[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 05 September 2017 08:30.
Free Thought Project, “Rothschild Just Dumped Massive Amounts of US Assets, Sending an Ominous Signal”, 30 Aug 2017:
In an ominous move, Lord Jacob Rothschild has aggressively moved to limit his exposure to “risky” U.S. capital markets.
In what is a sure signal to oligarchs across the globe, Lord Jacob Rothschild, founder and chairman of RIT Capital Partners, has substantially minimized his exposure to what he views as a risky and unstable U.S. capital market. In the half-yearly financial report for RIT Capital Partners, Rothschild explained the company’s aggressive moves to significantly reduce exposure to U.S. assets.
“We do not believe this is an appropriate time to add to risk. Share prices have in many cases risen to unprecedented levels at a time when economic growth is by no means assured,” Rothschild said in his semi-annual report.
Additionally, Rothschild stated that he believes quantitative easing (QE) programs employed by central banks, such as the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S. will “come to an end.”
Rothschild was quoted in the report as saying, “The period of monetary accommodation may well be coming to an end.”
Signaling a potential disaster in the making in the United States financial markets, Rothschild reduced the investments RIT Capital Partners has in the U.S. dollar by nearly fifty percent. On December 31, 2016, RIT Capital Partners reported a 62 percent net value asset investment in U.S. dollars. In the latest report released by RIT Capital Partners on June 30, 2017, the company has a 37 percent net value asset investment in U.S. dollars.
Over that same period of time, Rothschild increased RIT’s investment in Sterling and the Euro.
Just last year, the bond manager of what was once the world’s largest bond fund had a dire prediction about how “all of this” will all end. And by “all of this,” he means the propping up of financial markets by central banks.
Janus Henderson U.S. @JHIAdvisorsUS
Gross: Global yields lowest in 500 years of recorded history. $10 trillion of neg. rate bonds. This is a supernova that will explode one
When the U.S. stock market is trading at all-time highs, but Lord Rothschild is divesting RIT from those same markets, the central bank manipulation of market valuations becomes apparent.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that Rothschild’s RIT investment portfolio has returned roughly 2,000% since its formation – so he obviously understands how to position his assets to get big returns on investments, thus these recent moves should be a red flag to every American.
In explaining his recent investment moves, Rothschild, the RIT chairman stated:
“We have a particular interest in investments which will benefit from the impact of new technologies, and Far Eastern markets, influenced by the growing demand from Asian consumers.”
The report also noted that RIT had invested in Social Capital, a tech investment firm based in Silicon Valley, and that Francesco Goedhuis, Chief Executive of J. Rothschild Capital Management, will serve on the company’s advisory board. Social Capital provides seed funding for companies in the education, finance, and health care business sectors.
Rothschild also mentioned the advent of a fourth industrial revolution in the RIT Capital Partners report, noting, “As the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ develops, it becomes increasingly important for your Company to be able to assess investment opportunities in the innovation driven changes which are affecting almost every business sector.”
The fourth industrial revolution will be driven by new technologies that work to integrate the digital, biological, and physical worlds. Rothschild indicated in the report that the fourth industrial revolution was a driving factor in his investment in Social Capital.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 04 September 2017 06:00.
Background Briefing recently interviewed Johathan Taplin about his book, Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermine Democracy, and his op-ed at The New York Times, Google’s Disturbing Influence Over Think Tanks.
Some highlights: The New America Foundation funded a group called The Open Markets Group, which was headed by a guy named Barry Lynn; and they were the most important group of scholars looking at monopoly in America. When the EU sanctioned Google with a 2.7 billion dollar fine, The Open Markets Group put out a statement applauding the EU and saying American anti-trust regulators should follow their example. Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google, who provides most of the financing for the New American Foundation, was incredibly angry about this and essentially told the leader of New America, Ann Marie Slaughter, that she had to get rid of the Open Markets Group. She then wrote Barry Lynn an email saying that they had to leave by September 1, and essentially fired them. This is exactly the kind of political pressure that Google plies all over the world in terms of not just academic institutions, but think tanks and others in order to keep the political narrative in their favor and not have people who oppose them.
