Steve Bull's Blog, page 1292
October 9, 2017
Plague is Starting in Africa
Panic has ensued in Madagascar where a recent outbreak of the plague has claimed the lives of at least 24 people. Prime Minister Olivier Mahafaly Solonandrasana has announced a ban on all public gatherings and demonstrations in effect until the outbreak can be contained.
The plague is a deadly disease caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria. It usually begins as the bubonic plague, which is spread from small mammals (such as rats) and fleas to humans. If detected early, the bubonic plague can generally be treated and controlled with antibiotics and proper environmental measures. However, half of all reported cases in Madagascar are the pneumonic plague –- the deadliest form of the disease.
The pneumonic plague is transmitted person to person. Since this form of the plague is airborne, it spreads extremely rapidly and can have catastrophic consequences. Those who contract the pneumonic plague must be treated immediately as it can be fatal within less than 24 hours of onset.
Health officials in Madagascar are now rushing to identify anyone who has come into contact with those affected. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), those at risk will be treated with antibiotics and possibly quarantined.
Formerly known as the “Black Death,” this is the same plague that claimed the lives of 50 million Europeans during the Middle Ages. The disease first reached Europe in October 1347 and quickly turned into a contagion that destroyed nearly 1/3 of the population.
Donald Trump: Warmonger-in-Chief!
If a world conflagration, God forbid, should break out during the Trump Administration, its genesis will not be too hard to discover: the thin-skinned, immature, shallow, doofus which currently resides in the Oval Office!
This past week, the Donald has continued his bellicose talk with both veiled and explicit threats against purported American adversaries throughout the world. In a cryptic exchange with reporters during a dinner with military leaders, he quipped:
You guys know what this represents?
Maybe it’s the calm before the storm. It could be the
calm. . . before. . . the storm.*
A reporter asked if he meant Iran or Isis which the POTUS responded, “you’ll find out.” Instead of threatening supposed overseas foes with nuclear annihilation, none of whom have taken any concrete military action against the US, why not go after someone who has actually compromised the country’s security, namely Hillary Rodham Clinton!
While some dismissed the comments as typical Trumpian bluster, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders added further ominous overtones when questioned saying they were “extremely serious.”
Later in the week, Trump continued to threaten tiny North Korea, this time in not so veiled terms:
Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years,
agreements made and massive amounts of money paid hasn’t worked, agreements
violated before the ink was dry, making fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only
one thing will work.**
If war erupts either on the Korean Peninsula or in any other part of the globe that the U.S has wantonly poked its nose into, it can be safely assured that neither Trump nor any of the other “military leaders,” with which he recently had dinner with, will be in the midst of hostilities as the bombs and bullets are being cast about.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Britain to Criminalize Reading Online Extremist Content
Like America, Britain is unfit and unsafe to live in – both countries police states, serving privileged interests exclusively, allied in waging wars OF terror in multiple theaters, along with abolishing fundamental homeland freedoms.
The latest civil rights abuse came from hardline home secretary Amber Rudd. She’s spearheading a Tory effort to criminalize readership of so-called extremist content online – punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
The same holds for anyone publishing content Tories call extremist, especially about Britain’s military, intelligence services and police that could be considered related to preparing terrorist acts.
“I want to make sure those who view despicable terrorist content online, including jihadi websites, far-right propaganda and bomb-making instructions, face the full force of the law,” Rudd blustered, adding:
“There is currently a gap in the law around material (that) is viewed or streamed from the Internet without being permanently downloaded.”
“This is an increasingly common means by which material is accessed online for criminal purposes and is a particularly prevalent means of viewing extremist material such as videos and web pages.”
A Home Office analysis showed thousands of online ISIS tweets and other material over the past year.
Unmentioned was US and UK support for the terrorist group, recruiting, arming, funding, training and directing its fighters, using them as imperial foot soldiers in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.
The way to end extremist online content from ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups is by no longer supporting them, combating their fighters instead of using them.
Most important is ending US-led imperial wars in multiple theaters. ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups were created to serve as imperial ground forces, aided by Pentagon-led terror-bombing.
