7 Pieces of Fake News About the Latest U.S. Climate Report

Bjorn Lomborg is an environmentalist who believes in Climate Change. But he is not an alarmist. Because of that, he is one of the few worth taking seriously.

And while I'm sure he would prefer to spend more time convincing skeptics like myself that Climate Change is real, because of all the climate hysteria out there, most of his time is spent debunking myths, fake news, and bad science.

After the release the government's latest climate assessment report last week, and as we have come to expect, almost all of the establishment media used it to fire hose us with fake news. In response, Lomborg published a must-read piece at the New York Post debunking the misleading coverage.

Here are the 7 ways the media misled you about the report:

1. Climate scientist Michael Mann appeared on CNN and NPR talking about "unprecedented weather extremes." The only problem with that is that, according to the report itself, we are not experiencing "unprecedented weather extremes." Lomborg writes…

Actually, the assessment, and science, tell a different story. "Drought statistics over the entire contiguous US have declined," the report finds, reminding us that "the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s remains the benchmark drought and extreme heat event."

2. This is also true with respect to flooding. The report did not "attribute changes in flooding to anthropogenic [human] influence nor report detectable changes in flooding magnitude, duration or frequency." 

3. All those screaming headlines in the New York Times and on CNN about Climate Change shrinking the economy by ten percent are wildly misleading…
Actually, the UN's climate scenarios envision US GDP per capita will more than triple by the end of this century, so this ten percent reduction would come from an economy 300 percent larger than it is today. 

4. But even the misleading ten percent figure is "dodgy," as Lomborg puts it:
It assumes that temperatures will increase about 14 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century [2100]. This is unlikely. The US climate assessment itself estimates that, with no significant climate action, American temperatures will increase by between 5 and 8.7 degrees. Using the high estimate of 8.7 degrees, the [GDP] damage would be only half as big, at 5 percent.

And keep in mind that five percent is coming out of a 300 percent increase.

5. What's more, that 8.7 degree figure is also suspect:
The 8.7-degree warming estimate is unrealistically pessimistic. This stems from an extreme high-emission scenario that expects almost the entire world to revert to using massive amounts of coal: a five-fold increase from today.

Additionally, the only way that 8.7 degree prediction comes true is if the world burns more fossil fuel than is "plausibly available for use, according to one study."

6. The biggest flaw in that ten percent hysteria, however, comes from the fact that a full two-thirds of it is based on an estimate of how many people will die due to increasing temperatures. Lomborg punctures this notion using common sense: 

This assumes that even if temperatures were to increase by 14 degrees, people would die in masses, ignoring the fact that people have been shown to adjust over time to temperature changes. Then, too, over the 80 years until 2100, people can make many additional changes that reduce this risk, from getting air conditioners to changing how they build structures.

Humans are extraordinarily capable of adapting to their environments, and technology has only made this easier and ridiculously affordable. There is simply no reason these people have to die.

Moreover, in the unlikely event the world's temperature increases by 14 degrees, this would mean that cold and frigid areas would become more tolerable for human habitation. Even better, these areas could become more conducive for farming and food production.

7. Fighting Climate Change is more wasteful than adapting to it: 

The Paris Agreement target of 3.6 degrees [cooler] would cost some $134 trillion, much more than the associated climate benefits. Such prescriptions for climate change are worse than the disease.

I also recommend Lomborg's book Cool It.

By John Nolte

Source: Breitbart

Donald Trump Swats Paul Ryan for Challenging Idea to End Birthright Citizenship

President Donald Trump criticized House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday after the Speaker of the House challenged his idea of ending birthright citizenship.

"Paul Ryan should be focusing on holding the Majority rather than giving his opinions on Birthright Citizenship, something he knows nothing about!" Trump wrote on Twitter.

Ryan criticized Trump's proposal of ending birthright citizenship with an executive order during an interview on a Kentucky radio station on Tuesday.

"You cannot end birthright citizenship with an Executive Order," Ryan said. "We didn't like it when Obama tried changing immigration laws via executive action, and obviously as conservatives, we believe in the Constitution."

