"Could the next great Chinese advanced missile threat come disguised as an innocuous looking shipping transport vessel? A new report in The Washington Free Beacon suggests so, as it details China's new long-range cruise missile which can be launched directly from a shipping container device, which is meant to conceal detection of the threat right up until the moment of launch.
Alarmingly, it's already being flight tested, according to analysts cited in the report, which further finds the technology "could turn Beijing's large fleet of freighters into potential warships and commercial ports into future missile bases." If cruise missiles can be hidden in international shipping containers, China could be a major threat to western targets simply as it moves millions of tons of goods every year..."
As the Democratic Party quarrels over reparations for slavery, a new and related issue has arisen, raised by the president of Mexico.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has written Pope Francis I and King Felipe VI to demand their apologies for the Spanish conquest of Mexico that began 500 years ago with the “invasion” of Hernando Cortez.
Arriving on the Gulf Coast in 1519, Cortes marched in two years to what is today’s Mexico City to impose Spanish rule, the Spanish language and culture, and the Catholic faith upon the indigenous peoples.
“One culture, one civilization was imposed upon another,” wrote President Lopez Obrador:
“There were massacres and oppression. The so-called conquest was waged with the sword and the cross. They built their churches on top of the temples.”
He demanded that the king and the pope ask for “forgiveness for the abuses inflicted on the indigenous peoples of Mexico.”
"The White House has dramatically stepped up its rhetoric threatening action against Russia's military presence in Venezuela after the Kremlin deployed a troop contingency to Caracas last Saturday.
Trump's national security adviser John Bolton took tensions to a new level, on Friday issuing a new Monroe doctrine of sorts, telling Moscow any attempt to establish or expand military operations in the western hemisphere constitutes a "provocative" and "direct threat" to international peace and security in the region..."
"The dollar’s share of global central-bank reserves slumped to the lowest level since 2013 while holdings of the Chinese yuan rose for the fifth quarter in the past six, IMF data showed Friday.
The U.S. currency accounted for 61.7% of global allocated foreign-exchange reserves in the fourth quarter, down from 61.9% and the tenth decline in the past 12 quarters according to the IMF's Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) for Q4 2018 report. The drop occurred despite a 1% jump in the value of the dollar in the fourth quarter. The euro, yen and yuan each gained as a share of allocated reserves. While modest at just 1.9%, reserve allocation to the Chinese Yuan has been increasing rapidly and is now almost double where it was two years ago..."
With its hands tied when it comes to military intervention, only covert actions - such as those described in the RED Team document - are likely to be enacted by the U.S. government, at least at this stage of its ongoing “regime change” effort in Venezuela.
Juan Guaidó, the self-proclaimed “interim president of Venezuela” who is supported by the United States government, recently announced coming “tactical actions” that will be taken by his supporters starting April 6 as part of “Operation Freedom,” an alleged grassroots effort to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
That operation, according to Guaidó, will be led by “Freedom and Aid Committees” that in turn create “freedom cells” throughout the country — “cells” that will spring to action when Guaidó gives the signal on April 6 and launch large-scale community protests. Guaidó’s stated plan involves the Venezuelan military then taking his side, but his insistence that “all options are still on the table” (i.e., foreign military intervention) reveals his impatience with the military, which has continued to stay loyal to Maduro throughout Guaidó’s “interim presidency.”
"A former French spy has been murdered six months into an investigation for allegedly plotting to assassinate an opponent of Congolese President Sassou Nguesso, according to The Times.
The body of 57-year-old Daniel Forestier was found with five bullet wounds, including to the head and heart, in a remote car park near his home on the shores of Lake Geneva in the Alps.
France Bleu radio in Haute-Savoie said Forestier lived in the village of Lucinges, nine miles (15km) from where his body was found, with his wife and two children and had served as a local councillor until he was put under investigation last September.
The public prosecutor said the killing was probably a settling of scores. “There’s almost no doubt about it,” Philippe Toccanier said. Forestier had been shot five times in the thorax and the head, he added. -The Guardian
Forestier’s body was found in a parking area off a little-used road in Haute-Savoie.
Forestier spent 14 years working for France's General Directorate of External Security (DGSE), which is tasked with so-called black operations, including assassination, abduction and sabotage. The former agent was arrested after French officers with the internal security service (DGSI) reportedly overheard him admitting to spearheading a plot to murder former Congolese General Ferdinand Mbaou, the former head of Congo's presidential guard.
