Sri Lankan Authorities May Have Fallen Into a Trap Set by a Foreign Power
By Adam Garrie | EurasiaFuture | 2019-04-22
The entire world remains confronted with the horrors that unfolded yesterday throughout Sri Lanka. Whilst the country remains under curfew, the authorities have pinned the blame for the attack on an obscure group called National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ). NTJ is reportedly an Islamist terror group that as noted by Sri Lankan authorities, has multiple links to foreign countries. The links to foreign countries appears to hold the key to determining who is really behind the attacks. Notably, it has been confirmed by journalists that the group trains in Chennai in Tamil Nadu – the same location where LTTE had previously trained.
As the Muslim population of Sri Lanka is less than 8% of the country’s entire population, it is difficult to conceive that any genuine local Islamist group would seek to stage such massive attacks when the possibility of any material gain would be limited by the fact that not only is Sri Lanka’s Muslim population at harmony with the Buddhist majority, but the population of Muslims is incredibly small. This contrasts sharply with the situation in Syria where a Sunni Muslim majority was weaponized against a leadership comprised of the minority Alawite faction.
Therefore, due to NTJ’s foreign links, it is highly likely that a foreign entity, most likely a foreign state or state intelligence agency was behind the attacks and that the men on the ground who have been captured are merely pawns in a much larger and even more dangerous game. When it comes to seeking to pin-pointing the country with a clear motive for orchestrating the attacks, India is the one that springs immediately to mind, not least because NTJ trains where the LTTE once did.
India has a long history of seeking to manipulate the power balance in Sri Lanka in order to turn the country into something of an Indian protectorate. These attempts have notably been resisted by most contemporary Sri Lankan leaders who seek an independent foreign policy that aims at securing win-win friendship not only with India but crucially, also with China and Pakistan.
In spite of this, India was one of the first open backers of the LTTE’s reign of terrorism that gripped Sri Lanka beginning in 1983. India ultimately paid a price for its dithering in the early stages of the Sri Lankan civil war. By the end of the 1987, India had given up on LTTE and instead sought to influence the situation by committing a deeply controversial peace keeping force to Sri Lanka whose overall effect only served to provoke further violence. As a result of India’s 1987 decision to publicly “switch sides”, LTTE assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. In spite of this, it has been widely known in Sri Lanka and elsewhere that in spite of the official rhetoric in New Delhi, India’s RAW intelligence agency resumed covert support of LTTE later in the 1990s.
Since the end of the war against LTTE in 2009, India has sought to monopolise foreign influence in a post-war Sri Lanka that has developed ever more economic ties with China and plays a key role in the Belt and Road initiative. This has clearly been a source of consternation for an Indian state that has a track record of meddling in the affairs of both Sri Lanka and the much smaller Maldives. In both Sri Lanka and the Maldives, political factions are often divided by foreign observers into a pro-India side and a pro-China side. Although such divisions are not black and white, there is a level of truth to such descriptions. As such, India recently engaged in what geopolitical expert Andrew Kroybko described as a “electoral regime change in the Maldives”. This came after the prominent BJP supporter Subramanian Swamy called for a traditional war against the Maldives.
India was clearly looking to the south both in terms of Maldives and Sri Lanka for much of late 2018 and early 2019. Beginning in late 2018, Sri Lanka experienced a serious political crisis after President Maithripala Sirisena abruptly sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replaced him with former political rival (and former President) Mahinda Rajapaksa. According to Sirisena and his supporters, the proximate causes of Wickremesinghe’s dismissal were personal, cultural and class differences that Sirisena called irreconcilable. Furthermore, it was claimed by some in the Sri Lankan press that the sacking of Wickremesinghe was due to an Indian backed assassination plot against the President which resulted in the abrupt about face in respect of the Sri Lankan President’s loyalty. Later however, Sirisena assured Indian Premier Modi that he had never made such an accusation.
But while Sirisena took the time to assure India that stories regarding an Indian assassination plot are ‘fake news’, an inevitable geopolitical justification for Wickremesinghe’s sacking was offered from many quarters of Indian media.
According to the Indian narrative throughout the end of the 2018, the traditionally/”formerly” pro-India Sirisena dismissed the pro-India Wickremesinghe in favour of the pro-China Rajapaksa due to pressure from Beijing. Of course, no one has been able to present any evidence of any Chinese involvement in the matter while China itself has taken a diplomatic line on the matter that has respected Sirisena’s decision in a rather subdued manner.
Ultimately, the courts overruled Sirisena and Wickremesinghe has continued to serve as the country’s Prime Minister.
Whilst the saga which pitted Wickremesinghe against Rajapaksa on the orders of Sirisena does ultimately seem to have been a completely internal matter, India clearly has not forgotten that Sirisena had moved to install a Prime Minister who ostensibly was more favourable to China and less so to India. As Sri Lanka is a much larger country than Maldives, meddling in the political situation was clearly going to be more difficult than the “electoral regime change” that New Delhi pulled off in Malé. Beyond this, whilst Indian media did their best to meddle in the situation in Sri Lanka during late 2018 and early 2019, this may well not have been enough to satisfy elements of the Indian deep state seeking revenge against Sirisena.
Beyond this, the timing of the attacks is incredibly suspicious. After India’s recent provocation against Pakistan resulted in humiliation after Pakistan downed two Indian jets and safely captured and later released an Indian pilot, it can be logically deduced that India sought to create a different regional disturbance against a target that is generally seen as “softer” from the Indian perspective vis-a-vis Pakistan.
As Sri Lanka defeated LTTE ten years ago, the atmosphere of peace that had prevailed may well have created a false sense of security that was ripe for exploitation. Even before Colombo named an obscure Islamist group as the culprits of the attacks, Indian politicians up to and including Narendra Modi began banging the drums of jingoistic Islamophobia as is par for the course when it comes to the radical Hindutva BJP.
Therefore, when one connects the dots, one sees that India stands to uniquely benefit from Sri Lanka’s turmoil not only in terms of internal electoral politics but in terms of weakening a Sri Lankan government that in spite of its allegedly pro-India Prime Minister maintains healthy and growing ties to China and Belt and Road. Thus, the attack could well serve as a “punishment” for Sri Lanka’s “crime” of moving closer towards Belt and Road. Making matters all the more beneficial for India is that a relative of the Bangladesh Prime Minister’s family was also killed in the attack which took place on a five star hotel in which he was staying. It cannot be ruled out that RAW had knowledge of this and specially targeted the hotel in order to inevitably inflame Bangladeshi sentiment against Sri Lanka for its self-evident security failure.
