Apr 212019
 


Rembrandt van Rijn The deposition 1632-33

 

Yellow Vests Back In Action Despite ‘Unifying’ Notre Dame Disaster (RT)
Mueller Team Ignored Findings Of Former US Intelligence Officials (SP)
The Deep State vs. WikiLeaks (Escobar)
Julian Assange Put Through ‘Hell’ At Embassy, Says Former Diplomat (Sky)
UK PM May To Be Told To Quit By Top Conservative (R.)
London Home Prices Had Biggest Monthly Drop Since Lehman (DQ)
Battle To Save Amphibians From Global Killer Disease (G.)
Emissions From Thawing Arctic Permafrost 12 Times Higher Than Thought (Ind.)
Climate Change: The Facts – Our Greatest Threat, Laid Bare (G.)
Climate Change – The Facts (David Attenborough)

 

 

I predicted Macron would use the Notre Dame fire against the Yellow Vests, and he delivers. “We have to unify under our great leader, Me!”

Curious numbers here, 6 cops for every protester:

“The total number of people who took to the streets on Saturday reached 9,600, with 6,700 of them protesting in Paris, the Interior Ministry said.”

“Some 60,000 police officers were deployed across the country..”

Yellow Vests Back In Action Despite ‘Unifying’ Notre Dame Disaster (RT)

Yellow Vests protests brought clashes and tear gas back to the streets of Paris, despite politicians’ calls for “unity” in the wake of the Notre Dame fire. For protesters, the response to the fire only showed more inequality. Saturday’s protests mark the 23rd straight weekend of anti-government demonstrations, but the first since Notre Dame de Paris went up in flames on Monday. Officials were quick to criticize the protesters for returning to the streets so soon after the disaster. “The rioters will be back tomorrow,” Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told reporters on Friday. “The rioters have visibly not been moved by what happened at Notre-Dame.”


Joan of Arc monument, Toulouse

For many of the protesters, grief over the destruction of the 800-year-old landmark has made way for anger. With smoke still rising from Notre Dame, a group of French tycoons and businessmen pledged €1 billion to the cathedral’s reconstruction, money that the Yellow Vests say could be better spent elsewhere. “If they can give dozens of millions to rebuild Notre Dame, they should stop telling us there is no money to respond to the social emergency,” trade union leader Philippe Martinez told France 24. Some 60,000 police officers were deployed across the country, while a security perimeter was set up around Notre Dame in Paris.


A planned march that would have passed the site was banned by the authorities, but sporadic incidents of vandalism and looting took place across the city, with at least one car torched. There were also clashes between protesters and gendarmerie in the capital. The police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse the crowd, arresting 189 people, according to France Info. Yellow Vest rallies also took place in Nantes, Pau, Caen, Montbeliard, Bordeaux, Lyon and other French cities. The total number of people who took to the streets on Saturday reached 9,600, with 6,700 of them protesting in Paris, the Interior Ministry said.

Read more …

“How many of you wouldn’t be scared shitless by the head of the CIA declaring you the next target?”

Mueller Team Ignored Findings Of Former US Intelligence Officials (SP)

A group of former military and intelligence officials, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), conducted their own forensic tests that received a bit of attention in the United States press because they were some of the first people with prior backgrounds in government to question the central allegations of hacking into DNC servers. They asserted their examinations of the files showed DNC emails published by WikiLeaks were leaked, not hacked. However, the Mueller report makes no mention of the claims made by VIPS over the past two to three years—not even to debunk them.

The report stated, “Unit 26165 officers appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments, which were later released by WikiLeaks in July 2016.” But “appear to have” indicates the team did not have incontrovertible proof. They could only speculate. “The Office cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries, who visited during the summer of 2016,” the report acknowledged. “For example, public reporting identified Andrew Müller-Maguhn as a WikiLeaks associate who may have assisted with the transfer of these stolen documents to WikiLeaks.”