Changes Rudd proposed aim to strengthen Britain’s 2000 Terrorism Act. It authorizes civil liberties-destroying police powers, including repressive stop-and-searches ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
October 8, 2017
Schäuble: Another Financial Crisis Is Coming Due To Spiraling Global Debt, “New Bubbles”
Following the disappointing for Angela Merkel and her CDU German election results, which propelled the populist AfD into Germany’s political establishment with 92 members of parliament, the first casualty was Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, who in a few days will relinquish his long-held post and move on to the ceremonial role of Bundestag president. As part of his farewell tour, Schäuble – like so many other former members of the establishment- took a parting shot at the system he helped create and warned that “spiraling levels of global debt and liquidity”, as well as “new bubbles” present a major risk to the world economy.
Speaking to the FT, the Europhile beloved in Germany for successfully steering one of the world’s largest economies for the past eight years, and who nearly led to Grexit in the summer of 2005, said there was a danger of “new bubbles” forming due to the trillions of dollars that central banks have pumped into markets. Confirming another fear widely propagated by the Putin propaganda alternative media, Schäuble also warned of risks to stability in the eurozone, particularly those posed by bank balance sheets burdened by the post-crisis legacy of non-performing loans, something we have warned about since 2012, and an issue which remains largely unresolved.
A strong advocate of fiscal rectitude and debt reduction, Mr Schäuble dominated Europe’s policy response to the eurozone debt crisis and has been vilified in countries such as Greece as an architect of austerity. But he will mainly be remembered as the most ardently pro-European politician in German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet, skilled at selling the benefits of the euro and of deeper European integration to an often sceptical German public.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
October 7, 2017
Gunman Storms Saudi Royal Palace, Is Killed After Shootout With Guards
An armed attack took place on the Saudi Royal palace in Jeddah, with two Saudi guards shot dead while three others were injured on Saturday morning when a man drove up to the gate of the palace and began shooting, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by state news.
Royal Guards killed the gunman, identified by the interior ministry as Mansour al-Amri, a 28-year-old Saudi national; he was armed with a Kalashnikov rifle and three Molotov cocktails.
While Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki told al-Arabiya TV that Amri did not have a criminal record or any known connection to extremist groups, we look forward to ISIS promptly claiming the terrorist attack (or if not, prompting questions why not).
The Saudi Royal Palace in Jeddah
The attack occurred at a checkpoint outside the western gate to the Peace Palace in Jeddah, where the royal family conducts official business during the summer months, according to Reuters.
Saudi King Salman was not present as he is currently outside the kingdom on a historical state visit to Russia, according to Reuters. While the whereabouts of his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, were unknwn, although recent state news reports have placed him in Jeddah.
An investigation was underway to determine his motive for the attack, according to the Saudi interior ministry.
Earlier on Saturday, the United States Embassy in Saudi Arabia had warned US citizens to exercise caution in the area around the palace after reports on social media of an attack there. “Due to the possibility of ongoing police activity, American citizens are advised to exercise caution when travelling through the area,” the embassy had warned.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Paul Tudor Jones Warns Disastrous “Wealth Disparity” Will End In “Rev
Having previously warned of the “disastrous market mania,” and told Janet Yellen to “be terrified” in April, legendary trader Paul Tudor Jones has a new message for CEOs, urging them to stop embracing the profit-above-all-else ethic creating massive wealth-inequality, or face the “tearing down of our civilization via war, revolution, or taxes.”
“One of the key things that always ends up tearing down great civilizations and countries is wealth disparity. It’s not sustainable,” explained the billionaire hedge fund manager at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston, telling corporate chiefs that they have gone too far in embracing economist Milton Friedman’s profit-above-all-else ethic and they need to change how they do business.
Corporations have paid too much attention to prioritizing shareholders, said Jones, who’s backing a nonprofit called JUST Capital that will rank companies on how well they treat their employees, consumers, communities and investors.
Bloomberg reports that Jones said that even Friedman would rethink his ideas if he could see how divided the U.S. has become in terms of wealth, and worries about the outcome…
“The way wealth disparity has been historically dealt with is either wars, revolution or taxes. My guess is in the future it’ll be one of those three in this country.”
At the time of Friedman’s 1970 article, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” the maximum federal individual tax rate was 70 percent, versus about 40 percent today. The wealth gap was one-fifth of what it is today, said Jones.
Friedman believed corporate executives should make as much money as possible while “conforming to the basic rules of the society.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Trouble With Taxes
Can we imagine a world without?
The U.S. Department of the Treasury building in Washington. The federal budget makes up 21.5 percent of GDP. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“There is no more persistent and influential faith in the world today than the faith in government spending,” wrote economist Henry Hazlitt in 1946. If that was the case then, what about today? Nearly every problem in the world calls for the government to solve it. In return for these services, the government needs money—a lot of money.
