Indefatigable – “A Movement For Democracy” Farage Rises Again….


Following the refusal of the professional political class within the U.K. to honor the Brexit votes of the majority, British leader Nigel Farage came off the sidelines and said ‘enough’.

Farage and a group of independent British politicians have formed the Brexit party to take down the two-party structure and finally deliver the voice of the people.  Their Brexit party campaign has been criss-crossing the nation ahead of elections on May 23rd.  The response has been exceptional….  “A Movement for Democracy”.

Nigel Farage delivered remarks during a rally today [Prompted to 01:18:30, just hit play]

NEC Director Larry Kudlow Discusses Exceptional Jobs Report…


National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow appears on Fox Business to discuss the most excellent April jobs report and the continued forecast for U.S. economic growth.

Director Kudlow points out the greatest current economic benefits are being felt in the blue-collar Main Street sector; and rebuts former Vice President Joe Biden’s comments on the administration policy.

Adv

National Security Adviser John Bolton Gives Press Briefing on Venezuela…


National Security Adviser John Bolton holds a press availability to discuss the crisis in Venezuela following a briefing with President Trump.  Mr. Bolton said  “we are seeing the Venezuelan people strive to get a government that they control, not an authoritarian military regime”, adding “this is a very serious situation. The president has been monitoring it minute-by-minute throughout the day.”

Bolton emphasized “this is clearly not a coup. We recognize Juan Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela.” He called it a “potentially dispositive moment” for Venezuelans to regain their freedom”, later referencing “a very delicate moment.” If this effort fails, they will sink into a dictatorship from which there are very few possible alternatives.”

Venezuela Crisis Possibly Reaching Apex…


U.S. Secretary of State calls it “Operation Liberty” and supports opposition leader Juan Guaido. The Venezuela regime of Nicolas Maduro calls it a “coup attempt” and has help from Russia and Cuba to put down the uprising.  The regular Venezuelan military, and the ordinary people of the country appear to be caught in the middle.

Perhaps this is the last effort of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido to shift the balance of power. The White House is supportive but cautious. Everything is tenuous as Venezuela appears to be on the brink of extreme political violence.

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Tuesday made his strongest call yet to the military to help him oust President Nicolas Maduro, and violence broke out at anti-government protests as the country hit a new crisis point after years of political and economic chaos.

Several dozen armed troops accompanying Guaido clashed with soldiers supporting Maduro at a rally outside the La Carlota air base in Caracas, but the incident fizzled out and did not appear to be part of an immediate attempt by the opposition to take power through military force.

Guaido, in Twitter posts, wrote that he had begun the “final phase” of his campaign to topple Maduro, calling on Venezuelans and the armed forces to back him ahead of May Day mass street protests planned for Wednesday.

“The moment is now!” he wrote. “The future is ours: the people and Armed Forces united to put an end” to Maduro’s time in office.

Tens of thousands of people were marching in Caracas in support of Guaido on Tuesday, clashing with riot police along the main Francisco Fajardo thoroughfare. A National Guard armored car slammed into protesters who were throwing stones and hitting the vehicle.

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino called the latest instability a “coup movement” but several hours after Guaido’s announcement there was no sign of any other anti-Maduro military activity. Guaido later left a rally he was holding with military supporters at the air base.  (read more)

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Angus Berwick@AABerwick

Caracas’ Francisco de Miranda avenue after Venezuelans flooded streets today to support Guaido.

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Reuters Top News

@Reuters

Russia accuses Venezuelan opposition of resorting to violence https://reut.rs/2XRoAFu 

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Reuters Top News

@Reuters

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Reuters Top News

@Reuters

Opposition leader Guaido says final phase to oust Venezuela’s Maduro has begun. Follow our live coverage: https://reut.rs/2WdfMJK 

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Giovanni C.@giovannicavett

Shocking scenes in Venezuela as defected soldiers fire back to protect protesters from pro-Maduro forces attack.

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Montana 🕊Agent Applebutt@_Montana_Bound_
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This looks like a no-retreat proposition.  Those in the military who make a decision to support Juan Guaido can never return to life before the inflection point and will be targets of the Maduro regime.   A terrible crisis with few good options.

Our prayers for the Venezuelan people who are caught up in this political nightmare.

Secretary Pompeo

@SecPompeo

is underway in & the world is watching. @jguaido’s safety must be guaranteed. The Venezuelan people are demanding change, a peaceful democratic transition, & return to prosperity. It’s time for the illegitimate regime to step aside.

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Secretary Pompeo

@SecPompeo

is underway in & the world is watching. @jguaido’s safety must be guaranteed. The Venezuelan people are demanding change, a peaceful democratic transition, & return to prosperity. It’s time for the illegitimate regime to step aside.

View image on Twitter

Secretary Pompeo

@SecPompeo

What we are seeing today in is the will of the people to peacefully change the course of their country from one of despair to one of freedom and democracy. The U.S. stands with them and @jguaido now and always.

