty of big stories for the media to cover since Mueller finished his investigation and suggested the ratings drop is due to a lack of trust among viewers.

“Yesterday, CNN didn’t even average more than 540,000 viewers as a 40-year-old network with a big brand name and a crazy news cycle,” Concha argued. “You’re talking about [Jussie] Smollett getting released, [Michael] Avenatti getting arrested, the Mueller report — how anybody isn’t rising in ratings in this particular week when it’s just been nuts … that’s almost impossible to do unless your viewers don’t trust you anymore based on all the speculation you did recklessly and randomly over the past two years.”

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This article was posted: Friday, March 29, 2019 at 6:35 am

RT
March 29, 2019

‘Russiagate’ is over. But its toxic legacy will endure. And in Russia it has led to disenchantment with the United States.

Red Army Street is a 3km-long thoroughfare in Krasnodar, southern Russian, notable for its many bars and nightclubs, which number in the dozens. Indeed, it’s so raucous it makes snooty Moscow look rather pedestrian.

Last summer, I was in one hostelry, with a South African farmer who was visiting the region. Naturally, we spoke in English. This seemed to upset three drunken locals who (in Russian) were loudly exchanging anti-American slurs.

Eventually, the largest, and scariest, of the trio broke into English to shout “Yankee, go home.” To which I swiftly replied that I was Irish. Suddenly, he ran over, bear-hugged me, and shouted at the top of his voice: “Conor McGregor!”

It wasn’t always like this. When I moved to Russia, nine years ago, Americans were very popular here. And Russians knew little of my homeland, most wrongly seeing it as an extension of the United Kingdom.

If I’d had a dollar, in the early part of the decade, for every Russian who’d expressed a desire to visit the US, I’d easily have had enough to fund return tickets there myself, plus a few weeks in a decent hotel.

However, times have changed. And admiration and curiosity towards the US has been replaced with disappointment, hostility and often anger. We’re a long way from Mikhail Gorbachev advertising “Pizza Hut” now.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Wide Awake

And, it’s largely down to the Russiagate hoax which consumed American politics and its mainstream media for almost three years, before Robert Mueller kicked it into touch last weekend. Of course, there are other factors, among them US interference in Ukraine, anti-Russia sanctions and continued NATO expansion, but it’s the xenophobia Russiagate unleashed which has done the most damage.

Russians are…

Justin’s note: America can’t stop talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC).

AOC, if you haven’t heard, is a 29-year-old Democratic socialist. Earlier this year, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

Today, we turn to our founder Doug Casey for his thoughts on AOC and her policies. But Doug gets into much more than AOC. As you’ll see, he also explains why socialism isn’t just an intellectual failing… but also a moral failing.

If you’ve been following the Dispatch this week, you know we’ve been featuring Doug’s most politically incorrect and controversial opinions… and today’s essay is no exception…

Most likely Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is the future of the Democratic Party – and of the U.S.

Why?

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She’s cute, vivacious, charming, different, outspoken, and has a plan to Make America Great Again. And she – or at least her handlers – is shrewd. She realized she could win by ringing doorbells in her district, where voter turnout was very low, and about 70% are non-white. There was zero motivation for residents to turn out for the tired, corrupt, old hack of a white man she ran against.

The things she says are politically astute, although she herself doesn’t seem very intelligent. In fact, she’s probably quite stupid. But let’s define the word “stupid.” Otherwise, it’s just a meaningless pejorative – name-calling. Which I want to avoid.

But in fact she doesn’t appear to have a very high IQ. I suspect that if she took a standardized IQ test, she’d be someplace in the low end of the normal range. But that’s just conjecture on my part, entirely apart from the fact a…

Campus Reform
March 29, 2019

With far left candidates and policies on the rise in America, it’s no surprise that for the first time ever, more young people say they’d prefer to live in a socialist country over a capitalist one. 

Whether it’s free healthcare, free college tuition, or universal basic income, students around America increasingly support higher taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for these progressive policies.  But would they support similar policies if they had skin in the game?

To find out, Campus Reform‘s Cabot Phillips went to Florida International University in Miami to test the waters on a “Socialist GPA” policy in which students with higher GPAs would be forced to “spread the wealth” and give some of their GPA points to students with lower GPAs.

Despite the overwhelming number of students who initially said they’d support socialist policies, few agreed to go along with such a plan.

“I’m all for helping, but I wouldn’t give some of my points… I’ve lost a lot of sleep so I don’t know if that would be fair,” one student said, while another answered no because “I like, study all day for my grades.”

Yet another student, after expressing her support for socialism in America conceded, “I guess it would be kind of hypocritical for me to say no.”

Another student, trying to justify his refusal to abide by such a policy, said, “you study for your grades, and they reflect how much time you’re studying.” What did the rest of the students have to say when asked why it was any different when it came to spreading the financial wealth?

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

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This article was posted: Friday, March 29, 2019 at 6:38 am

American Mirror
March 29, 2019

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did her best Jeb! impression on Tuesday when she told the crowd to clap for her.

During a news conference to unveil Democrats’ “Protecting Pre-Existing Conditions & Making Health Care More Affordable Act,” Pelosi instructed the crowd to applaud her bill, which she claims will protect the health care law from “Republicans’ monstrous health care lawsuit.”

“Today, under the leadership of our three distinguished Chairmen: Mr. Pallone of Energy and Commerce, Mr. Scott of Education and Labor, and Mr. Neal of Ways and Means Committee – the three Committees of jurisdiction, we’re going forward with the Protecting Pre-existing Conditions and Making Health Care More Affordable Act,” Pelosi began.

When no one in the room clapped, she awkwardly shouted: “That’s a line for applause!” and cut the air with her hand for effect.

The audience obliged her and clapped even though they were apparently not excited about her comments.

“They and other Members, and Members of our Freshman Class will be speaking more to the particulars of the legislation, but suffice to say it lowers health care insurance premiums, stops junk plans, strengthens protections for pre-existing conditions and reverses the GOP health care sabotage,” Pelosi said.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

“Protecting and strengthening health care is why Democrats are here. On day one, the first day, as we were sworn in the 116th Congress, the House voted to intervene against Republicans’ monstrous health care lawsuit,” she added.

Pelosi’s comments were in response to the U.S. Justice Department filing a federal lawsuit on Tuesday to challenge elements of the Affordable Care Act.

But more importantly, this isn’t the first time the California Democrat has instructed the audience to clap for her.

While speaking at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in January,…

Special for LewRockwell.com

Not since the witchcraft hysteria of the Middle Ages have we seen such a display of human idiocy, credulity and absurdist behavior.  I refer, of course, to the two-year witch hunt directed against President Donald Trump which hopefully just concluded last week – provided that the Hillaryites, Democratic dopes and secret staters who fueled this mania don’t manage to keep the pot boiling.

This column has said from Day 1 that claims Trump was somehow a Russian agent were absurd in the extreme.  So too charges that Moscow had somehow rigged US elections.  Nonsense.  We know it’s the US that helps rig elections around the globe, not those bumbling Russians who can’t afford the big bribes such nefarious activity requires.

