Paul Gauguin Schooner and three masters 1886
Zero Hedge on Twitter: Putin’s diabolical plan to run the same democrat who lost against trump in 2016 is nearly complete.
Tulsi is brilliant here. Her tweets garnered 30k retweets and 100k likes in under two hours and she gained, more than 40,000 Twitter followers more than she gains in an average month.
Still, during and after every single debate, Tulsi was the most searched candidate on Google (even the debate she was banned from). Now with Hillary gifting her this much attention, will she still poll 2% or less? Then you would know what rigging means.
Tulsi is the first female combat veteran in history to run for President, and is still a Major in the Hawaii National Guard. And Hillary accuses her of being a Russian asset, i.e. treason. Real treason.
Michael Tracey: “If Tulsi is being controlled by Russia that’s a National Security Threat because she’s active military. Let’s have Hillary follow through on her batshit rhetoric. Is she alleging that a Major in the National Guard is secretly doing the bidding of Russia?”
Will Tulsi sue Hillary for defamation?
• Twitter War Breaks Out Between Tulsi Gabbard And Hillary Clinton (ZH)
Democratic presidential candidate and Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard – who like Trump was quickly put in the crosshairs of the military industrial complex, the deep state and the pro-war Atlantic Council for her de-interventionist foreign policy – fired back at Hillary Clinton, accusing her of being behind a “concerted campaign” to destroy her reputation and challenged her to stop hiding and enter the 2020 presidential race. Earlier in the day, Hillary Clinton floated a conspiracy theory that the Russians are “grooming” the Hawaii congresswoman to be a third-party candidate in 2020, while claiming 2016 Green Party nominee Jill Stein is “also” a Russian asset.
“Great! Thank you Hillary Clinton,” Gabbard tweeted late on Friday afternoon. “You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.” “From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.” Gabbard added. “Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly,” Gabbard called out Clinton, who has dropped hints that she might run again in 2020 as a rematch for her 2016 humiliation.
During this week’s Democratic debate, Gabbard blasted debate co-sponsors CNN and the New York Times for “smearing” her along similar lines. CNN commentator Bakari Sellers called her a “puppet” for the Russian government and the Times reported on her “frequent” mentions in Russian state news media. “Just two days ago, The New York Times put out an article saying that I’m a Russian asset and an Assad apologist and all these different smears,” Gabbard said. “This morning, a CNN commentator said on national television that I’m an asset of Russia — completely despicable.”
.@JulianAssange “Hillary Clinton is the only presidential candidate with corruption ties to Russia.”
Explains why Trump-Russia theory is BS pic.twitter.com/74DmmJ89Dp
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) July 27, 2017
Green Party isn’t nearly as efficient as Tulsi is.
• Green Party Torches Hillary Clinton For Claiming Jill Stein Is ‘Totally’ a Russian Asset
“Brazen Orwellian doublespeak” — that’s what the Green Party is saying in response to Hillary Clinton’s accusation that their 2016 candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, is “totally” a “Russian asset.” “Clinton has spent her entire career as an asset of Wall Street, the police state and war — the real dangers to everyday people in the United States and around the world,” Green Party communications manager Michael O’Neil said in a statement to Rolling Stone on Friday. Clinton, the erstwhile Democratic nominee in 2016, sat down for an interview with former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe earlier this week. Over the course of an hour-long discussion, the former Secretary of State speculated that American antagonists would attempt to influence the 2020 election, as they did in 2016.
She suggested the Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard might be the recipient — witting or not — of help from the Kremlin this time around. (At the Democratic debate on Tuesday, Gabbard called allegations that her candidacy is being boosted by the Russian government “completely despicable.”) Clinton said she wouldn’t be surprised if Gabbard, failing to secure the Democratic nomination, mounted a third party challenge in 2020. [..] “While Clinton would love to intimidate Green Party candidates and voters with baseless smears, her salty neo-McCarthyism will prove to be rocket fuel for the motivation of Greens everywhere in 2020 and beyond,” O’Neil said. Clinton’s spokesman, meanwhile, doubled down on the characterization to CNN on Friday. “If the nesting doll fits, ” Nick Merrill said. “This is not some outlandish claim. This is reality.”
New York Post editorial. A counterweight to the 1001 pieces that all interpret Mulvaney the same way.