They pay off academics and think tanks, getting them to write favorable articles (totaling a hundred from each) about Google and denying their monopoly. This is how Google curries influence by dominating the communications channels of Washington D.C.
Eric Schmidt, who is the biggest funder of the New American Foundation and who is one of the top executives at Google, was the number one visitor during the Obama administration. He was logged in more times visiting the White House than any other single person in the entire eight years of the administration.
Google’s regulatory capture: not only was Schmidt the most frequent White House visitor, more than any other CEO, by a long shot. But then Schmidt was able to put people from Google into the various agencies in the Obama administration. So, the person who ran the Patent Office was formerly the person who ran Google’s patent practice; the person who was the Assistant Attorney General for anti-trust in the Obama administration was the person who had been Google’s anti-trust attorney. Google had people high-up in The Federal Communications Agency. It was pernicious, it was everywhere…
One could say “Eric Schmidt is a liberal” and “he’s helping Hillary Clinton”, but literally the day after Clinton lost he was out there communicating with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the hopes of getting in bed with Trump. Not only did he extend invitations to them to come to his conference in Italy; but he also went to the White House and railed on about how Trump was going to be a great help to the economy with his new initiatives; so, its very clear that he has very little political conscience what-so-ever; he’s just going to go where the money is.
People from all sides are recognizing the Google has too much money and power to frame narratives, to shape and influence culture; its platforms such as Facebook and Youtube are not only the way 3/4 of Americans get real news, but also conduits of propaganda: e.g., Steve Bannon and the Mercers used market targeting in their campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton, used social media very skillfully with fake news, used Russian bots to amplify their effect. An interesting note along with that, the intelligence community observes that Eric Schmidt’s daughter worked for SCL, the company that controlled Cambridge Analytica - the company that Mercer owns and that Steve Bannon’s on the board of.
They couldn’t have done what they did if there hadn’t been these two open platforms, Facebook and Youtube, which you could totally manipulate; there was nobody at the control of these platforms to block fake news in favor of Trump. However, there is no pornography on Youtube, which means that Youtube has very sophisticated technology which could filter out fake news, propaganda, etc., if desired.
Google’s market capture is profound, its users provide content and profiles (which marketers value, of course) which competitors cannot match. Google is not just a virtual monopoly, not just one of the most wealthy companies, it is the richest company and perhaps the most powerful monopoly ever. More:
New York Times, “Is It Time to Break Up Google?”, 22 Aug 2017:
By Johathan Taplin
In just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.
They’re all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.
We have been transported back to the early 20th century, when arguments about “the curse of bigness” were advanced by President Woodrow Wilson’s counselor, Louis Brandeis, before Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court. Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer Melvin Urofsky) “in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.” We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the “fake news” business to know that Brandeis was right.
While Brandeis generally opposed regulation — which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption of the regulator — and instead advocated breaking up “bigness,” he made an exception for “natural” monopolies, like telephone, water and power companies and railroads, where it made sense to have one or a few companies in control of an industry.
Could it be that these companies — and Google in particular — have become natural monopolies by supplying an entire market’s demand for a service, at a price lower than what would be offered by two competing firms? And if so, is it time to regulate them like public utilities?
Consider a historical analogy: the early days of telecommunications.
In 1895 a photograph of the business district of a large city might have shown 20 phone wires attached to most buildings. Each wire was owned by a different phone company, and none of them worked with the others. Without network effects, the networks themselves were almost useless.
The solution was for a single company, American Telephone and Telegraph, to consolidate the industry by buying up all the small operators and creating a single network — a natural monopoly. The government permitted it, but then regulated this monopoly through the Federal Communications Commission.
AT&T (also known as the Bell System) had its rates regulated, and was required to spend a fixed percentage of its profits on research and development. In 1925 AT&T set up Bell Labs as a separate subsidiary with the mandate to develop the next generation of communications technology, but also to do basic research in physics and other sciences. Over the next 50 years, the basics of the digital age — the transistor, the microchip, the solar cell, the microwave, the laser, cellular telephony — all came out of Bell Labs, along with eight Nobel Prizes.