What Muller found after he turned over the big rock was a bevy of slithering, slimy creatures, shyster lawyers, and sleazes that are normally part of New York’s land development industry.  No surprise at all that they surrounded developer Trump.  Son-in-law Jared Kushner hails from this same milieu. The Kushners are pajama-party buddies with Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Now that the Muller investigation found no collusion between the Trump camp and the Kremlin, we Americans owe a great big apology to Vladimir Putin for all the slander he has suffered.  Too bad he can’t sue the legions of liars and propagandists who heaped abuse on him and, incidentally, pushed the US and Russia to the edge of war.

People who swallowed these absurdist claims really should question their own grasp of reality.  Those who believed that the evil Kremlin was manipulating votes in…

US President Donald Trump aims to strengthen Saudi Arabia by providing assistance to the Arab country for the development of nuclear technology, an American political analyst in Virginia says.

An official document shows that Trump has approved six authorizations that allow American companies to secretly provide Saudi Arabia with nuclear technology or technical assistance.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise that the administration is seeking to provide Saudi Arabia with assistance for the development of nuclear technology,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.

“The Trump administration has been extraordinarily friendly to Saudi Arabia. There was a multi-billion dollar arms deal that worked out between the United States and Saudi Arabia previously during the Trump administration,” Preston said.

The analyst said the Trump administration wanted to strengthen its regional ally against…

Free Beacon
March 29, 2019

Former attorney general Eric Holder said that America has never been “great,” during a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC’s The Beat.

Holder’s comment came in response to a question from host Ari Melber about how it was possible to call America a “leader as a democracy” during the 1800s when women and African-Americans could not vote.

“When I hear these things about ‘Let’s make America great again,’ I think to myself: ‘Exactly when did you think America was great?’” Holder said, in reference to the President Donald Trump’s slogan, which he used frequently at rallies and on merchandising during the 2016 presidential election.

Holder then pointed to instances in the United State’s past when he said America was not “great.”

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This article was posted: Friday, March 29, 2019 at 6:42 am

Daily Caller
March 30, 2019

Former President Barack Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said Thursday that the U.S. is “truly in a crisis” at the southern border.

“A little bit of context here. When I was in office in Kirstjen Nielsen’s job, at her desk, I’d get to work around 6:30 in the morning, and there would be my intelligence book sitting on my desk, the PDB, and also the apprehension numbers from the day before,” Johnson said during his appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“My staff would tell you if it was under 1,000 apprehension the day before, that was a relatively good number, and if it was above 1,000, it was a relatively bad number, and I was going to be in a bad mood the whole day.”

“On Tuesday there were 4,000 apprehensions. I know that a thousand overwhelms the system. I can’t imagine what 4,000 a day looks like. So, we are truly in a crisis,” he continued.

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This article was posted: Friday, March 29, 2019 at 5:48 pm

The following article is based on my recent lecture at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, entitled: “Henry Hazlitt’s Long-Term Economic Thinking: Foundation of Entrepreneurial Excellence.” Here I will explore morality as Hazlitt’s foundational theme in economics.

Henry Hazlitt is considered to be one of the best financial journalists of the 20^th century.“He was a giant in financial journalism,” as Jim Grant pointed out in his 2014 Mises Institute lecture entitled “Hazlitt, My Hero.”

Aside from his journalism, Hazlitt was a prolific writer who summed-up economics in “one lesson” in 1946.

Economics in One Lesson was based, in part, on Frederic Bastiat’s essay, What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, and delves into the importance of aspects of the economy that are never spoken about, because they never happen. Hazlitt goes one step further, summing up economics not simply as a series of transactions with hidden implications, but in terms of long-term effects outliving the short-term effects of every economic principle or policy.

Economics in One Lesso…
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Hazlitt wrote more than twenty books and was the principal editorial writer on finance and economics for the New York Times for twelve years and was a columnist for Newsweek for twenty years. His writing was thoughtful, incisive, and influential. And he played a significant role in supporting, introducing, and explaining the ideas of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.

Though incisive, Hazlitt’s opinions were still subject to criticism. He opposed many popular government initiatives in his day: The New Deal, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Marshall Plan. This opposition…

The first installment in this series discussed how NATO was set up partly to blunt the European Left. The other major factor driving the creation of NATO was a desire to bolster colonial authority and bring the world under a US geopolitical umbrella.

From the outset Canadian officials had an incredibly expansive definition of NATO’s supposed defensive character, which says an “attack against one ally is considered as an attack against all allies.” As part of the Parliamentary debate over NATO external minister Lester Pearson said: “There is no better way of ensuring the security of the Pacific Ocean at this particular moment than by working out, between the great democratic powers, a security arrangement the effects of which will be felt all over the world, including the Pacific area.” Two years later he said: “The defence of the Middle East is vital to the successful defence of Europe and north Atlantic area.” In 1953 Pearson went even further: “There is now only a relatively small [5000 kilometre] geographical gap between southeast Asia and the area covered by the North Atlantic treaty, which goes to the eastern boundaries of Turkey.”

In one sense the popular portrayal of NATO as a defensive arrangement was apt. After Europe’s second Great War the colonial powers were economically weak while anti-colonial movements could increasingly garner outside…

President Trump announced plans at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to sign an executive order protecting right-wing activism and organizing at public universities and colleges. Of course, it’s not Trump’s aim to protect free expression on college campuses, but to further empower far-right organizations on college campuses.

Trump’s executive order, cheered by anti-choice groups, will have far-reaching consequences at public colleges, including for reproductive rights advocacy.

With his latest executive order, the president is handing a victory to reactionary groups that operate on college campuses, groups that have spent the last several years framing protest against them as infringements on their right to free speech. There have long been culture wars waged on U.S. campuses, and the latest wave has brought fascist speakers and organizations—chiefly Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer.

The executive order, which was signed at a White House ceremony on March 21, states that “[the Trump] Administration seeks to promote free and open debate on college and university campuses.” The order states that “the heads of covered agencies shall … ensure institutions that receive Federal research or education grants promote free inquiry, including through compliance with all applicable Federal laws, regulations, and policies.” In essence, the order will allow the president to withhold federal funding from public higher education institutions that do not meet the administration’s criteria for “promoting free inquiry.”

Though the order is light on details, it would be naive to assume this means there won’t be negative consequences for marginalized members of university communities.

The concern over visiting fascist speakers remains, even though Spencer’s campus tour has long since ended. These fears are relevant to any progressive organizing on…

Breitbart
March 30, 2019

President Donald Trump is threatening to close parts of the U.S.-Mexican border as record numbers of migrants surge through the legal loopholes created by Congress and judges.

“CONGRESS MUST CHANGE OUR WEAK IMMIGRATION LAWS NOW …  If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States throug [sic] our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING….. ….the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week,” he said in a series of three tweets Friday morning.

The DEMOCRATS have given us the weakest immigration laws anywhere in the World. Mexico has the strongest, & they make more than $100 Billion a year on the U.S. Therefore, CONGRESS MUST CHANGE OUR WEAK IMMIGRATION LAWS NOW, & Mexico must stop illegals from entering the U.S….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2019

….through their country and our Southern Border. Mexico has for many years made a fortune off of the U.S., far greater than Border Costs. If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States throug our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2019

….the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week. This would be so easy for Mexico to do, but they just take our money and “talk.” Besides, we lose so much money with them, especially when you add in drug trafficking etc.), that the Border closing would be a good thing!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2019

Border officials are ramping up their estimates for the number of migrants who will grab the opportunity created by Congress. Predictions for 2019 have climbed from 900,000 to 1.2 million during the last few weeks.

