sell! sell! sell!

[tiznow]

Not good.
Instead of being a caretaker of the the system, he becomes the system.

We have ourselves a new supreme leader folks


China proposes to let Xi Jinping extend presidency beyond 2023

China's governing Communist Party has proposed removing a clause in the constitution which limits presidencies to two five-year terms.

The move would allow the current President Xi Jinping to remain as leader after he is due to step down.

It had already been widely thought that Mr Xi would seek to extend his presidency beyond 2023.

Party congress last year saw him cement his status as the most powerful leader since the late Mao Zedong.

His ideology was also enshrined in the party's constitution, and in a break with convention, no obvious successor was unveiled.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-43188739

[h=1]What’s Going Down in China is Very Dangerous – Part 1[/h]Wednesday Feb 28, 2018

I’m sure all of you are aware of the dramatic power play pulled off over the weekend by China’s Communist Party to eliminate term limits for both the president and vice president. Prior to the move, Chinese leaders have stuck to two five-year terms since the presidency of Jiang Zemin (1993-2003), but that’s about to change as wannabe emperor Xi Jinping positions himself as indefinite ruler of the increasingly totalitarian superstate.
While the weekend announcement was illuminating enough, I found the panicked reactions by Chinese authorities in the immediate aftermath far more telling. The country’s propagandists took censorship to such an embarrassing level in attempts to portray the decision as widely popular amongst the masses, it merely served to betray that opposite might be true.
China Digital Times compiled a fascinating list of words and terms banned from being posted or searched on Weibo. Here’s just a sample of some I found particularly interesting.

• The Emperor’s Dream (皇帝梦) — The title of a 1947 animated puppet film.
• Disney (迪士尼) — See also “Winnie the Pooh,” below.
• personality cult (个人崇拜) — Read more about the image-crafting campaign that has been steadily cultivated by state media over Xi’s first term.
• Brave New World (美丽新世界) — See also “1984,” below.
• my emperor (吾皇)
• Yuan Shikai (袁世凯) — Influential warlord during the late Qing Dynasty, Yuan became the first formal president of the newly established Republic of China in 1912. In 1915, he briefly re-established China as a Confucian monarchy.
• Hongxian (洪憲) — Reign title of the short-lived, re-established monarchy led by Yuan Shikai, who declared himself the Hongxian Emperor. After much popular disapproval and rebellion, Yuan formally abandoned the empire after 83 days as emperor.
• Animal Farm (动物庄园)
• N — While the letter “N” was temporarily blocked from being posted, as of 14:27 PST on February 26, it was no longer banned. At Language Log, Victor Mair speculates that this term was blocked “probably out of fear on the part of the government that “N” = “nterms in office”, where possibly n > 2.”
• emigrate (移民) — Following the news, Baidu searches for the word reportedly saw a massive spike.
• disagree (不同意)
• Xi Zedong (习泽东)
• incapable ruler (昏君)
• 1984
• Winnie the Pooh (小熊维尼) — Images of Winnie the Pooh have been used to mock Xi Jinpingsince as early as 2013. The animated bear continues to be sensitive in China. Weibo users shared a post from Disney’s official account that showed Pooh hugging a large pot of honey along with the caption “find the thing you love and stick with it.”
• I oppose (我反对)
• long live the emperor (吾皇万岁)

The full list is far more extensive and ridiculous, but the key point is that such a pathetic and panicked response from government censors highlights government insecurity, not strength.
I fully agree with a recent observationmade by Charlie Smith, co-founder of GreatFire.org:

Smith said he believed Beijing had underestimated the outrage its decision would cause. “The response from Chinese netizens indicates that Xi may have miscalculated how this would be received by the general public. Hence, he has asked the censors to put in overtime and things like the letter ‘N’ end up as collateral damage.”
​

The internet response to the Communist Party’s move to abolish term limits was not what leadership expected or desired, which prompted a panicky and desperate attempt to immediately clean up internet discourse.
It’s pretty sad when a government in charge of the lives of over a billion people is terrified of Winnie the Pooh memes.