• Quid Pro Nothing: Trump Accusers Don’t Care About The Facts (NYPost Ed.)
Everyone who already thought the case for President Trump’s impeachment was a slam-dunk went berserk Thursday, claiming that acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had just admitted to a quid pro quo with Ukraine. Except that what Mulvaney “admitted” is that the administration was doing what it should — pushing a foreign government to cooperate in getting to the bottom of foreign interference in the 2016 campaign. Virtually every media outlet in America — certainly all those that jumped on Mulvaney’s remarks — has spent most of the last three years painting such foreign interference as the blackest possible crime.
In fact, all Mulvaney did was repeat yet again that Trump “was worried about corruption with that nation” — and specifically say those worries extended to cooperation in “the look-back to what happened in 2016.” Asked if Ukraine’s uncertainty about probing those matters was linked to the US holdup of military aid, he said “yes” — clarifying hours later that it wasn’t a quid pro quo. Which it couldn’t be: Ukraine didn’t know about the holdup until weeks after President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call with Trump. Critics complain that one specific issue Trump pushed is a “debunked conspiracy theory.” So what? The Obama administration and several Democratic senators at various times pushed Ukraine to cooperate in probes of possible Trump 2016 wrongdoing that eventually turned out not to exist.
“..the final act in the collapse of the USA will be the government choking itself to death on replayed narratives from its own server farms.”
• The Fatal Loop of Recursivity (Kunstler)
The stupendous failure of the Mueller Investigation only revealed what can happen when extraordinary bad faith, dishonesty, and incompetence are brought to this project of reinventing “truth” — of who did what and why — while it provoked a counter-industry of detecting its gross falsifications. This dynamic has long been systematically studied and applied by institutions like the so-called “intelligence community,” and has gotten so out-of-hand that its main mission these days appears to be the maximum gaslighting of the nation — for the purpose of its own desperate self-defense.
The “Whistleblower” episode is the latest turn in dishonestly manipulated records, but the most interesting feature of it is that the release of the actual transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call did not affect the “narrative” precooked between the CIA and Adam Schiff’s House Intel Committee. They just blundered on with the story and when major parts of the replay didn’t add up, they retreated to secret sessions in the basement of the US capitol. Perhaps you can see why unleashing the CIA, NSA, and the FBI on political enemies by Mr. Obama and his cohorts has become such a disaster. When that scheme blew up, the intel community went to the mattresses, as the saying goes in Mafia legend and lore.
The “company” found itself at existential risk. Of course, the CIA has long been accused of following an agenda of its own simply because it had the means to do it. It had the manpower, the money, and the equipment to run whatever operations it felt like running, and a history of going its own way out of sheer institutional arrogance, of knowing better than the crackers and clowns elected by the hoi-polloi. The secrecy inherent in its charter was a green light for limitless mischief and some of the agency’s directors showed open contempt for the occupants of the White House. Think: Allen Dulles and William Casey. And lately, Mr. Brennan.
Pelosi needs to hold that vote. But she won’t. She’d rather go to the Senate based on secret info.
• US Energy Secretary Will Not Comply With Democrats’ Impeachment Probe (R.)
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will not turn over documents to congressional Democrats who had subpoenaed them over his role in Ukraine as part of their impeachment probe into President Donald Trump, a department official said in a letter on Friday. Three U.S. House of Representatives committees subpoenaed Perry on Oct. 10 for any role he played in Trump’s push to pressure Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate his political rival, former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden and his son. In a letter to the three committees, Melissa Burnison, an assistant energy secretary, wrote that the impeachment inquiry had not been properly authorized.
“Even if the inquiry was validly authorized, much of the information sought in the subpoena appears to consist of confidential Executive Branch communications that are potentially protected by executive privilege,” said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters. “However, the Department remains committed to working with Congress on matters of mutual importance conducted in accordance with proper authorizations and procedures,” it said. The energy department’s response follows the lead of the White House, which has said it would refuse to cooperate with an “illegitimate, unconstitutional” congressional impeachment inquiry.
Big day, but very unclear what the result will be.
• Brexit Vote Could Be Delayed After Move By MPs To Prevent No-Deal (Ind.)