Yet, this is wildly misleading. The source for this example is a 2018 profile of Müller-Maguhn by journalist Ellen Nakashima that was published by the Washington Post. Müller-Maguhn told Nakashima it “would be insane” for him to hand deliver sensitive files, especially when the CIA has labeled WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” “How many of you wouldn’t be scared shitless by the head of the CIA declaring you the next target?,” he said.

Read more …

Comey didn’t want Assange’s knowledge to get public, because it would have killed the “Russians hacked the DNC” narrative. And that would be a threat to the whole Russiand-did-it story Mueller kept in his report. These guys are just story tellers, it’s fiction.

The Deep State vs. WikiLeaks (Escobar)

[..] it was only in 2017, in the Trump era, that the Deep State went totally ballistic; that’s when WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 files – detailing the CIA’s vast hacking/cyber espionage repertoire. This was the CIA as a Naked Emperor like never before – including the dodgy overseeing ops of the Center for Cyber Intelligence, an ultra-secret NSA counterpart. WikiLeaks got Vault 7 in early 2017. At the time WikiLeaks had already published the DNC files – which the unimpeachable Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) systematically proved was a leak, not a hack. The monolithic narrative by the Deep State faction aligned with the Clinton machine was that “the Russians” hacked the DNC servers.

Assange was always adamant; that was not the work of a state actor – and he could prove it technically. There was some movement towards a deal, brokered by one of Assange’s lawyers; WikiLeaks would not publish the most damning Vault 7 information in exchange for Assange’s safe passage to be interviewed by the US Department of Justice (DoJ). The DoJ wanted a deal – and they did make an offer to WikiLeaks. But then FBI director James Comey killed it. The question is why. Some theoretically sound reconstructions of Comey’s move are available. But the key fact is Comey already knew – via his close connections to the top of the DNC – that this was not a hack; it was a leak.

Ambassador Craig Murray has stressed, over and over again how the DNC/Podesta files published by WikiLeaks came from two different US sources; one from within the DNC and the other from within US intel. There was nothing for Comey to “investigate”. Or there would have, if Comey had ordered the FBI to examine the DNC servers. So why talk to Julian Assange? The release by WikiLeaks in April 2017 of the malware mechanisms inbuilt in “Grasshopper” and the “Marble Framework” were indeed a bombshell. This is how the CIA inserts foreign language strings in source code to disguise them as originating from Russia, from Iran, or from China. The inestimable Ray McGovern, a VIPS member, stressed how Marble Framework “destroys this story about Russian hacking.”

No wonder then CIA director Mike Pompeo accused WikiLeaks of being a “non-state hostile intelligence agency”, usually manipulated by Russia. Joshua Schulte, the alleged leaker of Vault 7, has not faced a US court yet. There’s no question he will be offered a deal by the USG if he aggress to testify against Julian Assange. It’s a long and winding road, to be traversed in at least two years, if Julian Assange is ever to be extradited to the US.

Read more …

Moreno is a corrupt criminal.

Julian Assange Put Through ‘Hell’ At Embassy, Says Former Diplomat (Sky)

Julian Assange was always respectful but went through “hell” in the Ecuadorian embassy as officials tried to “break him down”, according to a former senior diplomat. Fidel Narvaez worked at the London embassy for six of the seven years the WikiLeaks figurehead lived there and says they became friends. Assange was evicted a few weeks ago after a change of government in Ecuador. Its new president, Lenin Moreno, publicly criticised the whistleblower and gave the impression the government ended his stay after growing tired of his alleged bad behaviour.


Assange birthday party, Ecuador embassy, July 2015

Speaking to Sky News, Fidel Narvaez disputed claims that Assange had assaulted guards, didn’t clean up after himself, didn’t take care of his pet cat and even smeared human excrement on the walls of the embassy. He said: “Julian had a respectful relationship with staff, diplomats and administrative staff. I don’t recall a single incident when he disrespected someone until I left in July 2018. “He was 100% respectful. Clean and tidy? What is clean and tidy? Did he put the dishes in the dishwasher? Probably not at weekends. Is that a crime?”


