TBR News May 24, 2017

May 24 2017

 

The Voice of the White House

        Washington, D.C. May 24, 2017:” Trump is a businessman, not a politician.

His intent to swell the coffers of the military by cutting off food stamps and medical aid to the general public is the action of a businessman, not a politician.

The pubic pay (forced) taxes and vote and Trump looks at the figures and not the consequences of enraging tax-payers and voters.

Also, his business deals with the crooked and untrustworthy Saudis are good economic business for the military and the armaments industry but a geo-political disaster.

The treacherous Saudis organized IS in an attempt to enforce their own brand of Islam on the rest of the Middle East and to get control of the area’s oil deposits (Their own are running out soon)

This may be good business for the Saudis but it is bad business for any attempt to stabilize the volatile Middle East.”

 

Table of contents

  • America’s Reign of Terror
  • The ‘War On Terrorism’ Isn’t Working
  • The Only Way to Stop Atrocities Like Manchester Is by Ending Wars
  • Washington’s Shameful Fondness for Saudi Arabia
  • Sea level rising at triple speed since 1990
  • Researchers model differences in East Coast sea level rise
  • Trump’s budget slashes $3.6 trillion from domestic programs over 10 years
  • Republicans voice opposition to Trump’s budget: ‘Dead on arrival’
  • Republicans Will Reject Trump’s Budget, but Still Try to Impose Austerity On Washington
  • Arizona ends taxation on purchase & exchange of gold and silver coins
  • Mass Chinese Counterfeiting of American gold and silver coins and gold bars
  • Turkey’s Erdogan: If Berlin wants to pull troops, we’d say ‘Goodbye’

 (Editor’s note: This is such an excellent article that we are running it again)

America’s Reign of Terror

May 23, 2017

by John W. Whitehead,

AntiWar

“The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.” ~ James Madison

Who designed the malware worm that is now wreaking havoc on tens of thousands of computers internationally by hackers demanding a king’s ransom? The U.S. government.

Who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The US government.

What country has one the deadliest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction? The US government.

Who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The US government.

Which is the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon in wartime? The United States.

How did Saddam Hussein build Iraq’s massive arsenal of tanks, planes, missiles, and chemical weapons during the 1980s? With help from the US government.

Who gave Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida “access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry”? The US government.

What country has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The US government.

Where did ISIS get many of their deadliest weapons, including assault rifles and tanks to antimissile defenses? From the US government.

Which country has a history of secretly testing out dangerous weapons and technologies on its own citizens? The US government.

Are you getting the picture yet?

The US government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.

The US government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.

Just think about it for a minute: almost every tyranny being perpetrated against the citizenry – purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure – has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government.

Cyberwarfare. Terrorism.

Biochemical attacks. The nuclear arms race.

Surveillance. The drug wars.

In almost every instance, the US government has in its typical Machiavellian fashion sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers.

It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by government propaganda.

We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

Case in point: For years now, the US government has been creating what one intelligence insider referred to as a cyber-army capable of offensive attacks.

As Reuters reported back in 2013:

Even as the US government confronts rival powers over widespread Internet espionage, it has become the biggest buyer in a burgeoning gray market where hackers and security firms sell tools for breaking into computers. The strategy is spurring concern in the technology industry and intelligence community that Washington is in effect encouraging hacking and failing to disclose to software companies and customers the vulnerabilities exploited by the purchased hacks. That’s because US intelligence and military agencies aren’t buying the tools primarily to fend off attacks. Rather, they are using the tools to infiltrate computer networks overseas, leaving behind spy programs and cyber-weapons that can disrupt data or damage systems.

As part of this cyberweapons programs, government agencies such as the NSA have been stockpiling all kinds of nasty malware, viruses and hacking tools that can “steal financial account passwords, turn an iPhone into a listening device, or, in the case of Stuxnet, sabotage a nuclear facility.”

And now we learn that the NSA is responsible for the latest threat posed by the “WannaCry” or “Wanna Decryptor” malware worm which – as a result of hackers accessing the government’s arsenal – has hijacked more than 57,000 computers and crippled health care, communications infrastructure, logistics, and government entities in more than 70 countries already.

All the while the government was repeatedly warned about the dangers of using criminal tactics to wage its own cyberwars.

It was warned about the consequences of blowback should its cyberweapons get into the wrong hands.

The government chose to ignore the warnings.

That’s exactly how the 9/11 attacks unfolded.

First, the government helped to create the menace that was al-Qaida and then, when bin Laden had left the nation reeling in shock (despite countless warnings that fell on tone-deaf ears), it demanded – and was given – immense new powers in the form of the USA Patriot Act in order to fight the very danger it had created.

This has become the shadow government’s modus operandi regardless of which party controls the White House: the government creates a menace – knowing full well the ramifications such a danger might pose to the public – then without ever owning up to the part it played in unleashing that particular menace on an unsuspecting populace, it demands additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threat.

Yet the powers-that-be don’t really want us to feel safe.

They want us cowering and afraid and willing to relinquish every last one of our freedoms in exchange for their phantom promises of security.

As a result, it’s the American people who pay the price for the government’s insatiable greed and quest for power.

We’re the ones to suffer the blowback.

Blowback: a term originating from within the American Intelligence community, denoting the unintended consequences, unwanted side-effects, or suffered repercussions of a covert operation that fall back on those responsible for the aforementioned operations.

As historian Chalmers Johnson explains, “blowback is another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows.”

Unfortunately, “we the people” are the ones who keep reaping what the government sows.

We’re the ones who suffer every time, directly and indirectly, from the blowback.

We’re made to pay trillions of dollars in blood money to a military industrial complex that kills without conscience. We’ve been saddled with a crumbling infrastructure, impoverished cities and a faltering economy while our tax dollars are squandered on lavish military installations and used to prop up foreign economies. We’ve been stripped of our freedoms. We’re treated like suspects and enemy combatants. We’re spied on by government agents: our communications read, our movements tracked, our faces mapped, our biometrics entered into a government database. We’re terrorized by militarized police who roam our communities and SWAT teams that break into our homes. We’re subjected to invasive patdowns in airports, roadside strip searches and cavity probes, forced blood draws.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

We can persuade ourselves that life is still good, that America is still beautiful, and that “we the people” are still free.

However, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the moment you tune out the carefully constructed distractions – the year-round sports entertainment, the political theatrics, the military’s war cries, the president’s chest-thumping, and the techno-gadgets and social media that keep us oblivious to what’s really going on in the world around us – you quickly find that the only credible threat to our safety and national security is in fact the government itself.

As science fiction writer Philip K. Dick warned, “Don’t believe what you see; it’s an enthralling – [and] destructive, evil snare. Under it is a totally different world, even placed differently along the linear axis.”

In other words, all is not as it seems.

The powers-that-be are not acting in our best interests.

“We the people” are not free.

The government is not our friend.

And America will never be safe or secure as long as our government continues to pillage and plunder and bomb and bulldoze and kill and create instability and fund insurgencies and police the globe.

So what can we do to stop the blowback, liberate the country from the ironclad grip of the military industrial complex, and get back to a point where freedom actually means something?

For starters, get your priorities in order. As long as Americans are more inclined to be offended over the fate of a Confederate statue rather than the government’s blatant disregard for the Constitution and human rights, then the status quo will remain.

Stop playing politics with your principles. As long as Americans persist in thinking like Republicans and Democrats – refusing to recognize that every administration in recent years has embraced and advanced the government’s authoritarian tactics – then the status quo will remain.

Value all human life as worthy of protection. As long as Americans, including those who claim to value the sanctity of human life, not only turn a blind eye to the government’s indiscriminate killings of innocent civilians but champion them, then the status quo will remain.

Recognize that in the eyes of the government, we’re all expendable. As long as we allow the government to play this dangerous game in which “we the people” are little more than pawns to be used, abused, easily manipulated and just as easily discarded – whether it’s under the guise of national security, the war on terror, the war on drugs, or any other manufactured bogeyman it can dream up – then the status quo will remain.

Demand that the government stop creating, stockpiling and deploying weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical, biological, cyber, etc. As long as the government continues to use our tax dollars to create, stockpile and deploy weapons of mass destruction – whether those weapons are meant to kill, maim or disable (as in the case of the WannaCry computer virus) – we will be vulnerable to anyone who attempts to use those weapons against us and the status quo will remain.

Stop supporting the war machine and, as Chalmers Johnson suggests, “bring our rampant militarism under control”:

From George Washington’s “farewell address” to Dwight Eisenhower’s invention of the phrase “military-industrial complex,” American leaders have warned about the dangers of a bloated, permanent, expensive military establishment that has lost its relationship to the country because service in it is no longer an obligation of citizenship. Our military operates the biggest arms sales operation on earth; it rapes girls, women and schoolchildren in Okinawa; it cuts ski-lift cables in Italy, killing twenty vacationers, and dismisses what its insubordinate pilots have done as a “training accident”; it allows its nuclear attack submarines to be used for joy rides for wealthy civilian supporters and then covers up the negligence that caused the sinking of a Japanese high school training ship; it propagandizes the nation with Hollywood films glorifying military service (Pearl Harbor); and it manipulates the political process to get more carrier task forces, antimissile missiles, nuclear weapons, stealth bombers and other expensive gadgets for which we have no conceivable use. Two of the most influential federal institutions are not in Washington but on the south side of the Potomac River–the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. Given their influence today, one must conclude that the government outlined in the Constitution of 1787 no longer bears much relationship to the government that actually rules from Washington. Until that is corrected, we should probably stop talking about “democracy” and “human rights.”

 

The ‘War On Terrorism’ Isn’t Working

It’s time to try something different

May 24, 2017

by Justin Raimondo,

AntiWar

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over in the expectation of a different result, then our foreign policy surely qualifies as madness. Since 2001, in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States has been in a state of constant warfare: the Afghan conflict has been ongoing since that time, the longest sustained combat in our history. From Iraq to Syria to Somalia and beyond, US forces and their proxies are engaged in a “war on terrorism” that shows no signs of slowing down, only expanding.

And where has it gotten us?

In Afghanistan, more than half the country is under the control of the Taliban, the radical Islamist group that sheltered Osama bin Laden – and they are now joined by ISIS, which has extended its tentacles into that country.

In Iraq, after our war of “liberation,” a civil war pitting Shi’ites against Sunnis is raging, and terrorist attacks are the norm. The Iranians have extended their sphere of influence into the country, and US troops are still fighting there, despite the much-heralded “withdrawal.”

The focus of US military action in the Middle East has now shifted to Syria, where a multi-sided civil war has been raging ever since the so-called Arab Spring. There we have managed to destabilize the regime of Bashar al-Assad by supporting alleged “moderate” Islamists, while we simultaneously fight ISIS – which is tacitly supported by our “moderate” proxies. The result has been a disaster of epic proportions: hundreds of thousands dead, as refugees pour out of the country and into Europe.

Far from winding down, the “war on terrorism” is constantly expanding. The latest front is in Yemen – arguably the poorest country on earth – where our Saudi allies, aided by the US, are slaughtering civilians, bombing funeral processions, and setting off a famine that will kill many thousands more. And while al-Qaeda does indeed have an active franchise in Yemen, the Saudis aren’t targeting them – they’re going after the Houthis, a religious sect that is neither Sunni nor Shi’ite, whose adherents are fighting both the Saudis and al-Qaeda. The Houthi-Saudi war started because Saudi missionaries were spreading Sunni fundamentalism in their historic homeland:  in short, the Houthis are resisting the very extremism that provides terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS with their base of support. Yet we are aiding Saudi Arabia – the epicenter of global terrorism – in their merciless war of aggression.

All this frenzied military action – the bombs, the proxy armies, the “surges” – has led to precisely the opposite of its intended result. If our “war on terrorism” was supposed to end or even reduce the incidents of terrorism in the West, it must be judged an absolute failure.

All across Europe, terrorists are swarming like termites after a rain. We saw what happened yesterday [Monday] in Manchester: the biggest attack in Britain since 2005, and the culmination of a series of prior incidents. In France and Germany it’s the same story.