Ryan has already announced his retirement after the Congressional mid-term elections but has campaigned for Republicans in a handful of races.

Trump said Republican Congress without Paul Ryan as Speaker would focus more on stopping illegal immigration.

"Our new Republican Majority will work on this, Closing the Immigration Loopholes and Securing our Border!" he wrote.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump 
Paul Ryan should be focusing on holding the Majority rather than giving his opinions on Birthright Citizenship, something he knows nothing about! Our new Republican Majority will work on this, Closing the Immigration Loopholes and Securing our Border!
9:43 PM - Oct 31, 2018 

By Charlie Spiering

Source: Breitbart

Iran Dismisses Israeli Atomic Warehouse Claims as 'Arts and Craft Show'

Israeli claims that Tehran harbours a secret atomic warehouse were roundly dismissed by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Friday.

Instead he demanded Israel realises it is "time to fess up and open its illegal nuclear weapons" program to international inspectors.

Javad Zarif
 @JZarif 
No arts & craft show will ever obfuscate that Israel is only regime in our region with a *secret* and *undeclared* nuclear weapons program - including an *actual atomic arsenal*. Time for Israel to fess up and open its illegal nuclear weapons program to international inspectors.
4:06 AM - Sep 28, 2018

"How can Israel, as the only holder of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, so shamelessly accuse a country whose programmes have repeatedly been declared as peaceful by the IAEA," the UN nuclear watchdog, Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted Zarif as saying.

He said Israel and the United States stood "alone" and isolated globally, as "policies forced by Netanyahu on America" had driven them both to isolation.

Zarif’s outburst follows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accusing Iran of hiding another nuclear site during a speech at the United Nations on Thursday.

The Israeli leader also slammed the International Atomic Energy Agency for its failure to investigate after Israel’s April very public unveiling of the Iranian nuclear program archive.

Netanyahu had held up a map and a photograph of an outwardly "innocent looking compound" which he said was a secret atomic warehouse in Tehran and urged the IAEA to inspect.

"Today, I'm disclosing for the first time that Iran has another secret facility in Tehran, a secret atomic warehouse for storing massive amounts of equipment and materiel from Iran’s secret nuclear weapons programme," he said.

Israel, along with Saudi Arabia and its allies, are the main supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump's abandonment of the flawed JCPOA 2015 nuclear accord between the major powers and Iran.

AFP contributed to this report

By Simon Kent

Source: Breitbart

China Blames 'Reckless' Local Officials for Mosque Demolition Protest

Beijing on Thursday blamed "reckless" local officials for sparking a massive protest against the demolition of a large mosque in the city of Weizhou.
 

Communist officials insisted the situation is "under control" and local Muslims are now in a "good mood," but they never quite got around to clarifying whether the mosque will indeed be demolished.

Weizhou is located not in Xinjiang province, whose Uighur Muslims have been the focus of growing international concern lately, but in the Ningxia region, where the roughly equivalent population of Muslims belongs to a less well-known and almost completely Chinese ethnicity called the Hui.

The Hui are generally much more comfortable with the government in Beijing than the Turkic Uighurs and are treated with a considerably lighter touch. Reasons commonly cited for the success of Hui assimilation into Chinese society include their lack of religious focus -- they follow several different branches of Islam -- and their disinterest in separatism, plus the simple fact that the Hui look more Chinese than the Uighurs.

The Hui protest in early August, therefore, came as a surprise. A large mosque was constructed in Weizhou last year, but local officials abruptly declared it was constructed without the proper permits and must be torn down. Several thousand Hui Muslims assembled outside the mosque to express their displeasure with this idea -- a public demonstration of resistance on a scale almost unheard of in China.

The protesters were described as stunned and frightened by the mosque demolition order. Some of them ominously stated they simply would not allow Chinese officials to harm the structure. Others worried the Hui were finally feeling the heat from Communist China’s general crackdown on organized religion, which the Party wishes to "Sinicize" and firmly establish as subordinate to Communist authority.

Hui worried about this "Sinicization" process were not mollified when Weizhou officials tried moderating their position by saying they merely wished to remodel the mosque to make it look more Chinese. In other words, they proposed knocking down the minarets and replacing them with pagodas.

