The head of Nigeria’s space program is determined to wring scientific achievements out of his shoestring budget.
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Source: Nigeria’s plan to put a man on the moon
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,
In the true Orwellian fashion now typifying 2016, a bill to implement the U.S.’ very own de facto Ministry of Truth has been quietly introduced in Congress – its lack of fanfare appropriate given the bill’s equally subtle language. As with any legislation attempting to dodge the public spotlight, however, the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 marks a further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to stultify avenues of accurate information.
Introduced by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu, H.R. 5181 seeks a “whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions” to counter “foreign disinformation and manipulation,” which they believe threaten the world’s “security and stability.”
“As Russia continues to spew its disinformation and false narratives, they undermine the United States and its interests in places like Ukraine, while also breeding further instability in these countries,” Kinzinger explained in a statement. “The United States has a role in countering these destabilizing acts of propaganda, which is why I’m proud to introduce [the aforementioned bill]. This important legislation develops a comprehensive U.S. strategy to counter disinformation campaigns through interagency cooperation and on-the-ground partnerships with outside organizations that have experience in countering foreign propaganda.”
Make no mistake — this legislation isn’t proposing some team of noble fact-finders, chiseling away to free the truth from the façades of various foreign governmental narratives for the betterment of American and allied populations. If passed, this legislation will allow cumbrously pro-‘American’ propaganda to infiltrate cable, online, and mainstream news organizations wherever the government deems necessary.
“From Ukraine to the South China Sea, foreign disinformation campaigns do more than spread anti-Western sentiments — they manipulate public perception to change the facts on the ground, subvert democracy and undermine U.S. interests,” Lieu explained. “In short, they make the world less safe.”
H.R. 5181 tasks the Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda.
Listed among nine core duties of this propaganda response squad, according to the bill’s text, emphasis added, will be “Identifying current and emerging trends in foreign propaganda and disinformation, including the use of print, broadcast, online and social media, support for third-party outlets such as think tanks, political parties, and nongovernmental organizations, and the use of covert or clandestine special operators and agents to influence targeted populations and governments in order to coordinate and shape the development of tactics, techniques, and procedures to expose and refute foreign misinformation and disinformation” — ostensibly in foreign lands.
Also called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman, the legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda battles.
“These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, …read more
Source: Propaganda Bill In Congress Could Give America Its Very Own Ministry Of "Truth"
French luxury brand Lancome has been accused of ditching an outspoken celebrity from its promotional activities to please China. …read more
Source: Lancome accused of caving in to China pressure
By Tyler Durden
Authored by Eric Zuesse, via The Saker,
Actions speak louder than mere words, and U.S. President Barack Obama has now acted, not only spoken. His action is to refuse to discuss with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s biggest worry about recent changes in America’s nuclear strategy – a particularly stunning change that is terrifying Putin.
On Sunday June 5th, Reuters headlined “Russia Says U.S. Refuses Talks on Missile Defence System”, and reported that, “The United States has refused Russian offers to discuss Washington’s missile defence programme, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov was quoted as saying on Sunday, calling the initiative ‘very dangerous’.”
Russia’s concern is that, if the “Ballistic Missile Defense” or “Anti Ballistic Missile” system, that the United States is now just starting to install on and near Russia’s borders, works, then the United States will be able to launch a surprise nuclear attack against Russia, and this system, which has been in development for decades and is technically called the “Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System”, will annihilate the missiles that Russia launches in retaliation, which will then leave the Russian population with no retaliation at all, except for the nuclear contamination of the entire northern hemisphere, and global nuclear winter, the blowback from America’s onslaught against Russia, which blowback some strategists in the West say would be manageable probems for the U.S. and might be worth the cost of eliminating Russia.
That theory, of a winnable nuclear war (which in the U.S. seems to be replacing the prior theory, called “M.A.D.” for Mutually Assured Destruction) was first prominently put forth in 2006 in the prestigious U.S. journal Foreign Affairs, headlining “The Rise of Nuclear Primacy” and which advocated for a much bolder U.S. strategic policy against Russia, based upon what it argued was America’s technological superiority against Russia’s weaponry and a possibly limited time-window in which to take advantage of it before Russia catches up and the opportunity to do so is gone.
Paul Craig Roberts was the first reporter in the West to write in a supportive way about Russia’s concerns that Barack Obama might be a follower of that theory. One of Roberts’s early articles on this was issued on 17 June 2014 and headlined “Washington Is Beating The War Drums”, where he observed that “US war doctrine has been changed. US nuclear weapons are no longer restricted to a retaliatory force, but have been elevated to the role of preemptive nuclear attack.”