And in the United States, the trail of post-9/11 terror follows the same pattern: far from diminishing, the number of terrorist incidents is on the upswing. Sixteen years after the twin towers fells, we are less safe – and less free. Draconian security measures are now taken for granted, and that includes not only cumbersome rules and restrictions around airline flights but also universal surveillance. Engulfed in a quagmire of perpetual war, we are fast approaching the condition of a police state – with not even the benefit of increased security.

Most ominously, the ranks of the terrorist armies are swelling, as hatred of America and the West is incorporated into the religious tenets of Islam. Some argue that Islam was always antithetical to Western values and norms, but this debate is now rendered irrelevant as the cycle of violence and repression makes this proposition a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The roots of this disaster are in the presidency of George W. Bush: he and his neoconservative advisors launched a war that was supposed to transform the Middle East into a laboratory of “democracy” – exported by force of arms. The idea, as expressed by neoconservative ideologues, was to “drain the swamp” of the Middle East, so altering the environment in which the “mosquitoes” of terrorism lived and flourished that they would be unable to produce a second generation. Yet we are now into the third generation – and they are more numerous than ever, buzzing around Europe and even the US, stinging at will.

So what’s the solution?

Let’s start by acknowledging that what we’re doing isn’t working.

That’s half the battle right there.

The other half involves winding down the multiple conflicts we’re presently engaged in. Afghanistan is a hopelessly Sisyphean conflict that can never be “won” – it’s long past time to get out. If the Iraqi government we put in place is incapable of defending itself, then let them fall – we can no more prevent that than King Canute could stop the tide from coming in. Syria is a catastrophe made in Washington: our “regime change” policy doomed that country to perdition. We should have the decency to recognize that, and stay out of their internal affairs: let Assad and the Russians take care of their terrorist problem.

 

The Only Way to Stop Atrocities Like Manchester Is by Ending Wars

May 23, 2017

by Patrick Cockburn

The Unz Review

President Trump leaves the Middle East today, having done his bit to make the region even more divided and mired in conflict than it was before.

At the same moment that Donald Trump was condemning the suicide bomber in Manchester as “an evil loser in life”, he was adding to the chaos in which al-Qaeda and Isis have taken root and flourished.

It may be a long distance between the massacre in Manchester and the wars in the Middle East, but the connection is there.

He blamed “terrorism” almost exclusively on Iran and, by implication, on the Shia minority in the region, while al-Qaeda notoriously developed in the Sunni heartlands and its beliefs and practises primarily stem from Wahhabism, the sectarian and regressive variant of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia.

It flies in the face of all known facts to link the wave of terrorist atrocities since 9/11 on the Shia, who have most usually been its target.

This toxic historical myth-making does not deter Trump. “From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms and trains terrorists, militias and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region,” he told an assembly of 55 Sunni leaders in Riyadh on 21 May.

In Israel, he informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 is “a terrible, terrible thing… we gave them a lifeline”.

By furiously attacking Iran, Trump will encourage Saudi Arabia and Gulf monarchs to escalate their proxy wars throughout the central core of the Middle East. It will encourage Iran to take precautions and assume that a long-term understanding with the US and the Sunni states is becoming less and less feasible.

There are already some signs that Trump’s endorsement of Sunni states, however repressive, is leading to an escalation of hostilities between Sunni and Shia.

In Bahrain, where a Sunni minority rules a Shia majority, the security forces attacked the Shia village of Diraz today. It is home to the island’s leading Shia cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim, who has just received a one-year suspended sentence for financing extremism.

One man in the village is reported to have been killed as the police moved in, using armoured vehicles and firing shotguns and tear gas canisters.

President Obama had frosty relations with the Bahraini rulers because of the mass incarceration of protesters and use of torture when the security forces crushed democratic protests in 2011.

Trump backed away from past policy when he met Bahraini King Hamad in Riyadh at the weekend, saying: “Our countries have a wonderful relationship together, but there has been a little strain, but there won’t be strain with this administration.”

The bombing in Manchester – and atrocities attributed to Isis influence in Paris, Brussels, Nice and Berlin – are similar to even worse slaughter of tens of thousands in Iraq and Syria. These get limited attention in the Western media, but they continually deepen the sectarian war in the Middle East.

The only feasible way to eliminate organisations capable of carrying out these attacks is to end the seven wars – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and north east Nigeria – that cross-infect each other and produce the anarchic conditions in which Isis and al-Qaeda and their clones can grow.

But to end these wars, there needs to be political compromise between main players like Iran and Saudi Arabia and Trump’s belligerent rhetoric makes this almost impossible to achieve.

Of course, the degree to which his bombast should be taken seriously is always uncertain and his declared policies change by the day.

On his return to the US, his attention is going to be fully focused on his own political survival, not leaving much time for new departures, good or bad, in the Middle East and elsewhere. His administration is certainly wounded, but that has not stopped doing as much harm as he could in the Middle East in a short space of time.

 

Washington’s Shameful Fondness for Saudi Arabia

Why is Trump expanding the U.S. alliance with the Kingdom?

May 23, 2017

by Ted Galen Carpenter

The American Conservative

President Trump’s state visit to Riyadh and his actions there should deeply trouble all Americans. The president not only inked a deal to sell the Kingdom $110 billion in U.S. armaments, but he greatly intensified the overall security relationship. He proposed a Middle East version of NATO—a thinly disguised, Saudi-led alliance against Iran—and indicated that there would be strong U.S. backing for that association. Trump also celebrated the establishment in Riyadh of a global center to combat extremism.

It is difficult to justify those measures on the basis of rational U.S. security calculations. It is impossible to do so on the basis of any decent moral considerations. Unfortunately, President Trump is perpetuating and intensifying an extremely questionable bilateral relationship that has gone on for decades.

Saudi Arabia is an exceptionally duplicitous power that cannot be considered a U.S. ally, much less a friend. Indeed, given the Kingdom’s track record of promoting Islamic radicalism, building a center to combat global extremism in Riyadh is akin to having placed a center to combat fascism in 1930s Rome or Berlin. As Malou Innocent and I document in our book, Dubious Partners, the Saudi regime abets extremism in multiple ways. Riyadh has funded schools (madrassa) in various Muslim countries for decades to promote the Wahhabi religious cult that has intimate ties with the royal family. Wahhabi clerics indoctrinate youth in a most virulent anti-Western perspective.

