| WEATHER INTERNAL

Media outlets attribute Obama-era child-detention stats to Trump, issue retractions

Several media organizations were forced to make retractions Tuesday after falsely attributing a staggering Obama-era migrant child-detention statistic to President Trump.

Hillary Clinton calls for White House adviser’s removal, says his presence is an ’emergency’

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, whom progressives have blamed for the president’s hard-line immigration agenda should be removed from his position.

Andrew McCarthy: Trump impeachment inquiry obstructed by Democrats’ ‘whistleblower’ secrecy charade

if Democrats insist on proceeding with the impeachment inquiry, they cannot insist on secrecy.

No mention of Bidens, Burisma while Ukraine military aid was held up, State official testifies

David Hale, the State Department’s No. 3 official, testified in a closed-door deposition that no one in the Trump administration or any “government channel” ever mentioned former Vice President Joe Biden or his son Hunter as a reason for withholding ai…

George Conway blasts Nikki Haley, says her ‘shameless’ Trump defense is ‘trashy’

George Conway ratcheted up his vicious rhetoric towards former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley after she criticized him towards his barrage of attacks towards Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.

Ron Johnson casts doubt on Vindman testimony, says NSC official fits ‘profile’ of Never-Trumper

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., sent a letter on Monday to the ranking Republicans on the House Intelligence and Oversight Committees in which he detailed his account of White House meetings with Senate lawmakers about releasing foreign aid to Ukraine — and…

Stephanie Grisham mocks MSNBC’s Joy Reid over ‘homophobic blog’ scandal

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham mocked MSNBC host Joy Reid over her homophobic blog scandal on Monday when asked for comment about the far-left host comparing her to “Baghdad Bob.”

Bannon says he wanted alleged whistleblower booted from NSC over leak concerns

Former top White House adviser Steve Bannon confirmed in a recent interview that he once tried to have the alleged Ukraine whistleblower booted from the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House over concerns of information leaks.

Trump undergoes tests at Walter Reed as part of annual physical, White House says

President Trump spent more than two hours at Walter Reed National Medical Center Saturday to undergo what the White House said were medical tests as part of his annual physical, despite undergoing the exam in February.

Pence adviser says Trump request that Ukraine open Biden probe was ‘unusual and inappropriate’

An adviser to Vice President Mike Pence told House impeachment investigators this month that President Trump’s request for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to open an investigation into Vice President Joe Biden and his family “struck me as unusual …

‘Furious’ Trump sounds off on whistleblower, inquiry in exclusive interview with Dan Bongino

Fox News contributor Dan Bongino said Saturday that President Trump was rightfully furious about House Democrats’ impeachment push.

Former Green Beret Maj. Mat Golsteyn praises Trump’s ‘courage’ for pardon, says he woke up ‘incredibly stunned’

Former Green Beret officer Maj. Mat Golsteyn said the president showed “an incredible display of courage” Saturday after President Trump intervened in several military war crimes cases — including granting clemency for his own case.

Donald Trump Jr. slams George Conway during Twitter spat: ‘You’re a disgrace’

Donald Trump Jr. feuded with George Conway on Twitter Friday, resulting in the president’s oldest son calling the husband of White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway a “disgrace.”

Trump asks Supreme Court to block House subpoena for financial records

President Donald Trump wants the Supreme Court to keep House Democrats from getting his financial records at least until the justices resolve a broader fight over efforts to subpoena a sitting president’s records.

Washington Post pans ‘A Warning,’ rips Trump official for staying anonymous

The controversial anti-Trump book written by the anonymous Trump official is apparently so dull that even the liberal Washington Post couldn’t praise it.

Pelosi comments show Democrats want to ‘overturn’ the American justice system: White House spokesman

The White House said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation for President Trump to offer “exculpatory” evidence proving his innocence in the Ukraine matter is proof her party wants to upend the justice system.

Lindsey Graham tears into Erdogan in tense White House meeting

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham ripped into Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a tense Oval Office meeting Wednesday over the country’s invasion of Syria and attacks on America’s Kurdish allies, according to aides and the senat…

AOC slams WH adviser Stephen Miller as ‘white nationalist’ after recent report, calls for his resignation

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., launched a petition this week calling for senior White House adviser Stephen Miller’s resignation, claiming that a recent report proves he is a “white nationalist” and the “architect” of what she described as Pres…

Government employees ‘working against the president’ should resign, WH press secretary says

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham slammed the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry Wednesday, suggesting that Foreign Service officials should resign if unprepared to carry out orders based on President Trump’s constitutionally recognized p…

CNN’s Anderson Cooper takes nasty shots at Nikki Haley for saying Trump was ‘truthful’ to her

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper attacked former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley on Tuesday night for her assertion that President Trump had been “truthful” to her while she served in his administration.

