Friday, May 4, 2018

Aluminum in brain directly linked to autism | NaturalHealth365

Aluminum in brain directly linked to autism | NaturalHealth365:



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Study Shows Where ‘Almost’ 100 Percent of Aluminum From Vaccines Could Go Inside A Baby’s Body – Collective Evolution

Study Shows Where ‘Almost’ 100 Percent of Aluminum From Vaccines Could Go Inside A Baby’s Body – Collective Evolution:



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How $21 trillion in U.S. tax money disappeared - Nexus Newsfeed

How $21 trillion in U.S. tax money disappeared - Nexus Newsfeed:



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Cancer-linked weedkiller found in every food tested except broccoli - Nexus Newsfeed

Cancer-linked weedkiller found in every food tested except broccoli - Nexus Newsfeed:



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Judge says CIA emails to journalists don't have to be released to public | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Judge says CIA emails to journalists don't have to be released to public | McClatchy Washington Bureau:



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As US Congresswoman Calls For Kanye West To Get Back To The Plantation, Vile Left Calls For ‘Crips’ To F**k Him Up’

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by Susan Duclos, All News Pipeline: Let me begin by making a couple of things clear at the outset. I am not a fan of Rap music, therefore I never paid much attention to Rap stars or celebrities. I am more a classic Rock fan, so sue me! Secondly, just because Kanye West is awakening […]

The post As US Congresswoman Calls For Kanye West To Get Back To The Plantation, Vile Left Calls For ‘Crips’ To F**k Him Up’ appeared first on SGT Report.



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Atlantic Council Explains Why We Need To Be Propagandized For Our Own Good

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I sometimes try to get establishment loyalists to explain to me exactly why we’re all meant to be terrified of this “Russian propaganda” thing they keep carrying on about. What is the threat, specifically? That it makes the public less willing to go to war with Russia and its allies? That it makes us less trusting of lying, torturing, coup-staging intelligence agencies? Does accidentally catching a glimpse of that green RT logo turn you to stone like Medusa, or melt your face like in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

“Well, it makes us lose trust in our institutions,” is the most common reply.

Okay. So? Where’s the threat there? We know for a fact that we’ve been lied to by those institutions. Iraq isn’t just something we imagined. We should be skeptical of claims made by western governments, intelligence agencies and mass media. How specifically is that skepticism dangerous?

The establishment is weaponizing hysteria over "Russiagate" and "fake news" to attack Black Lives Matter activists, anti-war voices, water protectors & other real progressives... & justifying it with the Orwellian lie they're "fighting propaganda". #WorldPressFreedomDay

 — @DrJillStein

Trying to get answers to such questions from rank-and-file empire loyalists is like pulling teeth, and they are equally lacking in the mass media who are constantly sounding the alarm about Russian propaganda. All I see are stories about Russia funding environmentalists (the horror!), giving a voice to civil rights activists (oh noes!), and retweeting articles supportive of Jeremy Corbyn (think of the children!). At its very most dramatic, this horrifying, dangerous epidemic of Russian propaganda is telling westerners to be skeptical of what they’re being told about the Skripal poisoning and the alleged Douma gas attack, both of which do happen to have some very significant causes for skepticism.

When you try to get down to the brass tacks of the actual argument being made and demand specific details about the specific threats we’re meant to be worried about, there aren’t any to be found. Nobody’s been able to tell me what specifically is so dangerous about westerners being exposed to the Russian side of international debates, or of Russians giving a platform to one or both sides of an American domestic debate. Even if every single one of the allegations about Russian bots and disinformation are true (and they aren’t), where is the actual clear and present danger? No one can say.

No one, that is, except the Atlantic Council.

We Need a NATO for Infowar | Commentary by @elisabethbraw of @AtlanticCouncil https://t.co/ntIpBplhGe

 — @DefenseOne

In an absolutely jaw-dropping article that you should definitely read in its entirety, Elizabeth Braw took it upon herself to finally answer the question of why Russian propaganda is so dangerous, using the following hypothetical scenario:

What if Russia suddenly announced that its Baltic Fleet had dispatched an armada towards Britain? Would most people greet the news with steely resolve in the knowledge that their governments would know what to do, or would constant Kremlin-influenced reports about the incompetence of British institutions make them conclude that any resistance was pointless?