Numerous analysts have noted that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 were Saudi nationals, but that was hardly the extent of Riyadh’s culpability. Some Saudi officials had at least a disturbingly tolerant relationship with Al Qaeda for years before those terrorist attacks. And the promotion of armed extremist groups did not begin or end with that association. As early as the 1980s, Riyadh made a concerted effort, in collusion with Pakistan, to make sure that the bulk of the financial and military assistance that Washington was providing Afghan insurgents resisting the Soviet occupation went to the most extreme Islamist factions. More recently, Riyadh backed extremist forces trying to unseat the governments of Iraq and Syria. Some of those groups eventually coalesced to form ISIS.

In terms of moral considerations, Washington’s de facto alliance with Saudi Arabia is even less justified. Riyadh has a dreadful human-rights record, not only treating women and religious minorities in a shabby fashion, but routinely imprisoning and executing even peaceful critics of the regime. The Saudi-led war in Yemen has been characterized by deliberate attacks on civilians and an assortment of other war crimes, including the use of banned cluster bombs. Washington’s willingness to endorse Riyadh’s military campaign, and even provide logistical support to it, makes America an accomplice in those atrocities.

Some of the U.S. emphasis on close ties with Saudi Arabia reflects the ongoing American obsession with viewing Iran as a mortal threat to stability in the Middle East. That simplistic perspective misconstrues the nature of a Sunni-Shiite struggle for dominance in the region. Washington has always favored Saudi Arabia in that contest, but Trump’s actions makes the bias far more pronounced. That is a mistake on both a strategic and a moral level. There are far more Sunnis than Shiites in the Middle East, and thanks to Saudi Arabia, there are also even more Sunni extremists than Shiite extremists. The United States should not have a dog in an Iranian-Saudi fight, but if the Trump administration felt it had to pick a side, it probably chose the wrong one. Fostering an Arab NATO puts America in the middle of not only the current Sunni-Shiite struggle, but even more long-standing Arab-Persian tensions. Moreover, tilting toward the stronger side is counterproductive if Washington’s goal is greater stability. It is as myopic as if Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had decided to tilt toward the Soviet Union rather than China in that bilateral feud.

Iran is hardly an admirable power, but the U.S. refrain that Tehran is the chief state sponsor of terrorism is overdone. Indeed, given Riyadh’s track record, Saudi Arabia may be a stronger candidate for that title. Domestically, Iran is certainly a repressive society, but it does have some features of openness. Women have a better status there than in the Saudi kingdom, and there are competitive (if constrained) elections featuring candidates with different views. None of that is allowed in Saudi Arabia.

Trump and his advisers seem oblivious to all of this. A key illustration came when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a joint press conference with the Saudi foreign minister. All American journalists (who might ask the Saudi official probing questions) were excluded. Tillerson spent much of the session condemning Iran for supporting terrorism and practicing repression at home. The secretary admonished the Iranians to withdraw their backing from terrorist groups and move toward greater democracy and freedom domestically.

To criticize Iran for its domestic failings while on the same platform with an official of a totalitarian theocracy was appalling. Saudi Arabia makes Iran, for all its faults and repressive aspects, look like a Jeffersonian democracy. Even if Tillerson had no sense of shame, he should at least have had a sense of irony in lecturing Tehran in the setting he chose.

The close U.S. association with Saudi Arabia has long been a stain on America’s honor. Trump and Tillerson have deepened that stain.

Sea level rising at triple speed since 1990

According to a new study, the world’s oceans are rising almost three times as fast as they were 25 years ago. Scientists say coastal regions face a much greater risk than previously thought.

May 24, 2017

by Natalie Muller

DW

A study published in scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests the threat of rising sea levels has been drastically underestimated.

“The acceleration in global mean sea-level rise is much larger than previously thought,” Sönke Dangendorf, the paper’s lead author, told DW.

“It underlines that sea-level rise is a serious threat,” he added.

Dangendorf, from the University of Siegen in Germany, worked with an international team of scientists from Spain, France, Norway and the Netherlands. They discovered that sea levels had risen relatively slowly – by about 1.1 millimeters, or 0.04 inches, annually – for much of the 20th century. But that changed in the early 1990s.

Pace picks up

Between 1993 and 2012, sea levels rose at a much faster rate of 3.1 millimeters annually.

Encroaching oceans have been flagged as one of the most damaging impacts of global warming. As trapped greenhouse gases cause temperatures to increase, seawater warms and expands, and ice melts into the sea, resulting in a rise in the water level. Some coastal cities and low-lying islands are already being inundated as a result.

This study isn’t the first to highlight that the rate of sea-level rise is speeding up. But its findings suggest a significantly faster rate of increase than past research. One of the reasons for the recent acceleration, Dangendorf told DW, is the melting of ice sheets over recent decades.

“We have always had a great uncertainty over the contribution of the large ice sheets, which store 100 times more sea-level equivalents than glaciers,” Dangendorf said.

The new research shows the impact of Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets melting rapidly over the last 20 or 30 years has been greater than expected, and is likely to result in a larger future sea-level rise than previously predicted.

That spells trouble for coastal areas.

“Cities like Miami which are already impacted by sea-level rise will experience much more coastal flooding and much stronger storm surges than have been observed so far,” Dangendorf said.

Satellite data

Dangendorf and his team took historical data from tide gauges, which were used to measure coastal changes until 1992, and compared them to more precise satellite information gathered in subsequent decades.

Satellites capable of monitoring sea levels were only launched in the early 1990s. To make the data as consistent as possible, the researchers adjusted the earlier results from tide gauges to reflect different factors that may affect sea-level rise in a given local region.

While it’s tricky to predict the extent of global sea level rise, projections published in the Fifth Assessment Report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of an increase of around 30 centimeters to 1 meter (1 foot to slightly more than 3 feet), by 2100.

Comment: This rise level is contradicted by a number of other predictions, none of which are acceptable to government agencies, of a rise caused by the progressive collapse of the Antarctica ice caps, of a rise of three meters within seven years. Ed

 Researchers model differences in East Coast sea level rise

May 19, 2017

by Kristen French

phys.org

For years, scientists have been warning of a so-called “hot spot” of accelerated sea-level rise along the northeastern U.S. coast. But accurately modeling this acceleration as well as variations in sea-level rise from one region to another has proven challenging.