Taken as a whole, India has clear motives for seeking to destabilise Sri Lanka at this time. What’s left for Sri Lankan investigators to do is make the foreign links of NTJ known to the wider world whilst Sri Lanka must also record and make public the voices of the surviving suspects so that experts can determine if the suspects speak in the language, dialect and vernacular that one would expect. Also, the bodies of the terrorists must be examined to determine whether they are circumcised or not. This is crucial as previous Indian false flag attacks have involved non-circumcised men (therefore not Muslims) participating in allegedly Islamist attacks whilst also, previous false flag attacks in India allegedly involving Pakistanis were later exposed due to the fact that the “Pakistani” suspects could not speak Urdu or any other official Pakistani language but instead spoke in languages and vernaculars common only to India.
Therefore, while it cannot be concluded with certainty that yesterday’s atrocity was a false flag attack, it can certainly not be ruled out. As such, anyone with a clear motive for conducting a false flag attack should be thoroughly investigated by the Sri Lankan authorities.
Combatting Anti-Semitism: Washington Goes to War for World Jewry
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | April 21, 2019
One of the most extraordinary displays of Jewish power in the United States took place in the State Department press briefing room on April 11th though it went virtually unreported in the mainstream media. It involved the introduction to the media of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Elan S. Carr, who had been sworn in earlier that day by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Carr, who will “lead United States policies and projects aimed at countering anti-Semitism throughout the world,” is a former Los Angeles prosecutor, who is, of course, Jewish, and ran for Congress in 2014 declaring that he was a “reliable vote for Israel.” He believes U.S. support for Israel should be “constant, unequivocal and bipartisan.” Carr speaks Hebrew, boasts about his visits to Israel every year and is a protege of GOP casino magnate and mega-donor Sheldon Adelson.
The State Department already has an Office of International Religious Freedom which inter alia seeks to “Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries” while also “identify[ing] and denounce[ing] regimes that are severe persecutors on the basis of religious belief.” It would seem that the International Religious Freedom office has all the bases covered, but there is apparently the Jewish exception rule that operates across the federal government and even at state levels. Jews, definable both as a religion and an ethnicity, clearly require more protection from government than other groups even though they are the most wealthy and politically powerful segment of the population both in the United States as well as in numerous European and Anglophone countries where they have a significant presence.
Here in America, Jewish organizations already benefit directly and grossly disproportionately as recipients of over 90% of Department of Homeland Security discretionary funds to protect their buildings and offices and such largesse is also the rule in countries like Britain and France. Holocaust education is mandatory in nearly all school districts, presumably to depict both Israel and Jews in a favorable light, and legislation to penalize or even criminalize any criticism of Israel is now in place in a majority of American states. Criticism of Israel is already regarded by the federal government as de facto anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism is itself considered a hate crime, subject to harsh penalties.
The United States is now committed to protecting Jews worldwide, with Carr putting it this way in a comment he made at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in February, shortly after he was nominated: “My office was created by law and designed to protect the Jewish people throughout the world. Think about that. The world’s greatest power is focused, by law and design, on protecting the Jews.”
One is hard pressed to find in the Constitution of the United States some mention of the “law or design” that mandated protecting one particular ethno-religious group worldwide at taxpayer expense. Nor has there ever been a referendum on the question of whether Jews should be protected by Washington no matter where they live. Indeed, if there is a religious group that is facing extinction it is Christians in the birthplace of the religion in the Middle East, but there is little advocacy on the part of the U.S. government regarding their plight because it is Israel that has been actively engaged in creating unfavorable conditions for Palestinian Christians that eventually lead them to emigrate. It is called ethnic cleansing to make the Jewish state truly and completely Jewish. Ironically, Christians are better protected in neighboring majority Muslim countries Syria, Lebanon and even in Iran.
To be reminded once again just how powerful Jewish interests are in the United States, it is only necessary to examine some of Carr’s remarks. He is, of course, an opponent of the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which seeks to apply economic pressure against Israel to persuade it to end its colonization of the Arab West Bank and its ruthless suppression of the Palestinians.
Carr regards it as an “honor” to be sworn in to “fight against anti-Semitism, to the protection of the Jewish people throughout the world, and to the support for the Jewish state.” He intends to do that by “ focus[ing] relentlessly on eradicating this false distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.” He elaborated that “… if there is an organized movement to economically strangle the state of Israel, that is anti-Semitic, and the administration has gone on the record for – as being opposed unequivocally to the BDS movement and the idea that somehow there can be movements organized to deny Israel its legitimacy and not to allow Israel to participate in economic commerce in the world – sure, that is. Hatred of the Jewish state is hatred of the Jewish people, and that’s something that’s very clear and that is our policy.”
Carr, responding to a question, also discussed what is now the U.S. government’s accepted definition of anti-Semitism, that “Criticism of the policies of any country, whether it’s the state of Israel or of the United States, is entirely proper and can’t be regarded as being inappropriate. However, as you may know, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism gives as a specific example the application of double standards to the state of Israel. And so if Israel is criticized in a way that no other country in a similar circumstance is criticized, yes, that is anti-Semitism.”
A journalist asked “Having covered the Israeli-Palestinian issues for – like many other people in this room – for a very, very long time, we know that U.S. former President Jimmy Carter did refer to Israel as an apartheid state, that it’s more of a human rights issue, especially with – in terms of policy. And a lot of things that the Trump administration has done – moving the U.S. embassy, recognizing the sovereignty of Israel over the Golan Heights – as not recognized under the international community. Can you tell me why you think Israeli settlements and a boycott, which was reminiscent of sort of South African sanctions issues and divestment, is an anti-Semitic issue specifically and not really one of more of a human rights or two peoples that need to get along?”
Carr responded: “I think any comparison between the state of Israel and apartheid is offensive to its core, and anyone who makes that comparison needs to check their facts. Israel is an exemplar of a democracy with democratic values, where all citizens of Israel not only vote but have representation in the Knesset, including, by the way, in the election we saw just yesterday. And so any notion that the state of Israel, which is a shining example of a democracy and a shining example of an American ally, one of our best allies – any suggestion that the state of Israel in any way, even remotely, reflects apartheid is offensive.”
Elan Carr is living on fantasy island, but he knows perfectly well that within the framework of the United States government he can say all the good things he wants about Israel while simultaneously labeling its critics as evil, even if you have to make things up, which he does when he claims repeatedly that BDS is seeking to “strangle” the Jewish state. He certainly knows perfectly well that hatred of the Jewish state is not hatred of the Jewish people but chooses to ignore the fact that Israel is criticized for how it behaves not because of what religion it claims to represent. If it is uniquely criticized it is because its record of war crimes is unique.