"Changing it to a traditional Chinese style is as incongruous as putting the mouth of a horse on the head of an ox," a local man retorted.

The Associated Press on Thursday quoted regional Communist Party official Bai Shangcheng claiming that "reckless local government actions caused this incident."

Those officials supposedly got rowdy because regional governor Xian Hui was away when the protests began, but she is now back in her office and "the situation overall is under control."

Bai promised local officials have been ordered to handle the mosque "properly and according to law."

"Local people are satisfied with our explanation, contrary to what was reported by many media. They are in a good mood now and live a normal and peaceful life," the governor insisted.

This good mood has allegedly been restored despite the fate of the mosque remaining unsettled. Bai blithely insisted the mosque is "different than others" and its "legality is controversial," which suggests the permits are still a problem and the extreme pagoda makeover is still on the table.

The BBC observed that Hui living in Weizhou tend to be more devout than those living in other parts of the province, and were very proud of the mosque as a symbol of both their devotion and prosperity. Bai nevertheless maintained, "We will be able to work out a solution on the matter to the satisfaction of all."

By John Hayward

Source: Breitbart

IRGC Chief: 'Iranians Will Never Allow Their Authorities to Negotiate with the Great Satan'

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, called Trump an "amateur politician" on Tuesday and declared that Iran's leaders will never meet with U.S. President Donald Trump, one day after Trump's second offer to meet with Iran's President Hassan Rouhani to "make a real deal" between the United States and Iran.

Iran's state-run Fars News Agency tweeted that Jafari said, "Iranians never allow their authorities to negotiate with the Great Satan," referring to the United States: In October, Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted that "Iranians -- boys, girls, men, women -- are ALL IRGC" less than 24 hours after the U.S. Department of Treasury officially sanctioned the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization. The IRGC is known as Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enqelab-e Eslami in Persian.

Many Iranians disagreed and rejected Zarif's claim, creating the #WeRejectIRGC hashtag on Twitter in response.

Jafari is the same commander who said in November that Iran does not need to extend its range of missiles because the Islamic Republic already has the ability to reach far enough to strike American forces deployed in the Middle East if the nation is faced with U.S. aggression.

"There is the capability to increase this range, but it is sufficient for now as the Americans are present within a 2,000-kilometer radius around the country, and would get a response in the case of any invasion," Jafari said during a Tehran-based conference titled "A World Without Terror."

A month before that, in October, Jafari warned President Trump that if he proceeds with his "stupid decision" to label the IRGC as a terror group, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards will treat the U.S. military around the world as their Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) enemies and come back with a "crushing" response.

The next day, on October 13, President Donald Trump announced that he had authorized the U.S. Department of Treasury to sanction the IRGC as a terrorist organization under terrorism Executive Order 13224, a move Trump said was "long overdue."

Last week, Jafari told Iran's state-run Tasnim News agency that the oil sanctions the United States is threatening on Iran "can be easily answered" by the IRGC. "If the current capabilities of the Revolutionary Guards … reaches the ears of the adventure-seeking president of America, he will never make this kind of mistake and will reach the understanding that an oil threat can be easily answered," Jafari said.

The day before Jafari's dire warning, Iran's Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri reportedly said that the United States should not threaten Iran because it would receive a "strong, unimaginable and regrettable" response.

The United States Treasury Department has warned it will impose sanctions on every country that failed to stop importing oil from Iran after the November 4 deadline it has set. The November deadline is likely symbolic as it was between November 4, 1979, and January 20, 1981, that 51 American diplomats were held hostage for 444 days in what became known as the Iranian hostage crisis.

The escalation in rhetoric also resulted in strong words from Iran's President Rouhani, who last week said, "America should know peace with Iran is the mother of all peace" and "war with Iran is the mother of all wars."

Trump responded to this threat with a tweet reading, "Never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before."

By Adelle Nazarian

Source: Breitbart

Iran Reopens Nuclear Plant Inactive for Nine Years

Iran has reopened a "major" nuclear plant that has been inactive for the past nine years, the country’s atomic energy agency (AEOI) announced on Wednesday.

