• The Untold Lives Of The Saudi Royal Family

  Saudi Arabia is a controversial region of the world thanks to its royal family known as the House of Saud.

  

  They have dealt with turmoil within the ranks and have wreaked havoc on those who disobeyed them…

  

• Red Flag Gun Laws: Yet Another Government Weapon For Compliance And Control

  Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

  – George Santayana

  We never learn.

  In the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes.

  Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.

  The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

  Mark my words: red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, will only add to the government’s power.

  

  These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.

  Thirteen states now have red flag laws on their books. That number is growing.

  As The Washington Post reports, these laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”

  In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings, these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.

  Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.

  Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.

  With these red flag gun laws, the intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats. 

  “We need to stop dangerous people before they act”: that’s the rationale behind the NRA’s support of these red flag laws, and at first glance, it appears to be perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others.

  Where the problem arises, of course, is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.

  We’ve been down this road before.

  Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

  This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.

  This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.

  This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.

  For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

  Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

  Let that sink in a moment.

  Now consider what happened in Maryland after a police officer attempted to “enforce” the state’s new red flag law, which went into effect on Oct. 1.

  At 5 am on a Monday, two police officers showed up at 61-year-old Gary Willis’ house to serve him with a court order requiring that he surrender his guns. Willis answered the door holding a gun.

  Mind you, in some states, merely answering the door holding a gun is enough to get you killed by police who have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

  Willis initially set his gun aside while he spoke with the police. However, when the police attempted to serve him with the gun confiscation order, Willis reportedly became “irate” and picked up his gun again. At that point, a struggle ensued, causing the gun to go off. Although no one was harmed, one of the cops shot and killed Willis.

  According to the Anne Arundel County police chief, the shooting was a sign that the red flag law is needed.

  What the police can’t say with any certainty is what they prevented by shooting and killing Willis.

  Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally.

  This is the world that science fiction author Philip K. Dick envisioned for Minority Report in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control.

  In Dick’s dystopian police state, the police combine widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining and precognitive technology to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage: precrime.

  In Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg, the technology that John Anderton, Chief of the Department of Pre-Crime in Washington, DC, relies on for his predictive policing proves to be fallible, identifying him as the next would-be criminal and targeting him for preemptive measures. Consequently, Anderton finds himself not only attempting to prove his innocence but forced to take drastic measures in order to avoid capture in a surveillance state that uses biometric data and sophisticated computer networks to track its citizens. 

  With every passing day, the American police state moves that much closer to mirroring the fictional pre-crime prevention world of Minority Report.

  For instance, police in major American cities have been testing a tool that allows them to identify individuals—or groups of individuals—most likely to commit a crime in a given community. Those individuals are then put on notice that their movements and activities will be closely monitored and any criminal activity (by them or their associates) will result in harsh penalties. 

  In other words, the burden of proof is reversed: you are guilty before you are given any chance to prove you are innocent.

  Dig beneath the surface of this kind of surveillance/police state, however, and you will find that the real purpose of pre-crime is not safety but control.

  Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.

  Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention. 

  In fact, U.S. police agencies have been working to identify and manage potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats for some time now.

  In much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect, the government’s anti-extremism program renders otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

  In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom, or generally live in the United States.

  Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there. 

  You will be tracked wherever you go.

  You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.

  This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

  The government has been building its pre-crime, surveillance network in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

  It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

  If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

  Connect the dots.

  Start with the powers amassed by the government under the USA Patriot Act, note the government’s ever-broadening definition of what it considers to be an “extremist,” then add in the government’s detention powers under NDAA, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

  To that, add tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the picture, toss in the real-time crime centers being deployed in cities across the country, which will be attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

  Hopefully you’re starting to understand how easy we’ve made it for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat for a variety of reasons that run the gamut from mental illness to having a military background to challenging its authority to just being on the government’s list of persona non grata.

  This brings me back to those red flag gun laws.

  In the short term, these gun confiscation laws may serve to temporarily delay or discourage those wishing to inflict violence on others, but it will not resolve whatever madness or hate or instability therein that causes someone to pull a trigger or launch a bomb or unleash violence on another.

  Nor will these laws save us from government-instigated and directed violence at the hands of the American police state or the blowback from the war-drenched, violence-imbued, profit-driven military industrial complex, both of which remain largely overlooked and underestimated pieces of the discussion on gun violence in America.

  In the long term, all these gun confiscation laws will do is ensure that when the police state finally cracks down, “we the people” are defenseless in the face of the government’s arsenal of weapons.

  After all, the most important and most consistent theme throughout the Constitution, including the Second Amendment, is the fact that it is not merely an enumeration of our rights but was intended to be a clear shackle on the government’s powers.

  Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas understood this tension well. “The Constitution is not neutral,” he remarked. “It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.” 

  In this way, the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights in their entirety stand as a bulwark against a police state. To our detriment, these rights have been steadily weakened, eroded and undermined in recent years.

  Yet without any one of them, including the Second Amendment right to own and bear arms, we are that much more vulnerable to the vagaries of out-of-control policemen, benevolent dictators, genuflecting politicians, and overly ambitious bureaucrats. 

  You can eliminate all of guns, but it will not necessarily eliminate violence. Those same individuals sick enough to walk into an elementary school or a movie theater and open fire using a gun can and do wreak just as much havoc with homemade bombs made out of pressure cookers and a handful of knives.

  It’s also not even a question of whether Americans need weapons to defend themselves against any overt threats to their safety or well-being, although a study by a Quinnipiac University economist indicates that less restrictive concealed gun-carry laws save lives, while gun control can endanger lives. In fact, journalist Kevin Carson, writing for CounterPunch, suggests that prohibiting Americans from owning weapons would be as dangerously ineffective as Prohibition and the War on the Drugs:

  [W]hat strict gun laws will do is take the level of police statism, lawlessness and general social pathology up a notch in the same way Prohibition and the Drug War have done. I’d expect a War on Guns to expand the volume of organized crime, and to empower criminal gangs fighting over control over the black market, in exactly the same way Prohibition did in the 1920s and strict drug laws have done since the 1980s. I’d expect it to lead to further erosion of Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, further militarization of local police via SWAT teams, and further expansion of the squalid empire of civil forfeiture, perjured jailhouse snitch testimony, entrapment, planted evidence, and plea deal blackmail.

  Truly, the debate over gun ownership in America is really a debate over who gets to call the shots and control the game. In other words, it’s that same tug-of-war that keeps getting played out in every confrontation between the government and the citizenry over who gets to be the master and who is relegated to the part of the servant.

  The Constitution is clear on this particular point, with its multitude of prohibitions on government overreach. As author Edmund A. Opitz observed in 1964:

  No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.

  In a nutshell, then, the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms reflects not only a concern for one’s personal defense but serves as a check on the political power of the ruling authorities. It represents an implicit warning against governmental encroachments on one’s freedoms, the warning shot over the bow to discourage any unlawful violations of our persons or property. As such, it reinforces that necessary balance in the citizen-state relationship.

  Certainly, dictators in past regimes have understood this principle only too well. As Adolf Hitler noted, “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”

  It should come as no surprise, then, that starting in December 1935, Jews in Germany were prevented from obtaining shooting licenses, because authorities believed that to allow them to do so would “endanger the German population.” 

  In late 1938, special orders were delivered barring Jews from owning firearms, with the punishment for arms possession being twenty years in a concentration camp.

  The rest, as they say, is history.

  Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it is a history that we should be wary of repeating.