And Carr also should understand but clearly chooses not to, that criticism of Israel is not equatable to anti-Semitism but for the fact that he offers a definition designed to come to that conclusion. And even if it were so, there is that pesky thing called the First Amendment. Israel is no “shining example of democracy,” nor is it an ally of the United States. It is a perfect example of an essentially racist apartheid state, worse than South Africa was before it democratized, and it is also a parasite that has completely corrupted America’s body politic, which is why Carr has the position that he holds.
Finally, the United States has no moral or legal authority to police the world on behalf of international Jewry. It does not need a Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism to lead it on a crusade – dare I use that word in this context – to fix the world and make it a more comfortable and enriching experience for people like Elan Carr. American taxpayers should not be required to support this kind of entitlement nonsense, particularly as Israel and worldwide Jewish communities are wealthy and powerful enough to protect themselves without having to bleed the rest of the world by virtue of an unending victim narrative that generates a guilt trip relating to events in Europe seventy years ago. Will Americans ever arrive at a point where Israel and its diaspora helpmates like Carr will just leave the rest of us alone? One can only hope.
The Splendid Peter Ridd Court Judgment
James Cook University took 28 separate actions against Professor Ridd. Each of them, including his termination, has been declared unlawful.
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | April 22, 2019
Few victories are as complete as the one achieved last week by Peter Ridd in the Federal Circuit Court of Australia.
A former head of the physics department at James Cook University, Ridd was fired after questioning the reliability of Great Barrier Reef research produced by some of his colleagues.
To quote the editor-in-chief of The Lancet, “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” Whenever third parties attempt to replicate published research, they often get different answers altogether. Since government decisions can throw people out of work, disrupt families, and destroy communities, Ridd thinks it’s a bad idea to base government policy on research that hasn’t been double-checked.
This saga began in December 2015, after Ridd sent an e-mail to journalist Peter Michael of the Courier-Mail outlining his concerns about the misleading use of Great Barrier Reef photographs and other matters. His e-mail offered to condense his thoughts for publication, but also urged the newspaper to ask pointed questions of those in charge of two publicly funded organizations affiliated with his own university.
Some journalists go to jail to protect their sources. Peter Michael instead forwarded Ridd’s e-mail whole cloth to Terry Hughes, the director of one of those entities. Less than two hours after receiving it, Hughes informed a James Cook administrator that he wanted to “make a formal complaint” against Ridd for attacking his integrity.
There’s no indication that Hughes or anyone else at James Cook has ever addressed Ridd’s concerns. When the powers-that-be swung into action, silencing him was apparently the only thing on their mind.
Universities are supposed to be places of rigorous inquiry and vigorous debate. Academic tenure is supposed to prevent exactly this situation: a professor being hounded from campus for expressing unfashionable views.
Ridd’s superiors insist his criticism of his colleagues wasn’t the problem. The way he criticized them was. In other words, their position is that bad manners is a firing offence.
Between April 2016 and May 2018, James Cook University took 28 separate actions against Ridd. Each of them, including his termination, was declared unlawful by Judge Salvatore Vasta last week (see the full list, three pages long, here).
Vasta determined that the university’s relationship with its staff is governed first and foremost by an employment contract ratified by Australia’s Fair Work Commission. That contract can’t be altered without the federal agency’s say-so, and was described by the judge as “the basis from which other [university] documents gain their power.”
Clause 14 of the contract is devoted to Intellectual Freedom, a concept Judge Vasta calls “the cornerstone upon which the University exists. If the cornerstone is removed, the building tumbles.”
Clause 14 clearly proclaims James Cook to be an institution of independent thought where professors have the right to participate in public debate. It says “ideas may be put forward and opinion expressed freely,” including “unpopular or controversial views,” so long as the professors doing so don’t “harass, vilify, bully or intimidate those who disagree…”
Since Ridd hasn’t harassed, vilified, bullied, or intimidated anyone, the university has never claimed that Clause 14’s built-in limits apply.
Instead, those in charge have argued that a right recognized and affirmed by the Fair Work Commission isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. They say professors are only entitled to that right if they also abide by the university’s homegrown Code of Conduct, a rambling document that talks vaguely about “the collegial and academic spirit,” and instructs employees to “celebrate diversity.”
Ridd’s first Formal Censure said he’d violated the Code by failing to behave in a collegial manner and failing to respect the reputations of his colleagues (the only reputation actually mentioned in the Code is that of the university). It also claimed he’d gone to the media in a manner that “did not respect the rights of others.”
Judge Vasta observed that the university neglected to explain “exactly how this was not collegial or how the rights of others were not respected.” It just declared Ridd guilty of misconduct.
Using words such as “extraordinary” and “simply absurd,” the judge ruled that the Code of Conduct cannot be used as a mechanism to rob professors of something that has been guaranteed to them via the Fair Work Commission. In his words:
Clause 14 means that it is the right of Professor Ridd to say what he has said in any manner that he likes so long as he does not contravene the sanctions embedded in cl. 14. (my italics)
A few pages later, matters become crystal clear:
The termination of Professor Ridd’s employment was unlawful because it punished Professor Ridd for conduct that was protected by cl.14…
Case closed.
What Will It Take To End Anti-Greenhouse Gas Insanity?
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | April 15, 2019
It was nearly six years ago, in one of the very early posts on this blog, that I wrote as to the global warming scam, “[E]ven as the cause becomes more and more ridiculous, the advocates just double down again and again.” At the time, world temperatures had failed to rise in accordance with alarmist predictions for about 15 years running, and I still had the naive idea that the politics of this issue ultimately would follow the scientific method; in other words, that the hypothesis of catastrophic human-caused warming would inevitably be forced to face the test of empirical evidence. Over time, empirical evidence would accumulate. As it became more and more clear that the evidence failed to support the hypothesis, the whole thing would gradually fade away. But up to that point, as I reported in that April 2013 post, what was happening was closer to the opposite. Extremely weak or completely negative empirical evidence for the hypothesis only made the advocates more and more extreme in their demands for immediate transformation of the world economy to “save the planet.”
The intervening six years have seen the ongoing accumulation of considerably more evidence, essentially all of it negative to the catastrophic global warming hypothesis, but my faith that actual evidence could resolve the issue has been almost completely shattered. Massive alterations have been made to the world thermometer temperature records by US and UK bureaucrats — almost entirely to reduce early-year temperatures and thereby create an apparent warming trend far greater than exists in the raw data. I have covered this issue extensively in a now-twenty-two part series “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time.” Meanwhile, every hurricane, tornado, drought, flood, or other damaging act of nature is presented by the progressive press as evidence of human-caused “climate change” — even as the actual occurrences of such events have been definitively shown to have no increasing trend over time. Actual evidence gets massively altered, buried and/or ignored.