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This article was posted: Saturday, March 30, 2019 at 6:22 am

Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev resigns amid mounting political crisis

By
David Levine and Clara Weiss

30 March 2019

In a sign of growing social and political turmoil in Central Asia, Kazakhstan’s 78-year-old president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been head of state of the country since its formation out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, announced his immediate resignation on Tuesday, March 19. Kazakhstan is of enormous geostrategic and economic significance. It is the largest country in Central Asia and generates well over half of the region’s GDP.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who had been chairman of the Kazakhstan Senate, the upper house of parliament, was sworn in as president of Kazakhstan on March 20. He is to remain in office until new elections are held next year.

Nazarbayev was for decades a high-ranking functionary of the Stalinist bureaucracy and played a central role in the restoration of capitalism in Kazakhstan, which threw millions into poverty and impelled millions more to emigrate. Among the positions he held were president of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (1990–1991), secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan (1979–1984), deputy of the Soviet of the Union of the USSR (1979–1989) and first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan (1989–1991).

Nazarbayev’s authoritarian regime has been characterized by extreme social inequality, nepotism, corruption and the violent suppression of political and social opposition, involving a rigorous regime of political censorship, as well as a language policy discriminating against non-Kazakh people who previously comprised the majority of the country’s population. The Kazakh economy has grown significantly, especially since 2000, largely based on the…

Zero Hedge
March 30, 2019

Update: In response to Barr’s letter announcing the upcoming release of a redacted version of the Mueller report, Chairman Nadler said: “As I informed the Attorney General..Congress requires the full and complete Mueller report, without redactions, as well as access to the underlying evidence, by April 2.  That deadline still stands.”

Nadler to Barr saying he’ll release rpt by mid-April if not sooner: “As I informed the Attorney General..Congress requires the full and complete Mueller report, without redactions, as well as access to the underlying evidence, by April 2. That deadline still stands”

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) March 29, 2019

Attorney General William Barr wrote a Friday letter in response to Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) notifying them that a redacted copy of the Mueller report will be delivered to Congress, then available to the public, by mid-April “if not sooner.” 

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

“Everyone will soon be able to read it on their own,” wrote Barr.

Barr says that his office is working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to redact sensitive information which could affect ongoing matters, infringe on someone’s personal privacy or information which could compromise the DOJ’s sources and methods of investigation.

The report will be nearly 400 pages, while Barr writes that there is no plans to let the White House review it beforehand.

“Although the president would have the right to assert privilege over certain parts of the report, he has stated publicly that he intends to defer to me and, accordingly, there are no plans to submit the report to the White House for a privilege review.”

Barr also disputes the characterization that a four-page letter released on Sunday was a “summary” of Mueller’s report.

“My March 24 letter was not, and…

Entering commoditized, fiercely competitive low-margin services cannot substitute for the high-margin profits that will be lost as global recession and saturation erode iPhone sales.

Apple has always been equally an enterprise and a secular religion. The Apple Faithful do not tolerate heretics or critics, and non-believers “just don’t get it.”

So the first thing any critic must do is establish their credentials as a Believer:My first Mac model 0001 was the 21,447th made in week 32 of 1984 in Fremont, California. Now that we’ve established that, we can move on to my profound sense of anguished abandonment that Apple ceased producing the iPhone SE, the only form factor that works for me.

But Apple Faithful are accustomed to repeated bouts of anguished abandonment; it’s just one of the burdens the faithful must bear.

Focusing on the enterprise rather than the religion, Apple’s core–its revenue and profit potential–is rotten. As the charts below illustrate, despite all the happy talk about growing “services,” the hardware-software iPhone generates nearly 60% of Apple’s revenues. The iPhone ecosystem is also the foundation of the “services” currently being hyped as replacement sources of revenue.

Pathfinding our Destin…
Charles Hugh Smith
Check Amazon for Pricing.

The problem is that the proprietary features of the iPhone that have generated strong demand as prices kept rising are reaching diminishing returns. People want the status of owning an iPhone, but there are limits on what the bottom 90% can pay for that status.

The new features of the $1,000 iPhones have also reached diminishing returns. This is analogous with adding memory to a computer or increasing the pixel count in a digital camera: at…

CitizenFreePress.com
March 30, 2019

Citing a ‘high-level source,’ Rand Paul says former CIA Director John Brennan grew frustrated that no one was giving credence to the Clinton-funded dossier, so he attached it to an intelligence report, ensuring that it would be seen by President Obama and President-elect Trump.

BREAKING: A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report… Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress ASAP.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 27, 2019

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News exclusively on Wednesday that President Donald Trump told senators at the weekly GOP luncheon that he backs his call for an investigation into the origins of the Russia scandal “hoax” that Trump has now been cleared of by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

“The president was at lunch today and he voiced his support for investigating the people who concocted this hoax,” Paul told Breitbart News.

“He didn’t use the word hoax, those are my words, but I think we should get to the bottom of this and he believes we should get to the bottom of this because this should never happen to another president. He feels that it’s damaging to the country, damaging to the ability to lead the country, that we basically—somebody within the Obama administration, within the DOJ and the FBI, basically concocted an investigation, trumped it up to be something that it wasn’t and then we’ve gone through two years of the country being stalled because of this fake investigation.”

Rand exclaimed (at around 3: 02): “Officials must be asked under oath what Obama knew, and when…”

When asked specifically if former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice should be called to testify…

Joe Mastroianni, National Science Foundation • Public domain

Global warming is a fact of life that haunts society with consequences that hit hard, exponentially, but where nobody lives. It is happening hyper fast, and it’s downright scary as major ecosystems of the planet turn upside down in nasty fashion.

But none of the ecosystems has the punch of East Antarctica. Its clout is humongous with a couple hundred feet of fresh water contained in ice. When it rumbles, scientists pay attention.

In that regard, as a potential savior in the face of irrefutable global warming dangers, America is fortunate to have a powerful fighting spirit in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). She has strong instincts about the dangers of global warming. She is beating the drums for a Green New Deal, which cannot come soon enough and, in fact, may not come soon enough to save most life on the planet. Meanwhile, Republicans belittle her as foolhardy, not in the spirit of America’s capitalistic enterprise. A socialist?

But, brushing aside off-putting Republican obstructionism, the planet is endorsing AOC, as it sends clear signals of impending disaster straight out of East Antarctica. After all, no signal can be as strong as the melting of the coldest spot on the planet, which is comparable to knocking someone in the head with a ball-peen hammer as a wake up call.

(As an aside: Nicola Jones has an excellent article about East Antarctica entitled: Polar Warning: Even Antarctica’s Coldest…

Every week as I engage in the by-now comfortably familiar process of following global news developments, thinking about what I want to address in this week’s missive, recording the podcast version of it, etc., it is a new weekly opportunity when I must once again observe that the world appears to be going to hell just as fast this week as it was last week. Catastrophic flooding on several continents at the same time, with an unknown and possibly vast death toll in Africa, where it appears entire cities may have drowned. Israeli missiles are once again raining down on the besieged outdoor prison known as Gaza. Christchurch is burying its dead. Trump has located the Golan Heights on a map. His Attorney General says he’s not working for Putin. And many other developments.