The huge tell that China was about to take a major totalitarian turn occurred last year with the draconian government response to Bitcoin and crypto currency exchanges generally. The people of China were embracing the technology as much as anyone else and were in a perfect position to be global leaders in this paradigm changing new ecosystem. Xi responded to this by shutting the whole thing down.
Not only did he dash the enthusiasm, drive and talent of some of his country’s smartest technologists and entrepreneurs, but he also made it clear to the world that the Chinese model will continue to be one of command and control, rigid hierarchy and centralization. This is a tragic and historic mistake, and I think the coming brain drain out of China could be massive. This provides an opportunity for more open nations to scoop up some serious talent as they look to leave. As noted previously, Chinese authorities banned the word “emigrate” earlier this week, which should certainly tell you something.
As someone who’s watched his own government turn increasingly opaque, corrupt, authoritarian and unconstitutional, I feel empathy for the tens, if not hundreds of millions, of Chinese horrified that their hopes of a more free society appear dashed for the foreseeable future. Making matters worse, the surveillance state that’s been installed across the country is science fiction level scary.
In case you missed the following video clip of the China’s all-seeing spy camera network, take a watch.

​

If that’s not wild enough, Chinese police are now starting to become equipped with fascial recognition eyeglasses.
From Verge:

China’s police have a new weapon in their surveillance arsenal: sunglasses with built-in facial recognition. According to reports from local media, the glasses are being tested at train stations in the “emerging megacity” of Zhengzhou, where they’ll be used to scan travelers during the upcoming Lunar New Year migration. This is a period of extremely busy holiday travel, often described as the largest human migration event on Earth, and police say the sunglasses have already been used to capture seven suspects wanted in major cases, as well as 26 individuals traveling under false identities.
The sunglasses are the latest component in China’s burgeoning tech-surveillance state. In recent years, the country has poured resources into various advanced tracking technologies, developing artificial intelligence to identify individuals and digitally tail them around cities. One estimate suggests the country will have more than 600 million CCTV cameras by 2020, with Chinese tech startups outfitting them with advanced features like gait recognition.
​

Let this be a lesson to U.S. citizens, as well as citizens across the world. Never, ever allow a massive, unaccountable surveillance system to be constructed and implemented in your society for any reason. It will always ultimately be abused by a power hungry despot to seize and then maintain power.
Finally, one major reason I’m so concerned about what’s happening in China is because it adds a huge element of geopolitical risk to the global equation and greatly increases the likelihood of worldwide conflict.
Tomorrow’s piece will focus on this angle.

 

[tiznow]

[h=1]Nother big battle raging in Syria.. mass media doesn’t barely mention it anymore.. too busy with trump stuff..if the goal of invading Iraq was to throw the region into chaos creating a never ending war while lining the pockets of the military industrial complex back home.. mission accomplished!

—————

The Iraq War: Fifteen Years Later[/h]February 17, 2018Guest

[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65098)]