And now here we are in 2019, and the demands of the anti-greenhouse gas activists have only become more shrill and strident. Exhibit A is the so-called Green New Deal, a call to end most or all GHG emissions by 2030 at a cost of maybe 100 trillion dollars or so. And we are treated to claims by seemingly serious elected officials that the world will end in 12 years if we do not follow these prescriptions. If mere adverse empirical evidence cannot end this insanity, what can?
Here’s what I think will put this to an end: the actual implementation by some jurisdictions of the activists’ preferred policies, all of which would impose massive costs on the people with no measurable impacts on world temperatures or the climate. The problem with expecting the scientific method to resolve this issue is that very few people have the time or inclination to follow empirical evidence of world temperatures to see if they are rising in accordance with predictions. Even fewer people are willing to get into the nitty gritty to evaluate alterations to the temperature data to see if they are legitimate. But almost everybody will notice immediately when their electricity bill gets tripled.
The process of imposing massive costs on the voting public in the name of saving the planet has been proceeding slowly in many places, and only very recently has this process started to face the beginnings of political blowback. For example, in Germany, the so-called Energiewende began in 2010, and over the ensuing near-decade has gradually brought consumer electricity prices in that country to about triple the US average, with minimal reductions in actual greenhouse gas emissions. Seven plus years into this, in the late-2017 elections, two climate skeptic parties (Free Democrats and Alliance for Germany) went from almost nothing to winning some 24.6% of the seats in the Bundestag. South Australia is an even more complex political situation, but they have also seen fanatic imposition of a “green” energy agenda, with vast increases in “renewable” electricity generation, the closing of coal plants, leading to several massive blackouts, and electricity prices also rising to about triple the US average. This has definitely become a major political issue. And just yesterday in Finland, a climate skeptic party called the Finns Party got 17.5% of the votes and 39 seats in parliamentary elections where the biggest establishment party (Social Democrats) got only 17.7% and 40 seats. Many sources report that the election was dominated by the Finns Party’s rallying cry of “climate hysteria.”
Here in my home city of New York, so far it has been all talk and not much action on the front of “fighting climate change” by forcibly suppressing greenhouse gas emissions. But that may all be about to change. A new omnibus package of “climate” bills has just been introduced in the City Council, seeking to go all in on every ridiculously expensive and completely ineffective policy you can think of, supposedly to “save the planet.” The Huffington Post has a big write-up here. Allegedly this monstrosity is going to come up for a vote as early as a week from today, April 22, aka “Earth Day.”
From the lead sponsor:
“This is about saving New York City,” Councilman Costa Constantinides, the Queens Democrat leading the effort. . . . “This is saving the city as we know it.”
This guy actually has the idea that he can stop bad weather or sea level rise or something by ordering the people of New York City (about 0.1% of the world’s population) to change their energy sources or use less energy or otherwise stop their sinning. How about some specifics?
The heart of the legislation is a measure requiring buildings of over 25,000 square feet ― the biggest source of carbon pollution in the city ― to install new windows, insulation and other retrofits to become more energy efficient. Starting in 2024, the legislation orders landlords to slash emissions 40% by 2030, and double the cuts by 2050.
Well, I have some experience as a building owner, and I can tell you that you can replace all the windows and insulate to your heart’s content, and you are not going to reduce your building’s energy usage by anything close to 40%, let alone 80%. In addition to which, most large buildings have long since made these upgrades. But hey, these are evil landlords, so we can just order them to do it, and it will happen.
And how about some other things we can order evil companies to do:
The full Climate Mobilization Act package goes further. One bill orders the city to complete a study over the next two years on the feasibility of closing all 24 oil- and gas-burning power plants in city limits and replacing them with renewables and batteries. Another establishes a renewable energy loan program. Two more require certain buildings to cover roofs with plants, solar panels, small wind turbines or a mix of the three. The last in this initial bunch tweaks the city’s building code to make it easier to build wind turbines.
These are some things with the real possibility of increasing our costs of electricity by big multiples. You might think I would strenuously oppose the bills, given that I am a designated guinea pig and victim for an experiment that can’t possibly end in anything other than abject failure. But you would be wrong. I say, let them try this nonsense, and the sooner and faster the better. That’s the only way that the inattentive multitudes will finally wake up. And, when electricity bills or gasoline prices or rents multiply by factors of three, or maybe five, then wake up they will. The insane politics of New York City might seem completely impervious to change, but that’s because the limits have not yet been tested. Going down this road could finally lead to a 180 degree reversal. I say, go for it!
North Korea pitched state-of-the-art submarine system to Taiwan military: report
By Sophia Yang -Taiwan News – 2019/04/05
TAIPEI — As Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine project is underway, media reported the North Korean government years ago reached out to Taiwan’s military in an attempt to sell its advanced marine propulsion technology – Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) – for the project.
People familiar with the matter told UPmedia that a number of submarine builders and software providers from the United States, Europe among 16 other countries showed their interest in participating in the country’s indigenous submarine project. To the military department’s surprise, the North Korean military was among the bidders, reportedly pitching their products through a Taiwanese trading company.
The name of the trading company was not disclosed in the news story.
The report indicated that the company was pitching on behalf of the isolated nation, which has been enduring severe financial stress under the sanctions imposed by international bodies and a number of countries. The products on the list included North Korea’s miniature Yono-class submarine, Yugo-class submarine, Sang-O-class submarine, as well as the North Korean self-made AIP system.
The system is believed to enable the submarine to remain submerged for up to four weeks to better extend its underwater endurance, compared to an underwater endurance of only a few days in traditional diesel-electric submarines.
A submarine expert working for Taiwan’s military reportedly made a fact-checking trip years ago to the China-DPRK border city of Dandong to meet the North Korean military officials, from whom the expert verified the authenticity of the bid and its capability to carry out the task. However, Taiwan’s military eventually didn’t consider the technologies out of concern that it would violate UN sanctions against North Korea.
Also, recently at a press event, a military official told media that Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine would not be equipped with the advanced and expensive AIP system, but will consider it for the other indigenous submarines in the future.
Trump, Erdogan seek reset of US-Turkey ties
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | April 21, 2019
Even as the countdown has begun before the first batch of Russian-made S-400 missiles will arrive in Turkey — expected in coming ten weeks from now — a crisis situation envelops the Turkish-American relationship. No doubt, this crisis, unless resolved in the coming days or weeks, could have profound consequences for the future of the western alliance system as a whole and the geopolitics of Eurasia and the Middle East.
What distinguishes the crisis from the run-of-the-mill spats that keep frequenting the Turkey-US relationship every now and then is that at issue here is Turkey’s vulnerability, if it proceeds with the S-400 deal, to US retribution under the 2017 law known as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA, which is directed against Russian arms industry but becomes applicable to third parties that enter into arms deals with Moscow.