Mr Narvaez worked at the embassy in Knightsbridge in central London between 2010 and 2018 as consul and first secretary. Assange went into the embassy in June 2012 and did not leave until he was carted away by British police a few weeks ago with the agreement of the authorities in Ecuador. Mr Narvaez said: “The last year was hell for Julian in that embassy. “I was there the first months of the last year and I witnessed when Julian was told that he would no longer be allowed to have internet or access to the phone and wouldn’t be able to have visitors. “The strategy was very clear – break him down. The government didn’t know how to end the asylum and face the catastrophic historical shame for doing that.”

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Oh, that’s right, Brexit!

UK PM May To Be Told To Quit By Top Conservative (R.)

A top member of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party will tell her in the coming week that she must step down by the end of June or her lawmakers will try again to depose her, the Sunday Times reported, without citing sources. May survived a vote of no confidence in December and although party rules mean lawmakers cannot challenge her again until a year has passed, lawmaker Graham Brady will tell her the rules will be changed unless she quits, the newspaper said.


Brady, who chairs the Conservative Party’s influential 1922 Committee of backbench lawmakers, will tell her that 70 percent of her members of parliament want her to resign over her handling of Brexit, the Sunday Times said. Britain was originally due to leave the European Union on March 29, but that deadline was pushed back to April 12 and then again to Oct. 31 as May failed to break an impasse in parliament on the terms of Brexit.

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Third world real estate.

London Home Prices Had Biggest Monthly Drop Since Lehman (DQ)

London home prices in February took their biggest one-off hit since the dark days of the last crisis, according to data published Thursday by the UK’s Office of National Statistics. The average price of a residential property in London tumbled 2% in February from January, the sharpest monthly drop since November 2008, when the City was grappling with the fallout from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. For the 12-month period, the average price dropped 3.8%, the sharpest year-over-year fall since August 2009, during the Global Financial Crisis. The average home in London is now worth £459,800 ($600,000), down 5.9% from the peak in July 2017:

But it’s still more than double the median UK home price (£225,000). In other words, while prices may have moderated somewhat they’re still well beyond the reach of average Londoners. Here are some more standouts from the ONS report: The slowdown is spreading out from London. Home prices in the south east of England recorded an annual decline (-1.8%) for the first time since 2011. Prices also fell in the North East and remained virtually unchanged in Yorkshire and the Humber. Home price annual growth is slowing in England; prices tick down in Scotland.


Prices did increase in a few places. Home price growth was strongest in Wales and the North West, increasing in both regions by 4.1% in the year to February 2019. It’s a very different story in the capital, which during the first decade and a half of this century enjoyed much faster home price growth than the rest of the country but which is now suffering a much sharper slowdown.The most exclusive boroughs of the city center — often referred to as Prime Central London — have been hit hardest, with prices falling an estimated 14% from their 2014 peak.

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It’s all interconnected and we are killing it all.

Battle To Save Amphibians From Global Killer Disease (G.)

Frogs, salamanders, and toads across the world are now under attack from a widening range of interacting pathogens that threaten to devastate global amphibian populations. That is the stark warning of leading zoological experts who will gather this week in London in a bid to establish an emergency plan to save these endangered creatures. “The world’s amphibians are facing a new crisis, one that is caused by attacks by multiple pathogens,” said Professor Trent Garner of the Zoological Society of London, which is hosting the conference. “We desperately need to devise strategies that can protect them.”


The golden toad of Costa Rica, which is now considered to be extinct. Photograph: Education Images/UIG via Getty Images

Thirty years ago experts noticed that amphibian populations were plunging in different areas of the world as an emerging fungal disease known as chytridiomycosis, or simply chytrid, began taking its toll of frogs and toads. At least 100 species have since been wiped off the face of the planet. These include the golden toad in Costa Rica (Incilius periglenes); the southern gastric-brooding frog of Australia (Rheobatrachus silus); and Arthur’s stubfoot toad (Atelopus arthuri) in Ecuador. Hundreds of other amphibian species have also suffered severe declines – as a result of chytrid infections.


But scientists also know chytrid is not the only cause of the amphibian deaths now occurring around the world. Another pathogen known as the ranavirus, which exists in at least four varieties, has been observed killing amphibians. In addition they found that there are at least two species of chytrid, and within these, many different genetic types.