Mr Forestier, a career soldier who worked in the clandestine DGSE “action service”, had been notified of preliminary charges of heading a plan to kill General Ferdinand Mbaou, the former head of the presidential guard of Congo who has lived in France for two decades. Mr Forestier was also charged with possessing explosives. -The Times
The ex-French spy was charged along with former DGSE colleague Bruno Susini.
Mbou - who has been living in France for 20 years, is seen as an opponent of President Nguesso. In 2015, Mbou survived being shot in the back as he left his home.
Mbaou, 62, was head of the presidential guard to Sassou-Nguesso’s predecessor, Pascal Lissouba, but fled the country when Lissouba was overthrown in a coup in 1997. He has been a fierce critic of the Sassou-Nguesso regime since and still has a bullet lodged near his heart from a previous assassination attempt. He told Paris Match last year he only learned of the plot to kill him when he read about it in the French newspapers. -The Guardian..."
"The 31st U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit (31st MEU) seized a tiny island and airfield with special operations airmen and soldiers as part of a new island-hopping strategy.
Last week, 31st MEU, backed by the 3rd Marine Division, 3rd Marine Logistics Group and 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, members of the Air Force 353rd Special Operations Group, and Army soldiers with 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, conducted a series of simulated military exercises attacking and seizing Ie Shima Island located off the northwest coast of Okinawa Island in the East China Sea, reported Task Purpose.
The new military strategy, known as Expeditionary Advanced Base (EAB) Operations, will allow Marine units to seize, establish, and operate multiple small bases across the Pacific Ocean, a tactic that will be beneficial in a high-end fight with China..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-22/marines-seize-island-pacific-training-war-china
The Cold War Ides of March
Heedless of the consequences, or perhaps welcoming them, America’s Cold Warriors and their media platforms have recently escalated their rhetoric against Russia, especially in March.
Anyone who has lived through or studied the preceding 40-year Cold War will recognize the ominous echoes of its most dangerous periods, when actual war was on the horizon or a policy option. Here are only a few random but representative examples:
1. In a March 8 Washington Post opinion article, two American professors, neither with any apparent substantive knowledge of Russia or Cold War history, warned that the Kremlin is trying “to undermine our trust in the institutions that sustain a strong nation and a strong democracy. The media, science, academia and the electoral process are all regular targets.” Decades ago, J. Edgar Hoover, the policeman of that Cold War, said the same, indeed made it an operational doctrine.
2. Nor is the purported threat to America only. According to (retired) Gen. David Petraeus and sitting Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, also in the Post on the following day, the “world is once again polarized between two competing visions for how to organize society.” For Putin’s Kremlin, “the existence of the United States’ rule-of-law world is intrinsically threatening.” This is an “intensifying worldwide struggle.” So much for those who dismissed post–Soviet Russia as merely a “regional” power, including former President Barack Obama, and for the myopic notion that a new Cold War was not possible.
3. But the preceding Cold War was driven by an intense ideological conflict between Soviet Communism and Western capitalism. Where is the ideological threat today, considering that post–Soviet Russia is also a capitalist country? In a perhaps unprecedented nearly 10,000-word manifesto from March 14 in the front news pages of (again) the Post, Robert Kagan provided the answer: “Today, authoritarianism has emerged as the great challenge facing the liberal democratic world—a profound ideological, as well as strategic, challenge.” That is, “authoritarianism” has replaced Soviet Communism in our times, with Russia again in the forefront.
The substance of Kagan’s “authoritarianism” as “an ideological force” is thin, barely enough for a short opinion article, often inconsistent and rarely empirical. It amounts to a batch of “strongman” leaders (prominently Putin, of course), despite their very different kinds of societies, political cultures, states, and histories, and despite their different nationalisms and ruling styles. Still, credit Kagan’s ambition to be the undisputed ideologist of the new American Cold War, though less the Post for taking the voluminous result so seriously.
The 40-year Cold War often flirted with hot war, and that, too, seems to be on the agenda. Words, as Russians say, are also deeds. They have consequences, especially when uttered by people of standing in influential outlets. Again, consider a few examples that might reasonably be considered warmongering:
4. The journal Foreign Policy found space for disgraced former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili to declare: “It is not a question of whether [Putin] will attack, but where.” (Saakashvili may be the most discredited “democratic” leader of recent times, having brought the West close to war with Russia in 2008 and since having had to flee his own country and then decamp even from US-backed Ukraine.)