In a 1956 consent decree in which the Justice Department allowed AT&T to maintain its phone monopoly, the government extracted a huge concession: All past patents were licensed (to any American company) royalty-free, and all future patents were to be licensed for a small fee. These licenses led to the creation of Texas Instruments, Motorola, Fairchild Semiconductor and many other start-ups.
True, the internet never had the same problems of interoperability. And Google’s route to dominance is different from the Bell System’s. Nevertheless it still has all of the characteristics of a public utility.
We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending that unfettered monoliths don’t inflict damage on our privacy and democracy.
It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. While profits at Google, Facebook and Amazon have soared, revenues in media businesses like newspaper publishing or the music business have, since 2001, fallen by 70 percent.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms. All content creators dependent on advertising must negotiate with Google or Facebook as aggregator, the sole lifeline between themselves and the vast internet cloud.
It’s not just newspapers that are hurting. In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in “supernormal returns on capital” at firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. The M.I.T. economists Scott Stern and Jorge Guzman explained that in the presence of these giant firms, “it has become increasingly advantageous to be an incumbent, and less advantageous to be a new entrant.”
There are a few obvious regulations to start with. Monopoly is made by acquisition — Google buying AdMob and DoubleClick, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon buying, to name just a few, Audible, Twitch, Zappos and Alexa. At a minimum, these companies should not be allowed to acquire other major firms, like Spotify or Snapchat.
The second alternative is to regulate a company like Google as a public utility, requiring it to license out patents, for a nominal fee, for its search algorithms, advertising exchanges and other key innovations.
The third alternative is to remove the “safe harbor” clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows companies like Facebook and Google’s YouTube to free ride on the content produced by others. The reason there are 40,000 Islamic State videos on YouTube, many with ads that yield revenue for those who posted them, is that YouTube does not have to take responsibility for the content on its network. Facebook, Google and Twitter claim that policing their networks would be too onerous. But that’s preposterous: They already police their networks for pornography, and quite well.
Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would earn them about $900.
I’m under no delusion that, with libertarian tech moguls like Peter Thiel in President Trump’s inner circle, antitrust regulation of the internet monopolies will be a priority. Ultimately we may have to wait four years, at which time the monopolies will be so dominant that the only remedy will be to break them up. Force Google to sell DoubleClick. Force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.
Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, “If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government.” We ignore his words at our peril.
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 03 September 2017 07:39.
Newsweek, “Charlottesville’s Alt-right Leaders Have a Passion for Vladimir Putin”, 16 Aug 2017:
The alleged ties between the administration of President Donald Trump and Russia are currently the subject of intensive media scrutiny. But perhaps less well known are the connections between a Kremlin ideologue described as “Putin’s brain” and key members of the U.S. alt-right and white supremacist movement, including those behind the Charlottesville protest.
Alexander Dugin is a Russian ultranationalist and former adviser to Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party who was appointed Russian foreign intelligence chief in 2016. Dugin supports Orthodox Russia’s role as a bulwark against what he has portrayed as the decadent forces of the liberal West.
Amongst Saturday’s headline speakers was Richard Spencer, who claims to have invented the term “alt-right,” and has disseminated its white nationalist ideology via his National Policy Institute think-tank, as well as a network of websites and publishing ventures.
Spencer has not disguised his fondness for Vladimir Putin’s Russia, describing the country as the “sole white power in the world.” In May, he led a smaller protest in Charlottesville, in which torch wielding white nationalists chanted “Russia is our friend.”
Neo-Eurasianist ideologue Alexander Dugin sits in his TV studio in central Moscow on August 11, 2016. Francesca Ebel/AP
In 2014, Spencer invited Dugin to an international far-right conference he planned to hold in Hungary, however international sanctions prevented Dugin attending and Hungarian police raided the meeting. Dugin has since become a frequent contributor to Spencer’s AltRight.com website, and has also contributed to his online journal Radix. Spencer has returned the favor, penning an article for Dugin’s Katehon website.
