- Germany Has Made Over 3 Billion Profit From Greece's Crisis Since 2010
Germany has earned around 2.9 billion euros in profit from interest since the first bailout for Greece in 2010.
As KeepTalkingGreece reports, this is the official response of the Federal Government to a request submitted by the Green party in Berlin.
The profit was transmitted to the central Bundesbank and from there to the federal budget.
The revenues came mainly due to purchases of Greek government bonds under the so-called Securities Markets Program (SMP) of the European Central Bank (ECB).
Previous agreements between the government in Athens and the eurozone states foresaw that other states will pay out the profits from this program to Greece if Athens would meet all the austerity and reform requirements. However, according to Berlin’s response, only in 2013 and 2014 such funds have been transferred to the Greek State and the ESM. The money to the euro bailout landed on a segregated account.
As the Federal Government announced, the Bundesbank achieved by 2017 about 3.4 billion euros in interest gains from the SMP purchases. In 2013, approximately 527 million euros were transferred back to Greece and around 387 million to the ESM in 2014. Therefore, the overall profit is 2.5 billion euros.
In addition, there are interest profits of 400 million euros from a loan from the state bank KfW.
“Contrary to all right-wing myths, Germany has benefited massively from the crisis in Greece,” said Greens household expert Sven Christian Kindler said and demanded a debt relief for Greece.
“It can not be that the federal government with billions of revenues from the Greek interest the German budget recapitalize,” Kindler criticized. “Greece has saved hard and kept its commitments, now the Eurogroup must keep its promise,” he stressed.
“Sorry, Angie, I couldn’t make more, yet 2.9billion is not bad profit either…”
- The United States Is Pushing Toward War With China
Authored by Michael Klare via The Nation,
The decision to change the name of US forces in the Pacific is more than symbolic… it’s a threat.
On May 30, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced a momentous shift in American global strategic policy.
From now on, he decreed, the US Pacific Command (PACOM), which oversees all US military forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM).
The name change, Mattis explained, reflects “the increasing connectivity between the Indian and Pacific Oceans,” as well as Washington’s determination to remain the dominant power in both.
What? You didn’t hear about this anywhere? And even now, you’re not exactly blown away, right? Well, such a name change may not sound like much, but someday you may look back and realize that it couldn’t have been more consequential or ominous. Think of it as a signal that the US military is already setting the stage for an eventual confrontation with China.
If, until now, you hadn’t read about Mattis’s decision anywhere, I’m not surprised since the media gave it virtually no attention—less certainly than would have been accorded the least significant tweet Donald Trump ever dispatched. What coverage it did receive treated the name change as no more than a passing “symbolic” gesture, a Pentagon ploy to encourage India to join Japan, Australia, and other US allies in America’s Pacific alliance system. “In Symbolic Nod to India, US Pacific Command Changes Name” was the headline of a Reuters story on the subject and, to the extent that any attention was paid, it was typical.
That the media’s military analysts failed to notice anything more than symbolism in the deep-sixing of PACOM shouldn’t be surprising, given all the attention being paid to other major international developments—the pyrotechnics of the Korean summit in Singapore, the insults traded at and after the G7 meeting in Canada, or the ominous gathering storm over Iran. Add to this the poor grasp so many journalists have of the nature of the US military’s strategic thinking. Still, Mattis himself has not been shy about the geopolitical significance of linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans in such planning. In fact, it represents a fundamental shift in US military thinking with potentially far-reaching consequences.
Consider the backdrop to the name change: in recent months, the United States has stepped up its naval patrols in waters adjacent to Chinese-occupied islands in the South China Sea (as has China), raising the prospect of future clashes between the warships of the two countries. Such moves have been accompanied by ever more threatening language from the Department of Defense (DoD), indicating an intent to do nothing less than engage China militarily if that country’s build-up in the region continues. “When it comes down to introducing what they have done in the South China Sea, there are consequences,” Mattis declared at the Shangri La Strategic Dialogue in Singapore on June 2.
As a preliminary indication of what he meant by this, Mattis promptly disinvited the Chinese from the world’s largest multinational naval exercise, the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), conducted annually under American auspices. “But that’s a relatively small consequence,” he added ominously, “and I believe there are much larger consequences in the future.” With that in mind, he soon announced that the Pentagon is planning to conduct “a steady drumbeat” of naval operations in waters abutting those Chinese-occupied islands, which should raise the heat between the two countries and could create the conditions for a miscalculation, a mistake, or even an accident at sea that might lead to far worse.
In addition to its plans to heighten naval tensions in seas adjacent to China, the Pentagon has been laboring to strengthen its military ties with US-friendly states on China’s perimeter, all clearly part of a long-term drive to—in Cold War fashion—“contain” Chinese power in Asia. On June 8, for example, the DoD launched Malabar 2018, a joint Pacific Ocean naval exercise involving forces from India, Japan, and the United States. Incorporating once neutral India into America’s anti-Chinese “Pacific” alliance system in this and other ways has, in fact, become a major 21st-century goal of the Pentagon, posing a significant new threat to China.
For decades, the principal objective of US strategy in Asia had been to bolster key Pacific allies Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines, while containing Chinese power in adjacent waters, including the East and South China Seas. However, in recent times, China has sought to spread its influence into Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region, in part by extolling its staggeringly ambitious “One Belt, One Road” trade and infrastructure initiative for the Eurasian continent and Africa. That vast project is clearly meant both as a unique vehicle for cooperation and a way to tie much of Eurasia into a future China-centered economic and energy system. Threatened by visions of such a future, American strategists have moved ever more decisively to constrain Chinese outreach in those very areas. That, then, is the context for the sudden concerted drive by US military strategists to link the Indian and Pacific Oceans and so encircle China with pro-American, anti-Chinese alliance systems. The name change on May 30 is a formal acknowledgement of an encirclement strategy that couldn’t, in the long run, be more dangerous.