I mean, wow. Wow! Just wow. Where to even begin with this?

Before I continue, I should note that Braw is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, the shady NATO-aligned think tank with ties to powerful oligarchs whose name comes up when you look into many of the mainstream anti-Russia narratives, from the DNC hack to the discredited war propaganda firm Bellingcat to Russian trolls to the notorious PropOrNot blacklist publicized by the Washington Post.Her article, published by Defense One, is titled “We Need a NATO for Infowar”, and it argues that westerners need to be propagandized by an alliance of western governments for our own good.

Back to the aforementioned excerpt. Braw claims that if Russian propaganda isn’t shut down or counteracted, Russia could send a fleet of war ships to attack Britain, and the British people would… react unenthusiastically? Wouldn’t cheer loudly enough as the British Navy fought the Russians? Would have a defeatist emotional demeanor? What exactly is the argument here?

That’s seriously her only attempt to directly address the question of where the actual danger is. Even in the most cartoonishly dramatic hypothetical scenario this Atlantic Council member can possibly imagine, there’s still no tangible threat of any kind. Even if Russia was directly attacking the United Kingdom at home, and Russian propaganda had somehow magically dominated all British airwaves and been believed by the entire country, that still wouldn’t have any impact on the British military’s ability to fight a naval battle. There’s literally no extent to which you can inflate this “Russian propaganda” hysteria to turn it into a possible threat to actual people in real life.

A NATO for infowar? As if the entire Western mainstream media doesn't already provide that function. https://t.co/MbNYv2mnvm

 — @MaxBlumenthal

It gets better. Check out this excerpt:

Such responses to disinformation are like swatting flies: time-consuming and ineffective. But not addressing disinformation is ineffective, too. “Western media still have this thing where they try to be completely balanced, so they’ll say, ‘the Russians say this, but on the other hand the Americans say this is not true,’ They end up giving a lie and the truth the same value,” noted Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia.

I just have so many questions. Like, how desperate does a writer have to be for an expert who can lend credibility to their argument that they have to reach all the way over to a former president of Estonia? And on what planet are these people living where Russian narratives are given the same weight as western narratives by western mainstream media? How can I get to this fantastical parallel dimension where western media “try to be completely balanced” and give equal coverage to all perspectives?

Braw argues that, because Russian propaganda is so dangerous (what with the threat of British people having insufficient emotional exuberance during a possible naval battle and all), what is required is a “NATO of infowar”, an alliance of western state media that is tasked with combatting Russian counter-narratives. Because, in the strange Dungeons & Dragons fantasy fairy world in which Braw penned her article, this isn’t already happening.

And of course, here in the real world, it is already happening. As I wrote recently, mainstream media outlets have been going out of their minds churning out attack editorials on anyone who questions the establishment narrative about what happened in Douma. A BBC reporter recently admonished a retired British naval officer for voicing skepticism of what we’re being told about Syria on the grounds that it might “muddy the waters” of the “information war” that is being fought against Russia. All day, every day, western mass media are pummeling the public with stories about how awful and scary Russians are and how everything they say is a lie.

This is because western mass media outlets are owned by western plutocrats, and those plutocrats have built their empires upon a status quo that they have a vested interest in preserving, often to the point where they will form alliances with defense and intelligence agencies to do so. They hire executives and editors who subscribe to a pro-establishment worldview, who in turn hire journalists who subscribe to a pro-establishment worldview, and in that way they ensure that all plutocrat-owned media outlets are advancing pro-plutocrat agendas.