Prominent among them, of course, is the increasingly chaotic state of the farcically-named country known as the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Soon perhaps to be known as the United Kingdom of England and Wales. The political class in the country is in the midst of a real meltdown, and life is uncertain for many millions of people within and outside of the UK right now.

The question of how people and politicians should react to this volatile…

Rising global temperatures could put half a billion more people at risk for tropical mosquito-borne diseases like chikungunya, dengue, yellow fever and Zika by 2050, according to a new study.

While a growing body of recent research warns the human-caused climate crisis will cause general worldwide “environmental breakdown,” a study published Thursday in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases focuses specifically on a related public health threat: how a hotter world will enable disease-carrying mosquitoes to reach more people.

The study’s lead author Sadie Ryan of the University of Florida—joined by researchers from Georgetown University, Stanford University, and Virginia Tech—examined how projected temperature rise for 2050 and 2080 could impact the global distribution of the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) and the tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus).

The team estimates that currently, about six billion people are exposed for a month or more annually to climates suitable for those mosquitoes to transmit diseases. As temperatures climb, colder regions such as parts of Canada and Northern Europe will become more hospitable to mosquitoes, at the human population’s expense.

“Plain and simple, climate change is going to kill a lot of people,” coauthor Colin Carlson of Georgetown told Nexus Media News. “Mosquito-borne diseases are going to be a big way that happens, especially as they spread from the tropics to temperate countries.”

Lead author Ryan emphasized that public health experts should be preparing now for the outbreaks predicted to occur in new places over the next few decades. As the study explains:

Aedes-borne virus expansion into regions that lack previous exposure is particularly concerning, given the potential for explosive outbreaks when arboviruses are first introduced into naïve populations, like chikungunya and Zika in…

Breitbart
March 30, 2019

The BBC was ordered to pay damages after the far-left outlet published fake news claiming Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko “authorized” an illegal payment of $400,000 to Michael Cohen for additional face time during a June 2017  meeting with President Trump.

“We apologize to Mr. Poroshenko for any distress caused and have agreed to pay him damages, legal costs and have participated in a joint statement in open court,” the BBC’s said in a written apology  published Thursday.

In the May 2018 piece, the disgraced BBC made the absurd claim that Poroshenko, who already had a meeting set up with Trump, paid this $400,000 to extend the meeting.

Think about how well this utterly deranged piece of fake news fits into the overall media’s Russia Collusion Hoax.

1. Poroshenko is an aggressive opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, so naturally the only way he could get serious face time with Trump (aka Putin’s Stooge) is through a six-figure bribe.
2. Michael Cohen was still the president’s personal lawyer at this time, which means the media were desperate for us to see Cohen as Trump’s world-traveling bagman, because that would lend credibility to the phony dossier’s lie about Cohen visiting Prague to pay off the hackers who got Hillary’s emails.
3. The story openly insinuates Trump is both in Putin’s pocket and accepting bribes.

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This article was posted: Saturday, March 30, 2019 at 6:22 am

“One day I woke up and I could fly… I’d look down and see. And I wouldn’t know myself. I’d have new hands. I’d have new feet. I’d have new vision. My eyes would be open a little better… For one moment of my whole life, I would know how it would be to be free!” – Nina Simone

“How do you feel about going home today?” the guard asked.

“It would be great,” Catherine replied.

“So you’re leaving us today, huh?” said the case manager.

“It was like an out of body experience for me,” Catherine Toney recounted the moment she was told she was going home from prison. She had to sit as her soul leaped in gratitude for God’s deliverance.

Catherine Toney had spent 14 years of her life in prison. She had no idea President Trump’s recently passed First Step Act prison reform bill would affect her sentence. She had tried and failed multiple times to get her sentence reduced. The surprise rescue from a 20 year sentence for a drug offense was a miracle.

Leading clemency champion Amy Povah of the CAN-DO Foundation introduced me to Catherine shortly after their visit to the White House in February, where she stood on stage with her family and President Trump and gave a powerful thank you to an electric crowd at the African American history celebration. She is the first woman to be released under the First Step Act.

Watch my interview with Catherine here:

Three weeks before the White House, Catherine woke herself up in the middle of the night on her steel prison bed shouting, ‘Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus!’ She startled herself by her outburst and looked around to see if she had disturbed her bunk mates. She could not recall any dream that led to her praise in the darkness. The next day, as she was…

Sixth Friday mass protest in Algeria demands fall of the regime

By
Alex Lantier

30 March 2019

Millions poured into the streets of Algeria’s major cities yesterday, for a sixth Friday protest demanding the fall of the military-backed National Liberation Front (FLN) regime.

It came after General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, the head of the Algerian armed forces, called on March 26 to apply Article 102 of Algeria’s constitution to remove the regime’s hated figurehead, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, on health grounds. Protesters rejected Salah’s sudden intervention to remove Bouteflika, who has been incapacitated since suffering a stroke in 2013. Instead, they demanded the bringing down of both the FLN and the army.

Banners carried at the protests read “Rest in Peace Gaïd Salah, leave power for the love of God,” “Gaïd Salah the people want democracy not a military regime,” and “Shame on you Gaïd Salah.” Another popular slogan was to demand the application of Article 7 of the constitution, which stipulates that power should come from the people.

Over a million people marched in Algiers, according to police reports, and thousands or tens of thousands marched in other major Algerian cities including Oran, Constantine, Annaba, Béjaïa, Tizi Ouzou, Sétif, Tlemcen and Sidi Bel Abbès. In Oran, protesters chanted “The transition must be led by the sovereign people and not the regime.” In Tlemcen, protesters chanted “Out, Out Saïd,” referring to Abdelmajid Sidi Saïd, the leader of the corrupt, FLN-linked General Union of Algerian Labor (UGTA) union.

In Algiers, huge throngs of people marched through the city’s major centers including Maurice Audin Square and outside the Main Post Office. Protesters also clashed during the afternoon with riot police, who…

Mediaite
March 30, 2019

Former Nevada State Assemblywoman Lucy Flores detailed, in a piece for The Cut, a very awkward and uncomfortable encounter she had with former Vice President Joe Biden in 2014.

Flores was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in Nevada in 2014, and she recounts how Biden came to the state ahead of the election to campaign.

At the event in question, Flores says she felt Biden’s hands on her shoulders:

I felt him get closer to me from behind. He leaned further in and inhaled my hair. I was mortified. I thought to myself, “I didn’t wash my hair today and the vice-president of the United States is smelling it. And also, what in the actual fuck? Why is the vice-president of the United States smelling my hair?” He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head. My brain couldn’t process what was happening. I was embarrassed. I was shocked. I was confused. There is a Spanish saying, “tragame tierra,” it means, “earth, swallow me whole.” I couldn’t move and I couldn’t say anything. I wanted nothing more than to get Biden away from me. My name was called and I was never happier to get on stage in front of an audience.

