My Son Was Born Into The Afghanistan War, And He May Die In It I never fought al-Qaeda. None of us did, really. It was 2011, a decade into an indecisive war, and few even pretended this fight was about bin Laden, the Twin Towers, or a smoking Pentagon. No, we chased the Taliban — or at least a motley collection of nationalists, bored teenagers, heroin dealers, and religious farmers calling themselves "Taliban" — around southern Afghanistan for a year or so.
Back then, in the bad old days, the US had 100,000 troops on the ground. No matter: It's not as though we were winning. So we came back to Fort Riley, Kansas — well, not all of us — and carried on with our lives, pretending Afghanistan had never happened.
That was five years ago, when the Obama administration was in the midst of its own doomed approach to "winning" in Afghanistan. It was clear from the start that despite his campaign rhetoric labeling Afghanistan the "good" war, President Obama had his doubts about escalation — and his heart was never really in it. Nonetheless, he lets his generals and hawkish cabinet members cajole him into a massive troop surge, so my gang and I were sent off to fight. We tilted at windmills for a bit, and, despite having tons of troops in the country, left the place no better than we'd found it. Read more at https://www.buzzfeed.com/dannysjursen/my-son-was-born-into-the-afghanistan-war-he-might-die-there?utm_term=.xwkmrOy37#.jhV250Egd.
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Nonsensical Idea of the Day: "Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme" In a video interview with Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough, not only did Rickards state that he agreed with Jamie Dimon, he made this claim "I call it a Ponzi with no one in charge. There's no Madoff, but it's working that way."
Rickards points out that primary uses of Bitcoin are money laundering, capital flight, etc. But what does that have to do with being a Ponzi scheme?
"Bitcoin has not been combat tested in a business cycle. We have not had a recession or a financial crisis since 2009. I've seen all these other asset classes go through many business cycles. I know how they'll behave. Bitcoin has not been tested in that arena," says Rickards.
I agree. But what does that have to do with being a ponzi scheme? Read more at https://www.themaven.net/mishtalk/economics/nonsensical-idea-of-the-day-bitcoin-is-a-ponzi-scheme-emIp5OIKVUOYbIsLC5lBIg.
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Indictment!? FBI uncovers "mountain of evidence" on Clintons The news is so outrageous, it should have lead to an outcry of pressure for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to immediately indict former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Instead… crickets. The reason you don't hear much about this in the mainstream media, it's for one reason.
This one has nothing to do with President Donald Trump… and EVERYTHING to do with former President Barack Obama.
Of course, it also has a clear link to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Outraged U.S. lawmakers are already vowing multiple investigations into the explosive new report from The Hill, which revealed how the FBI had the goods on allegations that Russians had infiltrated both U.S. business and politics with the goal of expanding its control over the global industry.
The report finds that federal investigators had ample evidence as early as 2009 – when Obama was president, and Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
"The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions," a source who worked on the case told The Hill.
That source was kept anonymous out of fear of retaliation… not only from Russia, but also American officials working furiously to keep this story under wraps.
The Hill report states:
"They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill." Read more at https://thehornnews.com/indictment-fbi-uncovers-mountain-evidence-clintons/.
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Here's why Bitcoin will soar soon now.
"There Were No Calls, That's Absolutely Crazy": How The Stock Market Died At least that is the impression one gets from walking around Wall Street's formerly busy trading desks (certainly the formerly biggest trading floor in the world, that of UBS, now hauntingly empty) where these days one can hear a pin drop. Take the Credit Suisse Prime Brokerage desk in Manhattan for example: here, as BusinessWeek reports in its 1987 anniversary issue, "the phones hardly seem to ring anymore." In fact, if one didn't know better, one could assume that instead of all time highs, the market has just experienced another spectacular crash resulting in a universal trading revulsion.
Credit Suisse's hedge fund clients don't call about Donald Trump's tweetstorms and the stock market or ask what to do when terrorists attack. And there was barely a whiff of panic when North Korea erupted in August. "Two rockets flew over the land mass of Japan and nothing happened," says Mark Connors, Credit Suisse's global head of risk advisory.
Connor's assessment, in not so many words, the market has died: "There were no calls. That's absolutely crazy."
Read more at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-16/%E2%80%9Cthere-were-no-calls-that%E2%80%99s-absolutely-crazy%E2%80%9D-how-stock-market-died.
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California secessionists think their path to independence is easier than Catalonia's The world has been watching the play-by-play of Catalonia's bid for independence from Spain, but one group is tuning in more closely than most: California secessionists.