GIRDING FOR WAR WITH CHINA
To grasp the ramifications of such moves, some background on the former PACOM might be useful. Originally known as the Far East Command, PACOM was established in 1947 and has been headquartered at US bases near Honolulu, Hawaii, ever since. As now constituted, its “area of responsibility” encompasses a mind-boggling expanse: all of East, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans—in other words, an area covering about 50% of the Earth’s surface and incorporating more than half of the global population. Though the Pentagon divides the whole planet like a giant pie into a set of “unified commands,” none of them is larger than the newly expansive, newly named Indo-Pacific Command, with its 375,000 military and civilian personnel.
Before the Indian Ocean was explicitly incorporated into its fold, PACOM mainly focused on maintaining control of the western Pacific, especially in waters around a number of friendly island and peninsula states like Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. Its force structure has largely been composed of air and naval squadrons, along with a large Marine Corps presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Its most powerful combat unit is the US Pacific Fleet —like the area it now covers, the largest in the world. It’s made up of the 3rd and 7th Fleets, which together have approximately 200 ships and submarines, nearly 1,200 aircraft, and more than 130,000 sailors, pilots, Marines, and civilians.
On a day-to-day basis, until recently, the biggest worry confronting the command was the possibility of a conflict with nuclear-armed North Korea. During the late fall of 2017 and the winter of 2018, PACOM engaged in a continuing series of exercises designed to test its forces’ ability to overcome North Korean defenses and destroy its major military assets, including nuclear and missile facilities. These were undoubtedly intended, above all, as a warning to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un about what he could expect if he continued down the path of endless provocative missile and nuclear tests. It seems that, at least for the time being, President Trump has suspended such drills as a result of his summit meeting with Kim.
North Korea aside, the principal preoccupation of PACOM commanders has long been the rising power of China and how to contain it. This was evident at the May 30 ceremony in Hawaii at which Mattis announced that expansive name change and presided over a change-of-command ceremony, in which outgoing commander, Adm. Harry Harris Jr., was replaced by Adm. Phil Davidson. (Given the naval-centric nature of its mission, the command is almost invariably headed by an admiral.)
While avoiding any direct mention of China in his opening remarks, Mattis left not a smidgeon of uncertainty that the command’s new name was a challenge and a call for the future mobilization of regional opposition across a vast stretch of the planet to China’s dreams and desires. Other nations welcome US support, he insisted, as they prefer an environment of “free, fair, and reciprocal trade not bound by any nation’s predatory economics or threat of coercion, for the Indo-Pacific has many belts and many roads.” No one could mistake the meaning of that.
Departing Admiral Harris was blunter still. Although “North Korea remains our most immediate threat,” he declared, “China remains our biggest long-term challenge.” He then offered a warning: Without the stepped-up efforts of the US and its allies to constrain Beijing, “China will realize its dream of hegemony in Asia.” Yes, he admitted, it was still possible to cooperate with the Chinese on limited issues, but we should “stand ready to confront them when we must.” (On May 18, Admiral Harris was nominated by President Trump as the future US ambassador to South Korea, which will place a former military man at the US Embassy in Seoul.)
Harris’s successor, Admiral Davidson, seems, if anything, even more determined to put confronting China atop the command’s agenda. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 17, he repeatedly highlighted the threat posed by Chinese military activities in the South China Sea and promised to resist them vigorously.
“Once [the South China Sea islands are] occupied, China will be able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania,” he warned.
“The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] will be able to use these bases to challenge US presence in the region, and any forces deployed to the islands would easily overwhelm the military forces of any other South China Sea claimants. In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”
Is that, then, what Admiral Davidson sees in our future? War with China in those waters? His testimony made it crystal clear that his primary objective as head of the Indo-Pacific Command will be nothing less than training and equipping the forces under him for just such a future war, while enlisting the militaries of as many allies as possible in the Pentagon’s campaign to encircle that country.
“To prevent a situation where China is more likely to win a conflict,” he affirmed in his version of Pentagonese, “we must resource high-end capabilities in a timely fashion, preserve our network of allies and partners, and continue to recruit and train the best soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coastguardsmen in the world.”
Davidson’s first priority is to procure advanced weaponry and integrate it into the command’s force structure, ensuring that American combatants will always enjoy a technological advantage over their Chinese counterparts in any future confrontation. Almost as important, he, like his predecessors, seeks to bolster America’s military ties with other members of the contain-China club. This is where India comes in. Like the United States, its leadership is deeply concerned with China’s expanding presence in the Indian Ocean region, including the opening of a future port/naval base in Gwadar, Pakistan, and another potential one on the island of Sri Lanka, both in the Indian Ocean. Not surprisingly, given the periodic clashes between Chinese and Indian forces along their joint Himalayan borderlands and the permanent deployment of Chinese warships in the Indian Ocean, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has shown himself to be increasingly disposed to join Washington in military arrangements aimed at limiting China’s geopolitical reach.
“An enduring strategic partnership with India comports with US goals and objectives in the Indo-Pacific,” Admiral Davidson said in his recent congressional testimony. Once installed as commander, he continued, “I will maintain the positive momentum and trajectory of our burgeoning strategic partnership.” His particular goal: to “increase maritime security cooperation.”
And so we arrive at the Indo-Pacific Command and a future shadowed by the potential for great power war.
THE VIEW FROM BEIJING
The way the name change at PACOM was covered in the United States, you would think it reflected, at most, a benign wish for greater economic connections between the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions, as well, perhaps, as a nod to America’s growing relationship with India. Nowhere was there any hint that what might lie behind it was a hostile and potentially threatening new approach to China—or that it could conceivably be perceived that way in Beijing. But there can be no doubt that the Chinese view such moves, including recent provocative naval operations in the disputed Paracel Islands of the South China Sea, as significant perils.
When, in late May, the Pentagon dispatched two warships—the USS Higgins, a destroyer, and the USS Antietam, a cruiser—into the waters near one of those newly fortified islands, the Chinese responded by sending in some of their own warships while issuing a statement condemning the provocative American naval patrols. The US action, said a Chinese military spokesperson, “seriously violated China’s sovereignty [and] undermined strategic mutual trust.” Described by the Pentagon as “freedom of navigation operations” (FRONOPs), such patrols are set to be increased at the behest of Mattis.