5. NBC News, a reliable source of Cold War frenzy, reported, based on Estonian “intelligence,” an equally persistent source of the same mania, that “Russia is most likely to attack the Baltic States first, but a conflict between Russia and NATO would involve attacks on Western Europe.”
6. Also in March, in The Economist, another retired general, Ben Hodges, onetime commander of the US army in Europe, echoes that apocalyptic perspective: “This is not just about NATO’s eastern front.” (Readers may wish to note that “eastern front” is the designation given by Nazi Germany to its 1941 invasion of Soviet Russia. Russians certainly remember.)
7. Plenty of influential American Cold War zealots seem eager to respond to the bugle charge, among them John E. Herbst, a stalwart at the Atlantic Council (NATO’s agitprop “think tank” in Washington), and the Post’s deputy editorial-page editor, Jackson Diehl. Both want amply armed US and NATO warships sent to what Russians sometimes call their bordering “lakes,” the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. To do so would likely mean the “war” NBC envisages.
Lest readers think all this is merely the “chattering” of opinion-makers, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once termed it, consider a summary of legislation being prepared by a bipartisan US Senate committee, pointedly titled and with a fearsome acronym, DASKA (the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act of 2019)..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-22/us-cold-warriors-escalate-toward-actual-war-russia
"Having brushed aside complaints from Brussels and the US, who fear the already heavily indebted and economically faltering NATO member might be walking into another "debt trap", Italian President Sergio Mattarella welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Rome on Friday. And after posing for photos, Mattarella and Xi set the table for the expected signing of a Memorandum of Understanding that will make Italy the first EU member and G7 nation to sign on to Beijing's controversial One Belt, One Road initiative (BRI), the AP reports.
Of course, the populist Italian government, already on thin ice with the globalist powers after defying Brussels and its fiscal rules by blowing out its budget deficit, didn't exactly smooth over European anxieties by insisting that the partnership with platitudes like insisting that the economic partnership be a "two way street".
But Rome has little incentive to cater to Brussels on this. And Beijing, too, has everything to gain. By the end of his two-day diplomatic visit to Italy, Xi will have achieved a major geopolitical victory - a key vote of confidence in one of his signature initiatives - at a time when his government is struggling with slowing economic growth and a destabilizing trade war..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-22/why-italys-decision-join-one-belt-one-road-makes-economic-sense
"Authored by Martin Feldstein, op-ed via The Wall Street Journal,
The most dangerous domestic problem facing America’s federal government is the rapid growth of its budget deficit and national debt.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the deficit this year will be $900 billion, more than 4% of gross domestic product. It will surpass $1 trillion in 2022. The federal debt is now 78% of GDP. By 2028, it is projected to be nearly 100% of GDP and still rising. All this will have very serious economic consequences, and the CBO understates the problem. It has to base its projections on current law—in this case, the levels of spending and the future tax rules and rates that appear in law today.
Those levels don’t match realistic predictions. Current law projects that defense spending will decline as a share of GDP, from a very low 3.1% now to about 2.5% over the next 10 years. None of the military and civilian defense experts with whom I’ve spoken believe that will happen, given America’s global responsibilities and the need to modernize U.S. military equipment. It is likelier that defense spending will stay around 3% of GDP or even increase in the coming decade. And if the outlook for defense spending is increased, the Democratic House majority will insist that the non-defense discretionary spending should rise to match its trajectory.
If defense and other discretionary spending stays steady as a share of GDP, the annual deficit will increase by nearly 1% of GDP—from 4.2% of GDP now to about 5% of GDP 10 years from now. At the same time, the tax increases in current law that the CBO assumes will occur during the next decade as some of the recent cuts are phased out probably won’t happen. Congress will face strong political pressure to avoid a functional tax increase..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-23/marty-feldstein-warns-debt-crisis-coming
"Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
At a high-level meeting in Rome this week, it seems that Russia reiterated a grave warning to the US – Moscow will not tolerate American military intervention to topple the Venezuelan government with whom it is allied.
