North Korea test fires ballistic missile from submarine (Source cnn.com)

North Korea test fired a submarine-based ballistic missile from its east coast on Wednesday, South Korean authorities said.

The launch took place at 5:30 a.m. local time, according to a statement from the South Korean Foreign Ministry. North Korea’s launch took place in the waters, off Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province, in the early morning, the South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

“If the North Korean regime continues to pursue its nuclear and missile capabilities and ignore severe economic difficulties of its people, it will bring about more severe sanctions and diplomatic isolation. It should also realize that it will hasten its self-destruction,” the country’s Foreign Ministry said. “Our government is prepared with full readiness posture to protect our people and the safety of our country and will thoroughly respond to any North Korea’s provocation.” The US Pacific Command tracked the missile over and into the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, approximately 300 miles off the coast of North Korea. This was the first time a North Korean missile entered Japan’s air defense identification zone, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said. “This is a threat to Japan’s security and an unforgivable reckless act that significantly damages the peace and stability of the region,” Abe said Wednesday morning.

The launch comes amid the annual joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea, which kicked off on Monday.

The annual drill includes 25,000 US troops, the bulk of which are already stationed in Korea, according to a statement by US Forces Korea. The United States and South Korea are closely analyzing the details. Dr. Daniel A. Pinkston, a professor at Troy University, told CNN the fact that the rocket traveled as far as it did suggests the North Koreans are “making quite rapid progress, and probably more rapid progress than any people had predicted.”

An Empire in the Making (Source thetrumpet.com)

Hand in hand with calls for a European army are calls for Europe to get more involved overseas. European Union and German officials want more European military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa. They also want Europe to build stronger alliances with allies in the area, with both Germany and the EU unveiling plans to directly fund foreign militaries for the first time. “It is in the interests of our citizens to invest in the resilience of states and societies to the east, stretching into Central Asia, and south down to Central Africa,” wrote EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini in her paper “A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy.” “We want also to increase our dialogue and cooperation with third countries in North Africa, the Sahel strip, the Lake Chad Basin, West Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East,” wrote German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault in a press release June 24. Similarly, Germany’s 2016 white paper on “German Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr” advocates the German military getting more involved abroad. “Germany’s security policy horizon is global,” it states. It calls on the nation to take “early and comprehensive action” to “eradicate the causes of conflicts.”

“Northern Africa is turning into a battleground with enormously important prophetic implications,”. Warning of the spread of radical Muslim groups, supported by Iran, in the region, he added, “But Iran isn’t the only one interested in Africa. Germany is making strong inroads as well. Both of these powers are racing to get as much control of North Africa as they can. They will inevitably clash with each other.” Europe and Germany both plan to expand their relationships with certain nations in North Africa and the Middle East. With the Islamic State focused on carrying out attacks in Europe, and the EU responding by deepening its reach into Africa, this clash is building up right now.

Donald Trump Is Going To Be Elected (Source huffingtonpost.com)

Donald Trump is going to be elected President. The American people voted for him a long time ago. They voted for him when The History Channel went from showing documentaries about the Second World War to Pawn Stars and Swamp People. They voted for him when The Discovery Channel went from showing Lost Treasures of the Yangtze Valley to Naked and Afraid. They voted for him when The Learning Channel moved from something you could learn from to My 600 Pound Life. They voted for him when CBS went from airing Harvest of Shame to airing Big Brother. These networks didn’t make these programming changes by accident. They were responding to what the American people actually wanted. And what they wanted was Naked and Afraid and Duck Dynasty. The polls may show that Donald Trump is losing to Hillary Clinton, but don’t you believe those polls. When the AC Nielsen Company selects a new Nielsen family, they disregard the new family’s results for the first three months. The reason: when they feel they are being monitored, people lie about what they are watching. In the first three months, knowing they are being watched, they will tune into PBS. But over time they get tired of pretending. Then it is back to The Kardashians. The same goes for people who are being asked by pollsters for whom they are voting. They will not say Donald Trump. It is too embarassing. But the truth is, they like Trump. He is just like their favorite shows on TV. Mindless entertainment. Trump’s replacement of Paul Manafort with Breitbart’s Steve Bannon shows that Trump understands how Americans actually think. They think TV. They think ratings. They think entertainment. We are a TV based culture. We have been for some time now. The average American spends 5 hours a day, every day, watching TV. After sleep, it is our number one activity. More shockingly, we spend 8.5 hours a day staring at screens – phones, tablets, computers. And more and more of the content on those devices is also video and TV. If you spend 5 to 8 hours a day, every day, for years and years doing the same thing it has an impact on you. For the past 40 years we have devoted 5 to 8 hours a day staring at a screen – every day. And we haven’t been watching Judy Woodruff. We have been watching Reality TV shows. That is what we love. That is what we resonate to. The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