  

• Kyle Bass Doubles-Down On Yuan Short, Calls For "China Reset"

  Nearly 18 months after Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass declared that he intended to stand by his massive offshore yuan short even as his fund moved deep into the red (unlike all of those other “tourist China bears” who had jumped ship at the first stirrings of dollar weakness), the Dallas hedge fund manager revealed that he had finally broken even after his fund sunk 20% last year, according to Reuters.

  Which means now is the perfect time to double down…

  

  Bass, who has long argued that the yuan will slide 30% against the dollar as the country’s credit bubble bursts, told his audience that he has added to his currency short as the currency hovers just above the big round 7-to-the-dollar level. He also praised President Trump’s trade policies, which he said would be “100% healthy for the next 10 years”, though he clarified that he was “not a Trump voter” and that he would jump at the opportunity to throw his support behind Michael Bloomberg.

  “Tariffs come and go,” Bass said.

  “But how do you negotiate with someone…with the hopes that they would liberalize their economy and do the things they said they would do, and especially don’t do the things they said they wouldn’t do, and yet they’ve done everything exactly as they always have?”

  Trump’s shortcomings, Bass said, include his tweeting and other means by which he communicates his message.

  “‘Trade wars are good,’ that was an insane comment to say,” Bass said of Trump. “What he should have said is, ‘We’re going to reciprocate with China, where they’re going to let us into their markets, we’re going to let them into ours…’ His actions were proper, but his comments were improper.”

  As corporate defaults soar, Bass believes that China is headed for a “reset” that he expects to arrive during “the next couple of years.”

  He projected that China could lose more than $2.5 trillion of equity, more than triple the size of the U.S bank bailout during the 2008 financial crisis, and would have to print more than $25 trillion of renmimbi to counteract the impact of slowing economic growth and declining credit on its banks.

  “It’s insane how levered this market has become,” Bass said.

  “You’re starting to see bankruptcies across the board in China that are hard to hide, if you look at the corporate default rate, the bankruptcy rate, M1 and M2 (money supply), the slowest money growth in over four decades.”

  “We’ll have a reset in China, and I think it will happen in the next couple of years,” Bass concluded.

  Chinese companies are already feeling the impact of its slowing credit impulse…

  

  …As defaults soar…

  

  …And small- and medium-sized companies resort to ‘imaginative’ strategies for paying down their debt – including striking an agreement with creditors for a ‘payment in kind’ of ham.

  

• Democrats Begin "Massive Grass-Roots" Campaign Pushing Medicare-For-All

  Authored by Ryan Martines via PlanetFreeWill.com,

  Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic Congresswoman from Washington, indicated on Tuesday that the time has come to begin laying the groundwork to vote on a Medicare-for-All bill once Democrats take control of the House in January 2019.

  

  “We are going to be pushing for it to get a hearing … to have this debate on the floor,” Jayapal told National Nurses United union members during a conference call, reports The Hill.

  Rep. Pramila Jayapal speaking at a ‘Hands Off’ rally to voice opinions about Trump’s budget proposal – May 2017

  Organizers from liberal groups, led by National Nurses United, said on the call that they are going to be organizing grassroots support, including phone calls especially targeting the 13 House Democrats on the key committees of Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce who they said have not signed onto the Medicare for All bill yet.

  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the idea’s leading champion, also joined the call and called for “massive grass-roots support” to push for Medicare for all.

  Jayapal, co-chairman of the House’s Medicare for All caucus, is likely to face headwinds regarding the potential legislation as Party leadership has yet to sign on to a bill or shown any interest in bringing such a measure to vote.

  In a recent interview with The Hill, Jayapal said the Medicare for All caucus is hard at work crafting a “revised version” of the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act, and aims to introduce it during Congress’ upcoming sessions.

  Hefty Costs For Those Who’ve Tried

  California pondered the idea of a single-payer health care system until they realized it would cost about $400 billion a year—more than twice the state’s annual budget.

  A single-payer bill passed by New York’s state assembly would cost $173 billion annually (the state generates about $71 billion a year in revenue).

  Vermont had to scrap their plans for a single payer system after realizing it would cost an extra $2.5 billion annually, almost double the state’s current budget, and would have required an 11.5 percent payroll tax increase and a 9 percent income tax increase.

  Nationwide “Medicare for all” could cost more than $32 trillion over its first decade, and other experts that may be a conservative number.  Even if the U.S. were to double federal income and corporate taxes they would still not have enough to pay for this program.

  Cost Is Not The Only Issue.

  In Great Britain,  4.2 million patients were on England’s National Health Service waiting lists.

  In Canada, the median wait time between seeing a general practitioner and following up with a specialist is almost 3 months.

  The wait between seeing a doctor and beginning treatment is five months.  According to a Fraser Institute study, the average Canadian waits 3 to 5 months to see an ophthalmologist, orthopedist and neurosurgeon.

  However, this has not done anything to stop the promoters of Medicare for All.  Our healthcare was already expensive and Obamacare made it worse. Instead of practical ideas like rolling back the tax burden on insurance companies (caused by Obamacare);  lowering regulations on health plans; not forcing consumers to buy coverage they do not need or want; and allowing the free market to create competition and provide quality care at a better cost.

  The best our politicians can do is promise “Medicare for All”?

  Sadly, promising the masses free anything usually prevents rational people from asking questions such as, “How will this be paid for?” or “Forget the intention of the program … what is the effect?”.

  

• China Sends Trump Written Response To Trade Reform Demands, Offers Insufficient Concessions

  Ahead of the much-anticipated meeting between presidents Trump and Xi on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Argentina at the end of November during which hopes run high for at least a modest de-escalation of trade tensions, on Wednesday China delivered a written response to U.S. demands for wide-ranging trade reforms, a move which according to Reuters could trigger negotiations to bring an end to a withering trade war between the world’s top economies.

  Reuters’ sources said that China had sent a written response to Trump’s demands on intellectual property theft, industrial subsidies, Chinese entry barriers to American businesses and the U.S. trade deficit with China, although it was unclear if the response contained concessions that would satisfy Trump’s demands for change.

  For the actual contents of the letter, we have to go to Bloomberg which reports that the text “outlines a series of potential concessions to the Trump administration for the first time since the summer” as they continue to try to resolve a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

  However, the commitments – for now – fall short of the type of major structural reforms that President Donald Trump has been demanding, “two of the sources said, cautioning that a long road lies ahead in negotiations. One person said that talks are continuing and constructive.”

  Then again they can’t be that constructive because one of the sources said the letter “raised doubts” over how substantive a deal Trump could make with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping when the two leaders meet later this month.

  Most of the document appeared to be a rehash of previous changes already made by Beijing, such as raising equity caps on foreign investment in certain industries, according to one person. It did not contain the sort of commitment to change industrial policies such as Xi’s “Made in China 2025” that Washington has been seeking, according to one person familiar with the discussions.

  Two other people familiar with the talks also said the Chinese offer was a sign of what they characterized as constructive discussions between the two sides ahead of the planned G20 meeting between the two leaders.

  Of course, if it was truly constructive, the Yuan would be surging, yet one look at the offshore currency, shows that the USDCNH has barely budged from its Tuesday closing price of 6.945, although it also remains well away from the key 7.00 level.

  

   

  

• Russia's Moon Base Plans Could Lead To Moscow Mining The Asteroid Belt

  Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

  Head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said that “this is about creating a long-term base, naturally, not habitable, but visited. But basically, it is the transition to robotic systems, to avatars that will solve tasks on the Moon surface”, which shows that Moscow is moving ahead with a general proposal that was first made a few years ago.