China 'Mega Dump' Full Of Trash 25 Years Ahead Of Schedule

20 November 2019

China 'Mega Dump' Full Of Trash 25 Years Ahead Of Schedule

A 'mega dump' in China has reached capacity 25 years sooner than anticipated after receiving far more trash per day than originally planned, according to the BBC.

The Jiangcungou ladfill in Shaanxi Province - around the size of 100 football fields, was designed to accept 2,500 tons of trash per day. Instead, it received 10,000 tons daily, the most of any landfill site in China.

The Jiangcungou landfill in Xi'an city was built in 1994 and was designed to last until 2044.

The landfill serves over 8 million citizens. It spans an area of almost 700,000 square metres, with a depth of 150 metres and a storage capacity of more than 34 million cubic metres.

Until recently, Xi'an was one of the few cities in China that solely relied on landfill to dispose of household waste - leading to capacity being reached early.

Earlier this month, a new incineration plant was opened, and at least four more are expected to open by 2020. Together, they are expected to be able to process 12,750 tonnes of rubbish per day. -BBC

The landfill sites are eventually slated to become ecological parks.

China collected 215 million tons of urban household waste in 2017 according to the country's statistical yearbook, up from 152 million a decade earlier. There are currently 654 landfill sites across the country and 286 incineration plants.

It's unknown what their recycling rate is as they have not released figures, however Beijing announced plans to recycle 35% of waste in major cities within the next 13 months, according to a government report.

To that end, the sorting and recycling of rubbish was made mandatory in Shanghai this July, leading to a "sense of panic" over people's social credit scores.

The plan is ambitious - Shanghai is the largest and most populous city in the world, with more than 24 million residents - three times the size of London or New York. And according to some reports, only 10% of its waste is recycled. Official statistics show that only 3,300 tonnes of recyclables are collected daily, compared to the 19,300 tonnes of residual waste and 5,000 tonnes of kitchen waste that are collected. -BBC

In 2017 alone, China accepted seven million tons of trash from Europe, Japan and the United States, along with 27 million tons of paper waste.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2019 - 23:45 Tags Environment

Six Conflicting Global Projects

20 November 2019

Six Conflicting Global Projects

The six major world powers approach the reorganization of international relations according to their experiences and dreams. Prudently, they intend to defend their interests first before promoting their vision of the world.

VoltaireNet.org's Thierry Meyssan describes their respective positions before the fight begins.

The US withdrawal from Syria, even if it was immediately corrected, indicates with certainty that Washington no longer intends to be the world’s policeman, the "necessary Empire". It destabilized without delay all the rules of international relations.

We have entered a period of transition during which each major power is pursuing a new agenda. Here are the main ones.

The Three "Greats"

The United States of America

The collapse of the Soviet Union could have caused the collapse of the United States, since the two empires were leaning on each other. This was not the case. President George Bush Sr. ensured with Operation Desert Storm that Washington became the undisputed leader of all nations, then demobilized 1 million soldiers and proclaimed the quest for prosperity.

Transnational corporations then signed a pact with Deng Xiaoping to have their products manufactured by Chinese workers, who were paid twenty times less than their American counterparts. This led to a considerable development of international freight transport, followed by the gradual disappearance of jobs and the middle classes in the United States. Industrial capitalism was replaced by financial capitalism.

At the end of the 1990s, Igor Panarin, a professor at the Russian Diplomatic Academy, analyzed the economic and psychological collapse of American society. He hypothesized that the country would break up along the lines of what had happened to the Soviet Union with the emergence of new states. To repel the collapse, Bill Clinton freed his country from international law with NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia. As this effort proved insufficient, US personalities imagined adapting their country to financial capitalism and organizing, by force, international trade so that the coming period would be a "new American century". With George Bush Jr., the United States abandoned its position as a leading nation and tried to transform itself into an absolute unipolar power. They launched the "endless war" or "war on terrorism" to destroy one by one all state structures in the "broader Middle East". Barack Obama continued this quest by associating a host of allies with it.