The French may love food, the Italians may love opera. What we love is TV. We are TV culture. It defines who we are. In the 1950s, early television was allowed, with many restrictions, to be an observational guest at political conventions. They were quiet ‘flies on the wall’, carefully and quietly commentating on what they saw way down below. They did not get involved in the process. Today, they ARE the process. Today, political conventions are nothing but carefully directed TV shows. Likewise ‘debates’. They exist only to entertain a TV audience. TV and entertainment now dictate everything political. It is a never-ending show. The biggest Reality Show on air. And Donald Trump is great TV. He knows how to entertain. He understands ratings.

Hillary Clinton is crap TV. She may be smarter, better prepared, a better politician. It won’t matter. She is terrible entertainment

‘Nobody’s looking’: why US Zika outbreak could be bigger than we know (Source theguardian.com)

If you were bitten by a mosquito, and within two weeks had a fever, bloodshot eyes, a rash and felt generally achy, you would have four classic symptoms of Zika. But if you or your sexual partner didn’t travel to Latin America, you might also have a hard time getting tested.

That’s because Zika tests are complicated, time-consuming, sometimes inaccurate and expensive. These obstacles have led some scientists to believe that several states at risk for spread of the disease may already have Zika outbreaks, without even knowing it.

“There is not active surveillance going on in the at-risk states in the United States,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.

“I think there’s not just Zika transmission going on in Miami, it’s going on all up and down the Gulf Coast and in Arizona, it’s just that nobody’s looking.” The only confirmed cases of Zika caused by local mosquitoes in the continental US are in Miami, Florida. Federal officials have since issued a travel warning for the area, asking pregnant women or those hoping to become pregnant to avoid the Wynwood neighborhood. There, local mosquitoes infected 15 people with the virus.

Other Gulf coast states are also considered to to be at high risk for local transmission of Zika virus. That is because Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are endemic, and multiple travelers have returned with the infection. Louisiana, long known to be a haven for mosquitoes, is considered a state at-risk of Zika transmission. There, 22 cases of travel-related Zika has been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “The big fear, of course, is we’ll figure this out seven, eight, nine months from now, in the spring of 2017, when we start seeing babies show up with microcephaly,” said Hotez.

Meanwhile, for community health centers in another Gulf Coast state, Texas, the virus recalls an earlier epidemic that left public health officials flat-footed. “We’ve never faced something like Zika before. We faced, what was it? H1N1,” said José Camacho, executive director of the Texas Association of Community Health Centers. Member clinics serve about 1.3 million low-income Texans. “Overnight we were overwhelmed, and I guess nobody was ready for that either. And we’re fearful that some of the same things are playing out here.”

One World Governance and the Council on Foreign Relations.“We Shall have World Government… by Conquest or Consent.” (globalresearch.ca)

The Bilderberg and CFR’s chosen member to become America’s next presidential puppet – Hillary Clinton – made no bones about whom she takes her New World Orders from: I [Hillary Clinton] am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.  In 1950 the son of one of the Council on Foreign Relations’ founders, James Warburg emphatically decreed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,  “We shall have world government whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent.”

From its very outset the CFR as the US elite’s most public face subversively promoting New World Order has always maintained one explicit purpose – to bring about a one world government. In 1975 powerful CFR insider and former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy Admiral Chester Ward wrote in his book entitled Kissinger on the Couch about the ultimate aim of the Council on Foreign Relations:

[The CFR has as a goal] submergence of US sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government… this lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of the United States is pervasive throughout most of the membership… In the entire CFR lexicon, there is no term of revulsion carrying a meaning so deep as ‘America First.’

Nearly all the top military generals (two active members were my West Point roommates) and admirals, major corporate CEO’s and numerous government leaders in all three branches have been circulating through the revolving turnstile in and out of the public sector as prominent Council on Foreign Relations members. They represent the shadowy government where secrecy rules from behind the scenes. That said, it’s a matter of public record that virtually every Secretary of Defense has been a CFR lifer.

Since 1940 every Secretary of State but one has been on the CFR and/or Trilateral Commission, and a majority of Secretaries of Treasury as well. Multiple CIA directors have been in the CFR. For eight decades nearly every key National Security and Foreign Policy Advisor are/were members. And of course a significant number of US presidents and VP’s have been CFR members. Regardless of what party happens to occupy the White House, an intransigent fixture operating at the highest echelons of power in Washington over the last century has been strategically assigned CFR plants.The CFR’s interlocking marriage between the private corporate sector and the public government sector is largely responsible for today’s lopsided world of harsh gross disparities. As cases in point, the 62 richest people on earth possess more wealth than the majority of the 7.3 billion humans currently inhabiting the planet. 