If CAATSA sanctions click in, Turkey, which is mired in recession due to the US pressure tactic on its economy, may descend into a free fall of its currency. Incipient signs are already available. Even minor US sanctions could trigger another sharp sell-off in the Turkish lira that deepens the recession. Last year, Turkish lira shed 30 percent of its value, and the currency is down another 10 percent recently, and markets remain on edge.
Simply put, Turkey is so much integrated into the western economies and banking system that any US sanctions would inevitably have a crippling effect. And if there is one message out of Turkey’s recent local elections, it is that the state of the domestic economy could directly impact President Recep Erdogan’s political standing. The point is, despite all the brave chatter about dethroning the dollar, the hard reality is that the US is in a position to “weaponise” the dollar for the foreseeable future and all the King’s men and all the King’s horses — in Moscow and Beijing or Tehran and Caracas or wherever — have to live with that reality.
Besides, in Turkey’s case, a life outside the Western system is simply unthinkable. The Turkish elite are acutely conscious of Ataturk’s legacy that the modernisation of the country demands integration with the West. True, Turkey under President Recep Erdogan is redefining its identity but reclaiming Ottoman legacies in the Muslim Middle East does not and will not mean turning the back on Europe. Paradoxically, Turkey’s strategic autonomy is best preserved by being part of the western alliance system, considering the country’s tough neighbourhood.
No doubt, the stakes are high for Turkey. Unsurprisingly, soon after the visit to Moscow on April 8, Erdogan decided to depute a high-powered team of officials to Washington. The indications are that Erdogan came away from Moscow not quite convinced of the Kremlin’s assiduous wooing of him with an alternative non-western road map for Turkey’s future. At any rate, a team of senior Turkish ministers visited Washington last week for talks aimed at easing the crisis, which included the powerful Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, son-in-law of Erdogan.
The hugely consequential mission of Turkish ministers (which also included Defence Minister Hulusi Akar and Erdogan’s key advisor Ibrahim Kalin) culminated in an unexpected Oval Office meeting for Albayrak with President Donald Trump, with only son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin present.
Turkish officials have since exuded optimism that Trump has a “more positive attitude” to Turkey’s pleas than the US Congress where Turkey has almost no cheerleaders.
The catch, however, is that CAATSA, which was legislated in the backdrop of Trump’s alleged “Russia collusion”, has been written precisely with the idea that Trump will have no loopholes to bypass it or dilute the sanctions legislation against Russian arms industry. In fact, for granting a waiver to Turkey in the present case, Trump by law would have to show that the S-400 purchase was not a “significant transaction”, and that it would not endanger the integrity of NATO or adversely affect US military operations.
Again, Trump would also need to show in a letter to congressional committees that the S-400 missile deal would not lead to a “significant negative impact” on US-Turkish cooperation, and that Turkey is taking, or will take, steps over a specific period to reduce its Russian-made defence equipment and weapons. It is a difficult proposition, but doable — provided there is political will.
Trump’s decision to receive Albayrak — it is absolutely unprecedented for POTUS to hold talks with a visiting finance minister — signals that the great dealmaker is on the prowl and would have some formula under his sleeve. Significantly, Trump has not weighed in on Turkey in recent weeks. A senior Turkish official told Reuters that the talks in Washington were “more positive than expected” and the Americans expressed “a softer tone” than they take in public. Another Turkish official added, “There might certainly be some steps to be taken but the search for common ground will continue.”
The Acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters on Thursday: “We’re closer” to a final decision on the S-400s after a meeting with his Turkish counterpart. “It’s like: ‘OK, where are we stuck? How do we get unstuck?” he said of the talks, adding he was optimistic and hopeful of visiting Turkey for the formal transfer of F-35 stealth aircraft, which Turkey plans to buy and Washington is threatening to block if Turkey pressed ahead with the S-400 deal with Russia.
Of course, the Turkish-American relationship is littered with several other disputes too — military strategy in the Syrian conflict, Iran sanctions, Turkey’s extradition request to Washington in regard of the Muslim cleric Fetullah Gulen (whom Ankara blames for a failed 2016 military coup) and so on. But the crisis over the S-400 missile deal is the mother of all disputes, since it is directly linked to the viability of the 7-decades old Turkish-American alliance, the Russian strategies in the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean, US-Russia tensions and the US’ capacity to influence the Middle East politics as a whole.
What is happening is that after a brinkmanship played out through months at different levels, the crisis over the S-400 affair is reaching a nail-biting finish, with Turkey and the US having reached the edge of the precipice, peering into the abyss and not liking what they see in the darkness and groping for a way to pull back somehow. If they succeed, it will have to be on a “win-win” basis. Read a commentary in the pro-government Turkish daily Sabah entitled This picture gives us hope.
David Attenborough’s BBC show would better have been called “Climate: Change The Facts”
Reviewing “Climate Change: the Facts” | April 21, 2019
… If you are going to present a film called Climate Change: the Facts the very least you should be doing is, well, presenting the facts. Well here they are, in two of the areas which made up such a hefty part of the film: wildfires and hurricanes. Are wildfires increasing? They are according to Attenborough. One of the scientists who takes part in the programme, Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University, goes as far as to say there has been a “tripling in the extent of wildfires in the Western US”. He is not specific about his evidence for this claim, nor said over what timeframe wildfires are supposed to have trebled, but it is not a fair assessment of the data collected by the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA). This shows no upwards trend in the number of wildfires in the US over the past 30 years.
But then again, go back further, to the 1920s, and you see that both the number of US wildfires and acreage burned in them has plummeted.
That is nothing to do with the climate – more down to firefighters getting better at tackling fires. But that reduction in wildfires – which, after all, were occurring naturally long before Europeans arrived in the US – has brought with it a problem: deadwood is not being cleared out at the rate which it used to be. As a result, when a wildfire does take hold, it tends to be a more powerful fire, which is one reason large acreages tend to get burned when fires do take hold. That was a large part of the debate which followed the wildfires in California last November.
But I know what will have entered the heads of many of Attenborough’s viewers: that wildfires are being caused by climate change and that is that. […]
The same will be true for hurricanes. If you are a child, for whom hurricanes are a novel phenomenon, watching the film will have given you the impression that hurricanes are pretty much a function of man-made climate change. A voiceover, indeed, makes the claim that climate change is causing ‘greater storms’. But again, the data on cyclone activity in the Atlantic, Gulf and Mexico and Caribbean does not support that idea. Figure one shows a very slight upwards trend in the number of hurricanes occurring in these waters but a flat or perhaps slightly downwards trend in the number of hurricanes making landfall in the US. There are two other methods of measuring hurricane activity which are used by the EPA. The first, the accumulated cyclone index (figure two) shows no obvious trend over the past 70 years. The second, the ‘power dissipation index’ shows an upwards spike in the early years of this century, followed by a reversion to mean since then.