"The production plant at Isfahan UCF Complex has been practically inactive since 2009 because of the lack of yellowcake in the country," the AEOI said in a statement. "It is important that the resumption of the Isfahan UCF provides for the fulfillment and execution of the supreme leader’s order to prepare for an increase in enrichment capacity."

Although the regime insists that the purposes of their nuclear development are peaceful, the reopened plant will allow the conversion uranium powder known as yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride gas, which can be used for atomic bombs as well as nuclear power plants.

The announcement comes as Tehran prepares to bolster its uranium enrichment activities over a month after President Donald Trump confirmed that the United States would pull out of 2015 Iran nuclear deal signed by Barack Obama alongside European leaders.

The move appears to be an attempt to pressure European leaders into finding a way of circumventing sanctions reimposed by the United States following the decision to pull out the deal. Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani has already written to leaders in France, Germany, and Britain to warn them that time to save the deal is running out. Rouhani, regarded as a "moderate" when he was elected, has escalated his incendiary rhetoric against America. On Wednesday, Rouhani urged Iranians to help "bring America to its knees."

During a speech at the Heritage Foundation last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlined a series of demands from Iran to help negotiate a new deal, that included greater transparency in disclosing their nuclear facilities and ending their support for terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.

In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described Pompeo’s speech as a "baseless and insulting statement" that "issued a number of demands and threats against Iran in brazen contravention of international law, well-established international norms, and civilized behavior."

"It comes as no surprise that the statement and the one made by the US president on Iran were either ignored or received negatively by the international community, including by friends and allies of the United States," he continued. "Only a small handful of US client states in our region welcomed it."

By Ben Kew

Source: Breitbart

Mattis Announces Pacific Command Name Change to 'Indo-Pacific Command'

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii – Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced Wednesday that he is renaming U.S. Pacific Command to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, in recognition of the "increasing connectivity" between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

"Over many decades, this command has repeatedly adapted to changing circumstance and today carries that legacy forward as America focuses West," Mattis said at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

Mattis made the announcement at a ceremony marking a change of command at Pacific Command from PACOM Commander Adm. Harry Harris to new Indo-Pacom Commander Adm. Philip Davidson.

The name change reflects the Trump administration’s focus on the Asia Pacific as a priority theater, and concern with China’s increasing deployment of weapons to disputed territories in the South China Sea.

While the Obama administration announced an Asia "pivot" or "rebalance," the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ultimately took precedence over that plan throughout the president’s tenure.

Trump Pentagon officials say, instead of saying the U.S. is going back to anything, it is stating what the reality is.

"Having grown up in Washington state, one of five with a Pacific Ocean coastline, and looking out over the vast expanse of ocean during yesterday’s flight, I was reminded that the United States is today and has been for two centuries a Pacific nation," Mattis said at the ceremony.

"America's national defense strategy, a roadmap for America's military, acknowledges this reality, taking a clear-eyed look at the world as it is, not how we would wish it to be," he said.

The Trump administration's National Security Strategy named China a strategic competitor, and the Pentagon's National Defense Strategy has focused on competition with China and Russia.

Mattis did not mention China, but referenced its One Belt One Road initiative, which lends developing nations large sums of money to build infrastructure China could potentially seize if the often strict loan repayment terms are not met.

"America's vision is shared by most nations in the region," Mattis said. "A region open to investment and free, fair, and reciprocal trade not bound by any nation's predatory economics or threat of coercion, for the Indo-Pac has many belts and many roads," he said.

Mattis said the National Defense Strategy, is not a "strategy of confrontation," however. "Rather, it is a balance of idealism, pragmatism, and cooperation."

"We will continue to seek opportunities for cooperation and open dialogue with our competitors when it aligns with our international interests and the interests of allies, partners and stability – and always seeking peace from a position of strength," he said.

Harris, who is nominated to become the next U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, said at the ceremony that North Korea was the most "imminent threat," but China was the biggest "long-term" challenge.

"Great power competition is back," he said.