She writes that Biden’s behavior was “blatantly inappropriate and unnerving” and he made her feel “uneasy, gross, and confused.”

Read more

This article was posted: Saturday, March 30, 2019 at 6:22 am

CNS News
March 29, 2019

In a statement about the release of the Mueller report to Attorney General William Barr, the government watchdog group Judicial Watch said President Donald Trump “has been vindicated,” that the Russia collusion claim was more than just a hoax — it was a “criminal abuse” — and that the targeting of Trump served to “protect Hillary Clinton and her anablers/co-conspirators in the Obama administration from prosecution.”

“The long, national nightmare is over and President Trump has been vindicated,” said Judicial Watch in its March 24 statement.  “The corruptly created and constitutionally abusive Mueller investigation failed to find any evidence to support the big lie that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government.”

In the actual report, part of which is quoted verbatim by Attorney General Barr, it states, “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Judicial Watch further said, “We’re pleased that AG Barr rejected Mueller’s attempt to smear President Trump with obstruction of justice innuendo by concluding that no such charges could be credibly sustained. Frankly, Mueller never had a valid basis upon which to investigate President Trump for obstruction of justice.”

“Let’s be clear, neither Mueller, the Obama FBI, DOJ, CIA, State Department, nor the Deep State ever had a good-faith basis to pursue President Trump on Russia collusion,” said Judicial Watch.

Read more

This article was posted: Friday, March 29, 2019 at 6:43 am

Warning: If you care about parental rights, this story will infuriate you.

On February 25, a pregnant mother took her 2-year-old son to the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine clinic in Tempe, Arizona because he had a fever of over 100. The doctor instructed the mother to take him to the emergency room because he is unvaccinated and she feared he could have meningitis.

The doctor called the emergency room at Banner Cardon Children’s Medical Center in Mesa to let them know the boy would be arriving.

But after leaving the doctor’s office, the boy showed signs of improvement. He was laughing and playing with his siblings, and his temperature moved closer to normal. Around 6:30 pm, the mother called the doctor to let her know the toddler no longer had a fever and she would not be taking him to the emergency room.

In Arizona, parents may decline vaccinations for their child based on personal, religious, or medical exemptions, but the mother was still concerned that the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) would come after her. One can’t blame her for being afraid, as unvaccinated families have been targets of dystopian crackdowns and witch hunts of late.

Battlefield America: T…
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The doctor assured her DCS would not come after her. According to police records, the mother then agreed to take her son to the hospital.

This is when things took a particularly nasty turn, reports AZCentral:

About three hours later, the hospital contacted the doctor to advise her that the child had not shown up and the mother wasn’t answering her phone, according to police records. The doctor contacted DCS.

A DCS caseworker called Chandler Police and…

The Canadian government under Justin Trudeau is undermining not just Canada’s (ok, undeserved) reputation as an honest, fair mediator, but he has chosen 2019 to make Canada the enabler of the worst of US imperial policies.

Yes, the Huawei debacle is an embarrassment that will be remembered more as a joke, though possibly as the Suez Crisis of the US empire. Whatever. Canada to the rescue! And of course, Canada reviles Islamic Iran, while shedding crocodile tears for the 50 Muslims murdered last week in New Zealand.

But the far more despicable, downright ‘war-crime’ territory is Canada’s role in undermining the Venezuelan socialist government. The US war on Venezuela has been ongoing ever since Hugo Chavez miraculously survived a US-backed coup in 2002. Canada has been a minor irritant to the socialists, but not the villain. Until now.

The scenario is a variation on Eisenhower in Iran 1953 and from Reagan on, JFK in Cuba 1961, Nixon in Chile 1973 … Same use of an angry old elitist fury that the common people were finally getting some justice. The current attempt at overthrowing the socialists is in full swing: total boycott, a lying media shrilly howling for President Maduro’s resignation, sabotage.

Canadian computer villains

Cyber warfare is use of computers, which can be hacked and infected with viruses. US-Israel developed the Stuxnet virus as a cyber weapon to sabotage Iran’s nuclear power program in 2010. Iran miraculously survived this —…

The idea that Westminster is the “mother of all parliaments,” representing a democratic model for the world, is a cultivated myth, writes Mark Curtis. 

By Mark Curtis
British Foreign Policy Declassified

On Tuesday in the British parliament, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry asked an urgent question relating to allegations that British troops have been covertly fighting in Yemen and supporting the Saudi-led coalition.

As reported in the Mail on Sunday, five British special forces troops from the elite Special Boat Service (SBS) were injured while “advising” Saudi Arabia on their deadly campaign in Yemen.

The commandos were injured in gun fights as part of a top-secret campaign, and other reports have claimed British troops have been killed in such battles. British soldiers from the Special Air Service (SAS) have reportedly been secretly deployed and operate “dressed in Arab clothing.”

Responding to Labour’s questions, Mark Field, a minister in the U.K.’s foreign office, said that he would seek to get to the bottom of these “very serious and well sourced” allegations.

The presence of British soldiers in Yemen, secretly fighting a war that has brought death, famine and destruction to millions of innocent civilians, raises an age-old question: why does British foreign policy in the Middle East support dictatorships, abuse human rights and prioritize Britain’s power status?

Member of Women in Black, a global movement against militarism, Jan. 31, 2018, Central London. (Alisdare Hickson via Flickr)

It’s tempting to say the reasons are simply geopolitics, oil and other commercial interests. But there is a deeper explanation: Britain, far from being a true democracy, is in reality an oligarchy that promotes the interests of a privileged domestic elite. The idea that Westminster is the “mother of all parliaments,” representing a democratic model for the world, is a cultivated myth.

An Elite Few

The U.K. has elections every five years, an independent judiciary, freedom of speech and association, and strong laws protecting the equality of all citizens and civil liberties. Yet real power rests in the…

US economic growth slowed sharply in the fourth quarter last year to an annual rate of just 2.2 percent as global weakness, fading government stimulus and rising trade tensions take a toll on the US economy.

Gross domestic product (GDP), the economy’s total output of goods and services, increased at a 2.2 percent in the fourth-quarter of 2018, the US Commerce Department said on Thursday.

The fourth-quarter GDP growth was less than initially thought, which was estimated in February to be 2.6 percent.  

Economists believe growth has slowed further in the first quarter of 2019, which runs from January to March.

For all of 2018, the economy grew 2.9 percent as previously reported, the best performance since 2015. Analysts calculate that growth this year will slip to around 2.4 percent.

Concerns over the economy were underscored by other data on Tuesday showing US consumer confidence ebbing in March, with households becoming pessimistic about…

Flight attendants played a crucial role in forcing an end to the government shutdown. Now the survival of their unions is being quietly threatened by Trump appointees on the National Mediation Board (NMB), an independent agency that was established in 1934 to resolve labor-management disputes in the airline and railroad industries.

Since November 2017, the three-member panel that oversees the NMB has been controlled by Republicans, as the Senate confirmed both of Trump’s nominees, Gerald W. Fauth III and Kyle Fortson. Trump was also required to nominate one Democrat by law and he chose Linda Puchala, an Obama appointee who has served on the NMB since 2009.