Spencer’s ex-wife is Nina Kouprianova, a tireless promoter of Russian nationalism and self-described “Kremlin troll leaders” who writes under the penname Nina Byzantina. She is also Dugin’s English translator.
Matthew Heimbach, co-founder of the white supremacist Traditional Workers Party, also attended Saturday’s rally and is a big fan of Putin.
“I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now,” he recently told Business Insider. “Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance, while promoting traditional values and self-determination.”
In 2015, he led a rally at which Russian and Confederate flags were flown alongside each other.
And, for good measure, here’s Heimbach with the Novorossiya flag, and leading a rally with both Confederate and Russian imperial flags: pic.twitter.com/5mHjHisfr7
12:26 AM - Jan 5, 2017
Heimbach, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the “face of a new generation of white nationalists”, has made several trips to Europe to meet the leaders of far-right parties, and at the official launch of the Traditional Workers Party in 2015 Heimbach hosted a Skyped-in congratulatory speech from Dugin.
And one more shot: Heimbach holding both a Dugin book and a neo-Confederate “League of the South” flag. ht @JvanDijkS pic.twitter.com/aY0KfVEhyS
6:41 PM - Jan 5, 2017
The following year he planned his first trip to Russia for the far-right World National Conservative Movement conference, which was ultimately postponed.
Infamous former KKK leader David Duke also made an appearance at the rally, which he called a “turning point” and pledged that white nationalists would “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”
Like his allies Spencer and Heimbach, Duke has made no secret of his admiration for Russia, describing the country as the “key to white survival,” and has been pictured alongside Dugin.
Just Rich @JustMeRich
Replying to @splcenter
Trump is in the side of David Duke and the Klan. Further speculation isn’t needed.
Follow
Trevor Smith @MrTSmith81
And david Duke and the klan are on the side of Russia, where’s that list of people trump won’t attack again? White supremacists and putin.. pic.twitter.com/4Nricps1N7
11:16 PM - Aug 15, 2017
Duke once lived in Moscow and owns an apartment in the Russian capital, which he reportedly sub-let to U.S. Neo-Nazi Preston Wigginton, who has in turn hosted web chats by Dugin at the University of Texas A&M college.
On Monday, the college announced it was cancelling a planned white nationalist rally on its campus to be led by Spencer.
Russian state media has also given a platform to Spencer and Duke, where their extremist beliefs were not flagged, and they expounded their racist views unchallenged. Spencer has frequently commented on the Syrian civil war on RT, where he has expressed support for Russian ally and alt-right icon President Bashar al-Assad.
Dugin himself has frequently appeared on Infowars, Alex Jones’ pro-Trump conspiracy theory site.
Anton Shekhovtsov, author of Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir, tells Newsweek that ties between U.S. and Russian fascists were longstanding.
“There is no evidence that the Kremlin - as an official body - has ever tried to build ties with the US neo-Nazis such as Spencer or Duke. However, both have long-standing relations with their Russian fascist counterparts,” he says in an email.
In Europe, the story is different, with Neo-Nazis in Germany reportedly recruited by Russian intelligence via martial arts clubs, and Hungarian neo-Nazi István Győrkös, who shot dead a police officer last October, running paramilitary training camps for right-wing extremists alongside Kremlin officials.
In a blog posting Tuesday, former NSA analyst John Schindler explained the appeal of Russia to the U.S. far-right.
“Although our country has always had white supremacists, Russia has given them renewed focus and energy, as well as a ready-made worldview. This take on the world includes overt white nationalism which despises the United States as a decadent and multiracial society,” he wrote.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 02 September 2017 16:46.
In Tel Aviv with supporters where he announced that the Africans would be expelled.
New Observer, “Netanyahu Vows to Expel Africans from Tel Aviv: “We Will Return it to the Israelis”, 1 Sept 2017:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday visited a rundown Tel Aviv neighbourhood with a large African population and pledged to rid it of illegal “infiltrators” and return control of the suburb to Jews after the non-Jews were expelled.
According to a report in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, Netanyahu announced that “We will return south Tel Aviv to the citizens of Israel.”