This policy paid off, but only a very few benefited, the "super-rich". The Americans responded by electing Donald Trump as president of the federal state. He broke with his predecessors and, like Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR, tried to save the United States by relieving it of its most costly commitments. He boosted the economy by encouraging national industries against those that had relocated their jobs. He subsidized the extraction of shale oil and managed to take control of the world hydrocarbon market despite the cartel formed by OPEC and Russia. Aware that his army is first and foremost a huge bureaucracy, wasting a huge budget on insignificant results, he stopped supporting Daesh and the PKK, negotiating with Russia a way to end the "endless war" with as little loss as possible.

In the coming period, the United States will be driven primarily by the need to save on all its actions abroad, until it abandons them if necessary. The end of imperialism is not a choice, but an existential question, a survival reflex.

The People’s Republic of China

After Zhao Ziyang’s attempted coup d’état and the Tiananmen uprising, Deng Xioping began his "journey south". He announced that China would continue its economic liberalization by entering into contracts with US multinationals.

Jiang Zemin continued on this path. The coast became a "workshop of the world", causing gigantic economic development. Gradually he cleaned the Communist Party of its caciques and ensured that well-paid jobs extended inland. Hu Jintao, concerned about a "harmonious society", repeals the taxes paid by peasants in the interior regions still not affected by economic development. But he failed to control the regional authorities and fell into corruption.

Xi Jinping proposed to open up new markets by building a huge project of international trade routes, the "Silk Roads". However, this project came too late because, unlike in antiquity, China no longer offers original products, but what transnational corporations sell at a lower price. This project was welcomed as a blessing by poor countries, but feared by the rich who are preparing to sabotage it. Xi Jinping is taking up positions in all the islets his country had abandoned in the China Sea, during the collapse of the Qing Empire and the occupation by the eight foreign armies. Aware of the destructive power of the West, he formed an alliance with Russia and refrained from any international political initiative.

In the coming period, China should affirm its positions in international fora, bearing in mind what the colonial empires imposed on it in the 19th century. But it should refrain from military intervention and remain a strictly economic power.

The Russian Federation

When the USSR collapsed, the Russians believed they would save themselves by adhering to the Western model. In fact, Boris Yeltsin’s team, trained by the CIA, organized the looting of collective property by a few individuals. In two years, about a hundred of them, 97% of them from the Jewish minority, took everything available and became billionaires. These new oligarchs fought each other mercilessly with machine guns and attacks in the middle of Moscow, while President Yeltsin bombed parliament. Without a real government, Russia was nothing more than a wreck. Warlords and jihadists armed by the CIA organized the secession of Chechnya. The standard of living and life expectancy collapsed.

In 1999, FSB Director Vladimir Putin rescued President Yeltsin from an investigation for corruption. In exchange, he was appointed President of the Council of Ministers; a position he used to force the President to resign and get himself elected. He put in place a vast policy of state restoration: he put an end to the civil war in Chechnya and methodically killed all the oligarchs who refused to comply with the state. The return of order was also the end of the Russian Western fantasy. Living standards and life expectancy improved.

Having restored the rule of law, Vladimir Putin did not stand for re-election after two consecutive terms. He supported a pale law professor, worshipped by the United States, Dmitry Medvedev, to succeed him. But not intending to leave power in weak hands, he was appointed Prime Minister until his re-election as President in 2012. Wrongly believing that Russia would collapse again, Georgia attacked South Ossetia, but instantly found Prime Minister Putin in its path. He then saw the pitiful state of the Red Army, but managed to overcome it thanks to the effect of surprise. Re-elected President, he focused on defence reform. He retired hundreds of thousands of officers, often disillusioned and sometimes drunk, and placed the Tuvan general (Turkish-speaking Siberian) Sergei Choïgou in the Ministry of Defence.

Adopting a traditional Russian management style, Vladimir Putin separated the civilian budget from part of the military budget. The first is voted by the Duma, the second is secret. He restored military research, while the United States imagined that it would no longer have to invest in this area. He tested a number of new weapons before deploying the new Red Army to help Syria. He experimented with his new weapons in combat situations and decided which ones would be produced and which ones would be abandoned. He organized a quarterly rotation of his troops so that all of them, one after the other, would become stronger. The Russian Federation, which in 1991 was nothing more than nothing, became the world’s leading military power in eighteen years.

At the same time, he used the Nazi coup d’état in Ukraine to reclaim Crimea, a Russian territory administratively linked to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev. He then faced a campaign of European Union agricultural sanctions that he used to create self-sufficient domestic production.

He forged an alliance with China and forced it to modify its Silk Roads project by integrating the communication needs of Russian territory to form an "Extended Eurasia Partnership".

In the coming years, Russia will try to reorganise international relations on two bases: to separate political and religious powers; to restore international law on the basis of the principles formulated by Tsar Nicholas II.

