America

Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Last year, when the people of the United Kingdom voted in favor of leaving the European Union, the Establishment in Europe and the United States was stunned. All the polls had predicted a win for the Remain camp. Everyone who counted, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, made it clear that staying within the increasingly dysfunctional EU was the only acceptable option.

Just three days after Turkish warplanes killed at least 20 US-backed Kurdish fighters along the Turkey-Syria border as well as several Kurdish peshmerga troops on Mount Sinjar in northwestern Iraq, footage posted by Syrian activists showed the US has deployed troops and APCs in the contested region, in a move that could potentially drag the US in a conflict where it already finds itself mediating between two so-called US ally forces in the proxy war against Syria.

Via The Daily Bell

Female circumcision, more accurately termed genital mutilation, is a barbaric assault carried out on young girls for religious and cultural reasons. Although generally considered an African and Islamic practice, the process of removing some or all of the clitoris is unfortunately carried out across the world, and not strictly confined to specific religions. An estimated half a million girls living in the United States have been subjected to the brutal practice, or are at risk of being victimized.

Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

While the news waves groan with stories about “America’s Opioid Epidemic” you may discern that there is little effort to actually understand what’s behind it, namely, the fact that life in the United States has become unspeakably depressing, empty, and purposeless for a large class of citizens. I mean unspeakably literally. If you want evidence of our inability to construct a coherent story about what’s happening in this country, there it is.

Despite yesterday's whopping beats by Amazon and Google which sent the Nasdaq to new record highs after hours, and brought Jeff Bezos "this close" to overtaking Bill Gates as the world's richest man, this morning futures S&P futures are little changed ahead of the closely watched Q1 GDP report, European stocks and Asian equities are slightly lower, oil is higher after Russia's energy minister Novak said Russia had reached the 300kbpd oil cut per the OPEC pact, and the dollar was modestly in the red.