Trump Plans Venezuela Trip, First U.S. President Visit Since Bill Clinton

Chicago Man Sentenced To 25 Years For Conspiring With ISIS Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times, Ashraf Al Safoo from Chicago has been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for conspiring to provide material support to ISIS, which involved recruiting members into the terror group and encouraging attacks on its enemies. Al Safoo, 41, was a leader of online organization Khattab Media Foundation, which pledged allegiance to ISIS, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in an April 17 press release. The foundation created and spread threats and ISIS propaganda...

When The Cost of Truth Is High, We (And AI) Lie... Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, When we can no longer tell the truth because the cost is so high that it threatens our reward for compliance, we're unimaginably impoverished. Truth has an intrinsic, irreplaceable value.  There's the truth, and then there's everything else. Truth has value, and so it has a cost.  Whatever has the highest value has the highest cost, and high cost commands sacrifices. When the cost of truth is high, we lie.  And since AI is a distorted reflection of...

What If The Automatic Stock Buying Just...Stops?  Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance My readers know that for the last couple of years I’ve repeatedly warned about the “passive bid” in markets. By that I mean the constant, automatic buying of stocks driven by retirement plans, ETFs, and other systematic investment programs. This bid isn’t discretionary. It doesn’t ask whether valuations are reasonable and it doesn’t care whether earnings justify prices. It simply asks one question: did money flow in? If the answer is yes, it buys. It buys regardless of valuation, regardless of...