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has tried many times to raise this issue with President Obama, the most recent such instance being via a public statement of his concern, made on May 27th. Apparently, the public statement by Antonov on June 5th is following up on that latest Putin effort, by Antonov’s announcement there that Obama now explicitly refuses to discuss Putin’s concerns about the matter.
The fact that these efforts on the part of the Russian government are via public media instead of via private conversations (such as had been the means …read more
Source: Obama Slams Door In Putin’s Face, Refuses To Discuss "Very Dangerous" Missile Defense System
By Tyler Durden
Across the United States, some residents have to pay far more state and local tax than others. The amount you pay depends heavily on the state you reside in with New Yorkers suffering under the heaviest tax burden according to website Wallethub.
As Statista details, the tax burden measures the percentage of a person’s income which goes towards state and local tax, different to the tax rate, which depends heavily on income and personal circumstances.
You will find more statistics at Statista
People in New York pay 13.12 percent of their income towards state and local tax, the highest rate nationwide.
Its neighbours Vermont (11.13 percent), Connecticut (10.91 percent) and New Jersey (10.38 percent) also have some of the highest tax burdens in the country.
Source: The U.S. States With The Highest Tax Burdens In 2016
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Hillary’s record includes supporting the barbaric “contras” against the Nicaraguan people in the 1980s, supporting the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, supporting the ongoing Bush-Iraq War, the ongoing Afghan mess, and as Secretary of State the destruction of the secular state of Libya, the military coup in Honduras, and the present attempt at “regime change” in Syria. Every one of these situations has resulted in more extremism, more chaos in the world, and more danger to our country. Next will be the borders of Russia, China, and Iran. Look at the viciousness of her recent AIPAC speech (don’t say you haven’t been warned). Can we really bear to watch as Clinton “takes our alliance [with Israel] to the next level”? Where is our sense of proportion? Cannot the media, at the least, call her out on this extremism? The problem, I think, is this political miasma of “correctness” that dominates American thinking (i.e. Trump is extreme, therefore Hillary is not).
– From the post: “We’re Going to War” – Oliver Stone Opines on the Dangerous Extremism of Neocon Hillary Clinton
Jeffrey Sachs has been on a roll lately. His latest might be his best one yet.
Published at the Huffington Post, Clinton’s Speech Shows That Only Sanders Is Fit for the Presidency, is an absolute must read. Here it goes:
Hillary Clinton’s recent foreign policy speech was an attack on Donald Trump but was also a reminder that Clinton is a deeply flawed and worrisome candidate. Her record as Secretary of State was one of the worst in modern U.S. history; her policies have enmeshed America in new Middle East wars, rising terrorism and even a new Cold War with Russia. Of the three leading candidates, only Bernie Sanders has the sound judgment to avoid further war and to cooperate with the rest of the world.
Clinton is intoxicated with American power. She has favored one war of choice after the next: bombing Belgrade (1999); invading Iraq (2003); toppling Qaddafi (2011); funding Jihadists in Syria (2011 till now). The result has been one bloodbath after another, with open wounds until today fostering ISIS, terrorism, and mass refugee flows.
In her speech, Clinton engaged in her own Trump-like grandiose fear mongering: “[I]f America doesn’t lead, we leave a vacuum — and that will either cause chaos, or other countries will rush in to fill the void. Then they’ll be the ones making the decisions about your lives and jobs and safety — and trust me, the choices they make will not be to our benefit.”
This kind of arrogance — that America and America alone must run the world — has led straight to overstretch: perpetual wars that cannot be won, and unending and escalating confrontations with Russia, China, Iran and others that make the world more …read more
Source: Jeffrey Sachs Destroys Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Policy Speech
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By Tyler Durden
When it comes to fake data, China is in a class of its own: between fabricated export and import numbers (where hundreds of billion in capital flight are hidden), to massaged, goalseeked GDP “data”, Chinese economic reporting has become a laughing stock across the developed world. Just last night, we showed a Goldman analysis according to which China was also misrepresenting its broadest credit aggregate, Total Social Financing, by hundreds of billions if not more as it was not accounting for shadow banking flows that did not end up in the economy.
And now, based on a new report by Fathom Consulting, it appears that China is also dramatically misreporting what may be the one most critical for social stability metric, its unemployment rate, which when stripped away of the political propaganda, is more than three times greater than the officially reported rate.
According to Fathom, China’s underemployment Indicator has tripled to 12.9% since 2012 even while the official jobless rate has hovered near 4% for five years.