Now, an upcoming paper in Geophysical Research Letters offers the first comprehensive model for understanding differences in sea level rise along North America’s East Coast. That model incorporates data not just from atmospheric pressure and ocean dynamics—changing currents, rising ocean temperatures and salinity all influence sea level—but also, for the first time, ice mass change in Greenland and Antarctica. The researchers say their model supports a growing consensus that sea level rise began accelerating in 1990 and that what they found will improve estimates of future sea level rise at a local level.

“A lot of people have been looking for sea level acceleration and have been having trouble finding it,” said James Davis, co-author on the paper and a professor and researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “The fact that we could model this well seems to indicate that what we are measuring is correct.”

Davis worked together with oceanographer Nadya Vinogradova, founder of Cambridge Climate Institute in Massachusetts, on the sea level rise modeling project. Their model, which incorporated assumptions that acceleration of sea level rise began in the 1990s and not before that, accurately predicted variations in sea level rise along North America’s East Coast that have been observed in tide-gauge data for over a half century.

Recent research indicates that global mean sea level, or the average height of the world’s oceans, has been increasing by 3 millimeters (.1 inches) per year on average since 1993, when satellites first started measuring it. But along the U.S. East Coast north of Cape Hatteras, rates of sea level rise were found to be some three to four times higher than the global average over certain periods.

Essential to the model Davis and Vinogradova built was research published in 2014 that for the first time measured acceleration in glacial melt in Greenland and Antarctica using data from NASA satellite GRACE. Another critical element was their addition of ocean dynamic modeling from University of Hamburg’s GECCO2 that, although low resolution compared to more current models, allowed them to look at a timeline going back to 1948. Newer, higher resolution models don’t reach back any further than 1990.

The researchers combined the GRACE and GECCO2 models with atmospheric pressure data and compared these against East Coast tide-gauge records, which measure actual sea levels at the shoreline and are plentiful and high quality for much of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Davis and Vinogradova found that contributions to the ocean from melting of the Greenland ice sheet actually tend to accelerate sea level rise along the southern part of the U.S. East Coast, south of latitude 35◦, in part due to a force called gravitational self-attraction and elastic loading. Though the melted ice adds volume to the oceans, it also causes sea levels closest to a melted glacier to fall due to a decline in gravitational pull from mass loss, called gravitational self-attraction. The loss of ice mass also causes the land that was underneath that ice to rise, and depresses the floor of surrounding ocean basin, which is called elastic loading.

In contrast, changing ocean dynamics are responsible for accelerated sea level rise along the northern part of the coast, north of latitude 40◦. For instance, an influx of freshwater from Greenland glacial melt to the nearby northern Atlantic, as well as rising ocean temperatures in the northern Atlantic, are weakening an established current system called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which drives the Gulf Stream. Typically the Gulf Stream depresses sea level right along the coast, so as this current weakens, sea levels bounce back. Meanwhile, higher ocean temperatures kick up sea level by expanding the water column.

Davis and Vinogradova chose to focus on the acceleration of sea level rise specifically to avoid the problem of accurately measuring what is known as post-glacial rebound. Post-glacial rebound is the ongoing shape-shifting of the earth’s surface that occurs after it is released from the burden of mountains of glacial ice, a process that began in North America at the end of its last ice age 16,000 years ago. (These changes occur very slowly over long time periods, unlike elastic loading, which is near-instantaneous and “elastic.”)

As with elastic loading, post-glacial rebound can causes the land or sea floor to bulge in some places and to sink in others, which can change the relationship between sea level and the land. Post-glacial rebound was the primary contributor to sea-level change over much of the 20th century along some parts of the East Coast—from Chesapeake Bay to New York as well as north of Maine. But short-term accelerations tend to be less sensitive to changes like post-glacial rebound that occur on time scales of thousands of years, said Davis.

Davis said that even though the results of their modeling do support the notion that sea level rise has been accelerating over the past 25 years, that doesn’t mean it will continue. “What we’re seeing is big,” said Davis. “But there’s nothing in this paper that says, ‘Oh, I’ve discovered acceleration and we’re all going to drown now.’ You can’t predict forward.” There are many sources of feedback in the system that scientists still don’t understand, he said.

Still, Davis suggested the findings might serve as a tool for local governments. “Suppose you’re a mayor in Miami and you hear that the projections for Greenland ice melt are wrong, and they’re going to be much greater in the next century. You have to worry much more than if you’re a mayor in Nova Scotia. But then if you’re talking about ocean currents, it’s flipped,” said Davis. “Wherever you live, you can’t just go by these [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports that say global sea level rise is one number.”

 

Trump’s budget slashes $3.6 trillion from domestic programs over 10 years

May 23, 2017

RT

The Trump administration’s $4.1 billion budget proposal calls for increased spending on law enforcement, the military and the US-Mexico wall, but cuts spending for programs for the poor by slashing funding for Medicaid and cutting food stamps.

“We looked at this budget through the eyes of the one’s paying the bills,” said Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.

“[F]or years and years we’ve looked at the budget in terms of the people in the back end of the program, the recipients of the taxpayer’s money, and we haven’t spent nearly enough time focusing our attention on the people who pay the taxes. Compassion needs to be on both sides of that equation,” he said.

Under this view, Medicaid, a federal-state health care program for the poor and disabled, would be slashed by more than $600 billion over 10 years. It also envisages capping payments to states and providing more flexibility to manage Medicaid recipients.

During question time, a reporter asked Mulvaney about Donald Trump’s announcement as a candidate that he would “Save Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid without cuts – gotta do it,” and whether the Trump was keeping his promises now that he’s president.

“We are not kicking anyone off any program who really needs it,” Melvaney responded. “We have plenty of money in this country to take care of everyone who needs help. But not enough for everyone who doesn’t need help.”

Trump is the first president to propose parental leave, Mulvaney said.

The budget outlines a paid parental leave program that accesses a state’s unemployment insurance scheme, but doesn’t include how the federal government will allocate funds to the program or how much. That’s because the states are being asked to figure out how to fund the program, which will probably fall on employers to fund, as unemployment insurance does in most states.