[/COLOR]
by James J. Zogby
Over the next few weeks, I want to take a look back to February and March of 2003, to those fateful days leading up to the Bush administration’s disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. I remember all too well the lies that were told, the hysteria that was created, the bullying tactics that were used to silence debate, and the mass mobilization that was organized in opposition to the war.
In the end, then President George W. Bush ignored American public opinion and the sage advice of senior Republican statement like former Secretary of State James Baker and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and invaded Iraq leading to the most consequential disaster in recent US history.
The Iraq war has had a staggering impact that continues to grow over time. The magnitude of this disaster can be measured in lost lives, treasure, capacity, and prestige.
From 2003 to the formal withdrawal of US fighting forces in 2011, the war took the lives of 4,500 Americans and well over 150,000 Iraqi civilians. And more than 600,000 US thousand veterans of these wars are now registered as disabled. To fully understand the war’s impact, however, we must also factor in the number of young men and women, who after multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan (400,000 served three or more tours of duty in these two wars) have returned home suffering from post-traumatic shock disorder (PTSD)—about 10% of veterans suffer from PTSD. A great number of them have tragically joined the ranks of the homeless or the addicted or they have committed suicide. Studies show that on an average night almost 40,000 veterans are homeless. And in recent years, the average number of suicides among this group of PTSD veterans is a staggering 22 per day—meaning that more young veterans of these two wars die each year at their own hands out of despair than died in battle in both wars combined.
The direct costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been estimated to be almost two trillion dollars, with trillions more needing to be factored in to cover the long-term health care and disability payments to the wars’ veterans.
The two long unwinnable wars resulted in grounding down and exhausting the US military. It also demonstrated their inability to decisively beat insurgencies and resistance movements. This proved demoralizing to US troops and also established the limits of the world’s most powerful and expensive military machine.
At the same time, the Bush administration’s reckless and arrogant unilateralism (“you’re either with us or against us”) caused friction with allies and contempt for public opinion world-wide. By the end of the Bush administration, US favorable ratings were at their lowest point, worldwide. US abhorrent behaviors exhibited during the war (Abu Ghraib, torture, Guantanamo, etc) also fueled extremist currents giving new life to al Qaeda which, though routed in Afghanistan, metastasized, spreading their anti-American hate across many continents. And the weakened and depleted US military spawned the unforeseen consequence of enabling the emergence of multiple and competing regional powers who were emboldened to expand their influence.
Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. As envisioned by the wars’ main protagonists, the neoconservative “Project for a New American Century,” a decisive US victory in a war like the one they encouraged in Iraq was needed to secure American hegemony in the New World Order. They worried that at the end of the Cold War the US had to project decisive strength to dissuade any would-be competitors. After a display of overwhelming force, they were convinced that the danger of a multi-polar world could be averted and the 21st Century would be an American Century.
As they rushed to war, the Bush administration and its neoconservative acolytes engaged in a massive propaganda campaign of lies to win support for an invasion. When I say that they lied, I don’t mean their fabricated case about Saddam’s “nuclear program” or their false efforts to portray the Iraqi regime as the region’s principle sponsor of terror—this was the brief presented by then Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations in his failed effort to win international backing for the invasion. No, the more serious lies they told were done so in their effort to sell the war to the American as an easy, cheap, and lofty venture.
In congressional testimony and press briefings, high-ranking administration officials argued the war would only require between 60,000 to 90,000 troops (in fact, the administration fired the Pentagon general who at a congressional hearing had admitted that the invasion and occupation of the country, if they were to succeed, would require over 350,000 troops). The fighting, administration spokespeople said, would be over in a few weeks. US troops would be greeted as liberators. And the total cost to the US treasury would be between $1 to $2 billion before Iraqi oil production would kick in and cover the rest. If all this were not fanciful enough, the promoters of the war repeatedly told the American people that when the dust settled Iraq would become a “model democracy” that would serve as a “beacon for the New Middle East.”
In his speeches leading up to the invasion, Bush went further saying that the war “will free people” and that his motivation was to bring “God’s gift of freedom” to the Iraqi people. “We will go into Iraq…to make sure the hungry are fed, those who need health care will have health care, and those youngsters who need education will get education.”
In the end, Bush succeeded only in mobilizing his base of right-wing evangelicals and neoconservatives both of whom were sold on the infantile fantasy, they shared, that a decisive blow delivered by a superior moral force would vanquish evil and lead to a “new order.”
It did not. And 15 years later we and most especially the people of Iraq and the region are living with the consequences of the disaster they brought down on us all: a shattered Iraq, an emboldened Iran, a weaken, war weary, and wary America, and a Middle East in which multiple regional and international powers are engaged in a number of deadly conflicts.
James J. Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

 

[eek.]

Xi Zedong

That one is spot on the money

Xi Zedong, Son of Mao Zedong

 

[eek.]

The Iraq War: Fifteen Years Later

The plan was never to help anyone, the plan was to deconstruct as many Arab dictatorships as possible and leave those countries
divided and in chaos

It worked for Libya and Iraq, the Russkies put the brakes on this strategy in Syria

All these dictatorships would kill and imprison Islamic militants in a heartbeat, but that wasn't enough to save them from this policy

 

[tiznow]