The name change will almost certainly roil China, but U.S. officials downplay that it is directed at China and say it is a reflection of the reality that the U.S. is a Pacific nation with five states that border the Pacific Ocean and a number of U.S. allies in the Asia Pacific.

By Kristina Wong

Source: Breitbart

gold

Trump: North Korea Meeting Could Happen in Korean DMZ

President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday afternoon that he has proposed the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea as a potential location for a U.S.-North Korea denuclearization summit.

Trump had just concluded a joint press conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in the White House Rose Garden when he returned to the podium to answer shouted questions about the potential denuclearization summit. Trump acknowledged that "various countries including Singapore" are under consideration for the summit, as well as the DMZ. He mentioned the Peace House and Freedom House in the DMZ, remarking, "There's something that I thought was intriguing … some people maybe don't like the look of that, some people like it very much."

President Trump proposed the idea of having the meeting at the DMZ in Monday communications with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The message was passed along to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

"There's something that I like about it because you're there, you're actually there where, if things work out, there's a celebration to be had on the site, not in a third party country," said Trump. "We are looking at the possibility of doing it in that location. We're also looking at various other countries including Singapore."

"The United States has never been closer to potentially having something happen with respect to the Korean peninsula that can get rid of the nuclear weapons … and peace and safety for the world," said Trump. "Who knows?"

Kim has been open and forward "so far" and has been talking about "getting rid of the site … no research, no launching of ballistic missiles, no nuclear testing, and he has lived up to that for a long period of time," according to Trump.

President Trump said the DMZ site could be a great site for a celebration "if it works out well."

"If it doesn't work out well, that's the way it goes," resolved Trump. He affirmed his belief that the U.S.-North Korea summit will happen and that the North Koreans very much want it to happen.

"If it's not a success, I will respectfully leave," Trump concluded. He identified getting rid of nuclear weapons as a requirement for success.

The White House has previously said that the meeting is slated for May or early June.

By Michelle Moons

Source: Breitbart

golden

China: Death Penalty Is the 'Ultimate Deterrent' Against Corruption

A Chinese court handed down a death sentence on Wednesday for Zhang Zhongsheng, former vice-mayor of the city of Luliang, who has been convicted on corruption charges.

The court cited Zhang's "extreme greed" to explain the harsh sentence, which China's state-run Global Times hailed as the "ultimate deterrent" and a powerful signal to other corrupt officials.

Zhang, 65, was convicted of taking over a billion yuan in bribes from 1997 to 2013, which works out to about $160 million in U.S. dollars. Two of the individual bribery cases against him involved amounts of over 200 million yuan. About a third of his illicit fortune remains unaccounted for, according to prosecutors.

Zhang was known as the "godfather" of Luliang for cutting himself a piece of just about every venture in the city, especially its increasingly lucrative coal projects, and he was far from the only official who needed to have his palm greased before deals could be consummated. The vice-mayor's lavish lifestyle was especially galling given the general poverty of the province surrounding his city.

The court breathlessly charged that Zhang "crazily took bribes from 1997 to 2013 and did not restrain himself after the 18th National Party Congress and caused extraordinarily great losses to the nation and its people and should be punished severely by law."

In other words, he kept taking bribes after Chinese President Xi Jinping launched his much-ballyhooed war on corruption, which was very bad form on his part. The court mentioned concerns about Zhang setting an especially bad example for other officials that could best be corrected by giving him the most severe sentence.

The Global Times notes that death sentences are rare for corruption in China, citing a previous example in which a senior lawmaker was given a capital sentence for poaching a considerably smaller sum than Zhang did, although the sentence was later commuted to life in prison.

Two other vice-mayors who were convicted of corruption were put to death in 2011. The amounts in their cases were much smaller than Zhang's billion-yuan haul. Their harsh sentences were based in part on the notion that they were holding up projects important to the Chinese people in order to extract bribes, which is also one of the allegations leveled against Zhang.