Here Bloomberg confirms what we said last year, namely that the risk of a social upheaval as a result of millions of newly unemployment workers in a “deregulated economy”, is why China quickly went back to its old ways unleashed the recent record amount of debt. To wit: “the weakening labor market may explain China’s decision to uncork the credit spigots and revive old growth drivers in an effort to stabilize the world’s no. 2 economy.”
Leaders have stressed that keeping employment stable is a top priority. Fathom’s data shows that while mass layoffs haven’t materialized, the number of people not working at full capacity or hours has increased. “The degree of slack has surged in recent years,” analysts at the London-based firm wrote. “China has a substantial hidden unemployment problem, in our view, and that explains why the authorities have come under so much pressure to re-start the old growth engines.”
Leaders of the world’s most populous nation have promised to slash excess capacity in coal mines and steel mills while at the same time ensuring that the economy grows by at least 6.5 percent this year. Across the nation, state-backed ‘zombie’ factories are being kept alive by local governments to keep a lid on any social unrest. To keep the plants ticking over, employees in some cases have been asked to work half the time for half the pay.
Meanwhile, the official registered unemployment gauge is notorious for not changing during economic cycles. In other words, just like most other Chinese economic indicators, it is a total fabrication. It’s compiled from the number of people who register at local governments for unemployment benefits, which excludes most of the nation’s more than 270 million migrant workers. Another official jobless rate, just as useless, based on surveys into major cities and supposed to be more accurate, stayed at about 5.1% as of April. That’s also little changed in the past two years.
Though official data show employment weathering a …read more
Source: China’s Real Unemployment Rate Is Three Times Higher Than The Offical Number
By Tyler Durden
While Bernie Sanders’ fans will be understandably surprised, if not downright furious, by the timing of the AP report, Hillary’s supporters will be delighted, as will Hillary herself. Here she is campaigning in rally in Long Beach, CA, where he has just learned she is the presumptive nominee.
Source: Live Webcast: Hillary Holds Campaign Rally After Learning She Is The Presumptive Nominee
By Tyler Durden
Update: Donald Trump's campaign Monday demanded that the State Department release Hillary Clinton-era government emails about a pending 12-nation trade deal that Trump says will destroy American jobs and hurt the American economy.
“Hillary Clinton's TPP emails should absolutely be released, as her support for TPP threatens to permanently undermine U.S. workers and sovereignty,” said Trump's senior policy advisor, Stephen Miller, in a statement to IBT. “Hillary is 100 percent controlled by corporate interests, including foreign corporate interests, and it is essential these emails see the light of day.”
“There is zero doubt that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would enact the TPP — just like she enacted the Columbian [sic] deal and the Korean deal after claiming to oppose both,” Miller wrote in apparent reference to recently released documents about Clinton's work on those deals as Secretary of State after she had previously pledged to oppose them during her 2008 presidential campaign.
“Hillary's careful wording on TPP in her primary battle — that she now disapproves of it only 'in its current form' after months of lobbying for it — is further proof that she has every intention of ramming it down the throats of the American people, sending millions more jobs overseas. Hillary is the outsourcing candidate.”
Even CNN is stunned at The White House's (and Hillary's) hypocrisy…
As we detailed earlier, with Hillary Clinton unclear on her 'real' support for ObamaTrade, and international trade bound to be a crucial issue during the 2016 US Presidential campaign, it will likely come as no surprise to many that, as International Business Times reports, the Obama administration has now abruptly blocked the release of Clinton's State Department correspondence about the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), after first saying it expected to produce the emails this spring.
The decision came in response to International Business Times' open records request for correspondence between Clinton’s State Department office and the United States Trade Representative. The request, which was submitted in July 2015, specifically asked for all such correspondence that made reference to the TPP.
The State Department originally said it estimated the request would be completed by April 2016. Last week the agency said it had completed the search process for the correspondence but also said it was delaying the completion of the request until late November 2016 — weeks after the presidential election. The delay was issued in the same week the Obama administration filed a court motion to try to kill a lawsuit aimed at forcing the federal government to more quickly comply with open records requests for Clinton-era State Department documents.
…
If IBT's open records request is fulfilled on the last day of November, as the State Department now estimates, it will have taken 489 days for the request to be fulfilled. According to Justice Department statistics, the average wait time for a State Department request is 111 days on a simple request — the longest of any federal agency the department's report analyzed. Requests classified as complex by the State …read more
Source: Trump Furious As Obama Administration Blocks Release Of Hillary-TPP Emails Until After Election
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