  

  It’s an open secret that the world is in the midst of a new space race between the US, Russia, China, and even a few other countries that are trying to enter the field, with this process unofficially started by America after Trump declared the creation of his country’s so-called “Space Force”. The US claims that it needs to act in order to thwart Russia and China’s militarization of this domain, while those two multipolar Great Powers have consistently accused the US of actually being the one to break international law by secretly doing this all along.

  Moving beyond the controversial rhetoric and into objectively recognized reality, however, there’s apparently no stopping the process that the US has unleashed, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that every manifestation of this race will be inherently militarized.

  Russia’s proud history of exploring space is universally acknowledged after it was the first country to send a satellite and a man into orbit, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it still longs to send a man to the moon after the US beat them to it back in 1969 during America’s first victory in this race. There are practical reasons for doing this other than prestige and the sake of science because a moon base is thought to be required for facilitating the future mining of mineral-rich asteroids, something that still remains in the realm of science fiction for now but shouldn’t be discounted as a promising industry of the future.

  President Putin also famously said last year that “whoever becomes the leader in the sphere (of AI) will become the ruler of the world”, and he also emphasized his nation’s prioritization of this technology and other related ones during a keynote speech that he made earlier this year ahead of Russia’s presidential elections, so it’s logical that his government would seek to pair this with space exploration and the potential mining of asteroids that might eventually follow in order to become a global leader in this respect.

  That’s why Russia’s plan to construct a robot-built moon base is more sensible of an investment than it might initially seem to those who hadn’t thought it through, though the country first has to prove that it has the technology to pull off this feat before it becomes something that the rest of the world can take seriously.

  

• Homesellers And Developers In NYC, Virginia Just Hit The "Amazon Lottery"

  A recent Long Island City property seller had trouble finding a buyer… until Amazon announced that it was coming to the Queens neighborhood. At that point, she promptly refused to sign a contract with the buyer and is now holding out for a higher bid on the property. This is a microcosm of what happens across real estate markets anytime Amazon moves in next door, according to a fascinating new Bloomberg report.

  When Amazon announced the location of its two new “HQ2” headquarters – one in Long Island City, New York and the other in Crystal City, Virginia – the housing markets in both areas lit up overnight, and it was immediately clear that resident, investors and speculators in these areas had just hit the “Amazon lottery”.

  

  The online retailer announced that it would be bringing about 25,000 new employees to Crystal City and Long Island City. As we had documented, these communities had already seen their fair share of real estate speculators, getting in early and betting that these locations would wind up being home to Amazon. Amazon helped bolster home prices almost 80% over the last six years in Seattle, location of the company’s original headquarters. People, of course, noticed this and applied it as a way to make a buck.

  Margaret O’Mara, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, suggested that upon building these two new properties, Amazon should now focus on preventing the loss of affordable housing and the rise in homelessness that came with the explosion of growth created in places like Washington. She claims that Amazon has an opportunity to set an example for how major corporations can expand into local communities and work on social challenges along side of helping create economic growth.

  “Amazon has an opportunity to set a new example for how companies, and particularly tech companies, can not only engage locally and be good neighbors,” she told Bloomberg. 

  Places like Long Island City have already experienced solid real estate growth as younger generations are trying to find affordable housing near public transportation. Amazon has stated that it is committed to preserving affordable housing, but its effect of accelerating home prices to the point of unaffordability going forward is both inevitable and unavoidable.

  Nina Janopaul, chief executive officer of the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing told Bloomberg: “We were already on a wave of gentrification. The younger generation is drawn to those transit-rich locations, which is great. It’s wonderful that they’re giving up the love affair with the automobile. But this is hard for people for whom it’s not a choice but a necessity.”

  Grant Long, senior economist with StreetEasy, told Bloomberg: “Queens has been a really popular place for its relative affordability and I think we’re going to see that relative affordability start to erode. The big thing to watch is what happens to the surrounding areas: Astoria, Sunnyside, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights are all going to emerge as really attractive places in a way they weren’t two weeks ago.”

  

  To be sure, even before Amazon’s announcement, Long Island City was already working on problems that come with quick population growth, such as parking complaints and complaints about blocked bike lanes.

  The situation is similar in Virginia. Real estate broker Sue Rasoul was awakened by a slew of phone calls about a two bedroom condo that had been listed in Crystal City for $505,000 on the morning that Amazon announced that it was coming to town. The property was already under contract, but it had spent months on the market with little interest prior.

  She told Bloomberg: “Over the last week I’ve received 50 inquiries on that one property — we hadn’t received 50 inquiries over the previous 100 days. There’s a difference in value between the idea that Amazon might come and the fact that it’s coming.”

  Meanwhile, online searches for homes in these two locations has exploded. In the week ended November 11, views of homes for sale in Long Island City were up 1049% from the year prior. Listings in Crystal City were up 217% from the prior year. In Long Island City, open house attendance instantly doubled at two new projects and agents at a local brokerage had to call in reinforcements on a Sunday because they were so busy.

  Eric Benaim, CEO of Modern Spaces, which markets new developments in Long Island City said: “I had to excuse myself from from my son’s birthday party, because agents were texting and calling me to say they were swamped.”

  He expects developers to raise prices at condo towers that are already under construction and he’s already been fielding phone calls from people seeking employment his brokerage office. He stated that he’s going to hire as many as 30 new agents in the coming months.

  “We won the real estate broker lotto,” he said.

  

  The developers in Long Island City who were developing far ahead of demand also will greatly benefit from the move. Long Island City already has the largest number of apartments under construction in New York City and is ranked number one in newly authorized units. We discussed the building binge in LIC previously when addressing the tax breaks that would be offered to Amazon.

  Those who invest in the area and hold their investments for 10 years can defer paying the entire capital gains on their appreciation. Real estate developers seek out these types of high growth areas where they can get the most bang for their tax-adjusted buck. Rules are still being finalized by the federal government about what types of development are allowed to occur in these areas, but both towering residential towers and light commercial offices and retail space are expected to qualify.

  The incentives were a little-known provision of the Republican tax overhaul that President Donald Trump signed into law late last year. Since then, they’ve captured the attention of developers and government officials because they have the potential to make projects in long-neglected areas more enticing. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has estimated that $100 billion may eventually flow to the roughly 8,700 struggling communities scattered around the country that were selected by state governors and officials in U.S. territories.

  This rounds out billions of dollars of investments that Long Island City has seen over the last couple of years, mostly due to its proximity to Manhattan. Just two weeks ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he would dump another $180 million into the neighborhood’s infrastructure, including upgrades to its sewer system and a new school.

  Separately, Pennsylvania, which participated in the HQ2 “lottery” hoping Bezos would come to Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, offered $4.6 billion in financial assistance to the company according to the Pittsburgh Post, dwarfing the combined $2.5 billion that Long Island City and Crystal City offered.

  But, as always with real estate, it was all about “location, location, location.”

  

• National Facial Recognition Database To Use Loyalty Rewards To Identify American Shoppers

  Via MassPrivateI blog,

  For years, I have been warning people about facial recognition in retail stores, but this story might convince you to avoid retail stores altogether.

  

  A recent article in Biometric Update. com (BU) reveals that retail stores have a master plan to convince Americans to accept facial biometrics.

  BU interviewed four facial biometric company CEO’s and what they revealed is frightening.

  The article starts off innocuously enough by telling us that U.S. retail biometrics is used primarily in loss-prevention but things quickly take a turn for the worse.

  BU’s interview with FaceFirst CEO Peter Tripp is especially disconcerting, as he reveals how retailers plan to use a “facial recognition opt-in environment.”

  “There is another step though that exists which has more to do with consumer loyalty, and consumer experience, that is not quite as expensive an endeavor, and I think there are lots of folks looking at ways of doing that in a friendly opt-in environment, where privacy is not the cornerstone issue, Tripp said.”