The federal government of the United States alone is on track to spend $3.65 trillion in the fiscal year of 2017, or 21.5 percent of gross domestic product.
Now, the Trump administration has been in the news for proposing a reform of the tax system, including some significant cuts. However, rather than bicker over the costs and effectiveness of that particular proposal, let’s take a step back and look at the big picture on taxes. We may even consider asking the question of whether we need taxation at all.
Taxes artificially increase the risk-reward profile for any operation, regardless of profits.
In 2017, we are immersed in taxes like a fish in water. We are so used to it, we could not even imagine a life without it. But the federal income tax only started in 1913, with a relatively modest 1 percent for the lowest bracket and 7 percent for the highest bracket. Since then, it has been fluctuating, reaching a peak of 92 percent on the highest bracket in the 1950s—which nobody could afford to pay nor actually did pay—and currently stands at 39.6 percent for incomes of more than $411,000.
No Taxes
There are many arguments in favor of abolishing personal and corporate income taxes altogether.
The first is that taxes prevent private economic activity, the core provider of employment and the products we need to sustain our lives.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Residents told to shelter in place after chemical plant explosion in Tennessee
Police were dispatched to the Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport, Tennessee.
Coal gasification is a process in which coal is converted into a product known as synthetic gas, or syngas. Syngas is comprised mainly of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and can be used to generate electric power, or as the building block for manufacturing certain chemicals.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Trump Hints At War With North Korea: “Sorry, But Only One Thing Will Work”
When we commented on this morning’s Trump tweetstorm, in which he covered everything from the fake (and not so fake) media, to RNC donors, to reaching out to Democrats on Obamacare repeal, to “late night” comedians and their “one-sided coverage” of Trump, we said that Trump has yet to make a comment on the most cryptic topic of the last week, his repeated suggestions that the current situation is a “calm before the storm.”
Moments ago, he may have done just that, when in his latest pair of tweets, Trump ominously suggested that following 25 years of failed diplomacy with North Korea, there is “only one thing that will work.”
“Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!”
Donald J. Trump Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid……
3:40 PM – Oct 7, 2017
Donald J. Trump …hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!
3:45 PM – Oct 7, 2017
The tweets prompted profoundly existential questions such as this one:
Bill Bishop Is trump threatening North Korea from the golf course?
3:57 PM – Oct 7, 2017 · Washington, DC
While Trump did not specify what that “one thing” is (at least not yet), it stands to reason that the president is referring to some sort of military intervention, i.e. war, which of course would most likely prompt a retaliation by North Korea, one which according to the 38 North website could result in over 2 million fatalities and nearly 8 million injuries.
For those who missed it, here again is “What Would A North Korean Nuclear Attack Look Like?”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
You’re On Your Own, by Robert Gore
ichef.bbci.co.uk
If the world seems incomprehensible now, just wait.
Within a twenty-four-hour span the Catalonian people voted 90 percent in favor of secession from Spain, despite the Spanish government’s effort to violently squelch the referendum, and a man in a Las Vegas hotel room opened fire on a concert, killing fifty-nine and wounding over 500. There’s no tangible connection between the two incidents, but they illustrate incipient forces still gathering steam that are transforming the world.
No government, military force, or intelligence unit has figured out how to stop those determined to kill large numbers of people if the killers are willing to forfeit their own lives. Nor will they. Individuals and small groups have the capability to amass and use large amounts of lethal weaponry, killing military and civilian targets in a guerrilla war, or victims on the deadly end of their random bullets or bombs.
Arguments that this can stopped by limiting access to weaponry are specious, serving only as cover for further expansion of government and curtailment of individual liberty. The trend towards cheaper, more widely distributed killing power stretches back to the invention of gun powder. Guns can now be manufactured at home with 3D printers. The cows left the barn long ago.
Standing in opposition to the forces of decentralized violence are the forces of centralized violence, governments. Catalonia offers a useful illustration. Violence was the government’s loud and clear cry that it had no other argument for preventing Catalonian succession. The wealthy region pays a disproportionate share of Spain’s taxes and gets less back than it puts in. Catalans are a distinct ethnic subgroup, attenuating any so-called blood ties between Catalonia and Spain. Suppression was only partially successful and 90 percent of those Catalonians who voted chose independence.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