NORTH CAROLINA TEACHERS ORDERED TO AVOID CALLING STUDENTS ‘BOYS AND GIRLS’ (Source blacklistednews.com)

Educators at a North Carolina public school district have been ordered to avoid using gender-specific pronouns when addressing pupils, according to a recently published training manual. A slideshow presentation, entitled “Supporting Transgender Students,” provides guidance for the upcoming school year to K-12 teachers of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, directing them how to properly handle students with gender identity issues. “Transgendered,” “transsexual,” “transvestite,” “MtF or FtM,” “Cross Dresser,” and “Drag Queen/King,” are all terms teachers are instructed to avoid in order to “maximize academic achievement for every child.”

Instead, the slideshow suggests, teachers should familiarize themselves with terms such as “Questioning,” “Cisgender,” “Non-binary,” “Genderqueer,’ and “Gender nonconforming.”

A worksheet with a purple unicorn appears amid the instructional, which students are intended to fill out with their own gender identities.

Among techniques to “avoid gender specific classroom management,” the slideshow tells teachers to line students up by birth month, favorite color, or alphabetized, rather than “boy/girl.”

Children should also be addressed as “scholars or students vs. boys and girls,” the guidance recommends. Additionally, faculty should “allow students to dress in accordance with their gender identity” (emphasis theirs), and “students must have access to the restroom/changing facilities that correspond to their gender identity,” in accordance with a recent Fourth Circuit court ruling.

“A student’s transgender status is confidential,” the Powerpoint presentation reminds teachers, and “Staff must take care not to ‘out’ a student to others, including the parents of an older student, without the student’s permission.” “In contacting the parents, use the student’s name/pronoun on birth certificate unless student or parent says otherwise,” slide #34 reads. Speaking to the Charlotte-Observer, Superintendent Ann Clark said little to nothing would change for most students. “I would say to parents in this community that very little is going to be different in terms of your child’s experience unless you are the parent of a transgender student,” she stated. But residents say the school’s new guidelines are an exercise in cultural Marxism.

“It’s a radical sexual revolution being forced on our kids,” Charlotte resident David Benham said to Fox News. “What they are doing is highlighting and exploiting the transgender community and trying to push their radical agenda on the rest of the students,” Benham told Todd Starnes. “It was really slick,” another parent told WCNC. “It is friendly looking and deceitful because that unicorn, to me, represents the religion of sex. It is silencing and penalizing those of us who believe we were created male and female and should be able to use those terms.” The Charlotte-Mecklenburg 2016-2017 school year begins on Monday, August 29.

The Outdated Arguments Against National Missile Defense That Could Get Us All Killed(Source nationalinterest.org)

Nuclear war is the greatest military threat that America faces.  A single 500-kiloton nuclear warhead of the type common in the Russian strategic arsenal, if burst above a U.S. city, would cause heavy damage to a radius of three miles, widespread fires to a radius of six miles, and skin lacerations to a radius of nine miles.  Electronic systems including power grids would be disabled to a far greater distance, and life-threatening radiation would linger for years. Russia has over a thousand such warheads on ballistic missiles able to reach the U.S., and that is where the vast majority of them are presumed to be aimed.  The sole U.S. military system capable of intercepting nuclear warheads traveling at intercontinental speeds is the Ground-based Midcourse Defense deployed in California and Alaska, but that system is only expected to deploy 44 interceptor missiles and is itself vulnerable to destruction.  Beyond that, Washington relies mainly on the threat of retaliation to deter nuclear aggression against the American homeland. The United States is thus the only dominant military power in recorded history that has elected to forego active defenses against the greatest threat to its survival.  Missile defense currently claims only 1% of the U.S. defense budget, and most of that goes to dealing with regional threats rather than the strategic danger Russia and China pose to America.  In other words, Washington spends more money each month defending Afghanistan than it does in a year trying to defend against the one challenge that could destroy American civilization. The reason for this seemingly perverse arrangement of military priorities lies in a series of assumptions about nuclear threats that won acceptance from Western elites during the Cold War.  With the passage of time, most of those assumptions have been called into question by new technology and changes in the geopolitical landscape.  However, there has been no serious rethinking of U.S. nuclear strategy.  