Boris Johnson’s hopes of finally obtaining parliament’s consent on Saturday for a historic deal to take the UK out of the European Union look set to be thwarted by an extraordinary bid by MPs to delay the crucial “meaningful vote”. Ahead of the highly unusual weekend sitting of the Commons, the prime minister was pulling out all the stops to secure the 320 votes he needs to claim victory in what was expected to be a razor-edge ballot, with the balance held by wavering Labour MPs, hardline ERG “Spartans” and expelled Tory rebels. But an amendment to his motion tabled by exiled Conservative Oliver Letwin threatens to withhold MPs’ approval until the full legislation to implement the deal is put into law.
With Labour expected to back the amendment, it seems almost certain to pass if selected for debate by Commons speaker John Bercow. The move – designed to avoid no-deal Brexit if the legislation is amended by Brexiteers or fails to complete its passage through parliament by Halloween – would force Mr Johnson to request an extension from Brussels beyond 31 October and could delay the meaningful vote for weeks. Although Downing Street indicated it would still push Mr Johnson’s motion to a vote in the hope of a symbolic win, success for the Letwin amendment would deny him the chance to claim he has parliament’s support for the last-minute deal struck with EU leaders on Thursday.
And if the motion fails, he could then face a non-binding vote on a second referendum put forward by Labour backbenchers Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson with the aim of demonstrating that a majority in the Commons back a public ballot on any future change to the relationship between the UK and EU.
The IMF is running out of money.
• Mnuchin Backs Proposal To Double IMF’s Crisis Fund (R.)
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Friday said he welcomes a proposal to double the size of the International Monetary Fund’s $250 billion crisis lending fund as part of a deal to maintain overall IMF resources. Mnuchin, in a statement to the IMF’s steering committee, said he backed the funding increase to ensure the global lender remained adequately resourced to respond to potential crises over the medium term. He also called for various reforms to streamline the fund’s costs, modernize salaries and benefits, and adopt a more independent, centralized risk management system.
Large scale often violent demos taking place today that I’ve indentified, not including the climate ones because they’re not big enough except incidentally (I did include London because they banned protests):
Chili, Ecuador, Lebanon, Barcelona, France, London, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong.
I must have missed some. Do add. There appears to be a trend here.
• Spain Calls In Civil Guard To Outskirts Of Barcelona (R.)
The Spanish Interior Ministry said on Friday it had given the go ahead for civil guard police reinforcements to be sent to the outskirts of Barcelona following five days of sometimes violent protests over the jailing of pro-separatist leaders. No further details were immediately available. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told reporters on Thursday he planned to send security reinforcements to Barcelona to help maintain order in the city and also to let police already there get some rest.
How far ahead has Putin planned?
• Syria Tells Russia It Will Force Both Turkey And US Out ‘By All Means’ (NW)
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has informed a visiting Russian delegation that his country was prepared to force out any uninvited guests, especially the armed forces of Turkey and the United States, which themselves recently fell on opposing ends of an eight-year civil war. Assad met Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentiev, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin and other visiting officials from Moscow to discuss “the situation in Syria, especially the Jazeera region”—referring to the country’s northeast, across the Euphrates river—”and the Turkish aggression against it,” according to the Syrian leader’s office.
Last week, Turkey mobilized Syrian rebels to storm the region and defeat Kurdish forces that participated in the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) but were viewed as terrorists by Ankara. “The current and future stage must be focused on stopping the aggression, and the withdrawal of all Turkish, American and other illegal forces from all Syrian territories, considering them occupation forces according to international law and conventions,” Assad said. “The Syrian people have the right to resist them by all means available.”
Two Boeing reports that appear to lay the blame with employees and pilots.
• Boeing Employees Misled FAA About Key 737 MAX Safety System – Report (CNBC)
Boeing shares slipped Friday after a Reuters report said instant messages from 2016 suggest that employees misled the Federal Aviation Administration about a key safety system on the 737 Max, the plane that has been grounded since mid-March after two fatal crashes. The FAA turned over the instant messages to U.S. lawmakers and the Department of Transportation Inspector General, the FAA said in a statement. The FAA says Boeing discovered the messages “some months ago” and the flight regulatory agency finds the document “concerning.” “The FAA is also disappointed that Boeing did not bring this document to our attention immediately upon its discovery,” the agency said. “The FAA is reviewing this information to determine what action is appropriate.”