Not that this seems to prevent documentary-makers like Attenborough resorting to footage of houses being demolished by winds and lorries being blown off bridges to show the supposed climate change we are already experiencing.
It is little wonder that terrified kids are skipping school to protest against climate change. Never mind climate change denial, a worse problem is the constant exaggeration of the subject. I had thought David Attenborough would be above resorting to the subtle propaganda which others have been propagating, linking every adverse weather event to climate change. But apparently not. — Ross Clark, The Spectator, 20 April 2019
… [W]e have already seen what can happen when ‘panic’ determines policy: the introduction of measures conceived by a need to be seen to be doing something under pressure from groups such as Extinction Rebellion.
Without making this clear, the film revealed one of the worst examples of this unfortunate effect. A powerful sequence showed an orangutan, fleeing loggers who have been eradicating Borneo’s rainforest.
This is disastrous for both wildlife and the climate because, as the film pointed out, a third of global emissions are down to deforestation, because giant trees lock up a lot of carbon.
But why are Borneo’s forests being cut down? The reason, as Attenborough said, is palm oil, a lucrative crop used in products ranging from soap to biscuits. Unfortunately, he left out the final stage of the argument.
Half of all the millions of tons of palm oil sent to Europe is used to make ‘biofuel’, thanks to an EU directive stating that, by 2020, ten per cent of forecourt fuel must come from ‘renewable’ biological sources. Malaysia says this has ‘created an unprecedented demand’.
To put it another way: misguided ‘action’ designed to save the planet is actually helping to damage it – although the EU has pledged to phase out palm oil biofuel by 2030.
Another example of a misconceived effort to save the planet is Drax power plant in Yorkshire which is fed, thanks to £700 million of annual subsidy, by ‘renewable’ wood pellets made from chopped-down American trees – while pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere than when it burnt only coal.
In theory, the trees it burns will be replaced – but a large part of its supply comes from hardwood forests that take 100 years to mature.
There are times when climate propaganda – for this is what this was – calls to mind the apocalyptic prophets of the Middle Ages, who led popular movements by preaching that the sins of human beings were so great that they could only be redeemed by suffering, in order to create a paradise on earth. Perhaps this is how Attenborough, nature journalism’s Methuselah, sees himself. But climate change is too important to be handled in this manner. It needs rational, well-informed debate. Too often, cheered on by the eco-zealots of Extinction Rebellion, the BBC is intent on encouraging quite the opposite. —David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 21 April 2019
… A former top executive at the BBC has warned that it is “at risk of being eaten” as new figures reveal that more than 880,000 television licences were cancelled last year. Cancellations among the under-75s rose from 860,192 in 2017-18 to 882,198 in the period from March 2018 to the end of February, new data shows. Mosey, 61, criticised the dumbing-down of news and “the nonsense put on social media by BBC” staff. —The Sunday Times, 21 April 2019
Fun Fictions in Economics
By Dean Baker | CEPR | April 18, 2019
Economists pride themselves on being the serious social science, the one most deserving of status as an actual science. I will let others make the comparative assessment, but there is an awful lot of nonsense that passes as serious analysis within economics. For cheap fun, I thought I would use a nice spring afternoon to highlight some of my favorites.
Myth 1: The Robots Are Taking All the Jobs
The “robots taking the jobs” story gets top place both because it is completely ridiculous and it is widely taken seriously in policy discussions. The story is ridiculous because it is directly contradicted by the data. Robots taking all the jobs is a story of rapid productivity growth. It means that we can produce the same output with fewer workers because the robots are doing work that used to be done by people. That is the definition of productivity growth.
But the productivity data refuse to cooperate with this story. This is not hard to discover. The Bureau of Economic Analysis releases data on productivity every quarter. The data show that productivity growth has been very weak in recent years, averaging just 1.3 percent annually since 2005. This compares to a rate of productivity growth of 3.0 percent in both the period from 1995 to 2005 and the long Golden Age from 1947 to 1973.
The job-killing robots story is sometimes diverted into a scenario that is just around the corner instead of being here today. Of course, we can’t definitely rule out that at some point in the future productivity will accelerate sharply, but it is worth noting that this pickup does not seem to be on the immediate horizon. Investment is not especially high as a share of GDP, averaging 13.4 percent over the last three years. That compares to 14.2 percent from 1999 to 2001, and 14.4 percent from 1980 to 1982, its post-war peak.
Investment is not even especially high in the more narrow categories of computers and information technologies, where we would expect the robots to live. This means that if businesses are about to start a mass displacement of workers with robots, they don’t seem to be spending too much money on the process.
Perhaps the most important point here is that there is no reason to assume that a pickup in productivity growth would be associated with mass unemployment and a collapse of wage income. The 1947 to 1973 Golden Age was a period of rapid wage growth, as were the years from 1995 to 2001, when the stock bubble collapsed and the economy fell into recession.
Bad economic policy can prevent workers from sharing in the benefits of productivity growth (e.g. Peter Peterson-types demanding deficit reduction, thereby reducing output and employment), but it would be crazy to blame robots because Wall Street billionaires are slowing growth and pushing the economy toward recession.
Myth 2: We Are Threatened by a Declining Population
Our policy elite can be very flexible in their thinking. At the same time that many are worried that the robots are taking all the jobs, we also have the opposite threat frequently arising in public debates, that we are running out of workers. The basic story is that the baby boomers are retiring. The generation that followed is smaller. Furthermore, fertility rates among young people are falling to record lows. So, we now face the horrible problem that we are running out of workers just as the rise of robots means we are running out of jobs.
The running out of workers story also involves incredibly sloppy thinking. Yes, a decline in the workforce means that we will have fewer workers to support each retiree. But we have been seeing declining ratios of workers to retirees for the last eight decades. This stems from the problem that people are living longer.
The declining ratio of workers to retirees has not prevented both workers and retirees from seeing rises in living standards for the simple reason that the impact of productivity growth in raising living standards swamps the impact of demographics in lowering living standards. (It’s also worth noting that children have to be supported by workers as well, so the ratio of dependents to workers is actually considerably lower today than at its peak in 1965.)
The declining population story is sometimes turned into a fear of slower growth story. Other things equal, slower workforce growth will mean slower GDP growth. This should bring the obvious response, “who cares?” We should care about rising living standards, in which per capita growth is a factor. There is no obvious benefit in having more rapid growth due to a larger population. In fact, insofar as there are negative externalities not picked up in GDP (e.g. congestion and pollution), we should be happier if the population is growing less rapidly or shrinking.