Meanwhile, back in Washington DC, President Donald Trump was again bragging that the military option was still on the table, in his press conference with Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro. Trump is bluffing or not yet up to speed with being apprised of Russia’s red line.
The meeting in the Italian capital between US “special envoy” on Venezuelan affairs Elliot Abrams and Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov had an air of urgency in its arrangement. The US State Department announced the tête-à-tête only three days beforehand. The two officials also reportedly held their two-hour discussions in a Rome hotel, a venue indicating ad hoc arrangement.
Abrams is no ordinary diplomat. He is a regime-change specialist with a criminal record for sponsoring terrorist operations, specifically the infamous Iran-Contra affair to destabilize Nicaragua during the 1980s. His appointment by President Trump to the “Venezuela file” only underscores the serious intent in Washington for regime change in Caracas. Whether it gets away with that intent is another matter.
Moscow’s interlocutor, Sergei Ryabkov, is known to not mince his words, having earlier castigated Washington for seeking global military domination. He calls a spade a spade, and presumably a criminal a criminal.
The encounter in Rome this week was described as “frank” and “serious” – which is diplomatic code for a blazing exchange. The timing comes at a high-stakes moment, after Venezuela having been thrown into chaos last week from civilian power blackouts that many observers, including the Kremlin, blame on American cyber sabotage. The power grid outage followed a failed attempt by Washington to stage a provocation with the Venezuelan military over humanitarian aid deliveries last month from neighboring Colombia..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-23/russia-gives-us-red-line-venezuela
"Authored by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Under the directorship of torture and black site maven Gina Haspel, Donald Trump’s Central Intelligence Agency has returned to its traditional roots of conducting “black bag” operations and disrupting electrical grids through cyber-attacks.
The Venezuelan government has accused the Trump administration of giving the green light for a series of crippling power failures in Venezuela, which affected 22 of Venezuela’s 23 states, including the capital of Caracas. The long-duration power failures were cited by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a reason for the US withdrawing its diplomats from Caracas. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced that an international commission assisted by specialists from Russia, China, Iran, and the United Nations would help his country analyze the sources of the Venezuelan electrical grid cyber-attack. Initial cyber-forensics by Venezuela traced some of the cyber warfare being waged against Venezuela to nodes in Houston and Chicago.
In addition to electricity, water service was disrupted in Venezuela. From Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Maduro tweeted on March 12: “From the Presidential Command Post, we monitored minute-by-minute the progress of the recovery of the National Electric System.”
Cyber-attacks on a country that puts its civilian population in jeopardy might, at first glance, appear to be a violation of the Geneva Conventions on warfare. However, without a Digital Geneva Convention, civilian populations are not covered by the current Geneva Conventions. However, in 2015, the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security (UN GGE), which included experts from the United States, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and other nations, agreed that current international law does apply to cyberspace. Most international legal experts agree that the Geneva Conventions require a digital annex to cover the type of cyber-disruption of the Venezuelan electrical grid carried out by the US intelligence services.
Hybrid warfare against Venezuela, which includes economic, diplomatic, and cyber, has the backing of the neo-conservatives who now call the shots for the Trump White House. They include, in addition to Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton; Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special envoy to the US-backed opposition-led rump Venezuelan government of Juan Guaido; Cuban-American Mauricio Claver-Carone, the senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council; and Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, who represents the interests of South Florida’s right-wing oligarch exiles from Venezuela and other Latin American countries.
While Trump was preparing for his Hanoi summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump’s second summit with Kim, Haspel’s CIA dug into its old bag of black operations, while also engaging in the more modern form of cyber-attack in targeting North Korea.
On February 22, 2019, ten males, all wearing masks, broke into the North Korean embassy, which is located in the residential suburb of Aravaca, north of Madrid, Spain, and subjected eight embassy staff members to brutal interrogation tactics, including tying up the diplomats, throwing black bags over their heads (a specialty of Ms. Haspel), and subjecting them to beatings. One female diplomat managed to escape through a second-floor window and her screams alerted a neighbor, who promptly called the police. Two embassy employees required medical attention from their injuries.