  If any of this sounds familiar its because they are doing the exact same thing with digital drivers licenses.

  Biometric companies are trying to convince Americans to accept digital drivers license by tying them to loyalty rewards programs.  Last year the Lincoln Motor Company installed “complimentary” TSA PreCheck biometric scanners in all their new vehicles so customers can get through airport and sport stadium check-in lines quicker.

  Corporate-run national biometric database

  According to a recent ZDNet article a new partnership between SureID a biometric fingerprinting company and Robbie.AI a facial recognition company “could create a national biometric database.”

  “Adding facial recognition from Robbie.AI gives the two firms the building blocks of a nationwide biometric database that could be used in a number of settings, from retail authentication and employment verification to more speculative applications like driver-identification for keyless self-driving cars or even user recognition in future robotic platforms.”

  “As technology emerges and companies adopt more sophisticated forms of security, it will be crucial for safety and security to authenticate the real identity of technicians and consumers,” says Ned Hayes, General Manager at SureID.

  BU’s article reveals how retailers plan to identify every customer.

  Whoo.ai CEO Arturo Falck said,  “Once companies are using this type of technology for crime prevention purposes, there’s no reason why they should not be using it for upselling their customers.”

  

  SensibleVision CEO George Brostoff sees customer loyalty rewards as a logical next step in the U.S. And Goode Intelligence Founder Alan Goode, sees a huge potential for biometric customer loyalty programs.  Goode also thinks retail facial recognition should be used for age verification in self-check out systems.

  A company called BiteKiosk wants restaurants to use their self-service facial recognition kiosks to increase profits and offers customers food discounts as an incentive to use them.

  Loyalty rewards used to create a national biometric database

  Falck said, loyalty rewards could be used to convince the public that facial recognition is not that bad.

  “It is a way for the businesses to turn what could potentially be bad public relations into engagement opportunities.”

  BU admits that loyalty rewards are a scam.

  “Companies participating in the scheme can offer app users incentives to opt-in, as well as loyalty rewards or discounts on particular items they may be interested in. The back-end uses an open REST API for companies to integrate it with their facial recognition systems.”

  Goode admits that facial recognition is really about creating a national biometric database.

  “China, India, Russia, parts of Latin America and Japan have been using centralized biometric databases for a long time.”

  Oddly or perhaps by design their is no mention of retailers creating facial recognition watchlists.

  So what is their master plan?

  Tripp revealed that retailers are planning on a “gradual expansion of facial recognition.”

  The BU article goes on to say that ‘retailers have been slowly installing facial recognition in back-of-house deployments which builds familiarity not only with retailers but with the staff as well.

  The article ends on a disturbing quote, “the infrastructure in this case is people’s perspective. That can change quickly.”

  Our perspectives had better change or corporate America will buy everyone’s identity using rewards programs and the ability to skip check-in lines.

  

• 5 US Tech Giants Just Spent $116 Billion Of Repatriated Cash On Buybacks

  While many analysts wanted to attribute the divergence in US stocks during the first three months of this year to strong economic data, the fiscal stimulus unleashed by Trump or stronger-than-expected corporate earnings, as analysts at Nomura (including cross-asset strategist Charlie McElligot) and Deutsche Bank have argued, when it comes to factors undergirding the market rally, buybacks trump growth “divergence”.

  

  And while equity-market performance in late September and October – when corporations entered a buyback “blackout” period – has largely vindicated their analysis, in case anyone still doubts the crucial role of the corporate bid, the Financial Times offered yet another piece of evidence in a story published in Tuesday’s paper when it revealed the full magnitude of tech company buybacks fueled by the Trump tax cuts during the first three quarters of 2018. Out of all the money repatriated by US companies thanks to the Trump tax cuts, US companies have spent a staggering sum on buybacks, and a comparatively paltry amount on boosting capex spending and reinvestment (the kind of corporate spending that helps drive economic growth).

  

  Per the FT, the five US tech companies with the largest cash piles spent more than $115 billion on buybacks during the first three quarters of the year, nearly double what they spent during the entirety of last year. This is the latest sign that, while Trump sold his tax cuts as a boon for working Americans, investors have reaped most of the benefits to date (though to be fair, the companies did boost their capital spend by a combined $42 billion). The tech firms also spent some of the repatirated cash paying down debt, freeing up more money to spend on buybacks in the future.

  “Most companies are using cash to buy back stock and make acquisitions, rather than invest in new facilities,” said Walter Price, a tech investment manager at Allianz. “I think this is good for shareholders and management.” Tech companies were also paying down debt they took on in previous years to buy back shares, he added.

  These companies (Apple in particular) had been sitting on massive cash piles that had been stashed off-shore to avoid paying US taxes when the money was repatriated.

  

  Take Apple, for example: While the tech giant spent $14.5 billion on capex during the first three quarters of 2018 (after promising to reinvest some $350 billion in tax-cut enabled repatriated cash within the US), its buyback spending soared to $62.6 billion – nearly three times the prior-year period. To be sure, some of the repatriated money has likely been earmarked for capital spending. However, this spending will likely take longer to plan and execute.

  “There’s a strong correlation between tax reform and capital spending,” added Youssef Squali, an internet analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, pointing at Google and Facebook, which plan to spend a combined $37bn between them this year, up from just under $21bn in 2017.

  Notably, the growth in buybacks hasn’t been confined to tech alone: US corporate buybacks rose 44% during the first nine months of 2018.

  Meanwhile, share buybacks have risen 44 per cent so far this year, according to Goldman Sachs, which estimates that buybacks will climb another 22 per cent in 2019. Just 25 companies accounted for 99 per cent of the growth in buybacks this year, the bank found, underscoring the outsized influence of tech companies’ use of cash.

  But while the buybacks led tech stocks to outperform on the way up, like the old saying goes: The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

  

  

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• Visualizing China's Belt And Road Investment Map

  The fifth anniversary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was recently marked in Beijing.

  This 900 billion U.S. dollar transcontinental development project was launched in the autumn of 2013 when president Xi Jinping proposed the building of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road – the two main segments of the ambitious economic cooperation campaign. As Statista’s Agne Blazyte explains:

  The first one refers to a half-dozen land corridors connecting China with Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, the Middle East and, from there, Europe.

  The second one is a sea route linking Asia, Africa and Europe.

  This “project of a century”, as Xi Jinping calls it, is meant to improve connectivity between Asia, Europe and Africa, and consequently to increase trade and development. Undoubtedly, BRI is also a geopolitical plan to boost China’s regional power.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  By now, more than 100 countries and international organizations have signed BRI cooperation agreements with China.

  So far, given that most of investment projects are associated with infrastructure development, BRI has mainly benefited China’s state-owned enterprises. Some regions of the vast investment landscape are doing better than others.

  Due to proximity to China and the demand for better infrastructure, Southeast Asia remains a high priority for China’s SOEs. Other important beneficiaries are India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, partly due to the size of their populations and growing market potential.

  

• Escobar: Decoding The Hypersonic Putin On A Day Of Remembrance

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

  Sitting alongside French President Macron during the 100th anniversary to commemorate the end of World War I, Putin and Trump stole the show in Paris…

  

  The Elysee Palace protocol was implacable. Nobody in Paris would be allowed to steal the spotlight away from the host, President Emmanuel Macron, during the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day marking the end of World War I.

  After all, Macron was investing all his political capital as he visited multiple World War I battlefields while warning against the rise of nationalism and a surge in right-wing populism across the West.