“We are dealing with illegal infiltrators, not with refugees, but illegal infiltrators. And Israel’s right is to safeguard its borders and to keep away illegal infiltrators,” he said.
“If needed, we will legislate an amendment to the law or change the agreements with the African countries, or both.”
Speaking with residents, the Netanyahu also promised that the government would step up enforcement against asylum seekers ‘in the face of those who employ them, in the face of the lawless infiltrators.”
Netanyahu made reference to the border fence on Israel’s frontier with Egypt, built to halt the influx of African invaders, saying that if it had not been built, there would be a million Africans in Israel.
The prime minister said he intends to convene a ministerial committee that would meet on a monthly basis with Israeli citizens and officials to deal with the issue. He was accompanied during his visit by Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev.
The Prime Minister’s Office said the purpose of the visit was to “identify with the residents and hear about their distress against the backdrop of the high court decision.” Netanyahu’s bureau said he intends to push for legislation “that will provide a response to deal with the distress from labor migrants following the criticism expressed by the Supreme Court.”
According to data from the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority, there are about 38,000 Africans in Israel including about 27,500 from Eritrea, 7,900 from Sudan and 2,600 from other African countries.
The flow of Africans into Israel has been halted entirely, with only one getting caught attempting to cross the Israel-Egypt border this year. In addition, in the first six months of 2017, about 2,100 Africans have left Israel after being detained in the desert concentration camp of Holot.
Streets around the central bus station, including almost all of Levinsky Park, were closed off for the Prime Minister’s visit, as he met with local residents.
Culture and Sports minister Miri Regev, who once infamously referred to the migrants as a “cancer” said while accompanying Netanyahu that “the residents of south Tel Aviv are the ones who became refugees in their own country.”
“We need [criminal] enforcement against the employers who pay the salaries of the infiltrators they employ,” she added, referring to those that do not have work permits.
Related Story:
New Observer, “Israel Will Forcibly Deport all Non-Jewish Illegal Aliens after Court Ruling, Government Says”, 31 Aug 2017:
The Israeli Justice Minister has announced that Israel will shortly be introducing a law which will forcibly deport all non-Jewish illegal aliens—including all “asylum seekers”—from the Jews-only ethnostate following a High Court ruling in that country which approved Israel’s current deportation program, but limited it to those “volunteering” to leave.
According to a report in the Jerusalem-based Times of Israel, the High Court of Justice on Monday allowed the Jewish ethnostate’s government to continue with its policy of deporting all illegal invaders from Africa back to Rwanda or Uganda—irrespective of their original country of origin—but said the state cannot jail those who refuse to go for more than 60 days.
The Jewish judges unanimously rejected a petition by human rights groups against the deportation practice, but said that the “deportations could only to be carried out with the agreement of the illegal aliens.
Previously Israel had detained “refugees” in an open prison in the middle of the desert for up to 12 months, imposing such harsh restrictions upon them that many chose to be “voluntarily deported” just to get out the Jewish state.
The Times of Israel further reported that following the new court ruling, Israeli officials said they would amend the law so that the invaders could be deported without their consent.
“The High Court removed from the state the ability to pressure the illegal infiltrators,” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked was quoted as saying. “It turned the [migrant’s] lack of cooperation into a reward. We will fight this until we achieve the necessary results.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed his justice minister up, saying that “We will need to pass a new law that will permit us to enforce these agreements,” adding that this was one of a three-pronged policy against the nonwhite invaders.
The other two include the fence built between Israel and the Sinai to “prevent infiltrators” and the agreement that Netanyahu worked out with Rwanda to facilitate the deportations.
The Israeli policies are in contradiction to the “open borders” policies endorsed and propagated by all Jewish organizations, synagogues and religious bodies in non-Jewish countries in Europe, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
At the same time, all of these Jewish bodies support Israel. The hypocrisy is too blatant to be coincidental, and must be deliberate: Jews support “open borders” for non-Jewish countries, but “closed borders” for their own country.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 02 September 2017 08:36.
