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Fri, 29 Oct 2021
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US midterm election has got America dancing the Monster Mash

political divisiveness
The sad reality is that last week's Pittsburgh synagogue massacre is only the latest float in the long-running parade of ghastly homicidal spectacles rolling across this land and will be just as forgotten in one week as was last year's Las Vegas Mandalay Bay slaughter of 58 concert-goers plus over 800 wounded and injured, a US record for non-military acts of violence. The Pittsburgh shootings elbowed the mass pipe bomber, Cesar Sayoc, out of the news cycle - but then Sayoc didn't manage to actually hurt any of the high-profile figures he targeted with his mailings. What I wonder - and what the news media has so far failed to report - is just how incompetent a bomb-maker Sayoc was. Fake news meets fake bombs.

One of the strange side effects of an epic American political hysteria is this strange ADD-like inability of the public to focus on anything for more than a few moments, even the most arresting atrocities. The hysteria itself is too compelling, like the actions of a human limbic system driving the collective public psyche from fight to flight on the wild horses of pure emotion. Reason has been discarded by the wayside just as a super-drunk person will shed his clothing even on a freezing night. Total culture war now beats a path toward all-out civil war, with the looming mid-term election as a fulcrum of history.

Arrow Down

The stock market has just reached a level of low not seen since 2009 - and it's far from over

stock market dip
We continue to see extremely wild swings on Wall Street. On Monday, at one point the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 352 points, and then later it was down 566 points. At the closing bell the Dow had officially lost 245 points, and all of this extreme volatility is making investors very nervous. Investors like markets that are predictable, because it is a whole lot easier to make money when things move in a predictable fashion. When things get crazy, a lot of investors pull their money out and wait until things settle down in the marketplace, and that definitely makes a lot of sense. Right now, there is a lot of uncertainty about where things are ultimately headed. Some experts believe that the bull market will resume after this "correction" is over, but others believe that a bear market has now begun. And as you will see below, the fact that the S&P 500 has now broken a major trendline that has not been broken since 2009 is strengthening the case of the latter group.

Many had anticipated that we may see a bounce on Monday, but instead we witnessed another very large decline. According to Zero Hedge, all of the major stock indexes are now officially in correction territory...

Megaphone

'Violent revolution' may come to US if Democrats don't win midterm election - Actor, James Cromwell

James Cromwell
© Reuters / Fred Prouser
James Cromwell
Actor James Cromwell has warned that a violent revolution could potentially be unleashed across the United States if the Democrats don't win back control from Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.

The actor, who played George H.W. Bush in Oliver Stone's 'W,' issued the drastic warning at the fourth annual Carney Awards where he was honored for his work as a character actor. Speaking to Variety before the event, the long-time liberal activist said he worried about the direction the US was heading politically, claiming that political violence could be the next step.

Cromwell, who has been arrested multiple times over the years for his political activism, argued that the US always had the potential to be a "turnkey, totalitarian state" and that all people needed was "an excuse" to turn nascent fascism into real fascism.
"If we don't stop [President Trump] now, then we will have a revolution for real. Then there will be blood in the streets."

Comment: Cromwell seems to be speaking out of both sides of his mouth.


Star of David

Top Israeli Labor party leader skewered for calling on US Jews to move to Israel after Pittsburgh attack

scene of the Pittsburgh shooting
© Reuters/ Cathal McNaughton
People at the scene of the Pittsburgh shooting.
The leader of Israel's Labor party Avi Gabbay has been slammed as "grossly inappropriate" after he called on US Jews to move to Israel following the Pittsburgh shooting last weekend which killed 11 in a synagogue.

While people expressed their condolences to the victims of Saturday's shooting in Pennsylvania, Gabbay thought of a different way of embracing them. He called on Jews in the US to "immigrate more and more to Israel, because this is their home."

The statement was met with outcry, with Deputy Minister Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, taking a swipe at the opposition leader.
Avi Gabbay said things that should not be said because he simply does not understand. Through his words he adds insult to injury.
The politician simply missed the point in the whole story, Oren argued.

Gabbaya's suggestion also received little praise from people on social media, who blasted him as "ignorant" and as someone championing the same causes of neo-Nazis.

Comment: Labor party leader Avi Gabbay isn't the only one to crudely politicize the horrific killings at Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue:

Twitter erupts over 'Christian Rabbi' who fails to name Pittsburgh victims, asks people to pray for GOP at Pence rally


Megaphone

'I am not an agent': Florida based company sues DOJ over required FARA registration for broadcasting Radio Sputnik

Radio Sputnik
© Nina Zotina / RIA Novosti
One of the companies that broadcasts Radio Sputnik in the US is suing the Department of Justice over the requirement to register as a foreign agent, saying the 1930s law does not apply to radio and television media.

