"Adding together President Trump’s call to the Saudi king, where they discussed Iran’s 'destabilizing' actions, and a preemptive war authorization bill languishing in the US House, the current danger of a US strike on Iran is just an accident – or a false flag – away."
"This is an insane escalation. It tells every country that the US government believes in the first use of nuclear weapons against any and every country. Those responsible for this document should be committed to insane asylums, not left in policy positions where they can put it into action."
"The Defense Department is preparing for possible preventive attacks on North Korean nuclear and missile facilities, supposedly intended to prevent the Kim Jong-un regime in Pyongyang from developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering nuclear warheads to the continental United States. There are many indications that the Pentagon is putting in place the means to conduct such an attack—and recent enhancements to the GBU-57 bomb are among the most alarming of those."
"So, why is Vice-president Mike Pence attending the Winter Olympics in South Korea? Is it because he’s a sports fan who just wants to enjoy the quadrennial spectacle of the Olympic games? Unfortunately, no. Pence is going to the games for political purposes. He intends to use them as an opportunity to level a propaganda attack against North Korea, the communist regime that the U.S. government has long been committed to regime-changing."
"Trump is not the originator of this madness. We have spent decades preparing the slippery slope he is gleefully pushing us down."
"Though lawmakers and concerned citizens alike can justifiably balk at the prospect of Trump becoming ‘Napoleonic‘ or wasting money on the pomp and circumstance of military worship, the far more damning truth is that this is only a natural progression of a decades-long fetish for American militarism, which, from the looks of the current climate in the United States, does not appear to be going anywhere anytime soon."
"Misreported numbers for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects totaled at least $465 million, according to the audit. Another $384 million was categorized as 'in progress' or lacked any documentation."
"Randall Schriver, the Defense Department's top Asia official, said the $45 billion total for the year includes $5 billion for Afghan forces and $13 billion for U.S. forces inside Afghanistan. Much of the rest is for logistical support. Some $780 million goes toward economic aid."
"Someone started arbitrarily and aggressively buying stocks and the decline was halved. Monday will still go down as a Wall Street massacre, but that anonymous superhero buyer or buyers made it a lot less bloody. Who was the market’s superhero? I’m going to tell you a story and then you decide."
"Overnight, realizing it is facing an avalanche of lawsuits even though it explicitly laid out the possibility of the ETN getting 'terminated' should VIX explode, Japan's biggest brokerage issued an apology after investors in its $300 million vol-linked ETN were all but wiped out during this week’s stock-market turmoil."