“The proposal will allow states to establish paid parental leave programs in a way that is most appropriate for their workforce and economy. States would be required to provide six weeks of parental leave and the proposal gives it broad latitude to design and finance the program,” stated the budget.

Under the budget plan, $191 billion would be cut from the food stamp program over a decade, representing a 30 percent reduction. The program currently serves 42 million people, a number that hasn’t changed much in a sluggish, recovering economy.

“We need people to work,” Mulvaney told reporters on Monday. “If you are on food stamps, we need you to go to work. If you are on disability and you should not be, we need you to go back to work.”

More than eight in 10 food stamp recipients, or 83 percent, are for households with children, the elderly or a disabled person. The average food stamp benefit is $133.85 a month, or the equivalent of $1.50 a meal. Working people who rely on food stamps are often times using it to supplement their lower income jobs where state and federal minimum wages have not been adjusted to meet living expense increases.

The food stamp program represents just 2 percent of the budget, whereas defense makes up 19 percent.

Under the budget proposal, military spending would increase by 10 percent, or an additional $54 billion. It would be financed by cuts to non-defense programs such as medical research and foreign aid.

Law enforcement and border security are also in line for increases.

The budget director coined a new term, “Trumponomics,” which he explained was  achieving and sustaining 3 percent economic growth, which would represent “a healthy American economy.”

“We have been attacked, stunningly, by some folks on the left and even in the mainstream who say that’s an unreasonable assumption,” Mulvaney complained.

“Ten years ago it was normal. The 1.9 percent growth rates that the previous administration assumed towards the end of their administration… we reject that pessimism.”

Budget watchers like Larry Summers, the treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, called the budget “simply ludicrous.”

Other cuts are planned for federal workers’ pensions and higher contributions toward those pension benefits, as well as trimming refundable tax credits paid to the working poor.

Under the proposal, 66 federal programs would be slashed, representing a savings of $26.7 billion. Some of these would receive funding in 2018 as part of a phase-out plan, The Hill reported.

Highway funds for the states could lose $95 billion, while the proposed US-Mexico border wall would get funding.

“We’re absolutely dead serious about the wall,” Mulvaney said.

The Department of Homeland Security would get $44.1 billion, while the Justice Department would receive $27.7 billion for law enforcement, public safety and immigration enforcement programs and activities. The Justice Department will also receive $214 million to hire 75 additional immigration judge teams, bring the total number of funded immigration judge teams to 449.

The proposal calls for investing $2.6 billion in infrastructure and border security technology “including funding to plan, design and construct a physical wall along the southern border.”

Around $300 million will be used to recruit, hire and train 500 new Border Patrol Agents and 1,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement law enforcement personnel plus support staff.

An additional $1.5 billion is earmarked for “expanded detention, transportation and removal of illegal immigrations.”

The plan was released while Trump is on his maiden overseas trip as president.

Tucked under the Infrastructure Plan, the budget said the $1 trillion will be met by a combination of “new Federal funding incentivized through non-Federal funding, and expedited projects (like Keystone XL pipeline),” with $200 billion allocated in outlays related to infrastructure initiatives.

The budget falls short on how this will come about, but it later says the Trump administration proposes to privatize US air traffic control. The administration admits that the country has maintained an excellent aviation safety record while operating the world’s most congested airspace.

“[T]he proposal to shift the air traffic control function to an independent non-governmental organization beginning in 2021, with a cap reduction in discretionary spending of $72.8 billion, and a reduction in aviation excise taxes of $115.6 billion,” the budget says.

On taxes, Trump promises an overhaul that would cut tax rates to 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent, instead of the current rates. The proposal also  promises to lower corporate tax rate to 15 percent. There is no detail to prove it would deliver on Trump’s promise for “massive” tax cuts.

Democrats’ response to the budget were swift, like Senator Ron Widen (D-Oregon) who is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.

 

Republicans voice opposition to Trump’s budget: ‘Dead on arrival’

The president’s plan to reduce spending ran into some conservative opposition, in addition to criticism from Democrats, for cuts to Medicaid and other programs

May 23, 2017

by Lauren Gambino

Reuters

Washington-Donald Trump’s proposal to reduce spending by $3.6tn, mostly by slashing antipoverty programs that provide social safety nets for the poor, ran into bipartisan opposition on Capitol Hill, where a number of Republican lawmakers rejected the cuts as “draconian” and “nonstarters”.

The president’s plan recommends $616bn in cuts to Medicaid, the government insurance programme for the poorest and many disabled Americans, while increasing border security spending by $2.6bn – including $1.6bn to begin construction on a wall along the US-Mexico border.

While fiscal conservatives welcomed the proposal, which aims to balance the budget by 2027, Republicans raised concerns that the plan would slice too deeply into programs that provide poor Americans access to healthcare, food stamps and student loans, setting the stage for a showdown over budget priorities.

“The cuts are draconian,” Kentucky representative Harold Rogers, a powerful member of the House Appropriations Committee, said of the proposed cuts to Medicaid.

Representative Mark Meadows, the chairman of the arch-conservative Freedom Caucus, praised the budget as “conservative” and said the White House presented a plan that “fundamentally could be implemented”. Though Meadows said he was encouraged by budget reductions to welfare programs, he could not get behind stripping funding from Meals on Wheels, a program that provides meal assistance for senior citizens that the president’s budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, dismissed in March as “just not showing any results”.

Arizona senator John McCain called the proposal “dead on arrival” in a statement, and knocked the $603m defense budget request “inadequate to the challenges we face”.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “The president’s budget, as we all know, is a recommendation. We’ll be taking into account what the president is recommending but it will not be determinative in every respect.”

Trump’s package of spending cuts and tax breaks assumes an economic growth rate of 3%, which many analysts have dismissed as improbable. The Congressional Budget Office forecast under current policy is 1.9%.

Presidential budgets are wish lists the White House sends to Congress. There was never a chance it would pass through untouched.

“Clearly Congress will take that budget, and then work on our own budget, which is the case every single year, but at least we now have common objectives,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters.