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Nitrous oxide emissions, that is. But the article says nothing about amounts, so what to make of it? How much of the stuff is there?

Emissions From Thawing Arctic Permafrost 12 Times Higher Than Thought (Ind.)

Emissions from thawing Arctic permafrost may be 12 times higher than previously thought, scientists have discovered. Permafrost is a mix of soil, rock or sediment that has been frozen for at least two years which is mostly found in the uppermost areas where temperatures are rising more quickly than the rest of the world. When it thaws because of global warming, it releases large quantities of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, causing temperatures to rise and creating a perpetual cycle where more permafrost melts. Nitrous oxide, a third greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, stays in the atmosphere for an average of 114 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).


It has “conventionally been assumed to have minimal emissions in permafrost regions”, according to a fresh study published in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics journal. However the research team behind the study, led by Harvard University scientists, has found that nitrous oxide emissions are 12 times higher than previously thought and therefore more of a threat. The group used a small plane with a probe on its nose to measure greenhouse gases over 120sqm of thawing permafrost in the North Slope of Alaska. They found that nitrous oxide emissions reached what was previously thought to be the expected yearly limit within just one month in August 2013. Nitrous oxide also poses a second threat because “up in the stratosphere, sunlight and oxygen team up to convert the gas into nitrogen oxides, which eat at the ozone”, Harvard University said in a statement.

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Attenborough trying to make up for lost time.

Climate Change: The Facts – Our Greatest Threat, Laid Bare (G.)

You sense that Our Planet was unfortunately timed for the BBC. In Climate Change: The Facts, the gloves are now not so much off as thrown to the floor in a certain rage. It’s right there in the title, bold and stark. This hour-long documentary, part of the Our Planet Matters season, is wide-ranging yet concise, easy to understand, not blighted by the ego of, say, An Inconvenient Truth, and it is designed to do for climate change denial what 2017’s Blue Planet did for single-use plastic. That’s not to say it should be Attenborough’s responsibility to get the wider public to pay attention, nor that it is down to the BBC. It isn’t.

But Climate Change: The Facts is a rousing call to arms. It is an alarm clock set at a horrifying volume. The first 40 minutes are given over to what Attenborough calls, without hyperbole, “our greatest threat in thousands of years”. Expert after expert explains the consequences of rising CO2 levels, on the ice caps, on coastal regions, on weather and wildlife and society itself. The most powerful moments are in footage shot not by expert crews who have spent years on location, but on shaky cameras, capturing the very moment at which the reality of our warming planet struck the person holding the phone.

In Cairns, Australia, flying foxes are unable to survive the extreme temperatures; rescuers survey the terrible massacre, and we learn that while 350 were saved, 11,000 died. A man and his son talk through their escape from raging wildfires, over the film they took while attempting to drive through a cavern of blazing red trees. These are horror movies playing out in miniature. It is difficult to watch even five minutes of this and remain somehow neutral, or unconvinced.

Read more …

After -how many?- too many years of silence, David Attenborough finally speaks out in his 90s. A very late wake-up. By now he’s so old, it’s not going to hurt him much, he won’t be around to see it. What if he’d done this 20-30-30 years ago? He’s THE voice on planet issues. And hey, he’s got the best camera people on the topic, so yeah, go full screen for the entire hour this doc lasts (click YouTube, bottom right corner).

Climate Change – The Facts (David Attenborough)

After one of the hottest years on record, Sir David Attenborough looks at the science of climate change and potential solutions to this global threat. Interviews with some of the world’s leading climate scientists explore recent extreme weather conditions such as unprecedented storms and catastrophic wildfires. They also reveal what dangerous levels of climate change could mean for both human populations and the natural world in the future.

Read more …

Home Forums Debt Rattle April 21 2019

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  • #46832

    Rembrandt van Rijn The deposition 1632-33   • Yellow Vests Back In Action Despite ‘Unifying’ Notre Dame Disaster (RT) • Mueller Team Ignored Find
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle April 21 2019]

    #46835
    Dr. D
    Participant

    So many great articles on Assange today. Thorough and true. Perhaps they can galvanize action again. There’s a certain motion and emotion in these battles, the human element.