Of course, the Chinese are hardly blameless in the escalating tensions in the region. They have continued to militarize South China Sea islands whose ownership is in dispute, despite a promise that Chinese President Xi Jinping made to President Obama in 2015 not to do so. Some of those islands in the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos are also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries in the area and have been the subject of intensifying, often bitter disagreements among them about where rightful ownership really lies. Beijing has simply claimed sovereignty over all of them and refuses to compromise on the issue. By fortifying them—which American military commanders see as a latent military threat to US forces in the region—Beijing has provoked a particularly fierce US reaction, though these are obviously waters relatively close to China, but many thousands of miles from the continental United States.
From Beijing, the strategic outlook articulated by Secretary Mattis, as well as Admirals Harris and Davidson, is clearly viewed—and not without reason—as threatening and as evidence of Washington’s master plan to surround China, confine it, and prevent it from ever achieving the regional dominance its leaders believe is its due as the rising great power on the planet. To the Chinese leadership, changing PACOM’s name to the Indo-Pacific Command will just be another signal of Washington’s determination to extend its unprecedented military presence westward from the Pacific around Southeast Asia into the Indian Ocean and so further restrain the attainment of what it sees as China’s legitimate destiny.
However Chinese leaders end up responding to such strategic moves, one thing is certain: They will not view them with indifference. On the contrary, as challenged great powers have always done, they will undoubtedly seek ways to counter America’s containment strategy by whatever means are at hand. These may not initially be overtly military or even obvious, but in the long run they will certainly be vigorous and persistent. They will include efforts to compete with Washington in pursuit of Asian allies—as seen in Beijing’s fervent courtship of President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines—and to secure new basing arrangements abroad, possibly under the pretext, as in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, of establishing commercial shipping terminals. All of this will only add new tensions to an already anxiety-inducing relationship with the United States. As ever more warships from both countries patrol the region, the likelihood that accidents will occur, mistakes will be made, and future military clashes will result can only increase.
With the possibility of war with North Korea fading in the wake of the recent Singapore summit, one thing is guaranteed: The new US Indo-Pacific Command will only devote itself ever more fervently to what is already its one overriding priority: preparing for a conflict with China. Its commanders insist that they do not seek such a war, and believe that their preparations—by demonstrating America’s strength and resolve—will deter the Chinese from ever challenging American supremacy. That, however, is a fantasy. In reality, a strategy that calls for a “steady drumbeat” of naval operations aimed at intimidating China in waters near that country will create ever more possibilities, however unintended, of sparking the very conflagration that it is, at least theoretically, designed to prevent.
Right now, a Sino-American war sounds like the plotline of some half-baked dystopian novel. Unfortunately, given the direction in which both countries (and their militaries) are heading, it could, in the relatively near future, become a grim reality.
- Water Wars: India Facing "Worst Crisis In Its History"
India is facing its worst-ever water crisis, with some 600 million people facing acute water shortage, a government think-tank says.
The Niti Aayog report, which draws on data from 24 of India’s 29 states, says the crisis is “only going to get worse” in the years ahead.
Around 200,000 Indians die every year because they have no access to clean water, according to the report. And as The BBC reports, many end up relying on private water suppliers or tankers paid for the by the government. Winding queues of people waiting to collect water from tankers or public taps is a common sight in Indian slums.
Indian cities and towns regularly run out water in the summer because they lack the infrastructure to deliver piped water to every home.
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600 million people face high-to-extreme water stress.
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75% of households do not have drinking water on premise. 84% rural households do not have piped water access.
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70% of our water is contaminated; India is currently ranked 120 among 122 countries in the water quality index.
India faces more than one problem – all compounding the nation’s crisis:
Droughts are becoming more frequent, creating severe problems for India’s rain-dependent farmers (~53% of agriculture in India is rainfed17).
When water is available, it is likely to be contaminated (up to 70% of our water supply), resulting in nearly 200,000 deaths each year.
Interstate disagreements are on the rise, with seven major disputes currently raging, pointing to the fact that limited frameworks and institutions are in place for national water governance.
And that means massive problems lie ahead…
40% of the Indian population will have no access to drinking water by 2030 with 21 cities running out of groundwater by 2020 – affecting 100 million people which will cut 6% from GDP by 2050.
What remains alarming is that the states that are ranked the lowest – such as Uttar Pradesh and Haryana in the north or Bihar and Jharkhand in the east – are also home to nearly half of India’s population as well the bulk of its agricultural produce.
But, the report said, policymakers face a difficult situation because there is not enough data available on how households and industries use and manage water.
While trade wars are grabbing all the headlines, the water wars are where the real pain lies.
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- Paul Craig Roberts: "The Entire Western World Lives In Cognitive Dissonance"
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
In this column I am going to use three of the current top news stories to illustrate the disconnect that is everywhere in the Western mind.
Let us begin with the family separation issue. The separation of children from immigrant/refugee/asylum parents has caused such public outcry that President Trump has backed off his policy and signed an executive order terminating family separation.
The horror of children locked up in warehouses operated by private businesses making a profit off of US taxpayers, while parents are prosecuted for illegal entry, woke even self-satisfied “exceptional and indispensable” Americans out of their stupor. It is a mystery that the Trump regime chose to discredit its border enforcement policy by separating families. Perhaps the policy was intended to deter illegal immigration by sending the message that if you come to America your children will be taken from you.
The question is: How is it that Americans can see and reject the inhumane border control policy and not see the inhumanity of family destruction that has been the over-riding result of Washington’s destruction in whole or part of seven or eight countries in the 21st century?
Millions of people have been separated from families by death inflicted by Washington, and for almost two decades protests have been almost nonexistent. No public outcry stopped George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump from clear and indisputable illegal acts defined in international law established by the US itself as war crimes against the inhabitants of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. We can add to this an eighth example: The military attacks by the US armed and supported neo-Nazi puppet state of Ukraine against the breakaway Russian provinces.
The massive deaths, destruction of towns, cities, infrastructure, the maiming, physical and mental, the dislocation that has sent millions of refugees fleeing Washington’s wars to overrun Europe, where governments consist of a collection of idiot stooges who supported Washington’s massive war crimes in the Middle East and North Africa, produced no outcry comparable to Trump’s immigration policy.
