Trump OKs Wider Syria Oil Mission, Raising Legal Questions
November 6th, 2019Legal questions. That’s hilarious.
I just want to remember the good old days, when they felt the need to dazzle us with yellow cake uranium fraud before they stole the oil.
Via: Military Times – AP:
President Donald Trump has approved an expanded military mission to secure an expanse of oil fields across eastern Syria, raising a number of difficult legal questions about whether U.S. troops can launch strikes against Syrian, Russian or other forces if they threaten the oil, U.S. officials said.
The decision, coming after a meeting Friday between Trump and his defense leaders, locks hundreds of U.S. troops into a more complicated presence in Syria, despite the president’s vow to get America out of the war. Under the new plan, troops would protect a large swath of land controlled by Syrian Kurdish fighters that stretches nearly 90 miles (150 kilometers) from Deir el-Zour to al-Hassakeh, but its exact size is still being determined.
A Michigan Man Underpaid His Property Taxes By $8.41, the County Seized His Property, Sold It and Kept the Profits
November 6th, 2019Via: Reason:
An 83-year-old retired engineer in Michigan underpaid his property taxes by $8.41. In response, Oakland County seized his property, auctioned it off to settle the debt, and pocketed nearly $24,500 in excess revenue from the sale.
Under Michigan law, it was all legal. And hardly uncommon.
Uri Rafaeli, who lost his property and all the equity associated with it, is just one of thousands of people to be victimized by Michigan’s uniquely aggressive property tax statute. The law, passed in 1999 in an attempt to accelerate the rehabilitation of abandoned properties, empowers county treasurers to act as debt collectors. In the process, it creates a perverse incentive by allowing treasurers’ offices to retain excess revenue raised by seizing and selling properties with delinquent taxes—even when the amount owed is miniscule, and even when the homes aren’t abandoned or blighted at all.
Organizations representing property owners like Rafaeli say the practice is unconstitutional, inequitable, and unreasonably harsh. They call it “home equity theft”—a process that’s a close relative to the civil asset forfeiture laws that have been used by police departments to similarly deprive innocent Americans of their property without due process. They are now asking the state Supreme Court to restrict the practice.
“Michigan is currently stealing from people across the state,” says Christina Martin, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm now representing Rafaeli and other homeowners in a class-action lawsuit that will go before the Michigan Supreme Court in early November.
“Counties have been authorized to take not just what they are owed, but to take people’s life savings.”
Sweden: An Energy Breakthrough Could Store Solar Power for Decades, Works for Heating Applications
November 5th, 2019Via: Bloomberg:
For decades, scientists have sought an affordable and effective way of capturing, storing, and releasing solar energy. Researchers in Sweden say they have a solution that would allow the power of the sun’s rays to be used across a range of consumer applications—heating everything from homes to vehicles.
…
The system starts with a liquid molecule made up of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. When hit by sunlight, the molecule draws in the sun’s energy and holds it until a catalyst triggers its release as heat. The researchers spent almost a decade and $2.5 million to create a specialized storage unit, which Moth-Poulsen, a 40-year-old professor in the department of chemistry and chemical engineering, says has the stability to outlast the 5-to 10-year life span of typical lithium-ion batteries on the market today.
Risky Mortgage Bonds Are Back and Delinquencies Are Piling Up
November 5th, 2019Meet the new toxic waste. Same as the old toxic waste.
Via: Bloomberg:
The subprime mortgage-backed bond may be dead in America a decade after it helped trigger the global financial crisis, but a security with some of the same high-risk characteristics is starting to take off.
It’s called the non-qualified mortgage — basically a loan granted to borrowers whose checkered financial record made them ineligible for conventional mortgages. Lenders have bundled more than $18 billion worth of these loans into bonds this year that they then sold to investors, a 44% increase from 2018 and the most for any year since the securities became common post-crisis.