Rather than criticize the budget, the Wisconsin conservative sought to paint a rosier picture, insisting that there were elements of the proposal that all Republicans could get behind.

“Here’s what I’m happy about – we finally have a president who’s willing to actually balance the budget,” Ryan said. “The last president never proposed, let alone tried, to balance the budget.”

Democrats were fiercely critical of the plan, which they said would hit hardest the people who helped elevate Trump to the White House.

“The Trump budget exists somewhere over the rainbow, where the dreams of Mick Mulvaney, Paul Ryan and the Koch brothers really do come true,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told reporters. “Of course, these dreams are a nightmare for the average working American.”

Senator Bernie Sanders recalled Trump’s campaign promises, saying: “Sadly, this budget exposes all of that verbiage for what it really was – just cheap and dishonest campaign rhetoric that was meant to get votes. Nothing more than that,” the Vermont Independent said.

Asked if there was any element of the budget that Democrats could cooperate on, Sanders conceded that the $25bn proposal to provide six weeks of paid leave for mothers and fathers after the birth or adoption of a child is a “good start” if “inadequate”.

 

Republicans Will Reject Trump’s Budget, but Still Try to Impose Austerity On Washington

May 23, 2017

by Carl Hulse

New York Times

WASHINGTON — Finally some good news for President Trump: His new budget stands absolutely no chance of being enacted by Congress.

Moving forward with the cuts outlined in the $4.1 trillion spending plan created by the budget director, Mick Mulvaney, formerly one of the most determined fiscal hawks in Congress, would no doubt have major repercussions and compound the peril of Republicans already facing upheaval over their health care proposals. It would most likely hurt some of the very voters in rural and economically distressed corners of the nation who catapulted Mr. Trump to the White House and Republicans to control of the House and Senate. The effect on those constituents would be quickly felt.

Presidential budgets, especially in times of divided government, are traditionally labeled dead on arrival. This one, with its deep domestic spending reductions, never even drew a breath, despite unified Republican control of Washington. But it will influence the coming congressional spending deliberations, and its most consequential effect may be to push authors of House and Senate budget and spending bills to the right.

In short, the Trump administration’s cuts will not become law. But Republicans on Capitol Hill may seize the moment to impose some austerity of their own without going nearly as far as Mr. Mulvaney or Mr. Trump would like.

“At least we now have common objectives,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan said, noting that the “last president never proposed, let alone tried, to balance the budget.”

Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, hinted at Republican plans to look at the budget cycle as a way to reorder federal spending. He said it presented “an opportunity for Congress to re-examine programs across the government, and to address the significant fiscal challenges that face our country.”

The spending package approved by Congress this month made clear that lawmakers intend to reassert themselves as the prime force in federal spending policy, and they hope to achieve some level of bipartisan support. Unless Democratic votes can be rounded up, Congress would quickly revert to a cycle of short-term spending bills, and both sides would like to avoid that disruptive situation.

To do so, Republicans will have to veer significantly from Mr. Trump’s budget plan given the outrage of Democrats who see the proposal as an amalgam of punishing cuts in the social safety net coupled with obvious budget gimmicks deployed to disguise the true extent of the fiscal damage

“This heartless spending plan attempts to balance the budget on the backs of the American middle class and would make life much harder for families and seniors,” said Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota. He predicted that if passed, it “would likely send our country into an economic free fall.”

The budget plan submitted by Mr. Mulvaney is reminiscent of the conservative House budget alternatives written by the Republican Study Committee, the group he belonged to before defecting to form the even more conservative House Freedom Caucus. Those budgets were routinely rejected by Democrats and significant numbers of Republicans, and were seen more as ideological documents than fiscal plans. Now Mr. Mulvaney is writing budgets for the White House.

Republicans were virtually unanimous in their estimation that Mr. Trump’s plan would be heavily rewritten. The health care debate has reminded many congressional Republicans that large numbers of their constituents facing tough economic conditions rely on Medicaid and other federal support programs. They know cutting too deep could have hurt them in the 2018 midterms. And nearly $50 billion in proposed cuts to agriculture over the next decade immediately set off alarms with farm-state Republicans who thought their Trump-embracing constituents deserved better.

In a joint statement, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas and Representative Mike Conaway of Texas, the Republican chairmen of the Senate and House Agriculture Committees, said they would “fight to ensure farmers have a strong safety net so this key segment of our economy can weather current hard times.” But they left the door open to cuts in food stamp programs managed by the Agriculture Department.

This is the quandary for many Republicans: They are all for reining in spending but want to make certain that their home-state priorities are walled off. For each Republican worried about farm subsidies, there are others who do not like the sound of less money for health research, the State Department, transit projects and popular programs like Head Start.

For instance, Representative Earl L. Carter, Republican of Georgia, said that curbing “Washington’s spending addiction” was overdue. At the same time, though, he said he would “fight for our ports, the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project, the Coast Guard, our military installations, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and other critical projects as discussions continue.

Mr. Mulvaney was unapologetic about a fiscal approach that critics found meanspirited and in conflict with an American tradition of asking the haves to provide for the have-nots.

“Compassion needs to be on both sides of that equation,” he said on Tuesday. “Yes, you have to have compassion for folks who are receiving the federal funds, but also you have to have compassion for the folks who are paying it.”

Democrats will do all they can to try to make Mr. Trump, his economic team and Republicans on Capitol Hill own this budget proposal even though many elements will not survive. The challenge for congressional Republicans will be to enact spending policies that advance their desire to be more frugal without going so far that voters decide to restore budget power to the Democrats.

Arizona ends taxation on purchase & exchange of gold and silver coins

May 24, 2017

RT

The Governor of Arizona Doug Ducey has signed into law a bill which removes all state income tax on precious metals coins. The measure was passed in the Arizona Senate on May 10 by a margin of 16-13.

When people buy gold or silver to protect themselves against the devaluation of America’s paper currency, they frequently end up with a “gain” when exchanging the metal back into dollars.

However, this is not necessarily a real gain, regarding purchasing power. This “gain” is often nominal because of the slow but steady devaluation of the dollar. The government nevertheless assesses it as a gain for tax purposes.

The bill, called House Bill 2014, was introduced by Republican Mark Finchem who insisted that taxing exchanges of “legal tender” like gold coins is a tax on money.