"According to the court, Zhang used his position to seek benefits for bribe payers through intervening in Luliang's economic development, severely infringed the integrity of Chinese officials, damaged their reputation, caused grave social impacts in not only Shanxi Province but the entire nation and inflicted particularly heavy losses on the State and people. Therefore the court handed down the ultimate punishment," the Global Times explained.

Zhang's impending date with the executioner is seen by the Global Times as firm evidence that China has achieved "law-based governance" and that "the fight against corruption is gaining unstoppable momentum," as officials at all levels gain a healthy "respect for the law" and "fear of discipline."

It will not just be administrative officials getting that message, as the UK Daily Mail points out the National People's Congress is in the process of creating an anti-graft agency with power over just about everyone in the public sector, which means just about everyone in China.

"This means the Communist Party-led anti-corruption agency would police not only the party's cadres, but also doctors, teachers, entertainers and other state employees," the Daily Mail muses.

Under Chinese law, Zhang still has the option of appealing his death sentence, and it must be approved by the Supreme Court in Beijing before it can be carried out. Given how often the Global Times chirps about his "immediate execution," it doesn't seem like the editors think much of his chances.

By John Hayward

Source: Breitbart

gold probe

U.S. Commander: China Cozying Up to Iran, Enhancing Military Posture in Middle East

WASHINGTON, DC - China is seeking to enhance its military posture in the Middle East, where Beijing is pursuing deeper cooperation with state sponsor of terror Iran, the chief of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) cautioned lawmakers Tuesday.

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Gen. Joseph Votel unveiled CENTCOM's 2018 posture statement, a summary of the combatant command's role, mission, operations, and budget presented to Congress each year.

He noted that the lifting of sanctions under former President Obama's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, has allowed China to enhance its relationship with Iran, which the general identified as the top long-term threat in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, Votel acknowledged, "While China will continue to develop its relationships with nations in the Middle East, Beijing will likely maintain its stance of avoiding a major role in ongoing conflicts."

Gen. Votel explained:

Both China and Russia seek to fill in perceived gaps in U.S. interest by increasing defense cooperation and sales of their equipment to our regional partners. They both are also cultivating multidimensional ties to Iran. The lifting of U.N. sanctions under the joint comprehensive plan of action opened the path for Iran to resume membership application to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The SCO organization refers to a Eurasian political, economic, and military coalition founded in Shanghai back in 2001 by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Iran, designated by the United States as the world's leading state-sponsor of terrorism, is listed by the organization as "observer state."

Gen. Votel testified:

An increasingly assertive China is testing Russia's dominance in the economic and security arenas of Central Asia but also posing challenges to U.S. influence. China seeks to capitalize on regional concerns over what it perceives as waning U.S. influence and support. Toward this end, Beijing is building and strengthening trade, infrastructure, defense, and political relationships across the Middle East, Central and South Asia.

Gen. Votel is charged with U.S. military activity in the Middle East, Egypt, and the Afghanistan region.

The top general's warnings about China's growing relationship with Iran come soon after the U.S. military warned China's "impressive military buildup" may soon enable the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to challenge America's military dominance in the Indo-Pacific region "across almost all domains."

Gen. Votel identified Iran as a significant menace to regional stability and U.S. interests in the Middle East, telling lawmakers the American military is seeking to "neutralize, counterbalance and shape the destabilizing impact that Iran has across the region."

"Make no mistake, while we continue to confront the scourge of terrorism, Iran's malign activities across the region pose the long-term threat to stability in this part of the world," warned the top U.S. general during the hearing Tuesday, adding in his written testimony that China is trying to amplify its relationship with Tehran.

Votel testified:

China also seeks to increase its economic and diplomatic cooperation with Iran. The lifting of UN sanctions under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) opened the path for Iran to resume membership application to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Eurasian political, economic, and security organization.

Gen. Votel acknowledges that China's ambitious multi-trillion dollar One Belt One Road (OBOR) plan, also known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has allowed Beijing to increase its ties Tehran.

Votel told lawmakers:

China is pursuing a long-term, steady economic growth in the region through its "One Belt, One Road" policy, but it is also improving its military posture by connecting ports such as Gwadar in Pakistan with its first overseas military base in Djibouti, adjacent to the critical Bab-el-Mandeb [strait between the Middle East and Africa]. 