  He was careful to always place the emphasis on praising “patriotism.”

  A battle of ideas now rages across Europe, epitomized by the clash between the globalist Macron and populism icon Matteo Salvini, the Italian interior minister.

  Salvini abhors the Brussels system. Macron is stepping up his defense of a “sovereign Europe.”

  And much to the horror of the US establishment, Macron proposes a real “European army” capable of autonomous self-defense side by side with a “real security dialogue with Russia.”

  

  Yet all these “strategic autonomy” ideals collapse when you must share the stage, live, with the undisputed stars of the global show: President Donald  Trump and President Vladimir Putin.

  So the optics in Paris were not exactly of a Yalta 2.0 conference. There were no holds barred to keep Trump and Putin apart. Seating arrangements featured, from left to right, Trump, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Macron, his wife Brigitte and Putin. Neither Trump nor Putin, for different reasons, took part in a “walking in the rain” stunt evoking peace.

  And yet they connected. Sir Peter Cosgrove, the governor general of Australia, confirmed that Trump and Putin, at a working lunch, had a “lively and friendly” conversation for at least half an hour.

  No one better than Putin himself to reveal, even indirectly, what they really talked about. Three themes are absolutely key.

  On the Macron-proposed, non-NATO European army: “Europe is … a powerful economic union and it is only natural that they want to be independent and … sovereign in the field of defense and security.”

  On the consequences of such an army: It would be “a positive process” that would “strengthen the multipolar world.” On top of it, Russia’s position “is aligned with that of France.”

  On relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Washington: “It is not us who are going to withdraw from the INF Treaty. It is the Americans who plan to do that.” Putin added that Moscow has not scheduled military drills near NATO borders as an attempt to appease an already tense situation. Yet Russia has “no issue with” NATO drills and expects at least a measure of dialogue in the near future.

  Enter the Avangard

  Vast sectors of the US Deep State are in denial, but Putin may have been able to impress on Trump the necessity of serious dialogue due to an absolutely key vector: the Avangard.

  

  The Avangard is a Russian hypersonic glide vehicle capable of flying over Mach 20 –  24,700km/h, or 4 miles per second – and one of the game-changing Russian weapons Putin announced at his ground-breaking March 1 speech.

  The Avangard has been in the production assembly line since the summer of 2018, and is due to become operational in the southern Urals by the end of next year or early 2019.

  In the near future, the Avangard may be launched by the formidable  Sarmat RS-28 intercontinental ballistic missile and reach Washington in a mere 15 minutes, flying in a cloud of plasma “like a meteorite” – even if the launch is from Russian territory. Serial production of Sarmat ICBMs starts in 2021.

  The Avangard simply cannot be intercepted by any existing system on the planet – and the US knows it. Here is General John Hyten, head of US Strategic Command:

   “We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us.”

  Iran as the new Serbia?

  I wish I had been in Paris – my home in Europe – to follow these concentric World War I–related plots live. But it was no less fascinating to follow them from Islamabad, where I am now, back from the northern part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The British Empire used 1.5 million to 2 million Indian colonial subjects to fight, and die, for empire in that war. Quite a few were Punjabis, from what is now Pakistan.

  As for the future, Trump is certainly aware of Russia’s hypersonic breakthroughs. Trump and Putin also talked about Syria, and might have touched on Iran, although no one at the working lunch leaked anything about it.

  Assuming the dialogue continues at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires at the end of November, Putin might be able to impress on Trump that just as Serbia catalyzed a chain of events that led great powers to sleepwalk into World War I, the same could happen with Iran leading to the terrifying prospect of World War III.

  Team Trump’s obsession on strangling Iran into economic submission is a no-go, even for the Macron-Merkel-led European Union. On top of it, the Russia-China strategic partnership simply won’t allow any funny – reckless – games to be played against a crucial node of Eurasia integration.

  Putin won’t even need to go hypersonic to make his case to Trump.

  

• Autonomous Vehicles And The Rise Of Mobile Sex Workers 

  Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) have the potential to revolutionize the way people live, work and travel across cities… oh, and have sex, according to a new study from the Annals of Tourism Research titled: “Autonomous vehicles and the future of urban tourism.”

  

  Co-authors Scott Cohen, a tourism professor at the University of Surrey, and Debbie Hopkins, a transportation instructor at the University of Oxford, discovered that CAVs have the potential to reshape the night-time visitor economy.

  “It’s only a natural conclusion that sex in autonomous vehicles will become a phenomenon,” Cohen told The Washington Post, citing convenience and the interior redesigns of CAV automobiles.

  

  Hopkins & Schwanen said mass market penetration and growth in public acceptance of CAVs could be as early as 2025, first in parts of Asia, Europe, and the US, and are forecasted by some to be the primary means of transportation globally by 2040.

  The academics searched over 150 studies on the future of automobiles and attempted to envision the technology’s impact on the night-time visitor economy: How could CAVs transform the sex industry?

  

  Silicon Valley transportation analyst forecast that the economy is less than a decade away from the series production of driverless cars – some futurists predict that traditional taxis will be obsolete.

  With no driver costs, auto and tech companies could reinvest more into the customer experience. Interiors may become more spacious with bedding and or a massage chair, analysts said.

  

  Enter “hotels-by-the-hour” on wheels, Cohen said, “a fleet of rolling love making bedrooms.” Tourists could summon the autonomous vehicle with a prostitute of their choice via the app on a basic smartphone. 

  “It is just a small leap to imagine Amsterdam’s Red Light District ‘on the move,’ ” Cohen and Hopkins wrote. Sex, they noted, “plays a central role in many tourism experiences. ”

  Given the potentially short timeline until CAVs enter the mass market, mobile prostitution could disrupt the entire underground economy by the mid-2020s: “While [driverless cars] will likely be monitored to deter passengers having sex or using drugs in them,” the authors warned, “such surveillance may be rapidly overcome, disabled or removed.”

  Cohen said law enforcement agencies should prepare for such looming threats, indicating that CAVs could provide cover for black market participants. 

  Missy Cummings, a mechanical engineering professor at Duke University, told The Washington Post that major tech firms and automakers across the world are currently developing and testing autonomous vehicles. 

  Back in March, one of Uber’s test cars killed a pedestrian. It was later learned Uber employees had disabled the automatic-braking features so the vehicle would not slow erratically during testing, The Washington Post said.

  Kate Devlin, the author of “Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots,” said a fully tinted driverless vehicle cannot hide everything.

  “Self-driving cars track a lot of data,” she said.

  Devlin warned that autonomous vehicles would be collecting data on the occupants inside. Unlike a hotel room, they will have artificial intelligence monitoring cameras, microphones, and sensors. This means implications for sex workers are even more complicated:

  “Would this be good in terms of sex workers’ security in that it could provide location information for safety,” Devlin said, “or could such data be used against sex workers where such work is criminalized?”

  Sex on wheels could be coming to a city near you by 2025. It would not shock us if silicone robots replace human sex workers by that time.

  

• The End Game In Afghanistan Is Beginning

  Authored by Lawrence Sellin, op-ed via The Daily Caller,

  China and Pakistan have plainly stated their plans for Afghanistan and South Asia.

  According to a press release from the November 12 conference held at Islamabad’s Pakistan-China Institute, “Pakistan-Afghanistan-China Trilateral Dialogue supports the CPEC [China-Pakistan Economic Corridor] as key to peace and regional cooperation.”

  Pakistani news outlets emphasized the point, one stating, “Pakistan and China on Monday urged Afghanistan to join the Belt & Road Initiative as well as the CPEC.”