The Spanish police and National Intelligence Center (CNI) linked two of the embassy invaders to the CIA. “El Pais,” a Spanish national newspaper, reported that the CIA issued one of its standard “denials,” however, the paper stated that Spanish authorities found the denial from Langley, Virginia to be “unconvincing.” “El Pais” reported that the invasion of the North Korean embassy by the CIA had severely harmed relations between Madrid and Washington."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-23/trumps-cia-now-unbound-and-back-its-traditional-hijinks
"Foreign countries continue dumping US Treasuries plus a look at Asia and negative interest rates in Europe.
Foreign Countries Continue Dumping US Treasuries
March 18 (King World News) – Here is what Peter Boockvar wrote today as the world awaits the next round of monetary madness: After finishing 2018 with only $1.6b of net foreign buying of US Treasury notes and bonds, foreigners sold $12b in January. It was back in 2011 and 2012 when foreigners bought more than $400b each of those years. China and Japan continued with their selling of notes and bonds but the pace of T-bill buying offset this which brought total holdings higher. Bottom line, foreigners continue to reduce their holdings of longer term US Treasuries as a percent of the total stock outstanding and have essentially been absent from the market on a net basis. Combine this with Fed ‘selling’ and the US Treasury has been held together by domestic buyers, including banks, pension funds and others…"
at https://kingworldnews.com/foreign-countries-continue-dumping-us-treasuries-plus-negative-interest-rates-in-europe-and-asia/
"The United States and China unleashed a war of words Friday (Mar 15) over Beijing’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) after the United Nation Security Council adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the council's political mission in Afghanistan for another six months, reported The Washington Post.
The 2018 resolution extended the council's mission for a year aimed at strengthening regional economic cooperation involving Afghanistan, including the BRI to connect China to Europe, and Africa. The 2016 and 2017 resolutions had similar BRI language..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-18/us-china-clash-over-belt-and-road-afghan-resolution
"As investors continue to await the outcome of this week’s Fed Meeting, today James Turk told King World News that people should instead be focused on the spectacular multi-year accumulation pattern in the gold market.
Is The Attack On Precious Metals Over?
March 18 (King World News) – James Turk: “The big question gold and silver bulls are facing at the moment, Eric, is whether the latest ferocious attack on the precious metals is over, or is there more ahead as month-end option expiry approaches. As one would expect, arguments can be made both ways.
First, I use the word “ferocious” purposefully. How else can the recent 15% increase in Comex open interest be described?…"
at https://kingworldnews.com/james-turk-check-out-this-spectacular-multi-year-accumulation-pattern-in-gold/
The next time someone tells you that "Facebook is a private company" ask them if they know about the dozens of government employees who fill its ranks...
As the Free Thought Project has previously reported, the phrase “Facebook is a private company” is not accurate as they have formed a partnership with an insidious neoconservative “think tank” known as the Atlantic Council which is directly funded and made up of groups tied to the pharmaceutical industry, the military industrial complex, and even government itself. The Atlantic Council dictates to Facebook who is allowed on the platform and who is purged.
Because the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the United States government—and they are making decisions for Facebook—this negates the claim that the company is private.
Since our six million followers and years of hard work were wiped off the platform during the October purge, TFTP has consistently reported on the Atlantic Council and their ties to the social media giant. This week, however, we’ve discovered something just as ominous—the government to Facebook pipeline and revolving door.
It is a telltale sign of a corrupt industry or company when they create a revolving door between themselves and the state. Just like Monsanto has former employees on the Supreme Court and Pharmaceutical industry insiders move back and fourth from the FDA to their companies, we found that Facebook is doing the same thing..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-08/government-facebook-pipeline-reveals-corrupt-mix-social-media-state
This study by Swiss Propaganda Research was first published in 2016, it is presented here in English for the first time. Translated by Terje Maloy.
The Propaganda Multiplier: Governments, military and intelligence services using global news agencies to disseminate their messages to a worldwide audience.
Therefore you always have to ask yourself: Why do I get this specific information in this specific form at this moment? Ultimately, it’s always about questions of power.”