Western Europeans

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

When the USSR fell, the United Kingdom subscribed with reservations to the Maastricht Treaty. Conservative Prime Minister John Major intended to take advantage of the supranational state under construction while keeping his currency out of the way. So he rejoiced when George Soros attacked the Pound and forced it out of the EMS ("monetary snake"). His successor, Labourist Tony Blair, restored full independence to the Bank of England and considered leaving the EU to join NAFTA. He transformed the defence of his country’s interests by substituting references to human rights for respect for international law. He promoted the US policies of Bill Clinton, then George Bush Jr., encouraging and justifying the enlargement of the European Union, the "humanitarian war" against Kosovo, and the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In 2006, he developed the "Arab Spring" plan and submitted it to the United States.

Gordon Brown hesitated to pursue this policy and tried to regain some room to manoeuvre, but his energy was caught up in the 2008 financial crisis, which he managed to get through. David Cameron implemented, with Barack Obama, the Blair-Bush plan for the "Arab Spring", including the war against Libya, but eventually only partially succeeded in placing the Muslim Brotherhood in power in the broader Middle East. In the end, he resigned after the Brexit voters voted, when the project to join NAFTA was no longer on the agenda.

Theresa May proposed to apply Brexit with regard to the exit of the supranational state from the Maastricht Treaty, but not with regard to the exit from the common market prior to Maastricht. She failed and was replaced by Winston Churchill’s biographer, Boris Johnson. He decided to leave the European Union completely and to reactivate the kingdom’s traditional foreign policy: the fight against any competing state on the European continent.

If Boris Johnson remains in power, the United Kingdom should in the coming years try to pit the European Union and the Russian Federation against each other.

The French Republic

François Mitterrand did not understand the dislocation of the USSR, going so far as to support the generals’ putsch against his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev. In any case, he saw an opportunity to build a European supranational state, big enough to compete with the USA and China in the continuity of the Napoleonic attempt. Together with Chancellor Helmut Kohl, he promoted German unification and the Maastricht Treaty. Worried about this United States of Europe project, President Bush Sr, convinced of the "Wolfowitz doctrine" of preventing the emergence of a new challenger to the US leadership, forced him to accept NATO’s protection of the EU and its extension to former members of the Warsaw Pact. François Mitterrand used cohabitation and the Gaullist Minister of the Interior, Charles Pasqua, to fight the Muslim Brotherhood that the CIA had made him accept in France and that MI6 used to oust France from Algeria.

Jacques Chirac developed French deterrence by completing air nuclear tests in the Pacific before moving on to simulations and signing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). At the same time, he adapted the armies to NATO’s needs by ending compulsory military service and integrating the Alliance’s Military Committee (planning). He supported NATO’s initiative against Yugoslavia (Kosovo war), but - after reading and studying 9/11 The Big Lie [1]- took the lead in global opposition to aggression against Iraq. This episode allowed him to bond with Chancellor Helmut Kohl and to advance the European supranational state, which he always conceived as a tool of independence around the Franco-German couple. Disrupted by the assassination of his business partner, Rafik Hariri, he turned against Syria, which the United States referred to as the mastermind behind the murder.

Advocating a radically different policy, Nicolas Sarkozy placed the French army under US command via NATO’s Integrated Command. He tried to enlarge the French area of influence by organizing the Union for the Mediterranean, but this project did not work. He proved his worth by overthrowing Laurent Bagbo in Côte d’Ivoire and, although he was overtaken by Arab springs in Tunisia and Egypt, he led NATO’s operation against Libya and Syria. However, for the sake of realism, he noted the Syrian resistance and withdrew from the theatre of operation. He continued the construction of the United States of Europe by having the Lisbon Treaty adopted by Parliament, even though the voters had rejected the same text under the name of the "European Constitution". In reality, the modification of institutions, which are supposed to become more effective with 27 Member States, is profoundly transforming the supra-national State, which can now impose its will on Member States.

Coming to power without being prepared for it, François Hollande followed in Nicolas Sarkozy’s footsteps in a somewhat rigid way, forcing him to adopt the latter¹s ideology. He signed all the treaties that his predecessor had negotiated - including the European Budget Pact allowing Greece to be sanctioned - adding to them each time, as if to apologise for his reversal, a declaration setting out his own point of view, but without binding force. Thus he authorized the establishment of NATO military bases on French soil, putting a definitive end to the Gaullist doctrine of national independence. Or he continued the policy of aggression against Syria, making a verbal overbid before doing nothing on the White House’s orders. He assigned the French Army a mission in the Sahel, as a ground-based substitute for AfriCom. Finally, he justified the CO2 emissions trading exchange by the Paris Climate Agreement.