The board is currently targeting the Railway Labor Act (RLA). That’s a federal law that was established in 1926 to govern labor disputes in the railroad industry and give workers the right to engage in collective bargaining. Although originally created specifically for railroad workers, it was extended to cover the airline industry in 1936. According to the RLA, any employee who wants to decertify their union must first get signatures from half of the workforce. After the signatures have been obtained, a “straw man” is established to run against the union. Workers then get to vote either for the union, for the straw man, or for no representation at all. The rule is designed to give workers the option to vote for new representation if they have an issue with the direction of the union, as opposed to getting rid of the union altogether.

In a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) issued on January 31, Fauth and Fortson made it clear that they’re seeking to create a “straightforward election process” and get rid of the strawman rule. Under the new criteria, workers would only be able to vote for the union, vote for no union or write in a vote. This would effectively make it much easier for a worker to decertify their union. Under the…

Westmonster
March 29, 2019

Greek economist and former Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, was not pulling any punches last night as he absolutely destroyed Theresa May’s bad EU deal.

Varoufakis, who has more experience dealing with the European Union than most, pointed out the soft UK approach taken during last night’s Question Time.

He described a big flaw in the government’s strategy as “failing to recognise Michel Barnier, when he announced the two-phased negotiation process, was issuing a declaration of hostilities against the government which they never ever saw coming.

WATCH | @YanisVaroufakis tears May’s deal to shreds: “Whether you’re a Brexiteer or Remainer, this is a deal a nation signs only when it has been defeated in war. It’s not a deal which is fit for purpose for any sovereign country.” 👍#BBCQT

Support us at https://t.co/iICfFaQP1G pic.twitter.com/7w8zlsJkt3

— Leave.EU (@LeaveEUOfficial) March 28, 2019

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This article was posted: Friday, March 29, 2019 at 6:45 am

Brandon Smith
Alt Market
March 29, 2019

The Federal Reserve is an often misunderstood entity, not only in the mainstream, but also in alternative economic circles. There is this ever pervasive fantasy on both sides of the divide that the central bank actually “cares” about forever protecting the US economy, or at least propping up the US economy in an endless game of “kick the can”. While this might be true at times, it is not true ALL the time. Things change, agendas change, and sometimes the Fed’s goal is not to maintain the economy, but to destroy it.

The delusion that the Fed is seeking to kick the can is highly present today after the latest Fed meeting in which the central bank indicated there would be a pause in interest rate hikes in 2019. As I have noted in numerous articles over the past year, the mainstream media and the Fed have made interest rates the focus of every economic discussion, and I believe this was quite deliberate. In the meantime, the Fed balance sheet and its strange relationship to the stock market bubble is mostly ignored.

The word “capitulation” is getting thrown around quite haphazardly in reference to the Fed’s tightening policy. And yet, even now after all the pundits have declared the Fed “in retreat” or “trapped in a Catch-22”, the Fed continues to tighten, and is set to cut balance sheet assets straight through until the end of September. Perhaps my definition of capitulation is different from some people’s.

One would think that if the Fed was in retreat in terms of tightening, that they would actually STOP tightening. This has not happened. Also, one might also expect that if the Fed is going full “dovish” that they would have cut interest rates in March instead of holding them steady at their neutral rate of inflation. This has not happened either. In fact, I’m not exactly sure how anyone can claim with a straight face…

The tides are shifting. Something’s in the wind. And it’s not just the fecund vapors of spring. The political soap opera of RussiaGate ended like a fart in a windstorm last weekend, leaving Mr. Mueller’s cheerleaders de-witched, bothered, and bewildered. And then a crude attempt was made to cram the Jussie Smollett case down Chicago’s memory hole. These two unrelated hoaxes emanating out of Wokester Land may signal something momentous: the end of the era when anything goes and nothing matters.

Welcome to the new era of consequences! All of a sudden, a whole lot of people who have been punking the public-at-large will have to answer for their behavior. Despite the fog of misdirection blowing out of The New York Times, The WashPo, CNN, and MSNBC, it’s become obvious that the RussiaGate hoax was kicked off by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and a cabal of Obama appointees in several executive agencies. The evidence is public, fully documented, and overwhelming that the so-called Steele Dossier was the sole animating instrument in both the 2016 pre-election effort to incriminate the Golden Golem of Greatness, and the Mueller Investigation launched post-election to cover-up those same political misdeeds of the Clinton campaign, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the CIA, NSA, and State Department.

The Fall of the Ancien…
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It’s also very likely that Robert Mueller learned that the Steele Dossier was a fraud in the summer of 2017, if not shortly after his appointment in May of that year, and yet he dragged out his investigation for almost two years in order to defame and antagonize Mr. Trump — and deflect attention from the ugly truth of the matter. It is…

US-China trade deal still in the balance

By
Nick Beams

30 March 2019

The back-and-forth trade negotiations between China and the US continue next week in Washington with a visit by China’s chief trade negotiator Vice Premier Liu He following the trip to Beijing this week by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

Talks between the top-level negotiators concluded in Beijing yesterday without any reported movement on the most significant questions, including the enforcement mechanism for any deal and the protection of intellectual property rights. No details were released but Mnuchin tweeted the talks had been “constructive.”

According to a report by Bloomberg, much of the discussion centred on working through line by line the text of what had been agreed so far, with differences between the Chinese and English versions.

Citing one of the officials involved, Bloomberg said that “the two sides have very different understandings of certain words.” Both negotiating teams are seeking to establish their own interpretation of the text because this will be significant in determining enforcement procedures in the event of disputes that are certain to occur even if a deal is reached.

The US officials were also reported to have accused China of backtracking on previous commitments, particularly on the question of intellectual property.

At this stage the plan is for a final agreement to be reached in the Washington talks, leading to a signing ceremony at the end of the April.

However, Lighthizer told the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month that there were still “major, major issues” to be resolved. In a speech delivered on Thursday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow indicated negotiations may continue for some time…

The pound fell Friday after Britain’s parliament again rejected a proposed deal to withdraw from the European Union.

Sterling had been mostly stronger against both the dollar and the euro in the runup to the vote, but then fell to its lowest point against the greenback in more than two weeks within moments of the count.

It then went on to recoup some of the losses towards the late afternoon, proving right analysts like ThinkMarkets’ Naeem Aslam who had predicted “crazy moves” in sterling before voting began.

“Sterling’s midday bounce felt a long way away on Friday afternoon, as MPs inflicted another embarrassment on a Theresa May premiership defined by them,” said Spreadex analyst Connor Campbell.

Lawmakers in parliament’s lower House of Commons defied May’s plea to end a political deadlock over Brexit, defeating her withdrawal agreement by 344 votes to 286.

“We thought it was going to be a lot closer,” Joshua Mahony told AFP on the IG…

Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com
March 29, 2019

Evolutionary roboticists have decided to begin teaching artificial intelligence powered robots to evolve and reproduce.  Why should humans go to the trouble of building more robots when a robot could do it instead?

According to Futurism, this is known as high-tech Darwinism. The researchers’ ultimate goal is to design artificial intelligence and robots that can analyze their own source code and mate with others by combining bits and pieces of their code with that of other robots. This would to create “offspring,” much like organic life, Futurism reported.  But it isn’t actually anything like organic life, actually. But evolutionary roboticists who have this new goal have high-tech Darwinism to the extreme. Apparently, just like biological life evolves to fill ecological niches, these robots’ offspring might be better adapted to their environments that their architects specifically built them for.