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British Pound v BREXIT


QUESTION: Martin you appear to be very bearish on the British pound when comparing with the Us Dollar. Does the outcome of Brexit make any difference to your view.?

SB

ANSWER: The British Parliament under the direction of Prime Minister May has been a disaster. She was a “Remainer” in her heart and the performance of the negotiations reflects that reluctance to leave the EU. The forecast our system has been making on the pound is based upon the performance of the market – not fundamentals.

Still, the fundamentals are reflected through confidence which then shows up in the price action of markets. The decline in the pound has reflected May’s inability to make a deal. Her strategy appears to be one who is on the payroll of Brussels – not the British people. It appears she refuses to negotiate and hopes that it will come down to a hard exit of her deal. This is what she is counting on and there can be a no-confidence vote until December to boot her out.

It is beside me why British politicians do not simply look at their own data and the facts. The UK has experience lower economic growth ever since it joined the EU. It loses just about every argument in the European court. Here is a clip from the Guardian on December 30, 1998, which showed even back then that 58.5% of trade in Britain was outside the EU. Britain cannot enter any trade deals with anyone without the approval of all 28 members of the EU. If just one objects, the deal is dead.

Perhaps PM May sings Frank Sinatra’s song My Way in the shower every morning to boost her spirits. BREXIT has been turned into a joke.

 

Suicide Rate Doubles in France Among Police


The Yellow Vest movement is turning into a major confrontation demanding Macron leave office. The French police are now protesting after 28 officers have committed suicide so far in 2019. This is double the amount recorded at the same time last year. While the press tends to focus on complaints of a lack of resources, unpaid overtime, and inefficient management, they are not speaking about the social isolation the police are starting to experience as they defend the government against the people.

I have written before about the Nika Revolt of 532AD where the local police and troops refused to defend the emperor Justinian. He almost fled Constantinople until his wife directed him to call in an army which was not Greeks. They came into the city and slaughtered some 30,000 protesters. What the French police are experiencing is this very same conflict. This is why Brussels wants a European Army for they would have no conflict with the French people if they are not French. The police may yet turn against the French government and if that happens, then we have a French Revolution. The revolution in Ukraine turned when the police saw that Yanukovich brought in Russians to defend himself. Then and only then did the Ukrainian police turn against Yanukovich and he had to flee. This is standard developments throughout all historical civil unrest movements defining the line when crossed it becomes a revolution.

 

Netherlands Objects to France’s Attempt to get EU Funding in a Crisis


The Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, is objecting to France’s desired changes to the EU budget. France wants aid with the inclusion of the objective to “stabilize” the economies within the Eurozone, whereby the Netherlands wants all funding to be limited to furthering “competitiveness and convergence.” The Netherlands contributes the most to the EU, and far more than it receives. This only illustrates once more that the Eurozone is far from one big family. The cultural differences remain and always will. They will not vanish as a matter of law. The only thing that will allow that to happen over time will be a common language, as took place in the United States. Then and only then did all the various cultures begin to integrate

Common Sense Canadians Crush the Moonbats in Alberta…


A massive defeat for the left-wing loons in Alberta Canada now means half the Canadian provinces are aligned against Justin’s rainbow-socks coalition and disastrous climate agenda.  Apparently having a common sense approach now means ‘right-of-center‘.

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – A right-of-center party swept to power in Canada’s main oil-producing province of Alberta on Tuesday and attacked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s efforts to fight climate change, raising tension just months ahead of a federal election.

The United Conservative Party (UCP) of Jason Kenney, which had led in the polls for months, crushed the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) government of Rachel Notley amid frustration over the economy and a beleaguered energy industry.

Kenney’s victory means governments in five of the 10 provinces now oppose Trudeau’s plans to combat global warming, which look set to be a major theme of the October election. (more)

The real-world effect of having an anti-business outlook is starting to have a real impact, and not just on massive corporations.  As Manny from Ottawa points out, even the smaller Canadian firms are giving up and heading to the more pro-business U.S.A.  In this example 240 Canadian jobs are moving…

(Truro, Nova Scotia) […] “Earlier today, we informed our employees that Tarkett North America will be closing our manufacturing plant in Truro, Nova Scotia, effective July 16, 2019,” the company said Tuesday afternoon in an email to Mills, Colchester County Mayor Christine Blair and other stakeholders.

“As one of our valued stakeholders, we wanted to share that this was not an easy decision and it is not a reflection of the caliber of work done by our Truro team,” the company said in a statement issued through the National Consulting Group.

“A business decision has been made and our manufacturing operations will be relocating to Dalton, Georgia.”

The company has sister operations in Georgia and Mills said one of the reasons he has heard for the move is to improve operational efficiencies. (more)

Manny_Ottawa@manny_ottawa

We hear of the big auto manufacturers and Steel moving to USA. But equally there are many small companies moving to USA. is only interest in his narcissist self. @realDonaldTrump creating conditions to attract Canadian businesses. https://www.trurodaily.com/news/local/truro-carpet-plant-moving-operations-to-us-302536/#.XLczn-GZhAV.twitter 

The carpet plant in Truro, which has been opened in 1964, is moving its operations to the United States, eliminating approximately 240 jobs.