How can it be that Americans can see inhumanity in the separation of families in immigration enforcement but not in the massive war crimes committed against peoples in eight countries? Are we experiencing a mass psychosis form of cognitive dissonance?
We now move to the second example: Washington’s withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
On November 2, 1917, two decades prior to the holocaust attributed to National Socialist Germany, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild that Great Britain supported Palestine becoming a Jewish homeland. In other words, the corrupt Balfour dismissed the rights and lives of the millions of Palestinians who had occupied Palestine for two millennia or more. What were these people compared to Rothschild’s money? They were nothing to the British Foreign Secretary.
Balfour’s attitude toward the rightful inhabitants of Palestine is the same as the British attitude toward the peoples in every colony or territory over which British power prevailed. Washington learned this habit and has consistently repeated it.
Just the other day Trump’s UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the crazed and insane lapdog of Israel, announced that Washington had withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, because it is “a cesspool of political bias” against Israel.
What did the UN Human Rights Council do to warrant this rebuke from Israel’s agent, Nikki Haley? The Human Rights Council denounced Israel’s policy of murdering Palestinians—medics, young children, mothers, old women and old men, fathers, teenagers.
To criticize Israel, no matter how great and obvious is Israel’s crime, means that you are an anti-semite and a “holocaust denier.” For Nikki Haley and Israel, this places the UN Human Rights Council in the Hitler-worshipping Nazi ranks.
The absurdity of this is obvious, but few, if any, can detect it. Yes, the rest of the world, with the exception of Israel, has denounced Washington’s decision, not only Washington’s foes and the Palestinians, but also Washington’s puppets and vassals as well.
To see the disconnect, it is necessary to pay attention to the wording of the denunciations of Washington.
A spokesperson for the European Union said that Washington’s withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council “risks undermining the role of the US as a champion and supporter of democracy on the world stage.” Can anyone image a more idiotic statement? Washington is known as a supporter of dictatorships that adhere to Washington’s will. Washington is known as a destroyer of every Latin American democracy that elected a president who represented the people of the country and not the New York banks, US commercial interests, and US foreign policy.
Name one place where Washington has been a supporter of democracy. Just to speak of the most recent years, the Obama regime overthrew the democratically elected government of Honduras and imposed its puppet. The Obama regime overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine and imposed a neo-Nazi regime. Washington overthrew the governments in Argentina and Brazil, is trying to overthrow the government in Venezuela, and has Bolivia in its crosshairs along with Russia and Iran.
Margot Wallstrom, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, said: “It saddens me that the US has decided to withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council. It comes at a time when the world needs more human rights and a stronger UN – not the opposite.” Why in the world does Wallstrom think that the presence of Washington, a known destroyer of human rights—just ask the millions of refugees from Washington’s war crimes overrunning Europe and Sweden—on the Human Rights Council would strengthen rather than undermine the Council? Wallstrom’s disconnect is awesome. It is so extreme as to be unbelievable.
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, spoke for the most fawning of all of Washington’s vassals when she said that she was concerned by the UN Human Rights Council’s “anti-Israel bias.” Here you have a person so utterly brainwashed that she is unable to connect to anything real.
The third example is the “trade war” Trump has launched against China. The Trump regime’s claim is that due to unfair practices China has a trade surplus with the US of nearly $400 billion. This vast sum is supposed to be due to “unfair practices” on China’s part. In actual fact, the trade deficit with China is due to Apple, Nike, Levi, and to the large number of US corporations who produce offshore in China the products that they sell to Americans. When the offshored production of US corporations enter the US, they are counted as imports.
I have been pointing this out for many years going back to my testimony before the US Congress China Commission. I have written numerous articles published almost everywhere. They are summarized in my 2013 book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism.
The presstitute financial media, the corporate lobbyists, which includes many “name” academic economists, and the hapless American politicians whose intellect is almost non-existent are unable to recognize that the massive US trade deficit is the result of jobs offshoring. This is the level of utter stupidity that rules America.
In The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I exposed the extraordinary error made by Matthew J. Slaughter, a member of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, who incompetently claimed that for every US job offshored two US jobs were created. I also exposed as a hoax a “study” by Harvard University professor Michael Porter for the so-called Council on Competitiveness, a lobby group for offshoring, that made the extraordinary claim that the US work force was benefitting from the offshoring of their high productivity, high value-added jobs.
The idiot American economists, the idiot American financial media, and the idiot American policymakers still have not comprehended that jobs offshoring destroyed America’s economic prospects and pushed China to the forefront 45 years ahead of Washington’s expectations.
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To sum this up, the Western mind, and the minds of the Atlanticist Integrationist Russians and pro-American Chinese youth, are so full of propagandistic nonsense that there is no connection to reality.
There is the real world and there is the propagandistic made-up world that covers over the real world and serves special interests. My task is to get people out of the made-up world and into the real world. Support my efforts.
- 80% Of Renters Can't Afford To Live Close To Work
Companies like McDonald’s and GE have been moving their headquarters from the suburbs to trendy urban centers to try and attract “tech-savvy” millennial talent. But unfortunately for their employees, the companies can’t take all the cheap housing from the suburbs with them. And even as developers are in the middle of a luxury apartment boom in many downtown areas, the cost of housing remains the No. 1 factor separating 80% of millennial employees from living close to work.
According to RentCafe, fewer than 17% of over 2,000 renters recently surveyed said they lived close to their ideal location, leaving 83% to live in less-than-ideal locations as rents have climbed incessantly since the crisis. What’s worse, 60% of respondents said they would not be able to afford to pay substantially more than they are already paying.
Nationally, the average rent charged by buildings in the most desirable locations is $1,650 a month, which is 37% more than the national average rent of $1,211 charged in lower-rated locations, according to rent data and location ratings by Yardi Matrix.
That rent gap comes from comparing top-notch locations rated A+/A/A-/B+ and apartments in average and below-average locations rated B/B-/C/D. The map below shows the cities with some of the largest gaps between low-rated and top-rated locations. The six cities where this difference is higher than 50% are Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Houston, Brooklyn, NYC, and Memphis.
Meanwhile, Raleigh and Seattle are among the six cities where renters pay less than 10% more for a top location vs. the rest of the city (though, at least in Seattle’s case, this is due to the immense tech boom that has seen rents increase across the city).