An interesting future awaits once high-tech Darwinism becomes successful. And Wired reported that some scientists are well on their way to making this technology a reality.

Computer scientists at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam built a simplified system that shows how future robots might swap and combine their “genetic” information.

Their recent research, published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence and which involved programming two parent robots to code a new “offspring,” found that the resulting offspring contain a mixture of the parents’ code as well as some modules that seemed to have mutated or been blended on its own. –Futurism

David Howard, one of the scientists on the project, told Wired that there’s a positive spin to all of this. “It gives you a lot of diversity, and it gives you the power to explore areas of a design space that you wouldn’t normally go into.” But others see this as a way to…

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair

No sooner had last November’s midterm election concluded than the next round in the electoral circus, focused on choosing the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2020, got underway.  After having worked triple overtime for nearly two seemingly endless years (since even before Trump’s Inauguration), by New Year’s Day, the nation’s junk mailboxes were full of it again, gathering in candidates’ pleas for money full throttle, along with the usual never-ending spam.

In the political culture of the United States, electoral politics is like an invasive weed that crowds out everything else.  Indeed, to many Americans, all politics is electoral; politics and electoral politics are one and the same.

This is obviously false.  Nevertheless, there are quite a few Americans — labor and community organizers, polemicists, agitators and others – who are as politically engaged as can be, and who therefore ought to know better, but somehow don’t.

Presidential elections are especially invasive; they even crowd out interest in other elections — for lesser federal, state, and local offices.  They suck up so much political oxygen that it is hard even to get militants interested in activities, like party building, that affect electoral outcomes in ways that are not immediately obvious.

This is one of many reasons why, unlike in most other liberal democracies and very much to our detriment, “third party” and independent electoral…

Global warming is a fact of life that haunts society with consequences that hit hard, exponentially, but where nobody lives. It is happening hyper fast, and it’s downright scary as major ecosystems of the planet turn upside down in nasty fashion.

But none of the ecosystems has the punch of East Antarctica. Its clout is humongous with a couple hundred feet of fresh water contained in ice. When it rumbles, scientists pay attention.

In that regard, as a potential savior in the face of irrefutable global warming dangers, America is fortunate to have a powerful fighting spirit in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). She has strong instincts about the dangers of global warming. She is beating the drums for a Green New Deal, which cannot come soon enough and, in fact, may not come soon enough to save most life on the planet. Meanwhile, Republicans belittle her as foolhardy, not in the spirit of America’s capitalistic enterprise. A socialist?

But, brushing aside off-putting Republican obstructionism, the planet is endorsing AOC, as it sends clear signals of impending disaster straight out of East Antarctica. After all, no signal can be as strong as the melting of the coldest spot on the planet, which is comparable to knocking someone in the head with a ball-peen hammer as a wake up call.

(As an aside: Nicola Jones has an excellent article about East Antarctica entitled: “Polar Warning: Even Antarctica’s Coldest Region Is Starting to Melt”, YaleEnvironment360,…

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more than 1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

RT
March 29, 2019

A Pentagon official has said that the US will retain the right to carry out a nuclear strike in response to a conventional attack. A ‘no-first-use’ policy would erode US allies’ belief that they are protected, he said.

Washington has no plans to reverse its policy of “no first use” of nukes, which means it can bomb its adversaries with nuclear weapons under “extreme circumstances,” Deputy Undersecretary of Defense David Trachtenberg said in his prepared remarks to the Senate Armed Service Committee hearing on Thursday.

Trachtenberg claimed that if the US changes its take on the issue, which he described as “constructive ambiguity,” it “would undermine US extended deterrence and damage the health of our alliances because it would call into question the assurance that the United States would come to the defense of allies in extreme circumstances.” This uncertainty might prompt these countries to arm themselves with nuclear weapons, he said.

The hawkish Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) commissioned by President Donald Trump in 2018 lists a range of circumstances under which the US might consider striking first, such as significant strategic attacks on the US, allied or partner civilian infrastructure, forces, their command and control, as well as warning and assessment capabilities with conventional weapons.

That clause represents a major shift from the previous US nuclear doctrine, and has drawn strong criticism from Moscow, which accusedWashington of lowering the nuclear threshold and exacerbating the nuclear arms race. In addition to threatening nuclear annihilation, the review sets the stage for upgrading and expanding the already vast US nuclear arsenal. The nuclear build-up envisions developing new types of low-yield warheads that could be placed on submarine-launched ballistic missiles and on sea-launched cruise missiles.

The “mini-nuke”…

To Stay Young… Kill “Zombie” Cells — Scientific American

Now you and your loved ones can play the game of life into extra innings and they aren’t going to have to send in a pinch runner for you, and you won’t be forced to retire and you can still hit home runs! 

Biologists just figured out how people living in developed countries are going to live 100 healthy years and the masses aren’t going to have to wait for some high-priced drug to achieve it. 

Despite precautions from university-based researchers not to forge ahead on their own and wait for anti-senescent (sen-ess-cent) drugs to be approved, longevity seekers have jumped on this newly understood longevity bandwagon, first by adoption of intermittent fasting (Dr. Jason Fung’s book THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO FASTING: HEAL YOUR BODY THROUGHT INTERMITTENT, ALTERNATE-DAY, AND EXTENDED FASTING is a best seller).

Then North Americans are eating less iron-rich red meat (not for the sake of reducing cow farts by the way).  

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And a growing number of Americans are adding a strawberry extract called FISETIN to their dietary supplement regimens. 

These and other health measures will add up to fewer “dud” senescent cells in the body, say biologists who study human aging.

370 million “dud” cells

There are an estimated 37 trillion cells in the human body.  Over time, senescent cells, that is, cells that no longer divide and replicate (mitosis), so-called “dud” or “zombie” cells, are produced.  These zombie senescent cells foment low-grade inflammation that is a hallmark characteristic of aging (inflammaging) in organs throughout the body…

The Daily Caller
March 29, 2019

President Donald Trump during a Thursday night rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, called House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff a “pencil-neck” who “is not a long ball hitter.”

WATCH:

“Many, many people were badly hurt by this scam. But more importantly, our country was hurt. Our country was hurt. And they are on artificial respirators right now. They are getting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” Trump began. “Little pencil-neck Adam Schiff. He has the smallest, thinnest neck I’ve ever seen.”

The president continued, “He is not a long ball hitter but I saw him today, ‘Well we don’t really know, there still could have been some Russia collusion.’ Sick, sick. These are sick people and there has to be accountability because it is all lies and they know it’s lies.”

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This article was posted: Friday, March 29, 2019 at 7:02 am

Emboldened by Trump, Brazil’s Bolsonaro orders military to celebrate 1964 coup

By
Miguel Andrade

29 March 2019

On Monday, presidential spokesman Gen. Otávio Barros announced to the press the unprecedented decision taken by Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro to order military institutions to prepare “due celebrations” of the anniversary of the 1964 US-backed military coup that brought down the bourgeois-nationalist government of President João Goulart.