[h=1]'Eat The Apple' Is A Brilliant And Barbed Memoir Of The Iraq War[/h]Maureen CorriganFebruary 26, 20183:59 PM ET
Matt Young enlisted in the Marines in 2005 on impulse. He was 18 years old, and hours before he walked into the recruitment center, he'd gotten drunk and crashed his car into a fire hydrant. Young knew he needed direction in life and thought that becoming a Marine would help him to quickly "man up."
Midway through his superb debut memoir, Eat the Apple, Young describes the surreal experience of flying back to the U.S. on a four-day leave from the Iraq War. His family and fiancée are waiting to greet him when he arrives in California. Young recalls wanting "so badly to be happy when he sees them."
Of course, that simple wish is doomed. A wall of incomprehension divides Young from his loved ones. At the hotel, Young chugs beers and tries to connect by telling stories about Iraq — stories about detaining a 12-year-old boy; about how he and his fellow Marines can't stop laughing during a deadly ambush because they're so terrified.
As his family and fiancée grow silent, Young decides he needs to make up other kinds of war stories, fictional ones that are still full of bullets and blood, but also full of meaning. Stories where "he gets to feel, for once, like a hero."
But that strategy doesn't work out so well either. Young remembers waking up the next morning with "a tough, meaty, sick feeling in the ethereal place beyond his stomach ... a shattered figurative pelvic bone where he birthed his lie into the world."

Matt Young enlisted in the Marines when he was 18 and served three tours in Iraq.


Tara Monterosso/Bloomsbury

Like Young's family, most of us readers still want to be told war stories where violence and death are redeemed by a larger purpose. And, yet, throughout history, so many of the writers and poets who've seen combat tell us it's just pretty to think so. The theme that war is absurd has only intensified in recent years with cynical Iraq War novels like Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds and Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.
Eat the Apple falls into formation right alongside those fictional testaments of youth and war. As a memoir, it loosely follows that most traditional of plots: a young man's growth from innocence to experience. But that's the only aspect of Young's narrative that's conventional.
Young is a frank, funny and mercilessly self-lacerating narrator. His writing is entertaining and experimental — two adjectives not often found together. To convey the chaos of his three deployments in Iraq, Young writes in choppy chapters filled with lists, letters, cartoons, plays and, yes, lots of stories.
His lighter subjects range from desert sandflies to the inventive ways Marines devise to, um, entertain themselves (as in the diagrammed chapter entitled "How to Make a Portable Partner").
Without warning, these comic interludes take a turn toward the brutish. Young owns up to killing dogs for sport and bullying and breaking a junior recruit. Then the narrative veers off again into explosions, sniper attacks and down time in camp where the young Marines rub suntan oil on each other and try to figure out whether what they're feeling is more than just Marine Corps brotherhood.
Throughout his memoir, Young questions just how that fateful decision to enlist transformed the raw teenager that he sometimes calls "past-me." Nowhere is the answer more disturbing than in the chapter called "Masks." There, Young describes how he hardened into a "person-thing" in the Marine Corps.
Years after his discharge, Young says he discovered a photograph taken of a gruesome scene involving the defilement of the corpse of a suicide bomber. Here's Young, referring to himself through the distancing collective pronoun, "we," describing his response to that photo:

We feel sick to our stomachs. ... We think we need to find a dog to stroke, a baby to coddle. We destroy the picture and reinforce the packaging that houses the person-thing with positive thoughts and exercise and whatever other coping mechanisms we have developed. But even as we rip the picture to shreds and our eyes well with tears for our once-lost humanity, we feel the person-thing slithering along the walls of its makeshift cell, waiting.

​

Eat the Apple is a brilliant and barbed memoir of the Iraq War. Unlike his "past-me" self in that hotel room struggling to communicate with his family, Young has now found the language to convey the messy totality of his experiences. And that's just about all the redemption you'll find in Young's war story.

 

[tiznow]

Looks like trump gonna follow through on his promise.. steel and aluminum import tariffs gonna be announced today based on his tweet..

let the trade wars begin!

 

[tiznow]

Markets not too happy.. been steadily falling ever since it was made official..

trump such a great fall guy.. for the one party liberal status quo big government everything bubble burst which was created by ben and yellen.. now the elites have found a placed for everybody to focus their anger at the gop and trump.. and it will usher in mega big government liberalism South America style.. where the elites own everything and there is no middle class.. us transformation into Mexico north still looking mighty fine..

I tip my cap..