Sun “KIM’S COMING FOR EUROPE Japan’s PM warns North Korea will soon target EUROPE with nuke missiles as he hails Theresa May’s ‘smooth Brexit”, 31 Aug 2017:
Mrs May said Japan’s investment in Britain was “a powerful vote of confidence in the strength of the UK’s long-term economy” - The comments hint that the two countries could move quickly to strike a free-trade deal as soon as we quit the EU in 2019.
Japan and the UK pledged to work together to face down Kim Jong Un.
JAPAN’S prime minister today warned that North Korea could soon send nuclear missiles to Europe as he hailed Theresa May’s plan for a “smooth Brexit”.
Shinzo Abe called for the UK and other European countries must play a part in the fight against Kim Jong Un, saying the danger would not be confined to Asia.
Speaking ahead of a state banquet in honour of the PM, the leaders of Britain and Japan said they had discussed the threat from North Korea, which this week launched a missile over Japan in a new show of strength.
They agreed the threat is “unprecedented” and pledged to hold joint military exercises in a bid to show dictator Kim Jong Un that his crimes cannot go unpunished.
Mr Abe said: “That threat is felt not only by our country or Asia alone, it has become a global threat including Europe.
“North Korea will launch an ICBM [inter-continental ballistic missile] and the range would include almost the entire region of Europe.”
Mrs May demanded Kim’s ally China do more to restrain him, saying: “We need to ensure it’s not just words of condemnation, but that action is taken.”
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 02 September 2017 07:54.
“We’re talking total destruction”
Irma worst case scenario: Cat 5 storm, direct hit on Miami.
“Major Hurricane Irma now ... I’d be surprised if storm didn’t become Cat 5 during next 5-7 days. Many EPS ensembles are very intense.
It would be much worse than Harvey. Miami is built right up to the ocean, all those tall building would receive the impact of Cat 5 winds plus devastating storm surge. We are talking total destruction.”
- Ryan Maue, Meteorologist (PhD) | Free ex parte opinions on Weather | Hurricanes | Climate Science | Politics | Think Tanker @CatoCSS
The Economic Collapse, “Category 6? If Hurricane Irma Becomes The Strongest Hurricane In History, It Could Wipe Entire Cities Off The Map”, 1 Sep 2017:
Meteorologists have been shocked at how rapidly Hurricane Irma has been strengthening, and they are already warning that if it hits the United States as a high level category 5 storm the devastation would be absolutely unprecedented. Of course we are already dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and many experts are already telling us that the economic damage done by that storm will easily surpass any other disaster in all of U.S. history. But there is a very real possibility that Hurricane Irma could be even worse. According to the National Hurricane Center, at 5 PM on Friday Irma already had sustained winds of 130 miles per hour. But it is still very early, and as you will see below, next week it is expected to potentially develop into a category 5 storm with winds of 180 miles per hour or more.
I suppose that it is appropriate that such a powerful storm has a very powerful name. In old German, the name “Irma” actually means “war goddess”…
The name Irma is a German baby name. In German the meaning of the name Irma is: Universal, from the Old German ‘irmin’. War goddess.
Irma began forming on Wednesday, and it intensified at a faster rate than any storm that we have seen in nearly 20 years…
Hurricane Irma formed early Wednesday in the warm waters off the coast of West Africa — and took just 30 hours to strengthen to a Category 3. That’s the fastest intensification rate in almost two decades. By Friday afternoon, the storm had also grown noticeably larger in size with a well-defined eye, a classic sign of a strong hurricane.
Though Irma poses no immediate threat to land, the outlook is ominous: In the Atlantic, Irma is expected to pass through some abnormally warm waters — the primary fuel source for storm systems. The official National Hurricane Center forecast says it will remain at major hurricane status for at least the next five days, and, in a worst-case scenario, Irma could eventually grow into one of the strongest hurricanes ever seen in the Atlantic.
So how powerful could Irma eventually become?
According to Michael Ventrice of the Weather Channel, Irma could easily become a “super typhoon” with “sustained speeds of over 180mph”…
Veteran USA forecaster Michael Ventrice posted the track model on Twitter overnight and warned it looked like the storm could be a “super typhoon”, with sustained speeds of over 180mph.