The survey confirmed that younger workers prefer to live closer to work, while older Americans prioritize being closer to their friends and family. Many renters who said they’d pay $250 more a month to live in a better location said living near quality schools was their reason. In the most-coveted buildings, Americans hoping for a rent reduction might be disappointed – but at least rents in newer high-rise towers tend to increase more slowly, RentCafe found. However, with the rush to cities still underway, the development boom in centrally located areas has yet to run its course. In the 50 cities analyzed for this study, there are more than 100,000 units of housing that are under construction in the highest-rated areas alone.
- What Life Is Really Like For A Venezuelan Mom
Authored by J.G. Martinez D. via The Organic Prepper blog,
Did you ever wonder what the life of a mother in Venezuela is like?
This is not a fictional story. It is a couple of days in the life of one of our best friends, in our country, under the current conditions. Her son suffers from diabetes. He is 12 years old and has lost one tooth because he is malnourished and needs a special diet. We’ll call her L.
The Morning
She woke up early, around 6 AM. After using just a drop of toothpaste, and a tiny little bit of what used to be a soap bar for washing her face, she dressed and went to her kid´s bedroom. He was already awake, but still in bed. Another drop of toothpaste, and using the same tiny bit of soap, he was ready for breakfast. This was just a piece of boiled tapioca, with a teaspoon of margarine, and a tiny bit of ground cheese on top. A banana, and a glass of water. Eggs are a luxury item, usually left for the weekend’s breakfast. A fulltime shower before leaving would be a waste of soap, better to sleep clean at night because going to bed fresh is better once the lights go out and the air conditioning stops working.
She walked her kid about ¾ mile to school, in streets half empty, with very few cars. This is not surprising. There is no money for oil changes nor tires or batteries. There are express assaults often, usually with a couple of men on a small Chinese motorcycle (bought by the government and sold under subsidies for the “poor” people who needed a vehicle), with the one on the back seat jumping off the bike with a gun, and robbing the bystanders.
With eyes on her back, and very alert, after dropping the kid at school she walked to the avenue, just for trying to find a cattle truck or any other farm truck that are transporting people to the downtown where she worked. After texting on her old cellphone and saying she was already waiting for a truck, she quickly hid her phone inside her jeans. After 35 minutes of waiting, a truck appeared, loaded with people up to the roof. She paid to the chauffeur and the passengers helped her to climb up. A taxi is no longer an option.
Most of the people are working the taxi just under request, because of the high price of spare parts. They are contacted by phone and charge high prices, because of the added security level they offer. Some people have been robbed or even killed by using the wrong kind of taxi. Usually, their phone numbers are passed on by word of mouth, and they rarely transport unknown people.
The Workday
She arrived at the beauty, nails and hair room on time, and her day was as usual, barely enough clients to keep the business open and running. The other 5 employees had to be sent home a long time ago, and now it is just her, the room owner (very sick with untreated cancer) and another girl with two small children and an older mother to support.
By lunchtime, an old lady with a styrofoam box wrapped in duct tape arrived. L got out her dish and “silverware”, to receive her lunch. The old lady opened her cooler and quickly served to L the ration in her dish. She pays the lady once a week if she has been able to find some stuff or the cash for buying enough food.
That day things were a little bit better so she decided to take some food for her son at dinner. One rice cup, another cup of beans, and two slices of fried plantains. Filtered water for washing it down and lunch is ready. She took an empty Tupperware she had left around just in case, and the old lady served the food inside. Sticking it in her backpack, she started to sweep the room.
Shortly before the end of the closing (business close around 6 o´clock in that part of the country and pretty much earlier if lights go out because of the night arrives fast, and being on the streets without lights is dangerous) she received a text of one of the neighbors who carpools for several people living in the same subdivision.
The Evening
She quickly accepted the ride (anything is better than the platform of a truck in the rainy season), said goodbye to her boss, and got out to wait. Not staying in one spot but walking from one side of the mall to another, always in sight of the watchmen, (armed robbery, express style is rampant in the downtown these days), once the car arrived she jumped inside the already full car. Everybody is thin these days so there is always space for one more passenger. She greets the people and jokes about being on time because it almost immediately started to rain.
A light chat was in place, and she joined cheerfuly. The general consensus was “something has to happen soon”, and about where to find what product, and better price. Another topic was who had been robbed recently, and who was already leaving out the country and which route they were taking. After a 15 minute ride, they arrived to the subdivision. There was power, so the electrical gate opened without problems. The passengers walked from the entrance to their homes, greeting the driver, until the next day.
Her son was already at home. He is a kid who is 12, so he could microwave his meager lunch once he had arrived home. Another piece of tapioca, and a can of sardines. They fed the cats and their rescued puppy. They watched part of a movie on the DVD and took a shower before the lights went out.
This happened around 9 PM so they went to bed. It was fresh after all with the rain. The next day was Saturday, and she told her boss that perhaps she would be delayed because she would need to leave out early in the morning, in order to buy some food for the weekend.
The Weekend
At 7 AM she was already with her son in the vegetable shop. Prices in cash were half of the prices using the POS, but there was not an alternative. The rows in the ATMs are too long and the money was not enough for buying anything, anyways. So she bought a kilogram of sweet potatoes (better for people with diabetes, she has been told), one large papaya for juice and dessert, a half kilo of white hard cheese, some tomatoes, lettuce, spice herbs, half kilo of two different dried grains, and then most of the money of her monthly salary was gone.
She would buy some ground beef for a special lunch on Sunday, 300 grams or so. Mostly for F, her son who needed the proteins. She hurried home, and leaving the kid and the groceries, she quickly walked up to the main avenue to get another truck again before the rain started.
She had to wait a little bit, because the trucks were much more filled up than the day before. Saturdays were days when people usually went out to buy some food, and getting earlier to the few shops that still have products was necessary.
Once she arrived, there was no power in the mall where her nail room was, and one man was working in the genset that provided energy for the entire mall. Once they started the engine, the mall came back to life. Some people hurried up to the line in front of the Chinese-owned supermarket. There is a lot of Chinese-owned supermarkets, and while Venezuelan people do not have money even for a taxi, the store owners drive Tahoes, live in luxury apartments, and enjoy a lifestyle that any Venezuelan, unless it is a member of the mafia cannot have.