While Beijing claims both locations support peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, the new military base and port bolsters China's force projection into the region.

China's BRI is expected to be a massive network of land and sea links connecting Xinjiang, China's biggest province, to more than 60 countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and likely Latin America, along one route.

Gen. Votel also noted that China views its ties to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a political and economic coalition of six Middle Eastern countries, primarily led by Saudi Arabia, as essential for expanding its influence in the region, a move that threatens U.S. interests.

The commander testified:

China considers its relationship with the GCC states critical for its current economic needs. The Gulf States provide approximately one-third of China's oil, and Qatar is its single largest supplier of natural gas. Like Russia, China has sought to arbitrate some conflicts in the region, offering to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Gen. Votel's warnings about China's growing influence in the Middle East comes soon after the U.S. military warned that Beijing's decision to expand its BRI project to Latin America might create security vulnerabilities for the United States by allowing Beijing to expand its influence over the region.

By Edwin Mora

Source: Breitbart

monetary gold

The Tax Cuts Are a Bad Deal for Charities

Will Americans give as generously now that the incentives have completely shifted?

Philanthropic organizations have been on edge since Republicans rammed through the monumental tax bill: Will Americans give as generously now that the incentives have completely shifted? Recent research provides little hope for them.

The idea that charitable activity should receive preferential tax treatment dates back to medieval England, but Americans didn't start seeing rewards until the 20th century. That's when the government rolled out the first permanent income tax. Though modest at first, it skyrocketed after the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, eventually hitting the top income bracket at 77 percent.

Senator Henry Hollis of New Hampshire, a Democrat, feared the high rates would prompt the wealthy to curtail their giving. So he proposed exempting up to 15 percent of a taxpayer's income donated to charity. Congress swiftly and unanimously approved it. Subsequent generations of legislators expanded the deduction and broadened the definition of a qualifying charity until it was a common write-off for millions of Americans.

The core belief was simple: Every dollar donated to charity would do just as much good, if not more, than a dollar paid into the U.S. Treasury. That kept politicians from questioning the wisdom of the policy, even as a more taxpayers took advantage of it. (That is, until last year's tax reform passed. It doubled the standard deduction, effectively eliminating most taxpayers' ability to itemize deductions via contributions to charity.)

On those terms, economists began testing the success of the charitable deduction in the 1970s by taking a close look at tax cost and price elasticity.

Tax cost refers to the actual, post-tax price that someone pays when they make a donation. Imagine someone with a marginal tax rate of 25 percent. Every dollar donated only "costs" the taxpayer 75 cents after he or she takes the charitable deduction.

But this begs another question: What happens when you change these "tax costs"?

Price elasticity measures these changes by comparing the percentage change in donations to the percentage change in the tax cost of giving. A price elasticity ratio of 0 means that a change to the tax code had no effect on the amount given to charity. A figure of -1, by contrast, means that a 1 percent decline in the tax cost led to a 1 percent increase in contributions. (Or to put the matter more baldly: Each dollar of tax revenue lost via the charitable deduction generates an additional dollar of charitable giving.)

This one-for-one trade-off is more or less what most people expect to happen. But what if the charitable deduction yields a disproportionate rise in charitable activity -- a price elasticity of -2, -3, or more? If that happens, then it's much easier to justify the deduction as a public good because the amount of tax revenue lost is far exceeded by the amount given to charity.

So which is it? Almost everyone who studied taxpayer behavior found that the charitable deduction encouraged people to donate more than they would if it didn't exist. But studies yielded very different price elasticity figures ranging from -0.5 (a dollar in lost tax revenue generates an additional 50 cents in donations) to -4.0 (every dollar in forgone tax revenue generates a whopping four dollars of donations). A recent meta-analysis of approximately 70 of these studies yielded a price elasticity a median of -1.2.

A recent study by Nicholas Duquette of the University of Southern California looked at the problem from the standpoint of the charities themselves, compiling data from Federal Form 990, which reports monetary contributions to registered nonprofits. Duquette then examined how taxpayer contributions changed after the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which increased the tax cost of giving by dramatically lowering marginal tax rates.