Truro carpet plant moving operations to U.S. | Truro News

Shutdown to eliminate 240 jobs

trurodaily.com

Do Border Walls Work?


COMMENT: Skeptics who believe a border wall will not stop illegals from entering the United States may want to look at what’s happening in Hungary.

On the day its border fence was completed, the influx of illegals entering Hungary went down from 6,353 per day to 870 the next day. For the remainder of that month, illegal border crossings were steadily below 40 per day, officials said.

“They don’t even try,” a local border guard told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “We haven’t had a single Muslim migrant in six months.” Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s pledge to stop illegals from flowing into the country appears to be a spectacular success.
Hungary’s 96-mile long, 14-foot-tall, double-line fence includes several layers of razor-wire capable of delivering electric shocks. The barrier features cameras, heat sensors, and loudspeakers ready to tell migrants they’re about to break Hungarian law if they as much as touch the fence, the DC report said.

Nearly every police officer in Hungary is part of a rotation to monitor the border fence at all times. Temporary military bases house the police while they do their rotation. Additionally, Hungary will train and pay more than 1,000 volunteers to deploy as “border hunters”.

Illegals who are caught are arrested and dropped off on the Serbian side of the fence. They don’t get a chance to apply for asylum unless they do so at a “transit zone” where they are held in housing containers while their cases get processed, the report said.

In September 2016, thousands of migrants streamed across the border every day as they made their way north to Austria, Germany, and Scandinavia. “It was an invasion,” Laszlo Toroczkai, the mayor of Asotthalom, told the Daily Caller. “Illegal immigration is a crime in a normal country. It’s not a normal thing to break into a country.”

“By mid-year, it was well beyond 100,000 people who came across”, said Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesman for the Hungarian government. “You should at least have the ability to handle what’s going on.” Kovacs added, “You might not like it, it’s not a nice thing, but… the only way to stop illegal border crossings is first building a fence, man it, equip it, and also, in parallel, build up your capabilities in terms of legal confines, legal circumstances to be able to handle what is coming.”

It’s no surprise the mainstream U.S. media refuses to report this story to the American public Can you imagine how support for a Southern border wall would spike?

REPLY: The people who claim Trump’s wall will not work just listen to the propaganda to defeat Trump. The entire objective is to be able to say he failed in 2020. He made a campaign promise to build the wall, and for that reason the Democrats must defeat the wall regardless of the truth. Romans built a wall between England and Scotland to prevent the Scots from raiding Roman settlements. The world’s earliest known civilization was also one of the first to build a defensive wall during the 21st century BC. The ancient Sumerian rulers constructed a massive fortified barrier to keep out the Amorites, who were a group of nomadic tribesmen who were pillaging their settlements.

The “Great Wall of Gorgon” was a 121-mile rampart that extended from the southern coast of the Caspian Sea to the Elburz Mountains in what is now Iran. It is often called the Great Wall of Alexander the Great or “Alexander’s Barrier” that prevented the barbarians from invading from the north. It was most likely constructed by the Sasanian Persians sometime around the 5th century AD, and remains one of the longest walls of antiquity.

Of course, there is China’s legendary Great Wall which stretches from the Gobi Desert to the North Korean border. It was constructed on the fortifications that began during in the 3rd century BC, and it was intended to keep the Mongols out. The completed wall was once the largest manmade object in the world. The Mongol leader Altan Khan bypassed the wall and raided Beijing in 1550.

Naturally, we should not forget the Berlin Wall, modern history’s most infamous wall, which was erected in 1961 to keep people in rather than out. More than 100 people were eventually killed while trying to escape through the maze of 12-foot walls, guard towers, and electrified fences. It stood for almost 29 years before East German authorities finally opened it on November 9th, 1989.

There are many examples of walls throughout history and the world.

France v Netherlands


Armstrong Economics Blog/European Union

COMMENT: I had to laugh your comment that the EU pretends to be a happy family but they are still nationalistic no matter what they say. The Dutch bid to buy Air France is just the tip of the iceberg as you say.

Thank you

HS

REPLY: You are absolutely correct. The Dutch government’s bid to buy a stake in Air France-KLM provoked an amazing outrage in Paris from the government. French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire called it “incomprehensible and unprecedented.” His statement on that issue reveals everything I have been saying about the nonsense going on in Europe. No matter what they say about federalizing Europe, deep down the politicians themselves show the inherent resentment that still lingers and will never die. The EU must abandon this idea that one government will prevent a European war. It is actually encouraging it. It should remain simply as a federation, consolidate the debts, let that be the Eurobond, and then abandon the ECB’s one policy fits all and let each nation function with their own budgets as the states do in the USA.