There is a serious issue here that because of poor family supports, such as the availability of quality daycare and inadequate family leave policy, many people feel they cannot afford to have children. That is a genuine problem, but this is because people should be able to have children, not because society needs their kids.
Myth 3: Technology Is Shifting Income Upwards to the More Skilled
The slightly coherent version of the robots taking our jobs story is that technology is causing an upward redistribution of income to those who have the sophisticated skills needed to master the technology. This is the old “skills-biased technical change” argument that my friends Larry Mishel and Jared Bernstein did a great job decimating two decades ago.
Not only does the data not support the story of an increasingly rapid shift in labor demand to more skilled labor, the logic of the argument skips a key factor. The price commanded by new technologies, and therefore the demand for associated labor, is determined by policy, not the technology.
To be specific, the amount of money that goes to people developing software, artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals, robots and other areas thought of as being at the technological frontier depends on the length and strength of patent and copyright protection. Shorter and weaker protections (or no protections) would send the price of these items plummeting. It would also mean much less demand for labor in these areas and much lower pay for the highly skilled workers in related occupations.
Arguably we benefit from having stronger and longer patent and copyright protection (I don’t think so), but the fact that these are government policies is not arguable. Insofar as there actually is a shift in income to people with skills in technology-related fields this is a result of policy choices, not the technology itself.
Myth 4: The Government Debt Will Impoverish Our Kids
An evergreen whine from the policy elite is that the government debt is going bankrupt our kids because they will be stuck paying it off. This one is so off the mark that it is difficult to know where to begin.
First of all, the debt involves payments within a generation, not between generations. At some point all of us profligate types will all be dead, so we will not be around to collect the interest on the debt. The rich ones among us will own government bonds, which they will presumably pass on to their kids. So the debt is then not an issue where our children and grandchildren will be paying us interest, but rather they will be paying interest to the children and grandchildren of Bill Gates and his friends.
That might not be a great story for those who are not children of the rich, but it can be fixed with that old-fashioned remedy of taxing the rich. In any case, the question is one of intra-generational distribution, not inter-generational distribution. It’s also worth noting that even with our relatively high debt-to-GDP ratio, the interest burden of the debt is less than 1.0 percent of GDP. That compares to the more than 3.0 percent of GDP that us baby boomer types had to pay in the 1990s when we were young.
The more serious version of the debt impoverishing our kids is that government deficits are pushing up interest rates, which in turn crowds out investment and slows growth. With nominal and real interest rates at extraordinarily low levels over the last decade, it is hard to tell this one with a straight face.
It is also worth noting that we have lost far more productive capacity (potential GDP) due to the austerity demanded by deficit hawks than we ever could have plausibly lost due to the crowding out story. In other words, the policies demanded by the “government debt will impoverish our kids” gang will cause our kids to have much lower real incomes. (The story is even worse when we consider that demands for austerity prevented measures to slow global warming.)
The other aspect missing from the debt story is that government debt is only one way that the government creates commitments for the future. When it grants patent and copyright monopolies it is also directing flows of income, often for decades in the future.
These monopolies are alternative mechanisms for paying for activities. Rather than directly paying for innovation and creative work with public funds, the government threatens to arrest people who violate the monopolies it grants, thereby allowing the monopoly holders to charge prices far above the free market price.
This gap is often quite large. By my calculations, government-granted monopolies cost us close to $370 billion (1.8 percent of GDP) a year in the case of prescription drugs alone and possibly as much as $1 trillion (5.0 percent of GDP) in total. Incredibly, the “government debt will impoverish our kids” gang never talks about the burdens created by patent and copyright monopolies.
Myth 5: Economy Threatening Bubbles Are Difficult to Detect
We saw the tenth anniversary of the Lehman bankruptcy last fall and with it a whole round of papers and conferences dedicated to the problems of the financial crisis. There was virtually no discussion of the housing bubble, the collapse of which was the real cause of the Great Recession.
There is a huge sense in which the focus on financial crises is self-serving for the economics profession. Financial instability can be difficult to anticipate. After all, many financial assets are complex, with new assets constantly being created. In many cases, there is limited data that is publicly available. Who knew that AIG had issued $600 billion worth of credit default swaps against mortgage-backed securities? This gives economists an excuse for missing the Great Recession.
By contrast, the housing bubble, whose crash sank the economy, was easy to see for anyone who pays attention to economic data. We get monthly data from the Commerce Department on residential construction. We also have the quarterly GDP data in which residential construction is a major component. It required some determined ignorance for macroeconomists not to notice the huge jump in this category, which peaked at 6.7 percent of GDP in 2005. That compares to a normal level in the neighborhood of 4.0 percent of GDP.
The unprecedented run-up in house prices was also easy to see with publicly available data. After largely tracking the overall inflation rate in the post-war era, real house prices rose 70 percent from 1996 to 2006. The fact that this increase was associated with virtually no rise in real rents might have seemed peculiar to people who know economics. Also, the fact that the vacancy rate was high and rising might also have suggested that this rise in house prices was not being driven by the fundamentals of the markets.
And, economists also should have known that a collapse of the housing bubble would lead to an end to the consumption driven by the ephemeral wealth created by the bubble. Some guy named Alan Greenspan wrote several papers on this consumption driven by housing wealth.
But rather than own up to having missed the obvious, the economics profession has decided that the problem was a mysterious financial crisis that caught everyone by surprise. Who knows where the next one may lurk?
As a policy matter, this actually has the positive effect of generating more political support for limiting abuses in the financial industry, since we are supposed to be worried that somehow bad practices will, by themselves, lead to another financial crisis and Great Recession. This is good, because finance is an intermediate good, like trucking.
We want the financial sector to be as small and simple as possible, there is no more reason to want a large financial sector than there is to want a trucking industry where goods are shipped back and forth for no reason. The financial industry has been both a major source of waste and inequality over the last four decades.
It would be best if we could rein in the financial sector based on an honest discussion of its role in the economy, but in American politics, no one expects honest discussions. So, we’ll settle for some positive spillover from economists’ efforts to cover their asses.
Myth 6: CEOs Manipulate Share Prices with Buybacks to Maximize Shareholder Value
One of the bizarre stories that passes for wisdom is that CEOs have gotten in the habit of committing large amounts of money to share buybacks in order to maximize shareholder value. Just about every part of this story is hard to square with reality.
First, if the goal is maximizing shareholder value, they are not doing a very good job. Stock returns have been extraordinarily low over the last two decades, averaging less than 5.0 percent annually, after adjusting for inflation, compared to a long-term average of 7.0 percent. It does seem at least a bit odd that when management is supposed to be exceptionally focused on providing returns to shareholders that they are doing such a poor job of it.