The result was eye-popping: A 1 percent rise in the tax cost of giving caused charitable donations to drop 4 percent. While Duquette's sample was focused on secular charities (religious nonprofits tend to be less sensitive to changes in the tax code), the results nonetheless raise the troubling possibility that the recent tax bill may have a bigger effect on charitable giving than many lawmakers anticipate.

But Duquette's more disquieting findings focused on what he called the "tax sensitivity" of particular kinds of charitable giving. He found that cultural institutions, museums, colleges and universities all had price elasticity rates between -2.3 and -2.5. In other words, a financial hit that is serious yet survivable.

The same cannot be said for the cash-strapped organizations that care for the needy and most helpless in society: hospitals, homeless shelters, children's aid societies, hospices and other organizations that provide social services. Health charities, for example, showed a price elasticity of -4.5; hospitals, -4.6; group home care, -4.2; K-12 education, -3.5. This finding echoes previous research that found social service charities to be twice as sensitive to changes in the tax code.

These findings suggest that the the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 may deal a particularly devastating blow to charities that make up the private social safety net -- the very same charities that Republicans pitched as potential replacements of government programs in the coming years. But like so much about the Republican tax plan, the numbers don't add up.

By Stephen Mihm

Source: Bloomberg

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Bannon: America's Elites Are 'Comfortable Managing Country's Decline'

When Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon sat down last month for an interview in New York City with Keith Koffler, author of Bannon: Always the Rebel, the future of America's relationship with the People's Republic of China was a major topic.

"Our elites have not just been okay with [the rise of China], they've helped exacerbate that rise … by telling us from day one that as China got wealthier, they become more liberal democratic and free-market capitalist," Bannon told Koffler.

Instead of adopting the global liberal values of America and the West's elite, Bannon argues, the leadership of Red China see their own "Confucian, mercantilist, authoritarian" model as the "way of the future." He cited Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping's latest speech to the Chinese Communist Party conference in which he laid out China's goal to overtake the United States in several key industries and replace the dollar as the world reserve currency in the next three decades.

Bannon began to characterize the China challenge by explaining that there is a "concept among our elites … called the ‘Thucydides Trap,'" a reference to the Classical Greek soldier and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, a pillar of the Western Canon.

In the fifth century before Christ, as Thucydides put it, "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in [Sparta], made war inevitable." The relatively declining Sparta used its Peloponnesian League to attack the rising power of Athens and its Delian League to maintain its place as the most powerful of the Classical Greek city-states. The resulting 27-year war is among the most celebrated of Western history and resulted in a Spartan victory and the end of democratic Athens as a great power in the Aegean.

The analogy of the "Thucydides Trap," as expounded by Graham Allison in a book economist and author David P. Goldman once described as "really dreadful," is that one great power declining relative to a rival, rising one leads towards war between the two by pure non-ideological mechanism of power politics.

The most prominent example in modern times is Germany's rapid rise to overtake the United Kingdom and become the industrial leader of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The Thucydides Trap theory would suggest the seemingly inevitable German eclipse of British naval supremacy drove the two powers inexorably towards conflict, as World War I's outbreak in August 1914 would appear to validate.

A Soviet Union supposedly rising relative to the United States, however, never turned the Cold War "hot" as the most pessimistic of Thucydidean theorists feared.

Today, the Thucydides Trap framework is increasingly deployed to describe America's relationship with China, including within the administration. A likely conclusion from it would be to manage the rise of China in such a way as to avoid confrontation.

Bannon slammed this thinking, noting that working class and middle class Americans do not share the same stakes in "managing" China's rise to economic hegemony. "It's quite evident, and Pat Caddell and I talk about this a lot," Bannon explained, "that America's elites are quite comfortable with managing America's decline."

The fate of the globalist class, Bannon argues, is no longer tied to the fate of the nation. Chinese hegemony substituted for American will not disrupt that class's goals. "For the elites, that [American] decline can be just as comfortable as the rise," he told Koffler.

By Ian Mason

Source: Breitbart

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