L worked her shift, and left in a hurry again to take the transport to a neighboring subdivision: one of her clients needed to be attended at home because she was having a special night with her husband. After having done the work on her hair and nails, she arrived home with some cash, but it was already too late to go to some place for buying anything. Going out at 8 PM is definitely not a good idea these days.
They ate some casabe (tapioca dry cakes, very typical of the east of the country but not too nutritious or filling) with tomato sauce and fried plantains and went to bed. This time lights went about 11 PM, and they could watch an entire movie on the DVD. The cats were on the bed with the four of them.
The puppy was in the living room, in a big cardboard box all for himself, sleeping like a baby.
She watched her son sleep, next to her, silently. Took the remote and shut down the TV. She wanted to cry, but instead, she gave thanks to God for another day with food.
- NSA Launches Amazon-Backed Cloud-Computing Service For Sharing "Top Secret" Info
Four years after handing Amazon a $600 million contract to develop a cloud-storage service for the US intelligence community that can store information across the full range of data classifications – including Unclassified, Sensitive, Secret, and Top Secret – the NSA announced on Thursday that it has moved most of its mission data to a front-end cloud computing system developed by the agency that’s supported by – you guessed it – Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos.
According to NextGov.com, the IC GovCloud, which was created by the NSA but is supported by Amazon’s web services, will offer similar hosting services to the other 16 members of the US intelligence community. The advantage of having all of these intelligence agencies using the same system, according to NSA Chief Information Officer Greg Smithberger, is that it will allow analysts from across agencies to share information and “connect the dots” more quickly. But even before the other agencies sign on, the NSA will use the platform to “collect, analyze and store” classified information in a “classified cloud computing environment.”
The goal of the platform is to gather all of the signals intelligence that the NSA gathers on foreign targets (and, of course, its myriad spying on the American public) into one centralized location that’s easily accessible by its analysts.
The impetus for the multi-year move is getting the NSA’s data, including signals intelligence and other foreign surveillance and intelligence information it ingests from multiple repositories around the globe into a single data lake analysts from the NSA and other IC agencies can run queries against.
“The NSA has been systematically moving almost all its mission into this big data fusion environment,” Smithberger told Nextgov in an interview. “Right now, almost all NSA’s mission is being done in [IC GovCloud], and the productivity gains and the speed at which our analysts are able to put together insights and work higher-level problems has been really amazing.”
Furthermore, the NSA cloud will employ AI and machine learning techniques to allow analysts to work more quickly than they otherwise would be able to.
Data ingested by NSA has been meta-tagged with bits of information, including where it came from and who is authorized to see it, which ensures analysts only immerse themselves in intelligence they’re cleared to see.
“This environment allows us to run analytic tools and do machine-assisted data fusion and big data analytics, and apply a lot of automation to facilitate and accelerate what humans would like to do, and get the machines to do it for them,” Smithberger said. Analysts, he said, can “interactively ask questions” of the data in the cloud environment, and it spits out data in “humanly readable form.”
In addition to utilizing some of the commercial technology used by tech firms like Facebook in their data centers, the IC GovCloud will feature proprietary technology developed by the NSA.
The backbone of the system is the same commercial hardware you might see in data centers owned by Facebook, Amazon or other industry titans. But that hardware is blended with NSA-developed custom software, exotic processing, high performance computing and other unique NSA intellectual property.
“It’s really a hybrid of the latest and greatest commercial technology, but a lot of custom NSA technology and a lot of unique development we’ve done to actually create these outcomes,” Smithberger said.
Of course, one can’t help but wonder what kind of access Jeff Bezos & Co. will have to this new technology. Or, to put it another way, will the most powerful company in America now have access to your girlfriend’s nudes?
- Zuesse: The Diseased, Lying, Condition Of America's 'News'-Media
Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Both President Trump and former President Obama are commonly said in America’s ‘news’ media to be or to have been “ceding Syria to Russia” or “ceding Syria to Russia and Iran,” or similar allegations. They imply that ‘we’ own (or have some right to control) Syria.
That’s not only a lie; it is a very evil and harmful one, dangerously goading the US President to go even more against Russia (and Iran) (and, of course, against Syria) than has yet been done – but the ‘news’media don’t care about that evil, and that falsehood, and that dangerousness – they do it anyway, and none of them attacks the others for perpetrating this vicious war-mongering lie, that lying provocation to yet more and worse war than already exists there.
And the fact that none is exposing the fraudulence of the others on this important matter, is a yet-bigger additional scandal, beyond and amplifying the media’s common lying itself. Because they all function here like a mob, goading to more and worse invasions, and doing it on the the basis of dangerous lies – that America, and not the Syrians themselves, own Syria.
These lies simply assume that America (probably referring to the US Government, but whatever) somehow “has” or else “had” Syria (so that America can now ‘cede’ it, to anyone); and this assumption (that the US somehow owns Syria) is not only an imperialistic one (which is bad, and wrong, in itself), but it reduces to nothingness the rights (in the minds of the American public) of the Syrian people, to control their own land.
That lie is what America’s ‘news’media won’t expose, but instead they all cooperate with it, when they’re not actually participating, themselves, in spreading these lies.
What they are doing is also to slur Russia, and to slur Iran, for having accepted the request from Syria’s Government, for assistance in protecting Syria’s Government, against the tens of thousands of jihadists who had been recruited throughout the world by the Saudi-American alliance, to overthrow and replace Syria’s Government, to replace it with one that would be appointed by the Saud family (’America’s ally’), the fundamentalist-Sunni royal family who (as the absolute monarchy there) do actually own Saudi Arabia – a monarchical dictatorship, which the US Government calls an ‘ally’.
The evilness of this imperialistic assumption, which is being constantly spread by the US-and-allied ‘news’media, is as bad as is its falseness, because “America” (however one wishes to use that term) never had, never possessed, any right whatsoever to control Syria. Of course, neither does Russia possess such a right, nor does Iran, but neither Russia nor Iran is asserting any such right; both instead are there to protect Syria’s national sovereignty, against the invaders (including the US, and the Sauds’ regime). But the US-and-allied ‘news’media don’t present it that way — the honest way — not at all. Such truths are instead suppressed.