- Dr. Konrad Hummler, Swiss banking and media executive
It is one of the most important aspects of our media system – and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-08/propaganda-multiplier-how-western-media-report-geopolitics
"Authored by Gunther Schnabl and Thomas Stratmann via The Mises Institute,
Ten years after the outbreak of the global financial crisis, banks in the euro area have not recovered. The Euro Stoxx Financials is only 40% above its March 2009 low, well below its pre-crisis level (Fig. 1). By contrast, the S&P Financials index in the US has risen by 320%. The different fates of European and US financial institutions could be due to the different monetary and regulatory crisis therapies of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Fed..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-08/progressive-zombification-europes-banks
While the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile has not attracted the same level of media attention as the strategic Avangard re-entry vehicle or even the air-launched Kinzhal aeroballistic missile, it nevertheless represents an important advance in military technology and represents the state-of-the-art of Russian technologies. It promises to maintain and even expand Russia’s conventional deterrence through its high guarantee of effective retaliatory capability even against the most advanced anti-air and anti-missile defenses.
The secrecy surrounding the 3M22 Zircon, to the point of there existing no official images of the weapon, is remarkable and reminds one of the careful effort to conceal the true nature of the P-700 Granit heavy anti-ship missile, specifically its air-breathing ramjet propulsion..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-09/russias-zircon-hypersonic-missile-challenges-us-naval-dominance
"The small town of Aurora, Illinois – best known for being Wayne‘s hometown in Wayne’s World – has another peculiar appeal to its location: it is one of the closest places that high frequency traders can get to the $63 billion CME Group exchange, where futures and derivatives on commodities and US treasuries trade making it a mecca for HFTs seeking to frontrun slower orderflow. That makes local real-estate extremely coveted, as detailed in a recent Bloomberg follow up to Michael Lewis' "Flash Boys".
The story is familiar to anyone who has been reading this website for the past decade, or leafed through Michael Lewis' HFT thriller: the closer traders can collocate to the CME, the more likely they are to shave off milliseconds from their trades, resulting in frontrunning of slower orderflow that can net them millions. For instance, this small brick hut is owned by New Line Networks a joint venture of HFT giants Jump Trading and Virtu Financial: the two paid $14 million for the land just to be close to the CME Group.
Not happy with the arrangement, Chicago HFT titan DRW Holdings wishes to be even "faster" than Jump and Vitru, and plans to move just a few yards closer to the exchange, having recently put an antenna on a light pole. Next to that is yet another light pole that has been rigged with antennas owned by McKay Brothers, an Oakland-based company. Meanwhile, on nearly all the roads in the area, trading companies have erected antennas or rented space on towers and poles, all of them littered with white circular dishes to try and get closer to the CME data center, all for the purpose of frontrunning slower traders, even if there are still no lasers to be seen, unlike what a visitor to the NYSE in Mahwah, NJ can observe.
As Michael Lewis first hinted in 2014, the real-estate scramble around the exchange had become a turf war between rival HFT corporations until one company decided it was going to do something about the constant jostling back-and-forth between high frequency traders. Dallas-based CyrusOne, which owns the CME center, decided last year that it would finally end the scramble for real-estate by putting up a 350 foot tall wireless tower that would allow anybody to rent space on it. It’s closer than any trading firm could get to the center and targeted putting everybody "on equal footing"... in exchange for a very generous fee to CyrusOne, of course.
And although the tower has room for about 35 satellite dishes but, to this day, remains unused.
Why? Because yet another smaller company, Scientel Solutions LLC, has announced plans to build its own tower about 1000 feet east of CyrusOne's tower, which CyrusOne says would block its own "line of sight" to downstream microwave dishes, and interfere with its communication to and from the CME data center. To prevent this potentially catastrophic development, CyrusOne sued to block Scientel's tower..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-09/meanwhile-hft-land-one-microwave-tower-about-be-blocked-another-microwave-tower
"Authored by William Craddick via Disobedient Media,
It's the second, but no less ludicrous, attempt in one week to sway the opinion of the public and President Donald Trump against the concept of denuclearization and peaceful dialogue with North Korea.
A March 8, 2019 report from National Public Radio (NPR) follows another by NBC News with sensational and misleading claims that satellite imagery released by private corporations with contractual ties to government defense and intelligence agencies show imminent preparations by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to engage in missile testing or the launch of a satellite from their facilities in Sanumdong, North Korea. An examination of the photos provided shows absolutely no indication of such activity.
I. Satellite Footage Of Sanumdong Facility Shows No Sign Of Imminent Launch
Images provided to NPR by private contractor DigitalGlobe consist of two low resolution images, one of a building in the Sanumdong complex and the other of a train sitting along a rail line. In neither photo is there any discernible amount of unusual activity.