Elected thanks to the American investment fund KKR, Emmanuel Macron is first and foremost an advocate of globalization according to Bill Clinton, George Bush Jr. and Barack Obama. However, he quickly adopted the vision of François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac according to which only a European supranational state would allow France to continue to play a significant international role, but in its Sarkozy-Holland version: the Union allows constraint. These two lines sometimes lead to contradictions, particularly with regard to Russia. However, they are united in a condemnation of the nationalism of the Member States of the European Union, a short Brexit, or a desire to restore trade with Iran.

In the coming years, France should measure its decisions in terms of their impact on the building of the European Union. It will seek as a priority to ally itself with any power working in this direction.

Federal Republic of Germany

Chancellor Helmut Kohl saw the break-up of the Soviet Empire as an opportunity to bring the two Germanies together. He obtained the green light from France in exchange for German support for the European Union’s single currency project, the euro. He also obtained the agreement of the United States, which saw it as a way to divert the East German army into NATO despite the promise made to Russia not to allow the German Democratic Republic to join.

Once German reunification was achieved, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder raised the question of his country’s international role, still under attack from its defeat in the Second World War. Although Germany is no longer militarily occupied by the four major powers, it nevertheless hosts huge US garrisons and the headquarters of EuCom and soon AfriCom. Gerhard Schöder used the "humanitarian" war against Kosovo to legally deploy German troops out of the country for the first time since 1945. But he refused to recognize this territory conquered by NATO as a state. Similarly, he is very strongly committed alongside President Chirac against the United States-British war in Iraq, stressing that there is no evidence that President Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks of September 11th. He tried to influence European integration in a peaceful way. He therefore strengthened energy ties with Russia and proposed a federal Europe (including Russia in the long term) based on the German model, but he met with opposition from France, which is very attached to the project of a supra-national state.

Chancellor Angela Merkel returned to the politics of her mentor Helmut Kohl, who handed her over in one night from her responsibilities at the Communist Youth of Democratic Germany to the Federal Government of Germany. Closely monitored by the CIA, which is not sure how to define her, she strengthened Germany’s ties with Israel and Brazil. In 2013, on Hillary Clinton’s proposal, she asked Volker Pethes to study the possibility of developing the German army to play a central role in CentCom if the United States moved its troops to the Far East. She then commissioned studies on how German officers could supervise the armies of Central and Eastern Europe and asked Volker Perthes to write a plan for Syria’s surrender. Very attached to Atlanticist and European structures, she distanced herself from Russia and supported the Nazi coup d’état in Ukraine. In order to be effective, she required that the European Union impose its will on small Member States (Lisbon Treaty). She was very tough during the Greek financial crisis and patiently placed her pawns in the European bureaucracy until Ursula von der Leyen was elected President of the European Commission. When the United States withdrew from northern Syria, she immediately responded by proposing to NATO to send the German army to replace it in accordance with the 2013 plan.

In the coming years, Germany should focus on the possibilities of military intervention in the framework of NATO, particularly in the Middle East, and be wary of the project of a centralised European super-national state.

Feasibility

It is very strange to hear today about "multilateralism" and "isolationism" or "universalism" and "nationalism". These questions do not arise because everyone has known since the Hague Conference (1899) that technological progress has made all nations in solidarity. This logorrhoea does not hide our inability to admit the new power relations and to envisage a world order that is as unjust as possible.

Only the three Great Powers can hope to have the means to implement their policies. They can only achieve their ends without war by following the Russian line based on international law. However, the danger of internal political instability in the United States raises more than ever the risk of a generalized confrontation.

When they left the Union, the British were forced to join the United States (which Donald Trump rejected) or to disappear politically. While Germany and France, which are losing ground, have no choice but to build the European Union. However, for the time being, they assess the time available very differently and consider it in two incompatible ways, which could lead them to disrupt the European Union themselves.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2019 - 23:25 Tags Politics War Conflict

For Christmas This Year, Teens Want Apple, Nike, And Louis Vuitton

20 November 2019

For Christmas This Year, Teens Want Apple, Nike, And Louis Vuitton

According to a new survey from Piper Jaffray, Apple, Nike and Louis Vuitton could be the big winners with teenagers this holiday season. And why wouldn't teenagers, most of whom likely don't work for a living, ask for luxury brands on the one day of the year where they are gifted things without regard for price?