He wrote: “These are the highest windspeed forecasts I’ve ever seen in my 10 yrs of Atlantic hurricane forecasting.
“Irma is another retiree candidate.”
The scale we have right now really never envisioned storms that powerful. In fact, some have suggested that we need to add a “category 6” to describe the kind of “super storms” that are now developing in the Atlantic.
One of the reasons why Irma is so unique is because it is a “Cape Verde hurricane”…
There are a few factors that worry hurricane forecasters more about this storm when compared to the myriad other tropical storms and hurricanes that tend to form in the Atlantic.
First, it’s a so-called Cape Verde storm, having formed off the west coast of Africa. These storms tend to be the ones that go on to affect the U.S., after gathering strength for many days during their march across the ocean. For example, Hurricane Andrew, which was the most recent Category 5 storm to hit the U.S. in 1992, was a Cape Verde-type storm.
Because they begin at a relatively low latitude and move west rather than northwest, it can be harder for upper level winds blowing across North America to pick up and steer these types of storms away from the U.S. coast.
Let us hope that this storm does get steered away from our coastlines at some point, but so far that is just not happening.
Many hurricanes are often weakened by wind shear, but that isn’t happening to Irma either. In fact, CNN is reporting that “Irma will remain in a low-shear environment for the next several days”…
A strong high-pressure ridge to the north of Irma, over the Atlantic, is steering the storm to the west and limiting the wind shear in the upper levels of the atmosphere, which has allowed the storm to grow so quickly. Wind shear is like hurricane kryptonite, and prevents storms from forming or gaining strength.
Unfortunately, Irma will remain in a low-shear environment for the next several days, so there isn’t much hope that Irma will weaken any time soon.
Basically, conditions are nearly ideal for a “super storm” to develop, and if Irma does make it to the U.S. the destruction that it causes could be absolutely off the charts.
Of course at this point there is no guarantee that it will ever reach the United States. But if it does, and if it is still a category 5 storm when it arrives, we could be facing an event unlike anything that we have ever seen before.
Do you remember Hurricane Katrina? Well, scientists now know that when it hit New Orleans it had already been downgraded to just a “low category 3” storm…
To put this all in perspective, Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane out over some hot spots in the Gulf. But when it hit New Orleans, scientists now know, Katrina had winds at a low Category 3, and much of them Category 2, including the “left side winds” that then came down from the north and pushed the surge-swollen waters of Lake Pontchartrain over and through NOLA’s levees. (Hurricanes spin counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, so when Katrina came ashore just east of New Orleans, its winds hit the city from the north.)
Only three Category 5s have come ashore in the United States in the past century — the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, Camille in 1969 and Andrew in 1992.
And Hurricane Harvey was just a category 4 storm.
If Hurricane Irma were to make landfall as a category 5 storm with sustained winds of 180 miles per hour, it would rip buildings and everything else in its path to shreds.
Next week we shall find out what happens. Let us hope for the best, but let us also get prepared for the worst.
Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.
Irmina Update:
The Island Packet, “Hurricane Irma back to Category 2, but its track makes a pronounced turn”, 2 Sep 2017:
Hurricane Irma become a Category 2 storm once more in the National Hurricane Center’s 5 a.m. update, but as its strength fluctuates, its track now shows a distinct northwestern turn.
Irma is currently located about 1300 miles east of the Leeward Islands, and is moving west at 14 mph. It has maximum sustained winds of 110 mph with gusts up to 132 mph.
While Irma has remained in a somewhat weakened state over the past day or so, it is expected to move into warmer waters and better wind conditions in about a day, and is expected to be a major hurricane again as it approaches the Lesser Antilles at the beginning of next week.
It is expected to reach Category 4 status by next Wednesday, with forecast sustained winds of 132 mph and gusts over 160.
The NHC track for Irma looks only five days out, but there are other, more speculative forecast models.