The California Freedom Coalition, the campaign that has taken the lead in the effort to break California off from the United States, sees similarities with Catalonia's secessionist movement. But there's an important caveat: they believe California has more legal tools at its disposal, creating an easier path to secession – if that's what Californians decide they want.
"There are definitely similarities in the fiscal situation – we both give more than we get back," said Dave Marin, director of research and policy for the California Freedom Coalition. "But there's more flexibility in the U.S. Constitution for secession than there is in the Spanish one. California has more tools available to it."
The Catalan Parliament, together with President of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont, approved in September a binding referendum to make Catalonia an "independent and sovereign state." Spain's constitutional court suspended the process, but Catalan authorities continued with the vote on Oct. 1, prompting violence between voters and Spanish security forces tasked with shutting it down.
After a majority who voted in the referendum cast ballots for independence, Puigdemont issued a symbolic declaration of independence from Spain on Tuesday, but immediately suspended it to ease negotiations with the Madrid government. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Wednesday that the Catalan government had eight days to drop the bid or he would suspend Catalonia's political autonomy and rule the region directly. Read more at http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article178435876.html.
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New York's Island of Lost Souls The plain wooden coffins are lowered, one by one, from the back of a morgue truck into the hands of waiting inmates, men standing in a pre-dug trench already filled with other bodies on a small, narrow strip of land off the coast of the Bronx. The only other people on the island – beside the inmates and the dead – are armed Department of Correction officers, overseeing this New York City burial as the rest of the nation's largest metropolis – almost wholly unaware this place exists – get ready for work.
This is just a regular Thursday on Hart Island, essentially the city's potter's field – though not all who end up here, it turns out, are destitute or unknown. The bodies are collected from the city morgues several times a week, ferried to a dock at the end of a residential street by a truck driver who alternately naps and drinks Dunkin Donut's coffee as he awaits the arrival of inmates from Rikers Island. Then the morgue truck and the inmates take a boat across the Long Island Sound, disembarking to drive along unpaved roads to open grave sites. Trenches ten feet deep are left open, week after week, until they're filled with 150 adult coffins, stacked three high, or 1,000 tiny pine boxes holding babies. Once the trenches are filled, the graves are covered in and eventually marked with nothing more than a stark white stake. The dead, on Hart Island, are nameless. It's the largest mass burial site in America. Read more at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4977742/The-island-mass-burial-site-New-York-city-dead.html.
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First, go to the the doctor to find out what he would prescribe. Then get 2 or 3 second opinions. Buy the medication that they prescribe. Use it faithfully until the first batch is gone. Or if it is several different medications to be used one following the other, continue until the first "batch" is completed. When it is gone, get onto nutritional therapy from a health practitioner. Don't continue with the medication. Why do this? The medication will kick your body into all kinds of actions to fight your problem. It will do this because virtually all medication is poison, and makes your body work very hard to get it out of your system. The hard work your body does will often take care of the problem you had in the first place. What will the nutritional therapy do? It will wash the remaining medication poison out of your body, and strengthen your immune system (which was weakened by the medication), and give your body the material it needs to rebuild itself from the destructive forces that the medication did. Depending on how old you are, and how healthy you are, if necessary, repeat this cycle 6 months to a year or more later. Ask your health practitioner for guidance. |
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"This Is A Crisis Greater Than Any Government Can Handle":
The $400 Trillion Global Retirement Gap As we do so, keep an old trader's slogan in mind: "That which cannot go on forever, won't." Or we could say it differently: An unsustainable trend must eventually stop.
Lately I have focused on the trend in US public pension funds, many of which are woefully underfunded and will never be able to pay workers the promised benefits, at least without dumping a huge and unwelcome bill on taxpayers. And since taxpayers are generally voters, it's not at all clear they will pay that bill.
Readers outside the US might have felt smug and safe reading those stories. There go those Americans again, spending wildly beyond their means. You are correct that, generally speaking, we are not exactly the thriftiest people on Earth. However, if you live outside the US, your country may be more like ours than you think. Today we'll look at some data that will show you what I mean. This week the spotlight will be on Europe.
First, let me suggest that you read my last letter, "Build Your Economic Storm Shelter Now," if you missed it. It has some important background for today's discussion. Read more at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-01/crisis-greater-any-government-can-handle-400-trillion-global-retirement-gap.
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Introduction To "The Satoshi Revolution" – New Book The revolution of 2009 went unnoticed by most people because it was peaceful, orderly and profoundly technological. In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released open source software by which peer-to-peer transfers of digital wealth, called bitcoins, flashed over an immutable and transparent ledger, called the blockchain.