The first image of a "production hall" bears a striking resemblance to a similar photo run by the Washington Post in July 2018 where unnamed intelligence officials claimed that North Korea was building one or possibly two liquid fueled ICBMs which appear to have never materialized or been used in any launch. The claims came one month after President Trump met with Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore for a historic summit between the United States and the DPRK..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-09/intelligence-contractors-make-second-attempt-one-week-provoke-tensions-north-korea
Artificial Intelligence has become a hot topic in tech circles. It has not only changed our lives, but it has also disrupted every industry you can think of. Despite all this, people have different perception about it. Some might consider it as a bad thing because they are told that it will take your job away from you in near future. On the other hand, AI advocates continue to think of AI as an enabler which will reduce your burden and make your life easy by automating things.
Whether you like AI or not, if you are interested in what AI has in store for the future, then you are at the right place. In this article, we will look at some of the biggest AI trends that will dominate in 2019.
1) AI Enabled Chips Will Go Mainstream
Unlike other technologies and software tools, AI depend heavily on specialized processors. To meet the complex demands of AI, chip manufacturers will create specialized chips capable of running AI enabled applications.
Even tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Amazon will spend more money on these specialized chips. These chips would be used for specialized purposes involving AI such as natural language processing, computer vision and speech recognition.
2) AI and IoT Meet At The Edge
2019 will be the year when we will see convergence of different technologies with AI. IoT will join hands with AI on edge computing layer. Industrial IoT will harness the power of AI for root cause analysis, performing predictive maintenance of machinery and detect issues automatically.
We will see the rise of Distributed AI in 2019. Intelligence would be decentralized and will be located closer to the assets and devices that are carrying out routine checks. Highly sophisticated machine learning models that is powered by neural networks will be optimized to run on edge.
3) Say “Hello” To AutoML
One of the biggest trend that will dominate the AI industry in 2019 would be automated machine learning (AutoML). With automated learning capabilities, developers will be able to tinker with machine learning models and create new machine learning models that are ready to handle future AI challenges.
AutoML will find the middle ground between cognitive APIs and custom machine learning platforms. The biggest advantage of automated machine learning would be that it offers developers the customization options they demand without forcing them to go through the complicated workflow. When you combine data with portability, AutoML can give you the flexibility you wont find with other AI technologies.
4) Welcome to AIOps
When AI is applied to how we develop applications, it will transform the way we used to manage the infrastructure. DevOps will be replaced by AIOps and it will enable your IT department staff to conduct precise root cause analysis.
Additionally, it will make it easy for you to find useful insights and patterns from huge data set in no time. Large scale enterprises and cloud vendors will benefit from the convergence of DevOps with AI.
5) Neural Network Integration
One of the biggest challenges that AI developers will face when developing neural network models will be to select the best framework. With dozens of AI tools available in the market, choosing the best AI tool might not be as easy as it used to be.
The lack of integration and compatibility among different neural network toolkits is hampering AI adoption. Tech giants such as Microsoft and Facebook are already working on developing an Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX). This will let developers reuse neural network models across multiple frameworks.
6) Specialized AI Systems Becomes a Reality
The demand for specialized systems will grow exponentially in 2019. Organization have limited data at their disposal but what they want is specialized data.
This will force businesses to acquire tools that can help them generate high quality AI data internally. The focus will shift from quantity of data to quality of data in 2019. This will lay the foundation for AI that could work in real world situations. Companies will look towards specialized AI solution providers who have access to key data sources and could help them make sense out of their unstructured data.
7) AI Skills Will Decide Your Fate
Even though, Artificial Intelligence have transformed every industry you can think of but there is still shortage of talent who have AI skills in abundance. Pat Calhoun, CEO of Espressive said, “Most organizations want to embrace AI as part of their digital transformation but do not have the developers, AI experts, and linguists to develop their own or to even train the engines of pre-built solutions to deliver on the promise.”
Rahul Kashyap, CEO of Awake Security added, “With so many ‘AI-powered’ solutions available to address a myriad of business concerns, it’s time enterprises get smarter about what’s happening within the ‘black box’ of their AI solutions.” He continues, “The way in which Artificial Intelligence algorithms are trained, structured, or informed can lead to significant differences in output. The right equation for one company won’t be the right equation for another.”