Self Sabotage: The Strange Swiss History of Rigging Vital Infrastructure to Explode
November 5th, 2019Via: 99percentinvisible:
Jagged concrete protrusions span for miles along the Swiss Alps. They have been cheerily dubbed “Toblerone Lines” after the famous Swiss chocolate maker, but they have other names, too. More ominous monikers like “dragon teeth” may better fit their original function: to repel invading tanks and other vehicles in wartime. These lines represent some of the most visible elements of defensive infrastructure in a nation known for its perpetual neutrality — a position reinforced by the fact that the country is well-prepared for attacks. Switzerland’s military-trained citizens are armed to the proverbial teeth. Many Swiss defensive strategies, though, are far less visible than spiked ridges and openly carried weapons, including infrastructure carefully designed and built to self-destruct on demand.
Ford Reveals All-Electric ‘Mustang Lithium’ Concept Car with 900hp at SEMA
November 5th, 2019Concept cars mean approximately nothing, in terms of a company’s future plans, but I was surprised by the inclusion of a six-speed manual transmission on this. That would be very fun.
Via: Electrek:
SEMA is a show where hot rodders and customizers come together to show off interesting projects that push the boundaries of what people can do with aftermarket parts. Lots of manufacturers show off one-off concept builds here.
We’ve already seen a heavily modified Model 3 by Unplugged Performance, an old C-10 pickup with 450 hp from two Bolt batteries, and a ’69 Camaro with an electric “crate motor” from Chevrolet.
Now Ford has a concept to beat them all, the Mustang Lithium one-off concept built in collaboration with Webasto, an electric car equipment manufacturer.
The Mustang Lithium produces double the horsepower of Chevy’s C-10 concept, with over 900 hp (671 kW) of power and 1,000 ft-lbs (1355 Nm) of torque. This power is delivered from an 800 volt battery system, a rarity among electric cars. Porsche is the only other manufacturer currently building a car with 800 volt EV systems.
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Most interestingly, Ford has given the prototype a “drag-strip proven” manual 6-speed transmission.
ABC Reporter on Hot Mic Discussing Suppression of Epstein Story, and His Assassination
November 5th, 2019Via: Project Veritas:
Turkish-Backed Jihadists Filmed Using CIA-Supplied Missiles Against Syrian Kurds
November 5th, 2019Via: ZeroHedge:
The Libertarian Institute’s Scott Horton captioned the below video accurately when he bluntly stated:
CIA’s former(?) “moderate” jihadist terrorists blast DoD’s Kurdish YPG friends with U.S. TOW missile.
This is exactly what it shows. The CIA previously introduced BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles to the Syrian battlefield, handing the advanced weaponry off to the so-called ‘moderate rebels’ of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in order to accomplish regime change against Assad as part of operation ‘Timber Sycamore’ (which failed).
Critics of CIA efforts in Syria were quick to point out that such American hardware would inevitably go straight to the jihadists of ISIS and al-Qaeda. As even the mainstream media and pundits were forced to document, this is precisely what happened, given Washington ultimately sought to use Sunni jihadists to overthrow the Syrian government.
And now the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA), more commonly known as the Syrian National Army, is deploying the very same CIA-supplied TOW missiles against America’s current proxy in Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as part of Erdogan’s ‘Operation Peace Spring’.
It’s been well-documented that the Turkey invasion forces of Syrian National Army are stacked with former ISIS, Nusrah, and FSA jihadists… who clearly brought their CIA toys with them.
“US Military May Be Targeted by Its Own Missiles in Middle East,” warned Newsweek earlier this year. Well, yes…
U.S. Adult Diaper Market Explodes, Topping Baby Diapers
November 5th, 2019Via: ZeroHedge:
As the population of the elderly explodes, the need for hygiene products like adults diapers will likely see a commensurate surge (and many of the companies that make these products are publicly-traded consumer staples).
The market is already growing, and last year, it expanded by 9%, to hit $9 billion.
How Central Banks Fund Our Age of Endless War
November 4th, 2019Via: Mises Institute:
The 20th century was the century of total war. Limitations on the scope of war, built up over many centuries, had already begun to break down in the 19th century, but they were altogether obliterated in the 20th. And of course the sheer amount of resources that centralized states could bring to bear in war, and the terrible new technologies of killing that became available to them, made the 20th a century of almost unimaginable horror.
It isn’t terribly often that people discuss the development of total war in tandem with the development of modern central banking, which — although antecedents existed long before — also came into its own in the 20th century.