Piper surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. consumers and analyzed the responses from the "upper income teenage cohort" to draw its conclusions, according to CNBC. The company found that Apple was the “top-listed consumer brand for teens,” with AirPods as the most popular product.

The second most mentioned brand was Nike, with its mentions more than tripling from last year's survey. And in keeping with the reality distortion field that is the budding U.S. consumer, Louis Vuitton - a brand that many hard working adults can't afford - rounded out the list of top brands for teenagers.

Piper has said of the holiday season: “The consumer remains healthy, but stock selectivity is key given pockets of weakness in the dept. stores, specialty retail stores & mixed views on spending.”

Other brands that Piper has on watch for the holidays include Activision Blizzard, Crocs, Lowe’s, Boot Barn and YETI.

Piper believes that strength from "Call of Duty" could help Activision Blizzard while popularity from Fortnite wanes. The firm also thinks that ongoing product collaborations could help Crocs power sales.

The strength in the housing market has prompted the watchful eye on Lowe's, while new product launches have the firm watching Boot Barn and YETI. However, the biggest winner could again be Amazon, according to the survey. Consumers are expected to make 46% of purchases online this year.

“Proprietary retail model shows acceleration of AMZN at detriment to department and specialty stores,” the firm said in its note. Piper has overweight ratings on Apple, Nike and Lululemon.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2019 - 23:05 Tags Business Finance

Impeach The Government: Rogue Agencies Have Been Abusing Their Powers For Decades

20 November 2019

Impeach The Government: Rogue Agencies Have Been Abusing Their Powers For Decades

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“When a man unprincipled in private life[,] desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper . . . despotic in his ordinary demeanour - known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty - when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity - to join in the cry of danger to liberty - to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion - to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day - It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

- Alexander Hamilton

By all means, let’s talk about impeachment.

To allow the President or any rogue government agency or individual to disregard the rule of law whenever, wherever and however it chooses and operate “above the law” is exactly how a nation of sheep gives rise to a government of wolves.

To be clear: this is not about Donald Trump.

Or at least it shouldn’t be just about Trump.

This is a condemnation of every government toady at every point along the political spectrum—right, left and center—who has conspired to expand the federal government’s powers at the expense of the citizenry.

For too long now, the American people have played politics with their principles and turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient, allowing Congress, the White House and the Judiciary to wreak havoc with their freedoms and act in violation of the rule of law.

“We the people” are paying the price for it now.

We are paying the price every day that we allow the government to continue to wage its war on the American People, a war that is being fought on many fronts: with bullets and tasers, with surveillance cameras and license readers, with intimidation and propaganda, with court rulings and legislation, with the collusion of every bureaucrat who dances to the tune of corporate handouts while on the government’s payroll, and most effectively of all, with the complicity of the American people, who continue to allow themselves to be easily manipulated by their politics, distracted by their pastimes, and acclimated to a world in which government corruption is the norm.

Don’t keep falling for the Deep State’s ploys.

This entire impeachment process is a manufactured political circus—a shell game—aimed at distracting the public from the devious treachery of the American police state, which continues to lock down the nation and strip the citizenry of every last vestige of constitutional safeguards that have historically served as a bulwark against tyranny.

Has President Trump overstepped his authority and abused his powers?

Without a doubt.

Then again, so did Presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, and almost every president before them.

Trump is not the first president to weaken the system of checks and balances, sidestep the rule of law, and expand the power of the president. He is just the most recent.

If we were being honest and consistent in holding government officials accountable, you’d have to impeach almost every president in recent years for operating “above the law,” unbound by the legislative or judicial branches of the government.

When we refer to the “rule of law,” that’s constitutional shorthand for the idea that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.

When the government and its agents no longer respect the rule of law—the Constitution—or believe that it applies to them, then the very contract on which this relationship is based becomes invalid.

Although the Constitution requires a separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government in order to ensure accountability so that no one government agency becomes all-powerful, each successive president over the past 30 years has, through the negligence of Congress and the courts, expanded the reach and power of the presidency by adding to his office’s list of extraordinary orders, directives and special privileges.

All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to act as a dictator by operating above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

Yet in operating above the law, it’s not just the president who has become a law unto himself.

The government itself has become an imperial dictator, an overlord, a king.

This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’état.

This abuse of power has been going on for so long that it has become the norm, the Constitution be damned.

There are hundreds—make that thousands—of government bureaucrats who are getting away with murder (in many cases, literally) simply because the legislatures, courts and the citizenry can’t be bothered to make them play by the rules of the Constitution.

Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.

It’s the nature of the beast: power corrupts.

Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.

We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.

A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses actors and actresses and gets away with it. The U.S. military bombs civilian targets and gets away with it.

Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sexual harassment, government corruption, or the rule of law.

Twenty years ago, I was a lawyer for Paula Jones, who sued then-President Clinton for dropping his pants and propositioning her for sex when he was governor of Arkansas. That lawsuit gave rise to revelations about Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, a 21-year-old intern at the White House, and his eventual impeachment for lying about it under oath.

As Dana Milbank writes for The Washington Post:

We didn’t know it at the time, of course. But in Bill Clinton were the seeds of Donald Trump. With 20 years of hindsight, it is clear… Clinton’s handling of the Monica Lewinsky affair was a precursor of the monstrosity we now have in the White House: dismissing unpleasant facts as “fake news,” self-righteously claiming victimhood, attacking the press and cloaking personal misbehavior in claims to be upholding the Constitution…. Clinton set us on the path, or at least accelerated us down the path, that led to today.

It doesn’t matter what starts us down this path, whether it’s a president insisting that he get a free pass for sexually harassing employees, or waging wars based on invented facts, or attempting to derail an investigation into official misconduct.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

After all, it is a tale that has been told time and again throughout history about how easy it is for freedom to fall and tyranny to rise, and it often begins with one small, seemingly inconsequential willingness on the part of the people to compromise their principles and undermine the rule of law in exchange for a dubious assurance of safety, prosperity and a life without care.

For example, 86 years ago, the citizens of another democratic world power elected a leader who promised to protect them from all dangers. In return for this protection, and under the auspice of fighting terrorism, he was given absolute power.

This leader went to great lengths to make his rise to power appear both legal and necessary, masterfully manipulating much of the citizenry and their government leaders.

Unnerved by threats of domestic terrorism and foreign invaders, the people had little idea that the domestic turmoil of the times—such as street rioting and the fear of Communism taking over the country—was staged by the leader in an effort to create fear and later capitalize on it.

In the ensuing months, this charismatic leader ushered in a series of legislative measures that suspended civil liberties and habeas corpus rights and empowered him as a dictator.

On March 23, 1933, the nation’s legislative body passed the Enabling Act, formally referred to as the “Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation,” which appeared benign and allowed the leader to pass laws by decree in times of emergency.

What it succeeded in doing, however, was ensuring that the leader became a law unto himself.

The leader’s name was Adolf Hitler, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Yet history has a way of repeating itself.

Hitler’s rise to power should serve as a stark lesson to always be leery of granting any government leader sweeping powers.

Clearly, we are not heeding that lesson.

“How lucky it is for rulers,” Adolf Hitler once said, “that men cannot think.”

The horrors that followed in Nazi Germany might have been easier to explain if Hitler had been right. But the problem is not so much that people cannot think but that they do not think. Or if they do think, as in the case of the German people, that thinking becomes muddled and easily led.

Hitler’s meteoric rise to power, with the support of the German people, is a case in point.

On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in full accordance with the country’s legal and constitutional principles. When President Paul von Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler assumed the office of president, as well as that of chancellor, but he preferred to use the title Der Füehrer (the leader) to describe himself. This new move was approved in a general election in which Hitler garnered 88 percent of the votes cast.

It cannot be said that the German people were ignorant of Hitler’s agenda or his Nazi ideology. Nazi literature, including statements of the Nazi plans for the future, had papered the country for a decade before Hitler came to power. In fact, Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, which was his blueprint for totalitarianism, sold more than 200,000 copies between 1925 and 1932.

Clearly, the problem was not that the German people did not think but that their thinking was poisoned by the enveloping climate of ideas that they came to accept as important.

At a certain point, the trivial became important, and obedience to the government in pursuit of security over freedom became predominant.

As historian Milton Mayer recounts in his seminal book on Hitler’s rise to power, They Thought They Were Free, “Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people‑—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies’, without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.”

The German people were not oblivious to the horrors taking place around them. As historian Robert Gellately points out, “[A]nyone in Nazi Germany who wanted to find out about the Gestapo, the concentration camps, and the campaigns of discrimination and persecutions need only read the newspapers.”

The warning signs were definitely there, blinking incessantly like large neon signs.

“Still,” Gellately writes, “the vast majority voted in favor of Nazism, and in spite of what they could read in the press and hear by word of mouth about the secret police, the concentration camps, official anti-Semitism, and so on. . . . [T]here is no getting away from the fact that at that moment, ‘the vast majority of the German people backed him.’”