  

  Is it a coincidence that such plain speaking occurs in parallel with an uptick in the frequency and intensity of Taliban attacks inside Afghanistan?

  Within a span of a few days, Jaghori – long considered a safe district – was being overrunby 1,000 Taliban, while other Taliban killed at least twelve Afghan soldiers and four tribal elders during an attack on a military base in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province. And bombs continue to explode in Kabul.

  In an effort to lure the Taliban to the bargaining table, the Trump administration may ask  the Afghan government to postpone presidential elections – a move the Taliban will undoubtedly construe as a sign of American weakness because they have always claimed the Kabul regime as illegitimate.

  In that respect, the Taliban are correct. Other than a “presence” in Afghanistan, the United States has no strategic cards to play.

  There is no military solution in Afghanistan, at least from the standpoint of the manner in which we have conducted the war.

  After an initial small-footprint victory in late 2001, driving the Taliban out of Afghanistan, the U.S. chose to mount an exhaustive and expensive counterinsurgency campaign with its nation-building component.

  At the same time, Pakistan, sustaining the Taliban, waged a proxy war in Afghanistan, much like Pakistan’s and, indirectly, China’s reported support and use of the Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliates against India.

  Pakistan has always controlled the operation tempo of the war as well as the supply of our troops in landlocked Afghanistan.

  U.S. inability or unwillingness to attack Taliban safe havens in Pakistan or forcing Islamabad to withdraw its support, essentially rendered a counterinsurgency victory unachievable. It is an obvious deduction the Pentagon should have made long ago, except for its blind love affair with Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency.

  After 17 years of strategic mismanagement, the Trump administration is left only with bad options. Getting out of Afghanistan is inevitable. Given the current trends, we couldn’t stay even if we wished to do so.

  We should let Pakistan and China “win” and then help them ruin their victory.

  Clearly, CPEC is the foundation upon which China and Pakistan intend to exploit their triumph, which is highly vulnerable to the very instability they were inciting in Afghanistan.

  Forty years ago, Pakistani President Zia ul Haq said that to control Afghanistan, the country should be kept “boiling at the right temperature.”

  Like a frog, CPEC will be slowly boiled in South Asia’s pot of instability. CPEC is the flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s blueprint for global domination. As the maxim, widely attributed to Napoleon, says “Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.”

  That is, by harnessing the potential power of ideological fissures, ethnic fault lines and differing national interests, in essence, the ability to manage instability, the U.S. can transform an untenable “presence” into longer-term regional leverage.

  

• Trump To Submit Written Replies To Mueller Probe Questions "In Coming Days"

  It’s been nearly a year since Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors started negotiating with President Trump’s lawyers about the prospects for a presidential interview, a request that Trump once said he’d be happy – even eager – to oblige, until his lawyers explained that the downside risks (Trump falling into a perjury trap and possibly winding up in jail) far outweighed the upside (a minor PR victory).

  

  Somewhere around July, Mueller began to realize that his only leverage to try and force an in-person interview, the possibility that he could subpoena the president, wasn’t all that threatening. Given the very flimsy legal precedent and the confirmation of another friendly conservative justice (Neil Gorsuch), subpoenaing a sitting president would be more trouble than it was worth, and far too unorthodox for a man who has built his career on respecting precedents. So, over the summer, Mueller finally conceded, and agreed to accept written answers to his team’s questions, while also agreeing to limit the scope of his inquiry to the probe’s original purpose: The Trump campaign’s ties to Russia (allegations of obstruction of justice would just have to wait).

  Which brings us to Tuesday, when CNN reported that Trump’s finalized and, we imagine, thoroughly vetted answers would be submitted to Mueller “in the coming days,” just as his team is said to be busy working on another indictment, or string of indictments.

  Trump reportedly met with his lawyers on Monday to give the answers one last review before submitting them.

  The meeting was the latest as the responses are finalized, and the source said the answers could be submitted to the special counsel in the coming days. The questions focus on Russia collusion and not obstruction of justice and are part of an agreement reached with Mueller’s team to “move forward,” according to the source.

  However, as CNN pointed out, there are still “issues that remain unresolved” – such as whether Trump will answer questions about whether he obstructed justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, or whether an in-person interview might still be a possibility.

  But there are other issues that have not been resolved, including answering questions about obstruction and whether the President will sit down for an interview with special counsel.

  As CNN previously reported, Trump was meeting with lawyers about the questions before the midterms as he was preparing to remove Jeff Sessions as attorney general.

  The move to replace Sessions with acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, who has been openly critical of the special counsel, comes as the White House braces for a return of public activity on the Russia investigation following a pre-election quiet period, according to people briefed on the matter.

  Whitaker will now oversee the Mueller investigation, which had previously been under the purview of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

  However, Trump’s appointment of Matt Whitaker as acting attorney general over Rod Rosenstein suggests that he has taken the necessary precautions to ensure that Mueller will wrap up his probe in a timely manner, as Whitaker has refused to recuse himself and Mitch McConnell has said that any legislation to protect Mueller would be dead in the water.

  Drafts of what were said to be questions submitted by Mueller leaked back in May.  But questions about whether these were the final set, or represented just one round in the negotiations, remain.

  

• Mauldin: A Worldwide Debt-Default Is A Real Possibility

  Authored by John Mauldin via Forbes.com,

  Is debt good or bad? The answer is “Yes.”

  

  Debt is future spending pulled forward in time. It lets you buy something now for which you otherwise don’t have cash yet.

  Whether it’s wise or not depends on what you buy. Debt to educate yourself so you can get a better job may be a good idea. Borrowing money to finance your vacation? Probably not.

  The problem is that many people, businesses, and governments borrow because they can. It’s been possible in the last decade only because central banks made it so cheap.

  It was rational in that respect. But it is growing less so as the central banks start to tighten.

  Earlier this year, I wrote a series of articles (synopsis and links here) predicting a debt “train wreck” and eventual liquidation. I dubbed it “The Great Reset.” I estimated we have another year or two before the crisis becomes evident.

  Now I’m having second thoughts. Recent events tell me the reckoning could be closer than I thought just a few months ago.

  Debt Doesn’t Fuel Growth Anymore

  Central banks enable debt because they think it will generate economic growth. Sometimes it does. The problem is they create debt with little regard for how it will be used.

  That’s how we get artificial booms and subsequent busts. We are told not to worry about absolute debt levels so long as the economy is growing in line with them.

  That makes sense. A country with a larger GDP can carry more debt. But that is increasingly not what is happening.

  Let me give you two data points.

  Hoisington Investment Management’s Lacy Hunt tracks data that shows debt is losing its ability to stimulate growth. In 2017, one dollar of non-financial debt generated only 40 cents of GDP in the US. It’s even less elsewhere. This is down from more than four dollars of growth for each dollar of debt 50 years ago.

  This has seriously worsened over the last decade. China’s debt productivity dropped 42.9% between 2007 and 2017. That was the worst among major economies, but others lost ground, too. All the developed world is pushing on the same string and hoping for results.

  Now, if you are used to using debt to stimulate growth, and debt loses its capacity to do so, what happens next? You guessed it: The brilliant powers-that-be add even more debt.

  Here’s How Much Debt We Actually Have

  This is classic addiction behavior. You have to keep raising the dose to get the same high.

  But centuries of history show that every prior debt run-up eventually took its toll on the economy. There is always a Day of Reckoning.

  The US economy is so huge and powerful that our current $24.5 trillion government debt (including state and local) could easily grow to $40 trillion before we meet that day. We are one recession away from having a $30 trillion U.S. government debt total.

  It will happen seemingly overnight. And deficits will stay well above $1 trillion per year every year after that, not unlike now.