I was immediately struck by this false and evil assumption that the US owns Syria, when reading the June 15th issue of The Week magazine. It contained, under its “Best Columns” section, a piece by Matthew Continetti (“Obama Too Good for America”), which says, among other falsehoods, “Obama was wrong about a lot of other things, too, like… ceding Syria to Russia.”
That phrase, “ceding Syria to Russia” rose straight out from the page to me as being remarkable, stunning, and not only because it suggests that America owns that sovereign nation, Syria. I was especially struck by it because the CIA has several times attempted Syrian coups and once did briefly, in 1949, overthrow and replace Syria’s democratically elected President. But is that really something which today’s America’s ‘news’media should encourage the American public to be demanding today’s American politicians to be demanding from today’s American President? How bizarre, even evil, an idea is that? But it is so normal that it’s a fair indication of how evil and untrustworthy today’s American ‘news’media actually are. I just hadn’t noticed it before.
Publishing such a false and evil idea, without any accompanying commentary that truthfully presents its context and that doesn’t simply let the false and evil allegation stand unchallenged – that instead lets it be unchallenged both factually and morally – is not acceptable either factually or morally, but then I checked and found that it’s the almost universal norm, in today’s US ‘news’media.
For examples:
On 17 April 2018, CBS News headlined “Lindsey Graham ‘unnerved’ after Syria briefing: ‘Everything in that briefing made me more worried’” and presented that US Senator saying, “It seems to me we are willing to give Syria to Assad, Russia, and Iran.” He was criticizing President Trump as being “all tweet and no action.” He wanted more war, and more threat of war. But when President Obama had repeatedly denied in public that only the Syrian people should have any say-so over whom Syria’s leaders ought to be, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon repeatedly contradicted the US President’s viewpoint on this, and he said, “The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people.”
If the American people have become so dismissive of international law as this, then is it because the US ‘news’media start with the ridiculously false presumption that “America” (whatever that refers to) is the arbiter of international law, and therefore has the right to dictate to the entire world what that law is, and what it means? Is America, as being the dictator over the whole planet, supposed to be something that Americans’ tax-dollars ought to be funding — that objective: global dictatorship? How does that viewpoint differ, then, from perpetual war for perpetual ‘peace’ — a dictum that’s enormously profitable for America’s big ‘Defense’ contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, but that impoverishes the general public, both in America, and especially in the countries (such as Syria) where ‘our’ Government drops bombs in order to enforce its own will and demand, that: “Assad must go!”
In fact, as any journalist who writes or speaks about the Syrian situation and who isn’t a complete ignoramus knows, Bashar al-Assad would easily win any free and fair Presidential election in Syria, against any contender. His public support, as shown not only in the 2014 Syrian Presidential election, but also in the many Western-sponsored opinion-polls in Syria (since the CIA is always eager to find potential candidates to support against him), show this.
On 17 December 2016, Eric Chenoweth, a typical neocon Democratic Party hack, headlined “Let Hamilton Speak: Recapturing American Democracy”, and he wrote: “Trump’s statements and appointments make clear he intends to tilt American policy to serve Russian interests: ceding Syria to Russia by ending support to pro-Western rebels; possibly lifting economic sanctions and recognizing the annexation of Crimea; proposing an alliance with Russia in the war on terror while remaining uncommitted to the defense of NATO allies, in particular the Baltic countries vulnerable to Russian aggression. Restoring American Democracy When they meet on December 19, Republican Electors who reflect on their constitutional duty should not then affirm Trump’s election.” Those “pro-Western rebels” in Syria were actually led by Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch. Without them, the US regime wouldn’t have had any “boots on the ground” forces to speak of there.
In fact, the US regime has actually been fronting for the Saud family to take over control of Syria if and when Syria’s Government falls.The Saud family even selected the people who in the U.N. peace talks on Syria represent ‘the rebels’ — the Sauds, who have been Syria’s enemy ever since 1950, selected ‘Syria’s opposition’, who were now seeking to take over Syria if and when ‘America’s moderate rebels’ succeed. Both Al Qaeda and ISIS are actually fundamentalist-Sunnis, like the Saud family are, and Assad’s Government is resolutely non-sectarian. Assad himself is a non-Islamist Alawite Shiite secularist, which virtually all fundamentalist Sunnis (such as the Sauds are) are taught to despise and to hate — especially because he’s Shiite. The US regime knows that neither it, which is considered Christian, nor Israel, which is theocratically Jewish, could practically succeed at imposing rule in Syria, but that maybe the Sauds could — so, they are the actual leaders of the ‘pro-Western’ forces, seeking to replace Syria’s secularist Government. Overthrowing Syria’s Government would be their victory. It would be the Saud family’s victory. But this fact is kept a secret from the American public, by the US ‘news’media.
Back on 17 September 2016, shortly before the change in US Administrations, Obama bombed the Syrian Government’s garrison in Der Zor, or Deir Ezzor, which is the capital of Syria’s oil-producing region. He did it in order to enable ISIS forces, which surrounded the city, to rush in and conquer it. Obama did this only eight days after his Secretary of State, John Kerry, had conceded to the demand by Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Russia’s demand that in a cease fire, Russia be allowed to continue bombing not only ISIS there, which Kerry agreed should continue to be bombed by both the US and Russia, but also Al Qaeda’s forces — which until 9 September 2016, Obama refused to allow to be bombed during a cease-fire. But, finally, after a year of deadlock between Russia and the United States on that crucial issue, Kerry and Lavrov both signed a cease-fire agreement, and it allowed both ISIS and Al Qaeda-led forces to continue being bombed. (Russia had been bombing both, ever since 30 September 2015, when Russia began its bombing campaign in Syria.)
That cease-fire went into effect on September 12th. Then Obama, unannounced — and a great disappointment to his Secretary of State, who wasn’t informed of this in advance — broke the agreement, by bombing the Syrian outpost in Deir Ezzor — and that’s the moment when Vladimir Putin quit his efforts to get agreements from Obama, because Putin now recognized that Obama was totally untrustworthy.