@SecPompeo: On #WorldPressFreedomDay, we renew our commitment to promoting & protecting a free press -- an essential pillar of democracy, & we honor journalists who have dedicated their lives to promote transparency & accountability throughout the world. https://t.co/6TFWT77tOT

 — @StateDept

The western empire is ruled by a loose transnational alliance of plutocrats and secretive government agencies. That loose alliance is your real government, and that government has the largest state media network in the history of civilization. The mass media propaganda machine of the western empire makes RT look like your grandmother’s Facebook wall.

In that way, we are being propagandized constantly by the people who really rule us. All this panic about Russian propaganda doesn’t exist because our dear leaders have a problem with propaganda, it exists because they believe only they should be allowed to propagandize us.

And, unlike Russian propaganda, western establishment propaganda actually does pose a direct threat to us. By using mass media to manipulate the ways we think and vote, our true rulers can persuade us to consent to crushing austerity measures and political impotence while the oligarchs grow richer and medicine money is spent on bombs. When we should all be revolting against an oppressive Orwellian oligarchy, we are instead lulled to sleep by those same oligarchs and their hired talking heads lying to us about freedom and democracy.

Russian propaganda is dangerous because when your government decides it's time to go to war with Russia, you might not want them to.

 — @caitoz

Russian propaganda is not dangerous. Having access to other ways of looking at global geopolitics is not dangerous. What absolutely is dangerous is a vast empire concerning itself with the information and ideas that its citizenry have access to. Get your rapey, manipulative fingers out of our minds, please.

If our dear leaders are so worried about our losing faith in our institutions, they shouldn’t be concerning themselves with manipulating us into trusting them, they should be making those institutions more trustworthy.

Don’t manipulate better, be better. The fact that an influential think tank is now openly advocating the former over the latter should concern us all.

_____________________

Internet censorship is getting pretty bad, so best way to keep seeing my daily articles is to get on the mailing list for my website, so you’ll get an email notification for everything I publish. My articles and podcasts are entirely reader and listener-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

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Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Salisbury-gate smoking gun found? Initial reports said Skripals poisoned with Fentanyl

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: The entire UK press is refusing to tell the British public of revelations about the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury which - if revealed - would surely lead to the sacking of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and could even bring down the entire Theresa May regime. The UK's press has gone strangely quiet on the Skripal case. After the huge uproar over the Salisbury poisoning incident and the miraculous recovery of all the victims of "Putin's deadly nerve agent Novichok", there is only silence. But remarkable revelations in the small print of a local newspaper and the website of a specialist health journal tell us why. First, consider for a moment what is missing: Where are the further statements from Julia Skripal? Where is she and why have there been no further briefings about the health? Has she visited her father in hospital? If yes, why has this not been reported? If, no, why not? What has happened to the daily updates on Sergei Skripal? The last reports suggested that he would shortly be able to leave hospital, so has he done so? If not, how is he? How did he take the news that the British state killed all his pets and incinerated the evidence that they were no contaminated with Novichok?

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Economic Old Age, Part 2: Mickey D’s Awesome Goose Egg

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The casino opened a bit jiggy yesterday (it didn’t last) on month-end window dressing and the alleged “blow-out” earnings of another Dow component. This time it was McDonald’s, which posted a sizzling “adjusted” earnings gain of 22%.

Except there was absolutely nothing to all the ballyhoo. Sales actually decreased by 9% versus the year ago quarter, and save for the dollar’s swoon last year (now reversing rapidly) sales would have been down by 15%.

Never mind say the sell-side numbers wizards. The revenue plunge was due to “strategic repositioning” by the company—-meaning it has sold off company stores to franchisees, thereby shrinking its top line.

Fine. Management claims that was all done to improve operating performance.

But it didn’t.

Operating income was up just 5.0% on a reported basis, but was flat when adjusted for the dollar’s swoon. And pre-tax income was up 4% on a reported basis, but down 1% in constant currencies.

So how did negative pre-tax income growth in constant currencies morph into a 22% adjusted gain per share?

Well, it happened in essentially the same manner which brought about the whole brouhaha about booming Q1 earnings.