A new model challenged the existing reality and peacefully rendered it obsolete. Instead of toppling a government only to have another rise in its place, the new model rendered all governments irrelevant through a new technology and a private currency unlike anything seen before. Bitcoins move seamlessly through a world without states or borders, obeying only the command of individuals who choose to deal with each other. Immune to currency manipulation and inflation, they do not serve the powerful elites at the expense of average people; it is a people's currency. Read more at https://news.bitcoin.com/introduction-to-the-satoshi-revolution-new-book-by-wendy-mcelroy-exclusively-on-bitcoin-com/.EDIT: Note that Bitcoin went public in the middle of the housing crash. Any significance?
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Vivid History: 'How Money Got Free' Is the Untold Story of Bitcoin Later going on to start several bitcoin ventures, he was also at the forefront of efforts to boost its regulatory compliance.
In this opinion piece, Waters reviews "How Money Got Free: Bitcoin and the Fight for the Future of Finance" (Oneworld Publications), arguing it captures the zeitgeist of the original cryptocurrency and the sprawling – all too human – movement that helped it reach the masses.
I have long suspected, owing to its sheer brilliance and idiosyncratic beauty, that bitcoin was in fact brought here by aliens from another planet.
Brian Patrick Eha's vivid history of bitcoin, "How Money Got Free: Bitcoin and the Fight for the Future of Finance," which captures in thrilling journalistic fashion what I experienced in my years working on this remarkable technology, only confirms my suspicions. Read more and click the links at https://www.coindesk.com/vivid-history-money-got-free-untold-story-bitcoin/.
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Imagine a form of Bitcoin that had different names for wallets. Why? Suppose you had 10 bitcoins in your Bitcoin wallet. You wanted to transfer them to someone who was selling a car to you. Transfer the wallet, rather than the bitcoins only. Why? Privacy. Bitcoin transfers are not anonymous. But, the amount of work that it takes to discover who the transferer and the transferee are (if they want to remain anonymous), is generally enormous. Think of multiplying that transfer encryption anonymity many times over by transferring wallets that might have loads of Bitcoin addresses in them. Anybody who thought that he/they had tracked some bitcoin addresses in that wallet, now has to work from almost a standing start to find out that their tracking might not be up to date. And if they find that it isn't, then they have to work from an even greater standing start to find the new owner. Essentially what we will have when this is done is, a simple form of bitcoin mixer. Who are the programmers that will do this for us? It all could be made to work with the current blockchain. The new Bitcoin core for this would be downloadable just like the current Bitcoin core. And if it is stopped by authorities, it is open source, and uploadable to the Internet by anyone for download by anyone. |
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Charlie Lee: China Bitcoin Mining Ban Rumors are False Litecoin creator Charlie Lee says a trusted source has told him that China will not ban bitcoin mining operations or the bitcoin network. He says the rumors are being propagated by large-scale traders who are attempting to manipulate the bitcoin price.
Lee revealed this information Thursday night on Twitter, stating that he had not traded on the knowledge before making it public.
With this tweet, Lee joins MGT Capital's John McAfee in contradicting a series of rumors suggesting that China would widen its crackdown on cryptocurrency to extend to mining. Citing a conversation with Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu, McAfee stated that regulators will not make mining illegal.
Nevertheless, Chinese miners account for a majority of the bitcoin hashrate, and the markets have been shaky as they attempt to separate rumor from fact.This fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) present within the market "is propagated by large manipulators trying to make money shorting," Lee suggested. "They know that China ban FUD works and cannot be proven wrong."
He added that the order-book exchange ban "is still absolutely true," although it is "not clear" whether China will shut down all peer-to-peer trading platforms (BitKan has already announced it will terminate its trading platform). Of course, many industry observers–including Blockchain Capital's Spencer Bogart–have pointed out that a ban on peer-to-peer trading would indirectly ban professional bitcoin mining as well since miners would not have an outlet to sell the coins they mine.
Lee has been ahead of much of the recent news regarding China's cryptocurrency squeeze. Citing an anonymous source, he predicted the bitcoin exchange ban, along with OKCoin and Huobi's meeting with regulators to discuss the terms of their closures. Read more and click the links at https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/charlie-lee-china-bitcoin-mining-ban-rumors-false/.