Already by late September of 2015, even prior to Russia’s having been requested by President Assad to enter the war in order to speed up the defeat of what Washington still calls ‘the rebels’, it was clear that Washington (actually Riyadh) wasn’t going to take over Syria; and Americans were — and are — being taught by the ‘news’media, that this was because Obama was ‘weak’ and didn’t care enough about ‘human rights’ in Syria, and about ‘democracy’ in Syria. So, on 28 September 2015, Matt Purple at the libertarian “Rare Politics” site, headlined “Pentagon admits that the Syrian rebels it trained handed over weapons to al Qaeda”, and he wrote “Neoconservatives wail that President Obama is ceding Syria to Russia — but the reason the Russians are taking the lead is precisely because America has sidelined itself.” But the US regime hadn’t at all “sidelined itself”; it continued — and it continues to this day — its invasion and occupation of that land. Trump’s policy on Syria is basically a continuation of Obama’s — and it’s not at all “ceding Syria to Russia,” or “ceding Syria to Russia and Iran.”
Because of America’s ‘news’media, it still isn’t “ceding Syria to the Syrians” — as Ban ki-Moon and international law would. That wouldn’t be profitable for Lockheed Martin etc. (whose biggest customers other than the US Government are the Sauds, and Trump alone sold $400 billion of US weapons to them); so, it’s not done.
Syria’s sovereignty is utterly denied by the US regime, but if the US regime were to succeed, the big winners would actually be the Saud family.
Do the American people have sovereignty, over ‘their’ (our) Government? US ‘news’media effectively ban that question. Perhaps what controls the US Government is the Saudi-Israeli alliance: the Sauds have the money, and the Israelis have the lobbyists. Of course, the US ‘news’media are obsessed whether Russia controls the US Government. That diversionary tactic is extremely profitable to companies such as General Dynamics, and America’s other weapons-manufacturers, which thrive on wars — especially by selling to the Sauds, and to their allies (and, obviously, not at all to Russia).
- As Shutdown Looms, New Jersey Legislature Blasts Governor's "My Way Or The High Way" Budget
In what’s beginning to sound like a repeat of last year’s statewide budget battles that pitted Democratic legislatures against Republican governors in states like Maine, New Jersey and Illinois, the Democrat-controlled New Jersey legislature is trying to jam a plan that would raise taxes on corporations down the throat of the state’s fledgling governor, Goldman Sachs alum Phil Murphy.
However, there’s one key incongruity here that might raise eyebrows among voters who don’t live in the Garden State: Murphy is also a Democrat – yet his tax plan, which would rely on long-term increases in sales taxes as well as a hike on income taxes for the wealthiest individuals, has been resoundingly rejected by lawmakers – including State Senate President Steve Sweeney, who lost out to Murphy in the gubernatorial primary to replace outgoing governor Chris Christie, according to NJ.com.
The Senate Budget Committee passed the budget bill 8-3 (including two abstentions), and the Assembly Budget Committee passed their bill 9-4. By ignoring the governor’s plan and instead moving ahead with its own, the legislature is hoping to send a resounding message to Murphy: “We don’t answer to you.”
New Jersey lawmakers on Tuesday flexed their muscles in advancing a state spending blueprint that eschews Gov. Phil Murphy’s call for income and sales tax increases in favor of higher taxes on the state’s largest corporations.
“The bill is hot off the press,” state Senate Budget Chairman Paul Sarlo, D-Bergen, announced before that committee voted along party lines on the $36.5 billion state budget that Murphy has already vowed to veto.
Legislative leaders have said they intend to put the budget before the two houses on Thursday, sending the bill to the governor, and with it, a message that the state Legislature doesn’t answer to him.
“The Legislature is an independent body. We’re equal partners and we’re expressing that right now,” state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, told reporters at the Statehouse Tuesday. “The Legislature is not going to accept ‘my way or the highway’ talking. We’re not subservient.”
Sweeney and Murphy have exchanged criticisms of their respective plans. Lawmakers criticized Murphy’s plan for failing to take advantage of corporations’ savings on their federal tax bill as Murphy blasted lawmakers’ budget plan as “irresponsible and temporary” – a reference to the fact that lawmaker’s tax plan would only last for two years.
But perhaps the most trenchant criticism of the legislature’s plan came from Republicans and Democrats who correctly pointed out that the tax hikes on corporations (some of which would be used to help fill the massive funding gap in New Jersey’s public-employee pensions) would cement New Jersey’s status as the “least friendly state in the US for corporations.”
The legislative budget retools the corporation business tax hike Sweeney proposed earlier this year, adding two new temporary tiers that would tax businesses with net income between $1 million and $25 million at a 11.5 percent tax rate and businesses with more than $25 million in net income at 13 percent — the highest rate of any state.
Sweeney said the tax should end after two years.
State Assemblyman John McKeon, D-Essex, voted in favor of the budget, he said with “trepidation” and hope the Legislature and governor would manage to find a compromise in the coming days and an alternative to that two-year tax.
“It sunsets in two years. That’s crazy,” McKeon said. “What does that mean two years from now?”
[…]
Business lobbyists and Republican lawmakers warned that the higher taxes would position New Jersey as the least-friendly state for corporations in the region.
New Jersey ought to be a “economic monster,” said Assemblyman John DiMaio, R-Warren.
“I just can’t help but realize that as we make this move – and I truly hope it’s temporary – that we’re not keeping more businesses from coming in,” he said. “I just hope this is not going to damage the business climate.”
As NorthJersey.com points out, both sides agree that taxes must be raised to beef up funding for public schools, NJ Transit and, of course, the state’s “troubled public pensions.” But thanks to today’s Supreme Court ruling, which opened the door to states collecting sales tax on e-commerce purchases made by its residents, Jersey could reap an additional $216 million to $351 million in tax receipts, according to some estimates. Murphy, Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, who along with Sweeney spearheaded the legislature’s bill, met Thursday morning to discuss their proposal with the governor. But given how budget battles have played out over the past year in states across the US, we imagine this, too, will snowball into a last-minute nail-biter, as Sweeney and Murphy refuse to lose face to their former opponents.
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