RN Broadcasting LLC has filed a lawsuit over the DOJ's demand to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), due to being a broadcaster of Radio Sputnik.

"I am not an agent," owner of RM Broadcasting Arnold Ferolito told Sputnik on Monday. "I am not an agent of any government. I'm an independent businessman who has made a business transaction, period."

FARA simply does not apply to the radio and television broadcasting industry, Ferolito argued, adding that his business does not meet any of the requirements to register under the law.

Chart Bar

With ranked choice voting, Maine gives 3rd parties a fighting chance in midterms

Green Party supporter
© Reuters / Mike Segar
According to important people on television, voting for a third party is irresponsible and selfish. But this puerile belief no longer holds water in Maine, which is using ranked choice voting in November's midterm elections.

Polls show that a comfortable majority of Americans think that a viable third party is necessary to make their representative government actually represent their views. But ironically, those who vote their conscience are often demonized as purists who allow one of the "lesser of two evils" to triumph.

Info

42% of British public unaware of war in Yemen, as Labour MP claims UK govt has 'blood on its hands'

Theresa May, Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud protest
© Global Look Press / Rob Pinney
Campaigners protest against the sale of British weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in the ongoing war in Yemen
Almost half of the British public are unaware a war is going on in Yemen, a Yougov poll has revealed, as a Labour MP accuses the government of having "blood on its hands" while it continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia.

Keith Vaz, chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Yemen, told the Independent that it's the "forgotten war." His claim appears to be backed up by a recent poll commissioned by NGO Human Appeal, which found that 42% of British respondents could not identify Yemen as a warzone - a war that has seen three years of bloodshed and at least 10,000 people killed, according to the UN.

Sheeple

'Fake News made me do it': Would-be terrorist's lawyers deploy 'Trump defense' in court

Patrick Stein
© Reuters / Handout
Patrick Stein (Right) and convicted co-conspirators
Attorneys for wannabe bomber Patrick Stein are asking a judge to consider the toxic political climate when sentencing their client, who called himself "Orkin Man" and wanted to exterminate Muslim "cockroaches."

Stein is facing 15 years to life on charges of weapons of mass destruction and conspiracy against civil rights. He was convicted in April alongside two other Kansas militiamen for plotting with an FBI informant and undercover agent to bomb an apartment complex in Garden City, where Muslim refugees from Somalia lived.

Comment: FBI entrapment of Muslims was useful in creating the illusion of terrorist boogeymen around every corner that the Deep State needed to continue on with their wars in the Middle East. Now, the entrapment of white male Trump supporters is being used as a means of demonizing Trump.


Handcuffs

Russia's security service busts IS cell planning Moscow attacks [Update]

FSB arrest
© Sputnik / Federal Security Service (FSB)
An Islamic State terrorist cell that was planning attacks in the Russian capital was detained in Moscow Region on Friday, Russia's Security Service (FSB) said.

The group consisted of six members, who received commands from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorist kingpins in Syria, the FSB said in a statement.

"The detained planned to carry out resonant terrorist attacks in Moscow, using both firearms and improvised explosive devices," the statement read.

The group was funded by money transfers from abroad and through local criminal activity. It put much effort into covering up its operations and avoiding detection by police.

Comment: See also: UPDATE: The FSB have released video footage of the arrests:




Star of David

Twitter erupts over 'Christian Rabbi' who fails to name Pittsburgh victims, asks people to pray for GOP at Pence rally

Tree of Life memorial
© Reuters / Cathal McNaughton/C-Span
A makeshift memorial outside the Tree of Life synagogue.
A 'Christian Rabbi' who offered prayers for victims of the Pittsburgh massacre failed to mention them by name and called upon people to pray for the GOP. Americans didn't appear to find it patriotic.

Vice President Mike Pence held the rally in the Waterford Township of Detroit. It took place less than 48 hours after the Pittsburgh Synagogue tragedy and was opened by a rabbi who held a prayer to honor the victims.

Rabbi Loren Jacobs represents the Messianic synagogue Shema Yisrael based in Michigan. Though the followers call themselves members of Messianic Judaism, a combination of Christianity and Judaism, many of the main Jewish movements refuse to accept them as 'true' Jews.

Pence couldn't possibly "have done something more offensive to Jews" than choose Jacobs to open the rally, people on Twitter were quick to point out.