To wit, last year McDonald’s tax rate was 32.8% versus 24.4% this year (after the $0.07 carryover adjustment from Q4); its share count last year was also 3.3% higher (825.2 million shares versus 798.7 million) and the dollar was 5.5% stronger. Accordingly, its reported earnings were just $1.47 per share last year.

On a constant currency, constant tax rate, constant share basis, however, McDonald’s earned $1.79 per share this year and $1.80 last year!

In short, Mickey D’s is the poster boy for the Q1 head fake that is being perpetrated by the sell-side crooks and their handmaidens in the financial press. Nearly all the ballyhooed gain is due to currency, share counts and tax rates.

Needless to say, you can’t capitalize those types of gains because they are non-recurring and non-sustainable.

Nevertheless, the questions recurs. When the casino hyper-ventilates about a 22% headline gain which arises from the zero growth economics evident in even the company’s own 2-page press release, you are dealing with some heavy duty mendacity.

Indeed, the Wall Street narrative has been so completely dumbed-down to grotesquely manipulated (“adjusted”), short-term headline deltas that anything which once resembled fundamental analysis was lost long ago.

And the street’s affinity for Keynesian beer goggles has only compounded the financial myopia. That is, it sees close up items (last quarter) in sharp focus, but most time-distant matters (1-10 year back) end up in a complete blur.

No matter. The casino’s day traders and robo-machines are programed by the utterly flawed and unwarranted Keynesian assumption that economies and business profits never stop growing as long as the central bank is “accommodative”. So they really don’t care what the 10-year trend has been because the Fed will keep the party going indefinitely, or succumb to a Wall Street hissy fit if it actually tries to remove the punch bowl.

Needless to say, there could not be a more specious assumption at the present moment. That’s because the current expansion is now in month #106.

That makes it technically the seconded longest cycle ever, having now passed LBJ’s “guns and butter” boom of the 1960s (105 months)—even as it presses hard upon the 119 month record of the 1990s.

But here’s the thing. The current cycle’s stellar old age has been achieved on the back of the weakest business recovery in history; and in the context of an economy that has been starved for productive investment while being freighted down with staggering amounts of public and private debt.

Stated differently, it is always foolish to pay nose-bleed PE multiples at the top of a business cycle because by definition such peak earnings levels are not sustainable and can’t be capitalized as if they are.

For instance, peak S&P 500 earnings of $85 per share for the June 2007 LTM period were capitalized at just 17.6X at the time. Yet that wasn’t cheap or the time to buy the proverbial dip: Within two years, earnings had withered t0 just $7 share, and the stock index had plunged by 55%.

But at 106 months of age, the current cycle is virtually on a respirator. That’s because sustained growth takes investment in productive assets, but there hasn’t been any—as in nichts, nada, nugatory and none.

Accordingly, the US body economic is exceedingly fragile, and not about to grow by the leaps and bounds implicit in current two-year earnings growth rate projections of 54% ($169 per share estimated for 2019 versus $110 per share actual for 2017) .

To wit, real net fixed business (i.e. nonresidential) was $492.4 billion as per the Commerce Department’s freshly minted numbers for Q1 2018. And that means ten years have produced a big fat rounding error: The figure was $492.1 billion way back in Q4 2007!

Needless to say, this isn’t what Steve Liesman tells you on bubble-vision or what the Fed occasionally mentions in its post-meeting economic weather reports.

That’s because in good Keynesian fashion they focus on real gross business investment, which has expanded from $2.0 trillion at the 2007 peak to $2.4 trillion in Q1 2018. Even then, the implied growth rate of 1.9% per annum is nothing to write home about.

Still, that tepid investment growth rate gets whitewashed by the mainstream narrative with the claim that the deep valley in real gross investment during the Great Recession represented some kind of 100-year flood occurrence, and that we are still pulling out of the rut.

Then again, real gross business investment way back at the turn of the century in Q1 2000 posted at $1.6 trillion. This means that during the entirety of this century to date—over two Keynesian booms and one bust—-the trend growth rate has been only 2.3% per annum.

And that get’s us to the skunk in the woodpile. During the same 18 year period, real capital consumption by the business sector rose from $1.09 trillion to $1.91 trillion or by 3.2% per annum.