No coastal watches or warnings have yet been issued for Irma. Watches and warnings are typically issued 36 hours before a tropical cyclone poses a threat to a coastal area. So, as alarming as some of the information coming in might be, people can take solace in the knowledge that they will have plenty of warning if Irma looks to threaten the U.S. coast.
“It’s still 2,000 miles away, and anything over the Atlantic Ocean moving generally westward, by geographical definition, would be ‘aiming in the general direction of the United States,’” said NHC spokesman Dennis Feltgen. “It is far to early to tell what, if any, impacts will be felt on the continental U.S.”
Feltgen also said that Irma is a useful reminder that we are in the peak of hurricane season, and that as such, people in hurricane prone areas should be prepared, just in case.
“Check your supplies and make sure you have a hurricane plan,” said Feltgen. “The last thing you want is to be doing this on the fly if you happen to be in an area where hurricane watches or warnings go up. Not that we expect that to happen any time soon, but use this weekend, when stores are open and everyone has supplies, to take advantage of that.
Britain is home to 35,000 Islamist fanatics, more than any other country in Europe, the EU anti-terror chief has said.
Gilles de Kerchove warned that of those, 3,000 were “‘worrying” for MI5.
He also warned Islamic State will attempt a cyber-attack on nuclear power stations or air traffic control systems within five years, potentially by paying paying Russian hackers to break into vital computer systems.
Mr de Kerchove told Spain’s El Mundo newspaper: “The United Kingdom has identified 20,000 to 35,000 radicals.
“Of these, 3,000 are worrying for MI5, and of those 500 are under constant and special attention.
“France has 17,000. Spain many less, but more than 5,000 I suppose. In Belgium almost 500 have been to Syria and there are around 2,000 radicals or more.
“I wouldn’t like to put a concrete figure on it, but (in Europe) tens of thousands, more than 50,000.
“We must select those who are really worrying and the most dangerous, and they should be monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
But for how long do we the native peoples of Western Europe have to play Damocles to this Saif ul-Ali? Will there ever be a moment when someone ... anyone ... a pol, a journalist, a Third sector artiste ... actually speaks the simple truth that Islam cannot remain in the West? It does not work for Europeans. It is not wanted by Europeans. And it is the will of Europeans which matters and which must be obeyed.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 31 August 2017 09:35.
DM, “Police call for Notting Hill Carnival to be banned after 31 officers attacked during the two-day event”, 30 Aug 2017:
- Police were slashed with broken bottles, spat at, bitten and had acid thrown at them
- In one of the worst confrontations, three PCs had bloody spit sprayed in their faces
- Frontline police said ‘enough is enough’ and called for organisers to help safeguard them
- Four people were stabbed, more than 300 arrested and dozens of weapons seized
The Notting Hill Carnival was branded a disgrace last night after it was revealed that 31 police officers were attacked during the two-day event.
They were slashed with broken bottles, spat at, bitten and had acid thrown at them.
In one of the worst confrontations, three PCs had bloody spit sprayed in their faces by a man claiming to be HIV positive.
Frontline police said ‘enough is enough’ and called for organisers to help safeguard those who dedicate their lives protecting others.
Four people were stabbed, more than 300 arrested and dozens of weapons seized during Europe’s biggest street carnival. Although there were fewer arrests than last year’s record 454, a three-week crackdown had seen hundreds banned from attending.
Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation representing the capital’s 32,000 rank-and-file officers, said at least 31 officers were attacked.
‘We cannot carry on like this. It is a disgrace,’ he said. ‘My brave colleagues were attacked for just doing their job.
‘This is not acceptable. What other event would be allowed to carry on regardless with so many police colleagues under attack?’
‘There is a growing lobby calling for the carnival to be moved to Hyde Park and made ticket-only to deter opportunist criminals. Changes were first proposed in 2000 when two men were murdered. In 2008 there was a riot.
In Tel Aviv with supporters where he announced that the Africans would be expelled.
Mrs May said Japan’s investment in Britain was “a powerful vote of confidence in the strength of the UK’s long-term economy” - The comments hint that the two countries could move quickly to strike a free-trade deal as soon as we quit the EU in 2019.
“We’re talking total destruction” 