  Even though a budget deficit is under $800 billion this year, we added over $1 trillion of actual debt. That is due to “off budget” items that Congress thinks shouldn’t be part of the normal budgetary process.

  It includes things like Social Security and Medicare They vary from time to time and year to year and can be anywhere from $200 billion to almost $500 billion.

  And here’s the point that you need to understand. The U.S. Treasury borrows those dollars and it goes on the total debt taxpayers owe. The true deficit that adds to the debt is actually much higher than the number you see in the news.

  Household and corporate debt is growing fast, too.  And not just in the U.S.

  Here’s a note from Economic Cycle Research Institute’s Lakshman Achuthan:

  Notably, the combined debt of the US, Eurozone, Japan, and China has increased more than ten times as much as their combined GDP [growth] over the past year.

  Yes, you read that right. In the last year, the world’s largest economies are generating debt 10X faster than economic growth. Adding debt at that pace, if it continues, will boost the debt-to-GDP ratio at an alarming rate.

  Lakshman continues.

  Remarkably, then, the global economy—slowing in sync despite soaring debt—finds itself in a situation reminiscent of the Red Queen Effect we referenced 15 years ago, when tax cuts boosted the US budget deficit much more than GDP. As the Red Queen says to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

  This Won’t End Well

  I am trying to imagine a scenario where this ends in something less than chaos and crisis. The best I can conceive is a decade-long (and possibly more) stagnation while the debt gets liquidated.

  But realistically, that won’t happen because debtors won’t let it. And they outnumber lenders. For this reason, something like “the Great Reset” will happen first.

  The rational course would be to delay the inevitable as long as possible. Yet in the U.S. we’re rushing it.

  *  *  *

  Get a Bird’s-Eye View of the Economy with Thoughts from the Frontline. My weekly newsletter is a must-read for investors who want to find out about the trends to watch out for. Get it free in your inbox

  

• Feds "Harden" San Diego – Tijuana Border As LGBT Caravan Migrants First To Arrive

  In anticipation of the approaching Central American migrant caravan, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that work began on Tuesday to “harden” the border crossing between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego. 

  

  The work comes as the first wave of migrants arrived in Tijuana Monday; approximately 80 gay, lesbian and transgender asylum seekers who were bussed ahead by an anonymous organization after they say intolerant fellow asylum seekers were harassing them. 

  

  Apparently the caravan is full of bigots who can’t wait to get into the United States. 

  “We were discriminated against, even in the caravan,” said Erick Dubon, 23, from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, who has been traveling with his boyfriend, Pedro Nehemias, 22. “People wouldn’t let us into trucks, they made us get in the back of the line for showers, they would call us ugly names.” –WaPo

   

  “They experienced a lot of violence, including having the shelter they were staying in robbed and set on fire,” said immigration lawyer Nicole Ramos. “They are vulnerable.”

  A second group of 360 migrants made it to Tijuana on Tuesday morning. 

  CBP closed four lanes at the heavily trafficked San Ysidro and Otay Mesa ports of entry in San Diego in order “to install and pre-position port hardening infrastructure equipment in preparation for the migrant caravan and the potential safety and security risk that it could cause,” according to CBS News and PBS. 

  On Thursday, 1,100 Marines from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in California were deployed to support border security, CBS San Diego affiliate KFMB reported. They were primarily tasked with installing concertina wire and pre-positioning jersey barriers, barricades and fencing.

  …

  The thousands of Central American migrants left shelters in Guadalajara early Tuesday and were taken by bus to a highway tollbooth to wait for rides to their next destination. Most appeared intent on taking the Pacific coast route northward to the border city of Tijuana, which was still about 1,350 miles away. The migrants have come about 1,500 miles since they started out in Honduras around October 13. While the caravan previously averaged only about 30 miles a day, the migrants are now covering daily distances of 185 miles or more, partly because they are relying on hitchhiking rather than walking. 

  –CBS News

  “CBP has been and will continue to prepare for the potential arrival of thousands of people migrating in a caravan heading towards the border of the United States,” said Pete Flores, CBP’s director of San Diego field operations. 

  In Texas, meanwhile, approximately 5,600 troops have laid approximately 1,000 feet of razor wire fencing along the Texas side of the Rio Grande river underneath the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge, as soldiers work to support US Customs and Border Patrol efforts to prevent the asylum seekers from entering the country.

  

  The first groups to arrive in Tijuana were served breakfast before walking toward the beach to look for a place to remain until they attempt to cross into the United States. Tijuana Municipal Migration Affairs Office director, César Palencia, said that there is enough shelter space for 900 migrants in the city, however they still need more mattresses, blankets and clothes for new arrivals. 

  Palencia is concerned that there won’t be enough resources for the large group of at least 3,000 migrants expected in a couple of weeks. 

  “We are expecting more of these little groups, but we don’t know right now exactly what we are going to do with the big caravan,” he said. “But we will make room.”

  Meanwhile, some of the LGBT migrants have received a tepid welcome from Tijuana residents. 

  The arrival in Tijuana of the LGBT group has not been welcomed by everyone. Santiago Alvarez, a police officer on duty outside their rental house, said that people have stopped by “knocking on the door, shouting things, telling them to leave.” –WaPo

  “A few of the migrants left to go buy a couple of things, and they were harassed and insulted in the street,” said Alvarez.

  The rest of the migrants are expected to trickle in over the next few weeks, unless anonymous organizations bus them to the border sooner. 

  

• Nationalists, Patriots, & Former Rothschild Bankers

  Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

  If and when a former Rothschild banker starts telling us what the words in our respective languages actually mean, beware. Even if he has dozens of professional speech writers and spin doctors to do it for him. And even if the meaning and interpretation of words, though they may seem easily translatable, differ between English, French, German, Russian, Chinese to such an extent that Lost in Translation may appear to be an understatement.

  

  But if you’re that Rothschild banker who became president of France through a process that nobody will ever understand, and you host the 100th commemoration of perhaps the worst war ever in history, to be ‘celebrated’ with ‘leaders’ none of whom have exhibited any memory through their actions of the ‘This must never happen again’ that the war ended with, you can expect to get away with bending both history and language.

  Macron’s entire audience was ready for, and willing to absorb, a message that seemed so benevolent and sincere and loving, and that perhaps most of all was yet another jab at one of his guests, the American president. They were eating it up. As long as they can appear to stand together against Trump, they can make their people, their voters, and perhaps even each other forget how divided they themselves are.

  It was nothing but one more circus, one more theater piece, albeit this one extremely carefully scripted for many months and by many of the finest directors and script writers France has to offer. The underlying theme: the EU is good, so is the UN, NATO is good etc. The list would include the IMF, World Bank and on and on. Big global institutions are good, the bigger the better, and criticism of them is not.

  Macron’s spin doctors had come up with a few choice lines to express these sentiments. And since I couldn’t find anyone who had looked at those lines with anything but silent and blind admiration (undoubtedly only due to the solemn occasion) , please allow me. Here’s some of the things Macron said, the way they were translated into English, according to Anglo media:

  “The old demons are rising again, ready to complete their task of chaos and of death.”

  “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.

  “In saying, ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others’, you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: its moral values.”

  Well, yes, the old demons are rising again. Or rather, they have been for years. French arms sales to countries and their often dictatorial leaders who one could classify as ‘nationalists’ have never really abated in the past 100 years. As a country, as a society, at least on the leadership level, nothing has been learned. The only ‘excuse’ Paris could provide for this is that all the other countries who sent away their young and strong to be slaughtered never learned a thing either.