    “Climate Change: The Facts – Our Greatest Threat, Laid Bare
    (G.)”

    Was this the one where they killed ‘300’ walruses by driving them over a cliff? In true AGW, or heck, any-media-written-and-published-by-adults fashion, first: it wasn’t 300. The footage has only a few. Second, it wasn’t “Global Warming” that caused it, because walruses are so self-aware and anxious about the future that they decide end it all, yet don’t have access to firearms? What animal planet would that theory come from? Clearly, they’d be out hunting, not find food, get thinner and sick and die, not weigh 800lbs and have a mass psychotic break. Third, they had to add that a walrus swims “100 miles” for food, doesn’t find any, only to swim sadly home. Uh, no. Swimming 100 miles would take weeks, and if they didn’t find at least some food fairly quickly, they would die, just like you and I. So . . . wtf? And viewers nod their heads hearing this and . . . wtf?

    But the important part of this, four: walruses do NOT suffer from depression and do NOT jump off cliffs to their deaths – no animal does. However, having seen this footage, multiple scientists DO say that if walruses see the camera crew, and especially if they buzz them with drones, walruses are easily spooked and will rush to escape…over a cliff, if that’s where the camera crew pushes them, while another camera crew films down below.

    And follow up, five: so people had a lot of questions about this, particularly since Disney’s ‘lemmings’ documentary fooled two generations before being debunked as fake, and yes, film crew driving them into the ocean for profit, to die. So BBC, where was the footage? When was it taken? Under what conditions? Hey, was it that place in Russia where they already knew the people had caused the illegal senseless deaths of endangered animals, not global warming, and got into trouble for it? The Filmmakers refuse to answer any questions, provide any evidence – evidence which they surely have – and exonerate themselves from killing endangered animals for profit, all brought to you by AGW and David Attenborough.

    Remember, it’s the media: if they say it, if they print it, if they film it, it’s false. …And they wonder why the world is a mess: lies are more toxic than plastics, and more ubiquitous.

    #46836

    Was this the one where they killed ‘300’ walruses by driving them over a cliff?

    No, that’s the Netflix series that came out last week. The scene is that with no ice left to sit/lie on, they all come together on a very small island. Some climb up a hill to escape the ‘overcrowdednes’s, but can’t climb down. A physical issue, not a psychological one.

    #46837
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48007487

    Ukraine election: Comedian Zelensky ‘wins presidency’

    Well! What is it?

    Ukrainian comedian Volodymyr Zelensky has won a run-off election to become the country’s next president, exit polls suggest.

    #46838

    Zelensky is not just a comic or comedian. His claim to fame is he played a douche who was president. As I said a while back: how is it possible that the US is NOT the first country to elect someone as president who played the president on TV? They got close with Trump and the Apprentice, but not quite any cigar.

    #46839
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    I was awakened today by the radio broadcasting that Russia meddling had elected Donald Trump President. This won’t go away. It is gospel with no supporting facts. Julian Assange will be collateral damage. He likely will disappear like Sergi and Yulia Skripal. The fact is that the Obama Administration was spectacularly incompetent. African drone strikes, and the Libya, Ukraine and Syria Wars continue today and will continue for no good reason other than war profits until forced to stop. The FBI and British Intelligence surveilled, and their informants tried to trap the Trump campaign and smeared it, but he was still elected President. The soft coup against the dimmest bulb to reside in the White House failed. The Oligarchs’ Handmaidens cannot face reality. 90% of Americans are being screwed by the Plutocrats who are hoovering up the world’s wealth with the assistance of the credentialed 10% and contaminating the earth doing it. The tipping point is now. War and climate change are forcing millions to migrate. They are at the Southern Borders. There are only two paths ahead; autocracy or restoration of democracy and the rule of law. If France is an example, this won’t be peaceful.

    #46853

    If France is an example, this won’t be peaceful.

    France is a peaceful example.

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