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You look around at what is happening in the world. You see many things that are going wrong all over the place. I'm not going to list any of them. You know what they are. Both, things right near you, and things far away. Often you have a difficult time determining where the true justice and rightness lies in what is happening. Often you don't know who is right. There seems to be some rightness in everything, even though there is also wrongness. There is the good and bad in everything. Do you have strength to correct the wrong and the bad like you wish? What strength do you really have? I mean, in your life, just to live, you depend on the activities of some/many other people. Do you grow all your own food? Can you make the car you drive?... or even the bicycle? Do you make your own clothes? Is your water something that is free to you? Can you get rid of the smog in the air you breathe? Can you keep yourself from getting sick? Where do you start? The answer is that you and I don't have much strength at all. So, we have to use the strength that we have in the best way that we can. The question, again, is: "Where is our greatest strength for changing the world?" Our greatest strength is in prayer to God. Why? I mean, why would God listen to me? The answer is, because He is way ahead of listening to you already. What?! Here's what. Can you cause yourself to grow a new arm or hand if you lose one? Can you change the color of your hair by thinking about it? Can you change the color of your eyes? Can you make yourself live longer or healthier by thinking about it? This "stuff" and much more, exists already because God already made it for you. All that you can do is based on using the things of nature that are around you. And any changes you make are generally not as good as what was there in nature in the first place. But if it they are, it's because nature already seems to have a plan for you to make something as good as what already exists. Since God set all things in place already, and since He is giving you the food and water and clothing, etc., that you need to live, He is the strength that you need, if you want to change things in the world. Again, why would He listen to you? Because He has already listened to your basic needs with a wonderful universe to live in... even though there is corruption in it. Since He has listened to your needs long before you even thought about them, and since He is continually listening to many of your needs that you don't even know about, He will certainly listen to your prayers when you call out to Him. Do you want to change the world, or at least conditions around you that you seem to have no control over? Call to God. Never give up calling. He will hear you even as He is listening to your needs already. And He will make changes for you... if you keep on calling, sincerely, trusting in Him. |
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John McAfee accidentally just revealed why Bitcoin is total fraud: Behold logic of "artificial work" In a recent CNBC interview that's being widely touted by self-deluded Bitcoin promoters as some kind of "smack down" of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Bitcoin advocate John McAfee accidentally admitted why Bitcoin is a total fraud that's doomed to fail.
In answering Jamie Dimon's recent declaration that Bitcoin is a fraud, McAfee replied: (see the video at The Daily Sheeple)
However, sir… you called Bitcoin 'a fraud.' I'm a Bitcoin miner. We create Bitcoins. It costs over one thousand dollars per coin to create a Bitcoin. What does it cost to create a U.S. dollar? Which one is the fraud? Because [the dollar] costs whatever the paper costs, but it costs me and other miners over a thousand dollars per coin – it's called 'proof of work.'
Behold the logic of artificial work: How John McAfee just embraced Paul Krugman's ditch digging fable
The problem with John McAfee's explanation, of course, is that it admits Bitcoins can only be created through the practice of computational wheel spinning operations where the difficulty and duration of such wheel spinning is artificially made needlessly complex by the Bitcoin algorithm. In a world where Bitcoins used to be created for less than one penny's worth of computational work, a single Bitcoin now requires over US$1,000 worth of "artificial work" to be achieved. A rational person must ask McAfee, "Why did Bitcoins used to cost just a penny to create, and now they cost a thousand dollars?" The 100,000 X increase in complexity for generating a Bitcoin, it turns out, is an artificial work algorithm known as "computational difficulty" in mining.
This admission should be shocking to all Bitcoin holders for the simple reason that if Bitcoin drops below $1,000, mining now becomes unprofitable, rendering a very large part of the entire Bitcoin mining infrastructure instantly obsolete. The only thing keeping Bitcoin mining profitable right now is the bubble pricing of Bitcoin itself, and because all bubbles eventually burst, Bitcoin mining will sooner or later reach a point where it's not worth the investment of hardware, electricity and time. (There's also the 21 million coin limit that's rapidly approaching, by the way, which will spell the end of Bitcoin mining as it is conducted today.)
Furthermore, the "artificial work" aspect of Bitcoin mining and its artificial computational complexity is the digital equivalent of paying people to dig ditches and fill them in again while claiming the activity boosts economic output. This idea, believe it or not, is the classic economic paradox routinely pushed by left-leaning economic myth-meisters like Paul Krugman. Those of you who follow economic news know that Krugman openly and wholeheartedly believes that government could boost the economy by literally paying millions of people to dig ditches and fill them in again. This artificial work generates real-world abundance, according to economic fools like Krugman. That's why Zero Hedge rightly posts an article entitled, "Why Paul Krugman Should Go Back To 5th Grade." Read more and click the links at https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-09-17-john-mcafee-accidentally-revealed-why-bitcoin-is-a-total-fraud-behold-the-logic-of-artificial-work.html.
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