8) AI Will Get into Wrong Hands
Just like a coin which has two sides, AI also has a positive side and a negative side to it. IT security professionals will use AI to detect malicious activities quickly. You can be able to reduce false positives by 90% with the help of AI driven response and machine learning algorithms.
AI will land into wrong hands and cyber criminals with malicious designs will abuse it to fulfill their motives. With automation, armies of cyber attackers can launch lethal attacks with greater success. This will force enterprises to fight fire with fire and invest in AI powered security solutions capable of protecting them from such AI driven attacks.
9) AI Powered Digital Transformation
In 2019, AI will be everywhere. From web applications to health care systems, airline to hotel booking systems and beyond, we will see shades of AI everywhere and it will be at the forefront of digital transformation.
Dr. Tung Bui, Chairman of IT department and professor at University of Hawaii said, “Unlike most of the predictions and discussions about how autonomous vehicles and robots will eventually affect the job market — this is true but will take time due to institutional, political, and social reasons — I contend that the biggest trend in AI will be an acceleration in the digital transformation, making existing business systems smarter.”
The United States military is going to attempt to build deadly artificial intelligence-driven tanks. Dubbed Project ATLAS, this type of tank would lead to the first autonomous ground combat vehicles..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-01/arms-race-begins-deadly-ai-tanks-us-militarys-next-project
As the remaining pockets of ISIS fighters faced imminent defeat in northeast Syria, the United States allegedly gave them an offer they couldn’t refuse: give us your massive caches of gold - or die.
According to reports by Syrian state news agency SANA, U.S. forces struck a deal with ISIS whereby the terrorist group would give up 50 tons of gold across eastern Syria’s Deir el-Zour province in exchange for safe passage.
The precious metal, worth about $2.13 billion, was plundered by the self-designated “caliphate” as its reign of terror spread across Syria and Iraq between 2015 and 2017..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-01/us-army-takes-50-tons-gold-syria-alleged-deal-isis
The city of Miami, Florida may have started out as a retirement mecca for winter-worn pensioners from northern climes. However, after the beginning of the Cold War and US military and Central Intelligence Agency intervention in Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Guyana, the Bahamas, and other Western Hemisphere nations, Miami became a refuge for exiled wealthy businessmen escaping populist revolutions and elections in South and Central America and spies. The retirement and vacation capital of the United States quickly became the “Tropical Casablanca.”
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-02/welcome-miami-military-intervention-and-mercenaries-inc
So, you might want to sit down for this, but believe it or not it appears that the US government is using the fallout from its “humanitarian aid” performanceto justify further sanctions against the Venezuelan government..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-02/shocker-humanitarian-aid-stunt-used-escalate-against-venezuela
"Boeing Australia has announced plans to manufacture a drone with artificial intelligence that can act as a "loyal wingman" for fourth and fifth generation aircraft.
On Wednseday, Defence Minister Christopher Pyne unveiled the Boeing Airpower Teaming System (ATS), an Australian-designed unmanned platform that flies alongside high-value assets such as the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, Boeing P-8 Poseidon, and Boeing E-7 Wedgetail..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-01/boeing-unveils-wingman-combat-drone-supports-stealth-jets
It is nearly impossible to traverse web news or popular media today without being assaulted by vast amounts of propaganda on Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is perhaps the fad to end all fads as it supposedly encompasses almost every aspect of human existence, from economics and security to philosophy and art. According to mainstream claims, AI can do almost everything and do it better than any human being. And, the things AI can't do, it WILL be able to do eventually.
Whenever the establishment attempts to saturate the media with a particular narrative, it is usually with the intent to manipulate public perception in a way that produces self fulfilling prophecy. In other words, they hope to shape reality by telling a particular lie so often it becomes accepted by the masses over time as fact. They do this with the idea of globalism as inevitable, with the junk science of climate change as “undeniable” and they do it with AI as a technological necessity.
The globalists have long held AI as a kind of holy grail in centralization technology. The United Nations has adopted numerous positions and even summits on the issue, including the “AI For Good” summit in Geneva. The UN insinuates that it's primary interest in AI is in regulation or observation of how it is exploited, but the UN also has clear goals to use AI to its advantage. The use of AI as a means to monitor mass data to better institute “sustainable development” is written clearly in the UN's agenda..."
at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-02/real-reason-why-globalists-are-so-obsessed-artificial-intelligence