Another aspect of this story is that the reason that companies are not investing more is supposed to be that they are paying out so much money to shareholders. Looking at the data, what seems most striking is that there is not much fluctuation, apart from cyclical ups and downs in the share of GDP going to investment.
If investment is determined primarily by investment opportunities, and these tend not to change much, at least for the economy as a whole, then in a period of high profits like the present one, lots of money will be paid out to shareholders, since companies have nothing else to do with it. There is good reason to be unhappy with the rise of corporate profits at the expense of wages, but if companies don’t have good investment opportunities, it’s not obviously bad that they pay the money out to shareholders.
Finally, the focus on buybacks as being especially pernicious seems odd. Is there a reason anyone would be happier if the money was paid out as dividends instead? The switchover to buybacks instead of dividends as the main route for giving money to shareholders, dates from an early 1980s court ruling that approved the practice.
I have heard the complaint that buybacks are worse because top management can manipulate the timing in order to maximize the value of their stock options or planned sales. While that may true, they can also manipulate dividend announcements or statements on earnings.
More importantly, if we think management is manipulating the timing of buybacks, then the victims of the manipulation are shareholders who aren’t in on the joke. That is entirely possible, but then we are not telling a story of maximizing shareholder value. We are telling a story where CEOs and other top management are enriching themselves at the expense of shareholders.
That sets up a dynamic in which shareholders should be allies in cracking down on excessive CEO pay, but I’ll leave that one for another day.
It is safer to be a cop today than 50 years ago
Homeland Security News Wire | April 11, 2019
There is no doubt that policing is a dangerous profession. But is it safer to be a cop today than it was fifty years ago? Yes, according to a study that analyzed police officer deaths (felonious and non-felonious) in the United States from 1970 to 2016.
The study represents one of the most comprehensive assessments of the “dangerousness” of policing to date and provides an important historical context on the ongoing dialogue over a perceived “war on cops” in recent years.
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University, Arizona State University, and the University of Texas at El Paso, found that despite increases in violent crimes, the hazards of policing has dramatically declined since 1970 with a 75 percent drop in police officer line-of-duty deaths. FAU notes that the study also refutes the theory of “war on cops,” following the Ferguson effect and Michael Brown’s death in August 2014, and finds no evidence to support those claims.
“On average, there were slightly more than 1.6 fewer felonious police officer deaths per month after Michael Brown’s death in August 2014 when compared with pre-August 2014,” said Lisa Dario, Ph.D., co-author and an assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice in FAU’s College for Design and Social Inquiry. “This result directly contradicts the hypothesized war on cops, in which an increase in felonious killings after August 2014 is predicted. Our results show the opposite. In the context of nearly 50-year monthly trends, our results show a statistically significant decline in felonious killings of police after Michael Brown’s death.”
Results of the study, published in the Journal of Criminology & Public Policy , show that felonious deaths dropped by more than 80 percent. The only anomaly is 2001 when more than 70 officers were killed during the 9/11 terrorist attack. The rate of non-felonious deaths also declined by 69 percent. Furthermore, the gap between felonious and non-felonious deaths closed over time. Officer deaths peaked in 1974 at 272; in 2016 there were 134 deaths.
Featured Video
Iran’s Mass Protests /Patrick Henningsen & Lt Col Daniel Davis
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Does Kevin Barrett Seek to “Absolve Islam of a Terrible Crime”?
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
Blog Roll
Recent Comments
loongtip on Eilat port faces worst crisis… loongtip on British minister dreams of kid… loongtip on Kiev awards major mining proje… loongtip on UK believes it can seize any t… loongtip on Pirates of the Caribbean loongtip on Australian festival boycotted… loongtip on Kiev seeks to ban Russian musi… seversonebcfb985d9 on Somaliland and the ‘Grea… John Edward Kendrick on Kidnapped By the Washington… aletho on Somaliland and the ‘Grea… John Edward Kendrick on Somaliland and the ‘Grea… aletho on Donald Trump, and Most America…
Aletho News- Knesset advances bill mandating death by hanging for Palestinian prisoners
- Eilat port faces worst crisis as Red Sea shipping collapses
- Iran protest-riots can only achieve US-Israeli intervention, ‘shadow CIA’ concludes
- The Coming War on Iran: What Has Really Been Happening?
- US Cargo Planes Have Flooded the Persian Gulf Since the First of December
- Deep-state forces from abroad instigated violence in Nepal – former foreign minister
- Rare Earths—or Arctic Control? Greenland’s Riches May Just Be Excuse
- Kiev awards major mining project to Trump-linked investors
- US makes money from weapons, not from Ukrainian minerals
- Drone hits Kazakh tanker en route to Russian port
- If Americans Knew
- The New Neoconservatives
- As more Gaza children freeze to death, Trump eyes Gaza as starting point for world domination – Not a ceasefire Day 95
- More death: in Gaza, West Bank, Israeli prison – Not a ceasefire Day 94
- The Israeli Influence Operation Aiming to Install Reza Pahlavi as Shah of Iran
- Avoidable tragedy: another infant dies from cold – Not a ceasefire Day 93
- Israel is quietly erasing Palestinian refugee camps from existence in the West Bank
- The “Zionist tint” to the Maduro abduction, if not operational, then normative
- Press association condemns Israel’s continued ban on media access to Gaza
- Israeli Indifference to Palestinian Suffering Is Fertile Ground for the Growth of Sadism
- Surge in premature births, congenital defects, cancer deaths in Gaza – Not a ceasefire Day 92
- No Tricks Zone
- Denmark Places Climate Protection Above Animal Welfare, Poisoning And Culling Cows
- New Study: Greenland Was 3-7°C Warmer And Far Less Glaciated Than Today 6000-8000 Years Ago
- German Media Report That Current Frigid Weather Can Be Explained By Arctic Warming!
- Berlin Blackout Shows Germany’s $5 Trillion Green Scheme Is “Left-Green Ideological Pipe Dream”
- Modeling Error In Estimating How Clouds Affect Climate Is 8700% Larger Than Alleged CO2 Forcing
- Berlin’s Terror-Blackout Enters 4th Day As Tens Of Thousands Suffer In Cold Without Heat!
- Expect Soon Another PIK Paper Claiming Warming Leads To Cold Snaps Over Europe
- New Study: Human CO2 Emissions Responsible For 1.57% Of Global Temperature Change Since 1750
- Welcome To 2026: Europe Laying Groundwork For Climate Science Censorship!
- New Study Finds A Higher Rate Of Global Warming From 1899-1940 Than From 1983-2024
Aletho News 