The document was shared with lawmakers investigating the plane’s certification, the FAA added. Boeing shares were down more than 4% in midday trading, shaving 107 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average. FAA’s statement that Boeing knew about the document earlier, comes amid mounting pressure on Boeing’s CEO Dennis Muilenburg. The company’s board removed Muilenburg as chairman last week, saying the division of the two roles will help him focus on bringing the plane back to service.
But in the end it’s all about huge cost-saving operations in the face of Airbus competition. Not employees and pilots, but upper echelons.
• Boeing Pilots Detected 737 MAX Glitch 2 Years Before 1st Crash (NPR)
New evidence indicates that Boeing pilots knew about “egregious” problems with the 737 Max airplane three years ago, but federal regulators were not told about them. Investigators say the plane’s new flight control system, called MCAS, is at least partially to blame for 737 Max crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia this year that killed 346 people. Acting on data from a single, faulty angle-of-attack sensor, MCAS repeatedly forced both planes into nosedives as the pilots struggled, but failed to regain control. The pilots in the Lion Air plane that crashed in Indonesia last October did not know MCAS existed, as Boeing did not disclose any information about it in pilot manuals or in training material.
Newly revealed instant messages sent between Boeing’s then-chief technical pilot for the 737, Mark Forkner, and another technical pilot, Patrik Gustavsson, in November 2016 indicate that Forkner experienced similar problems with MCAS during a test session in a flight simulator. In a transcript obtained by NPR, Forkner writes that “there are still some real fundamental issues” with the system that he says Boeing engineers and test pilots “claim that they are aware of.” As the two pilots banter back and forth in the messages, Forkner says the system is “running rampant in the sim on me,” then adding, “I’m leveling off at like 4000 ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like crazy.”
Forkner calls the problem “egregious” and writes that he had “basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)” before experiencing the glitch, when he had told the FAA that MCAS was safe and did not need to be included in pilot manuals. Later emails, also newly disclosed, show Forkner still telling the FAA that MCAS didn’t need to be covered in the manuals. “If you read the whole chat, it is obvious that there was no ‘lie,’ ” Forkner’s lawyer, David Gerger, told news services by email on Friday. “The simulator was not reading right and had to be fixed to fly like the real plane. Mark’s career — at Air Force, at FAA, and at Boeing — was about safety. And based on everything he knew, he absolutely thought this plane was safe.”
How are the kids going to ‘not waste’? The societies they grow up in are geared towards maximizing waste. They have to be completely retrofitted. But I don’t see you mentioning that. What I see is “don’t waste paper”.
• ‘Just Don’t Waste’: David Attenborough’s Message To Next Generation (G.)
David Attenborough has delivered a heartfelt message to children around the world on how they can help save the planet: “Live the way you want to live but just don’t waste.” At the first screening of the BBC’s forthcoming blockbuster nature series, Seven Worlds, One Planet, the 93-year-old offered his advice to a five-year-old in the London audience. The boy was overwhelmed by nerves when handed the microphone, so his father asked his question on his behalf: “What can he do to save the planet?” “You can do more and more and more the longer you live, but the best motto to think about is not waste things,” Attenborough replied. “Don’t waste electricity, don’t waste paper, don’t waste food. Live the way you want to live but just don’t waste. Look after the natural world, and the animals in it, and the plants in it too. This is their planet as well as ours. Don’t waste them.”
A rapt audience of children in India and South Africa joined the event by videolink and lined up to ask Attenborough questions and wave posters. At Mumbai’s packed Royal Opera House, placards read “Sir David please come to India please” and “Sir David can I please come on a shoot with you?” One asked Attenborough which animal he had found most difficult to document during his 70-year career. “I nominate going to look for mountain gorillas for the first time,” he said. “That was an unforgettable time and more successful than we could possibly have hoped … but it was a long time ago.”
⏳ #Unity4J Solidarity via @YourMarkLubbers & #Anonymous ⏳
March for persecuted multi-award winning journalist #JulianAssange #MillionMaskMarch
Tuesday Nov 5thLocations: https://t.co/RMi4L67Qra
CARRY a #FREEASSANGE SIGN!
For signs, check out: https://t.co/bXacAPtuOa pic.twitter.com/bLzFknC2li
— #Unity4J (@Unity4J) October 19, 2019