 

[tiznow]

Donald J. Trump



@realDonaldTrump










When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!

—————-

Unbelievable this guy is POTUS

the trump twitter tantrums crying like a 17yo girl on twitter as stock market and economy crumbles gonna be hilarious..

 

[tiznow]

lol here comes the tantrum breaking out the caps..

——————

[h=1]Conversation[/h]






Donald J. Trump



@realDonaldTrump










We must protect our country and our workers. Our steel industry is in bad shape. IF YOU DON’T HAVE STEEL, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY!

 

[eek.]

Good Morning Vietnam ! We're back !

If you'd been around in the 60s and 70s this would have seemed impossible

Like Trump making a state visit to Iran with an aircraft carrier battle group

---------------------------------------------------

US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in historic Vietnam visit

US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson is making a historic call at Vietnam, the first time a ship of this size has visited since the Vietnam War ended.

The nuclear-powered carrier set anchor off the port city of Danang, where US combat troops first landed in the war, making this a highly symbolic location.

The visit is meant to demonstrate the countries' growing military ties.

But analysts say it inevitably sends a message to China as it continues to develop the disputed South China Sea.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-43282558

 

[tiznow]

Trumps Goldman Sachs economic advisor says I’m outta here over tariffs stuff.. stock futures down 1%

 

[eek.]

So all the Liberals and free trade communists are now on the same team united against the US President

It is indeed a funny old world

 

[tiznow]

So all the Liberals and free trade communists are now on the same team united against the US President

It is indeed a funny old world

It’s clearly just one big circus to divide and conquer and distract the masses .. no different than Roman times.. same shit just looks different

Western economy has become a one party system of economic liberalism and crony capitalism .. debting and spending beyond our means as big corporations and the wealthy in bed with government reap the rewards

only way it can continue is if they distract us with circuses.. and trump is one hell of a circus!

 

[tiznow]

Since the last bubble peak in 2007

mean family net worth has gone from 557 to 692k

whilw the median net worth has gone from 120 to 97.3k

market soaring at all time highs well above the 2007 peak yet the bottom 50% still has lower net worth than they had in 2007.. plus that doesn’t take into account inflation..

only way to pull it off is to divide and conquer the masses with propaganda and circuses..

 

[eek.]

Thought I'd mention a route for easy crypto trading, Tradesatoshi.com

Buy a litecoin or two from ebay or wherever and load them in there

It reminds me of Wall Street in the 1920s, a zero regulation wild west free for all where fortunes will be won and lost

It's like a penny stock market for most of them

If you fancy one then download the wallet first so you can cash them out after buying, fees are 0.2% (0.002)

Then wait 10 years....

edit: I got some mincoin and luxcoin, both are a high risk punt, you can't even cash the lux out at the moment lol

 

[tiznow]

Thought I'd mention a route for easy crypto trading, Tradesatoshi.com

Buy a litecoin or two from ebay or wherever and load them in there

It reminds me of Wall Street in the 1920s, a zero regulation wild west free for all where fortunes will be won and lost

It's like a penny stock market for most of them

If you fancy one then download the wallet first so you can cash them out after buying, fees are 0.2% (0.002)

Then wait 10 years....

edit: I got some mincoin and luxcoin, both are a high risk punt, you can't even cash the lux out at the moment lol

90s .com like bubble has peaked IMO eekster

wait a year+ for the fallout to play out and gain more clarity on which ones will be the big winners looking out 10+ Years.

 

[tiznow]

Pretty amazing run looking back..

a year ago total crypto market cap was sitting at 25 billion

peaked at over 800 billion not too long ago..

now down to 350 billion

once I see a lot of worthless shitcoins going to near zero time to move in.. still have hoards of worthless coins with valuations of half a billion etc..

 

[eek.]

Flippy the burger flipping robot takes time out after one day

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43343956

 

[tiznow]

Flippy the burger flipping robot takes time out after one day

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43343956

Yeah all those aspiring burger flippers out there better beware! Lol

 

[tiznow]

Luckily most of us currently alive will be dead and gone before robots can do more than remedial tasks..

to those youngins out there learn programming and how to train the robots.. so they aren’t training you into a life of poverty