Stated differently, over the course of the last two business cycles, the  growth rate of real capital consumption was far higher than that of real gross investment. The US economy was essentially eating is seed corn.

In fact, real net business investment back in Q1 2000 was $508 billion at an annual rate or about 3.3% higher than the $492 billion rate posted for the quarter just ended (Q1 2018).

Moreover, if you look at the three elements that comprise business investment, the story is pretty much the same.

Real net investment in structures printed at $129 billion in Q1 2018, but that represented a negative 2.5% annual growth since Q1 2000 when the number clocked in at $203 billion (all figures in 2009$).

Likewise, real net investment in intellectual property was essentially flat at $104 billion over the period; and real net investment in equipment of $261 billion during the period just ended reflected a growth rate of just 0.95% per annum—and that goes all the way back to the approximate time that Bill Clinton explained to the world what the meaning of “is’ is.

It goes without saying that zero growth in real net investment for 18 years running is something new under the sun, and not in a good way; and not in a way which is remotely compatible with Wall Street’s current 54% earnings growth hockey stick over the next two years.

Indeed, the weakness of the US economy at the 106 month stage of the current cycle could not be more dramatically underscored than by way of comparison with what happened during the 1990s record expansion (119 months).

During that 10-year period, real nest business investment grew from $169 billion (1990) to $526 billion (2000) or by 12.0% per annum.

Even then, the 1990s business cycle did expire in March 2001. Thereupon followed a modest recession over the next several quarters— until Greenspan threw open the monetary spigots and ignited the housing and credit bubble that ended in tears in September 2008.

And that dials us into the other skunk in the woodpile this time around. Namely, record levels of total public and private debt and a national leverage ratio that remains in the nosebleed section of history.

And that, too, contrasts dramatically with the earlier long-lived cycles. Thus, back during the 105 month expansion of the 1960s, the initial debt level during Q3 1960 was $777 billion, which represented 1.42X GDP. When the expansion finally ended in Q4 1969, the total public and private debt level had risen to $1.04 trillion, but was still just 1.48X GDP.

In a word, the debt burden was low and in keeping with the 100-year trend at about 1.5X national income; and the implicit leverage ratio had not increased measurably.

Likewise, during the 1990s boom, the initial debt levels was $13.8 trillion, which represented 2.3X GDP; and the ending level in December 2000 was $29.0 trillion and represented 2.8X GDP.

So the leverage ratio grew materially during the so-called Greenspan tech boom of the 1990s, but it was at least accompanied by a robust rate of net investment growth, which as shown above tripled over the 10-year period.

By contrast, the starting debt in December 2007 was $52.6 trillion. That represented 3.58X GDP and was evidence of the national LBO which occurred after the inauguration of Bubble Finance in October 1987.

Needless to say, the last eight years of  so-called recovery have produced virtually no deleveraging, with total public and private debt now at $68.6 trillion or still 3.47X GDP.

In short, the second longest expansion in recorded US history has been accompanied by zero real net investment growth and a $16 trillion increase in nominal debt.

At the same time, as we showed in Part 1, industrial production has also flat-lined as have real median household incomes. In fact, between 1999 and 2016, real median incomes grew by the grand sum of $22 per year.

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In other words, the main street economy has essentially gone nowhere during the last decade and one-half and is heading for even weaker results ahead— given the current staggering debt burden and the deep deficiency of real net investment.

Only if you credit Mickey D’s with earnings growth of 22% during the recent quarter could you possibly conclude that now is the time to buy the dip.

In fact, what is actually heading for a dip is the current aging, frail business cycle. And this time the Fed will not be at the ready with firehouse and ladder.

Indeed, the Eccles Building is now hell-bent on administering the bleeding cure of QT; and that’s not the way the other two long expansions ended, either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Monday, April 30, 2018

FDA finds weedkiller in array of foods, internal emails show

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The FDA has been testing food samples for traces of glyphosate for two years, but the agency has not yet released any official results

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