In aftermath of the DNC hack, experts warn of new front in digital warfare(Source Christian Science Monitor) Cybersecurity experts and US officials often point fingers at Moscow after digital attacks that cause a political stir – from last year’s Ukraine grid hack that led to a widespread power outage to the Democratic National Committee data breach. But if the Kremlin is indeed behind the DNC hack and helped orchestrate the subsequent WikiLeaks dump of sensitive emails on the eve of the Democrats’ convention, Russia has opened a new front in information warfare that may fundamentally change the value of data in national security. “This is what cyberconflict actually looks like,” says James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank. “The problem in the US is we’re very militarized, so we tend to think about attacking infrastructure. The Russian approach is much more political and about trying to manipulate public opinion.” “The world we live in has gone from a cybersecurity crisis where an adversary can steal your data to one where the adversary can become telepathic,” says Tom Kellermann, chief executive at Strategic Cyber Ventures, a firm that invests in cybersecurity startups. “They’re trying to change hearts and minds now through stolen data.”

It also appears Moscow is increasingly relying hacking to fulfill an ambitious global agenda – and undercut the US.

How Long Can Economic Reality Be Ignored? (Source globalresearch.ca)

Trump and Clinton have come out with the obligatory “economic plans.”  Neither them nor their advisors, have any idea about what really needs to be done, but this is of no concern to the media. They say what they are paid to say and that is whatever serves the corporations and the government. We are told that we have been enjoying an economic recovery since June, 2009, that we are more or less at full emploment with an unemployment rate of 5% or less, and that there is no inflation.  We are told this despite the facts that the “recovery” is based on the under-reporting of the inflation rate, the unemployment rate is 23%, and inflation is high. GDP is measured in current prices.  If GDP rises 3% this year over last year, the output of real goods and services might have risen 3% or prices might have gone up by 3% or real output might have dropped but is masked by price increases.  To know what really happened the nominal GDP number has to be deflated by the amount of inflation. In times past we could get a reasonable idea of how the economy was doing, because the measure of inflation was reasonable.  That is no longer the case. Various “reforms” have taken inflation out of the measures of inflation.  For example, if the price of an item in the inflation index goes up, the item is taken out and a cheaper item put in its place.  Alternatively, the price rise is called a “quality improvement” and not counted as a price rise. In other words, by defining inflation away, price increases are transformed into an increase in real output. The same thing happens to the measure of unemployment. Unemployment  simply isn’t counted by the reported unemployment rate.  No matter how  long and hard an unemployed person has looked for a job, if that person hasn’t job hunted in the past four weeks the person is not considered to be unemployed.  This is how the unemployment rate is said to be 5% when the labor-force participation rate has collapsed, half of American 25-year-olds live with their parents, and more Americans age 24-34 live with parents than independently. Finanial reporters never inquire why government statistics are designed to provide an incorrect picture of the economy.

“Thinking Through the Unthinkable”: RAND Corporation Lays out Scenarios for US War with China (Source globalresearch.ca)

A new study by the RAND Corporation titled “War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable” is just the latest think tank paper devoted to assessing a US war against China. The study, commissioned by the US Army, provides further evidence that a war with China is being planned and prepared in the upper echelons of the American military-intelligence apparatus. That the paper emerges from the RAND Corporation has a particular and sinister significance. Throughout the Cold War, RAND was the premier think tank for “thinking the unthinkable”—a phrase made notorious by RAND’s chief strategist in the 1950s, Herman Kahn. Kahn devoted his macabre book On Thermonuclear War to elaborating a strategy for a “winnable” nuclear war against the Soviet Union.

RAND Arroyo Center, part of the RAND Corporation, is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the United States Army.”

The paper is a war-gaming exercise in the Kahn tradition: weighing the possible outcomes of a war between two nuclear powers with utter indifference to the catastrophic consequences for people in the United States, China and the rest of the world. The study is based on a series of highly questionable assumptions: that a war between the United States and China would not involve other powers; that it would remain confined to the East Asian region; and that nuclear weapons would not be used. In reality, a war on China would from the outset involve US allies and would thus, in all likelihood, rapidly escalate out of control, spread beyond East Asia, and heighten the danger that nuclear weapons would be used.

As part of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” the US has been strengthening alliances throughout the region, establishing new basing arrangements and consolidating military “interoperability.” The US military could not wage war against China without the intelligence and military and basing resources of, at the very least, Japan, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The RAND Corporation paper is a chilling confirmation of the warnings made by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) in its statement of February 18, 2016 titled “Social ism and the Fight Against War.” The statement notes that at a certain point, military fatalism becomes a significant contributing factor to the outbreak of war. It cites an international relations specialist who wrote: “Once war is assumed to be unavoidable, the calculations of leaders and militaries change. The question is no longer whether there will or should be a war, but when the war can be fought most advantageously.” The new study indicates that such a shift in thinking is underway in Washington. And while the RAND Corporation study dismisses the possibility of nuclear war, other imperialist strategists are planning for such an eventuality.