“As transmitted the bill provides for the tax-neutral treatment of a very limited class of collectibles, using narrowly defined language,” Ducey said in a written statement. He and his predecessor Jan Brewer have vetoed three similar bills.

It is a major win, say gold proponents.

“Every supporter of free markets should cheer Arizona’s passage of HB 2014. There is no more justification for forcing individuals to use government created money than there is for forcing them to drive government manufactured cars. In fact, as the Federal Reserve’s 114 years of failure shows, giving monopoly control over our money supply to a secretive central bank is the most dangerous form of government intervention,” said Ron Paul, former Congressman from Texas and Campaign for Liberty Chairman.

“By allowing the people of Arizona to use an alternative to Federal Reserve-created fiat currency, HB 2014 will help the people of Arizona survive the next Federal Reserve-created recessions. Passage of this bill will also help make Arizona more attractive to the growing number of people seeking alternatives to fiat money in order to protect themselves, their families, and their business from the effects of Federal Reserve policy. Thus, this bill will help attract new investments and jobs to Arizona,” he said.

Mass Chinese Counterfeiting of American gold and silver coins and gold bars

May 23, 2017

by Brian Harring

With the collapsing American economy, many Americans are rushing to invest in gold; either coins or bar, and also silver. One of the most popular forms of this investment are American coins. Where there is a need, there is always someone to fill it and in this case, the filling consists of the massive counterfeiting of gold coins, silver coins, and even Swiss gold bars in China. Initially, it appeared they were only faking Morgan dollars, but then it turned out they were also making $20 Liberty, and Indian Head gold $2.50, $5, and $10 coins, of all dates. Evidently, this is extremely easy with today’s computer-and-laser-die-cutting technology, and the fakes are being die-struck in vast quantities, not cast, and visually at least, are superb copies.

The good news is that these fakes are readily detectable with a 0.01 – gram scale, as the Chinese in their greed are using lower carats of gold and lower grades of silver than the genuine coins, to maximize profit, and thus, in most cases, the fake coins and bars are lighter than the real ones. In a few cases, the silver coins of high numismatic interest are actually OVER weight – it appears that the supply of accurate planchet stock is a major difficulty for the forgers.

Here are links to a two-part article about this in Coin World Magazine:

http://www.coinworldonline.com/counterfeits/articles/20081203/counterfeit_1.asp

http://www.coinworldonline.com/counterfeits/articles/20081203/counterfeit_2.asp

A friend who has an extremely wealthy friend in Europe (on the order of several hundreds of millions) asked this person to make enquiries at his bank. The bank told him candidly that indeed, the Chinese are also faking sovereigns, half sovereigns, French 20 Franc gold, and various denominations of Nicholas II Russian Rubles, of all dates, as well as Swiss gold bars. They said any gold bars they are offered for purchase are both weighed and the serial numbers checked with the manufacturers. The Chinese do not know the serial and manufacture date numbering systems on the gold bars, and so that error is quickly detectable.

The US Secret Service has been made aware of this problem, which was new to them, and if they decide to launch an investigation, they have indicated that while they cannot do anything about the operations in China, they can, and will, seize any counterfeit US coins they come across. Dealers in these fakes would also be liable to fines and jail time. Foreign fakes are not under their purview, but if that business turns out to be substantial, there could conceivably be an FBI investigation of fraud in interstate commerce, targeting companies who are mail-ordering fake foreign coins. Individuals who have been cheated might also sue their suppliers – in short, this could turn into a huge mess.

General appearance aside, it is very easy it is to spot fakes – just with a scale reading to 1/00th of a gram, and a table of the correct weights and sizes of the coins or bars they are buying. (In the case of large-size bargold, unless buying from the manufacturer or a reputable bank, the serial numbers need to be verified, so that one does not buy a Chinese bar with a lead or mercury core)

Herewith a listing of what I have uncovered so far:

1; The U.S .Morgan silver dollar. All dates and all mint marks;

2: The U.S. gold coins viz the $2.50, $5.00 and $10.00 Indian head issues

  1. The U.S. copper penny viz 1909 S vdb
  2. Three gold Imperial Russian roubles from the reign of Nicholas II
  3. A gold 20 franc coin with the head of Napoleon I on the obverse

6.1921 Mascot mexico snake 50 pesos gold

7 ‘CREDIT SUISSE’ 1oz 24ct gold bar serial numbered

  1. The South African Krugerrand
  2. British sovereigns and half sovereigns of different monarchs and dates

And in addition, they are also making fake gold bars from the Credit Suisse people. These, as well as fake U.S. Treasury gold bars, are made from tungsten (close to gold in weight) and then heavily gold-plated.

It was always considered that numismatics as a relatively fraud-free area of collecting, but it appears that a coin collector today has to carry a digital scale around. This doesn’t affect me very much, but I too have wondered at the sudden appearance of all the Morgan dollars. Fortunately, the ones I have came down to me from my grandfather, and I’ll be very careful picking up individual pieces that fill blanks.

And full-page advertisements in coin magazines offering Morgan dollars for sale, all in UNC condition and all “recently found in Dubuque bank vault” are laughable hustles for Chinese fakes.

As for Krugerands and similar gold pieces that are traded for bullion prices, it is obvious that the Chinese have lowered the purity and thus debase the value; otherwise, a fake Krug would have as much gold as a real one.

In the final analysis, at the present time, gold is not a good investment because of growing suspicions of forgery. If the public is concerned, no matter if the gold happens to be real and not a forgery, then they will hesitate to purchase.

 

Turkey’s Erdogan: If Berlin wants to pull troops, we’d say ‘Goodbye’

May 24, 2017

RT

Turkey would tell Germany “goodbye” if it decided to withdraw its troops from the Incirlik air force base, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.

Erdogan, who was speaking in Ankara before flying to Brussels for a summit of NATO leaders and a meeting with EU leaders, also said that Turkey had not received any indication from Berlin on the possible withdrawal of troops stationed at the southern Turkish air force base.

The future of the German troops at Incirlik has been thrown into question after Turkey blocked German lawmakers from visiting the troops this month. Some 250 German troops are stationed at Incirlik, where they contribute to the US-led fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

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