The coup inaugurated a blood-soaked regime that would last until 1985 and that would prove instrumental in the installation of three other genocidal military regimes in the following years, in Chile and Uruguay in 1973 and Argentina in 1976, that murdered, tortured and persecuted millions of South Americans.

Bolsonaro has insisted that the military regime was not a dictatorship and that its seizure of power in 1964 was not a coup. He has defended torture and insisted that the solution to Brazil’s problems is to “do the job that the military regime didn’t do: killing 30,000.”

Bolsonaro’s order is yet another milestone in the protracted and sharp turn to the right taken by the Brazilian political regime since the re-election of Workers Party (PT) President Dilma Rousseff in 2014. Although such celebrations have been held furtively in the country’s military institutions, especially military schools and academies and retired officers’ clubs, it is the first time an elected president orders such ceremonies and publicly defends the former dictatorship.

The return of such open celebrations again exposes the lies of all those in the former opposition to the dictatorship, first and foremost in the PT, that a stable bourgeois democracy could be built in Brazil if only there was respect for their…

Breitbart
March 29, 2019

President Donald Trump berated Democrats Thursday for causing a crisis on the Southern border by promising amnesty for illegal immigrants and making sure they take advantage of legal protections.

“Democrats want to pretend that there is no border crisis, for one simple reason. Because they have caused the border crisis,” Donald Trump said. “You know why else? Honestly? Because they want votes, and they don’t want to give us a win.”

Trump said that illegal immigrants and migrants crossing the border were met by lawyers who coached them to take advantage of the existing legal loopholes to get into the country.

“It’s a big, fat con job, folks,” he said. “It’s a big fat con job.”

The president commented on the ongoing crisis at the border during a rally with supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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This article was posted: Friday, March 29, 2019 at 7:05 am

Photograph Source Senate Democrats

Note: please do not shoot economists. The title is a metaphor.

Soon to be released research from the United Nations is expected to place species loss, a/k/a mass extinction, as an environmental threat equal to or greater than climate change. Industrial agriculture— vast expanses of monoculture crops managed with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, will feature prominently as a cause. This plant agriculture supplies people with increasingly toxic and processed food and antibiotic and hormone dependent factory farms with animal feed.  Together, these link the model of capitalist efficiency economists have been selling for the last two centuries to environmental crisis.

Understanding the theoretical precepts of Western economics is crucial to understanding these crises. Capitalism is scientific economic production, a method in search of applications. Its object is to maximize profits, not to growth nutritious food sustainably. As industrial agriculture has demonstrated, these objectives are antithetical. Crop yields have increased as the nutritional value of the food produced has declined. But far more troublingly, the narrow focus on profits has led to a form of environmental imperialism where interrelated ecosystems are viewed atomistically.

Mass extinction is largely attributable to the drive for economic control— the expansion of industrial agriculture to feed factory farm animals has been both geographic and…

A Spanish judge released new information about a raid on the embassy of North Korea in Spain. The leader of the raid was a shady U.S. ‘activist’ who earlier reports from Spain associated with the CIA.

On March 13 the Spanish newspaper El Pais Spain reported that Spanish authorities identified two CIA related persons who took part in a raid of the North Korean embassy in Madrid. The raid happened on February 22, a few days before the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi, and seemed designed to influence that event. We asked Who Ordered The CIA To Assault North Korea’s Embassy In Spain?

The embassy raid was no normal thievery. There were eight people in the embassy when it was raided at 3:00 PM local time. They were bound, bags were put over their heads and some were interrogated. The thieves left with computer hardware and the cellphones of the personnel.

The Spanish version of the El Pais piece included this detail (machine translated):

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After analyzing the recordings of the security cameras in the area, questioning the hostages and analyzing the diplomatic vehicles used in the flight, it has been possible to identify some of the assailants. Although the majority were Koreans, at least two of them have been recognized by the Spanish information services for their links with the American CIA.

The indications that point to the US espionage service, in probable cooperation with that of South Korea, are so strong that Spanish interlocutors have contacted the CIA to ask for explanations. The response was negative, but “unconvincing”, according to Government sources.

Two days after the El Pais report the Washington Post national…

President Trump held his first rally since mid-February on Thursday in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sounding alternately buoyant and furious, he took a big victory lap and declared himself to have “won” against the witch hunt. In an extended rant right out of the gate he proclaimed:

After three years of lies and smears and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead. The collusion delusion is over. The Special Counsel has completed his report and found no collusion, no obstruction … Total exoneration, complete vindication. …

The Russia witch hunt was a plan by those who lost the election to take power by framing innocent Americans — they suffered — with an elaborate hoax. They tried to destroy a movement like nobody has ever seen before. They did it because they refused to accept the results of the greatest presidential election results in American history … they perpetuated the single greatest hoax in the history of politics, they have to be — I’m sorry — they have to be accountable.”

As we saw telegraphed as early as Monday, Trump wants revenge. His motto for years has been “get even” and he obviously thinks that wreaking vengeance on his political opponents will keep him in the White House past 2020. Even his decision to back the lawsuit repealing Obamacare, made against the advice of many Republicans, is really just a way for him to exact revenge on his most hated rival — who happens to be a dead man, John McCain.

Trump went out of his way to crudely insult House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif.:

TRUMP: “Little pencil neck Adam Schiff. He has the smallest, thinnest neck I have ever seen. He is not a long-ball hitter.” #BeBest pic.twitter.com/NW7oU3z4Il

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 28, 2019

He didn’t talk about the size of his own neck, thankfully. But he did get a bit more rhetorically pungent, saying,…

British MPs on Friday rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s EU divorce deal for a third time, opening the way for a long delay to Brexit — or a chaotic “no deal” withdrawal in two weeks.

The pound sank as lawmakers defied May’s plea to end the deadlock that has plunged Britain into a deep political crisis, defeating her withdrawal agreement by 344 votes to 286.

It is yet another blow to a prime minister who has all but lost control of her government and the Brexit process — particularly after she offered to quit if MPs backed the deal.

Britain had been due to leave the EU on Friday, the long-heralded March 29 “Independence Day”, but faced with deadlock in parliament, May asked European leaders last week for a little more time.

She now faces having to return in the coming days to explain what happens next, after EU Council President Donald Tusk immediately called a Brussels summit for April 10.

The EU has set a deadline for April 12 for a…

Breitbart
March 29, 2019

European Parliament’s Liberals have promised to tear down walls, in an EU election campaign video depicting the group’s leader smashing through a border fence with his head.

“Europe’s future” rests on this May’s EU Parliament elections, and the choice voters will be given of either between “destroying” the bloc or “reforming” it, according to a new Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) campaign video.

Declaring the elections a battle between“destroying” the bloc or “reforming” it, ALDE says “the choice is clear”, before graphics depicting the group’s leader, Guy Verhofstadt, breaking through a barbed wire-topped border wall with an enormous representation of his head, bursting onto the screen accompanying a promise to ‘tear walls down’ rather than build them.

“Europe is NOT the problem. It is the solution,” declares the video, which features cartoon hands grabbing at the EU flag.

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This article was posted: Friday, March 29, 2019 at 7:11 am