Half a century later, the wife of a prominent German historian, neither of whom were members of the Nazi party, opined:

“[O]n the whole, everyone felt well. . . . And there were certainly eighty percent who lived productively and positively throughout the time. . . . We also had good years. We had wonderful years.”

In other words, as long as their creature comforts remained undiminished, as long as their bank accounts remained flush, as long as they weren’t being discriminated against, persecuted, starved, beaten, shot, stripped, jailed and turned into slave labor, life was good.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) has sucked the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen because of one particular incident or one particular president. It is a process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day, aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art of how to “divide and conquer.”

Unfortunately, there is no magic spell to transport us back to a place and time where “we the people” weren’t merely fodder for a corporate gristmill, operated by government hired hands, whose priorities are money and power.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, our freedoms have become casualties in an all-out war on the American people.

So yes, let’s talk about impeachment, but don’t fall for the partisan shell game that sets Trump up as the fall guy for the Deep State’s high crimes and misdemeanors.

Set your sights higher: impeach the government for overstepping its authority, abusing its power, and disregarding the rule of law.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2019 - 22:45 Tags Politics

"It's Really Refreshing And Relaxing" - College Students Ditch Smartphones For A Week, Changed Their Lives

20 November 2019

"It's Really Refreshing And Relaxing" - College Students Ditch Smartphones For A Week, Changed Their Lives

Dozens of students at Adelphi University, a private university in Garden City, New York, abandoned their smartphones for a week, it was part of a college course that would break the cycle of addiction of their dependence on technology, reported CBS NewYork.

CBS2's Carolyn Gusoff interviewed several students last week who were finally reunited with their smartphones.

Jacob Dannenberg, a student who took part in the experiment, said he had to use an 'old school alarm clock' to wake up.

Dannenberg had to write notes and keep a journal of tasks because without a smartphone, he was basically paralyzed from completing some of life's simplest tasks.

One student told Gusoff that "I'm freaking out, I could probably cry right now." The student said she didn't have a smartphone for a week.

Professor Donna Freitas, who experimented with students, said it was a bold challenge for students to recognize just how dependent they're on technology.

Dannenberg told Gusoff that after ditching his smartphone for a week, life is truly amazing. "I'm having a lot of better relationships… it's a stress-free environment no pressure about social media," he said.

Student Adrianna Cigliano said, "I think it's really refreshing and relaxing… I was able to fall asleep a lot easier" without the phone.

Cigliano added that "Doing homework was 100 percent easier. I got it done faster, and I was in the zone."

Freitas said she wanted students to recognize their addiction level to smartphones.

"Are the conveniences worth it because the drawback are pretty significant," Freitas said.

"The fact that no one can focus, that my students can't sleep… They feel bad about themselves because of social media, and the list goes on and on."

Students told Gusoff that after the week challenge, they would change their smartphone habits and lessen their screentime.

"I want to keep that balance and figure out the healthy relationship that we deserve to have with our phones," Cigliano added.

"My screen time is definitely going to go down, and I'm going start to appreciate my surroundings more because usually I'm looking at my screen all the time," Ashley Castillero said.

Students overwhelmingly said they want to live more in the moment, rather than have their heads buried in the fake social media world.

Tyler Durden Tue, 11/19/2019 - 22:25 Tags Education

Wendi Deng's daughters Chloe and Grace are seen out with their stepsister Georgia May Jagger

20 November 2019

Chloe, 16, Grace, 18, and Georgia, 27, attended the 3rd Annual Citymeals on Wheels Power Lunch for Women in NYC on November 19. Rupert and Wendi were also there and posed for pictures.

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn both REFUSE to back Prince Andrew in leadership debate

20 November 2019

David Baddiel said the Labour leader's way of pronouncing 'Epstein' made the paedophile sound more Jewish as others accused Corbyn of making a point to 'fellow Anti-Semite comrades'.

The study that shows why Donald and Melania Trump are a perfect match

20 November 2019

Researchers have discovered that men always focus on looks - finding men place 27 per cent more importance on attractiveness, while women prioritise social status by a similar margin.

Tories blasted over FactCheckUK Twitter scam

20 November 2019

The Conservative Party Press office changed their official Twitter handle to FactCheckUK during tonight's ITV debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

Bride, 30, who 'dreaded' trying on a wedding dress loses 55 kilos in just 12 months

20 November 2019

An Australian bride who weighed 120 kilos and 'dreaded' trying on wedding dresses in the future has lost 55 kilos by exercising in her living room and cutting out dairy.