  But the spin doctors’ finest hour comes after this: “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.” I’m not a linguist, but I know enough about languages -and so do you- to know this is utter nonsense. You may attempt to find some differences between nationalism and patriotism, if you want, but they will never be each other’s opposite. Unless you either are Macron looking for a catchy line or you write his speeches for him.

  Obviously, Macron said this because Trump declared himself a nationalist recently. And Macron could now claim that this means Trump is not a patriot. Which we all know is hollow talk. Because Trump said it while speaking about trade, about the US economy. Which does nothing to ‘prove’ he doesn’t love his country. But that is what Macron suggests. He claims patriots love their country, and since nationalism is the opposite of patriotism, Trump does not love America.

  Also, and again referring to Trump without mentioning him (if only he had the guts), Macron alleged that nationalists don’t care one bit about what happens to anyone who’s not a citizen of their country. Whereas it is much more likely to mean -I’m treading softly here- that there are people who look out for their own people first, and others after, and they expect all countries to do the same. Macron does the same. A long way away from “whatever happens to others”.

  Trump was elected because many Americans feel shortchanged, because jobs have disappeared, because they can’t make ends meet. Macron was elected for largely similar reasons: the existing political system failed to protect people. In many other countries, the exact same dynamics are playing out. Macron’s answer to this is to emphasize -make that celebrate- the importance of the exact institutions that have been instrumental in making it all happen.

  Ergo: Macron is a globalist. Or maybe I should say he believes in globalism, before someone chimes in to link this to Judaism. Macron believes in global economies and global institutions, whereas Trump does not. The Donald recognizes that global banks and multinationals are responsible to a large extent for the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries. His tariffs, especially on China, address exactly that. Even if he’s clearly conflicted when it comes to US companies who profit from the exact same thing.

  Still, that doesn’t mean Trump is not a patriot. But that is precisely what Macron insinuated on Sunday. According to him, one can’t be both a nationalist and a patriot. He might have done better to let the millions who died a 100 years ago, and whom he commemorated, have their own say on that. Did the unfortunate frail forms bleeding to death in the trenches see themselves as nationalists or patriots? Wouldn’t that have been the last thing on their minds? And doesn’t that question tell the entire story?

  Doesn’t it put into perspective Macron’s veiled attacks on Trump while the latter was sitting right there? The wonderboy banker trying to gain some sort of moral superiority over the real estate mogul over the heads and rotten bodies and memories of the French and British AND American troops who died deaths the western world can no longer even imagine (while they actively help inflicting them on Yemen) ? And then the entire media run with how beautiful Macron’s words, nay dedications, were?

  100 years after the ‘Never Again’, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and the US are still selling billions worth of arms to regimes they know will abuse them. As long as they get their cut, right? The suggestion that Trump is somehow worse than the rest is ludicrous. If anything Trump is a little better on the warmonger front. He still has to prove that, true. The rest have proven their role already though.

  Last thought: Xi Jinping is going out of his way to claim China is opening up its economy. That makes him a globalist, right? And globalists can only be nationalists, according to Macron, never patriots? Can we get someone to ask Xi how he sees this? And what about Vladimir Putin? Russia’s been bounced off the global stage through sanctions and allegations, but perhaps he would still like to be a globalist. So is Putin a nationalist or a patriot? Asking for a friend.

  Again, according to Macron, you can’t be both. You think about that. What are you?

  

• A Robot Now Runs AllianceBernstein's Fixed Income Trading

  Three things are certain: death, taxes, and that the already thin gap between human trader and algo is narrowing ever further.

  AllianceBernstein’s new virtual assistant can now suggest to fixed income portfolio managers what the best bonds may be to purchase using parameters such as pricing, liquidity and risk, according to Bloomberg. The machine has numerous advantages to humans: “she” can scan millions of data points and identify potential trades in seconds. Plus she never needs to take a cigarette or a bathroom break.

  The new virtual assistant, dubbed Skynet 2.0 “Abbie 2.0”, specializes in identifying bonds that human portfolio managers have missed. She can also help spot human errors and communicate with similar bots like herself at other firms to arrange trades, making humans redundant. This is the second iteration of AllianceBernstein‘s electronic assistant which debuted in January of this year, but could only build orders for bonds following precise input from humans.

  

  Sourcing bonds that are easy to trade is done by Abbie 2.0 reaching out to another AB system called ALFA, which stands for Automated Liquidity Filtering and Analytics. The AFLA system gathers bids and asks from dealers and electronic trading venues to work out the best possible trades.

  For now, humans are still required: Jeff Skoglund, chief operating officer of fixed income at AB told Bloomberg that “humans and machines will need to work closer than ever to find liquidity, trade faster and handle risks. Our hope is that we grow and use people in ways that are more efficient and better leverage their skills.”

  What he really means is that his hope is to fire as many expensive traders and PMs as possible to fatten the company’s profit margins. Which is why the virtual assistant already helps support a majority, or more than 60% of AllianceBernstein‘s fixed income trades. The “upgrades” that are coming for the new assistant will help it include high-yielding investment grade bonds, before expanding to other more complex markets in the coming months. AB says that they will still rely on humans to make the final decisions on trades. For now.

  While the original version of the assistant had to be told how much a portfolio manager wanted of a specific bond, the new version now mines data pools to be proactive, making sizing suggestions to portfolio managers. Among other things, the assistant looks at ratings of companies, capital structure and macro data such as social and geopolitical risks.

  This is just another step in the industry becoming machine oriented in order to help cut costs, save time and avoid errors, especially in relatively illiquid bond markets. Liquidity could become even more of a factor if the economy slips into recession over the next couple of years.

  Electronic trading in general is becoming more pronounced in fixed income as banks act more like exchanges instead of holding bonds on their balance sheet. All the while, regulations have encouraged the shifting of bond trading to exchanges. More than 80% of investors in high-grade bonds use electronic platforms, accounting for 20% of volume, according to Bloomberg.

  Skoglund concluded, “We expect to be faster to market and capture opportunities we otherwise would not have caught by using this system. There’s a liquidity problem right now that could become significantly more challenging in a risk-off environment.“

  

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• Midterm Elections: A Disaster Denied, And What Is Coming

  Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces ) via SHTFplan.com,

  Before the 2016 Presidential Election, and both before and after the inauguration, I wrote specifically about how important the midterm election would be, and the results if the President should lose even one House of Congress.  That happened: the Republicans just lost the House of Representatives. Now that the Democrats control it, not one piece of legislation will pass that is on the President’s agenda. In the supreme act of denial, the Republican party claims the “Blue Wave” was not successful; the President even declared a “victory” with the midterms.

  

  Nothing could be further from the truth, on either count.

  The Democrats intend to mount a non-stopping offensive against the President. First, they are going to demand that Mueller go on the attack again. They are already demanding the President’s tax returns. On Thursday, 11-8-18, thousands of people marched in Times Square in New York City in protest of Jeff Sessions’ departure from the White House…although Sessions was the one who tendered a letter of resignation. The mob of protesters carried mass-produced “No one is above the law” placards and signs.

  Not one of those Marxists carried those signs when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton resigned after Benghazi, where a U.S. Consular Outpost of the United States was destroyed, and the U.S. Ambassador and four of his staff murdered.

  “Happy Veterans’ Day” is coming up, with the cliché eternal: “Thank you for your service.”

  Nobody really cares about it, except the vets. Those who have to work receive time and a half for their pay, and Hallmark makes about another $50 million or so on the cards and gifts…about $10 million of that for the Government to “re-ingest” with the taxes….another day on the endless cycle:

  The cycle of spending of disposable income, an indispensable part of the economy and all of the governmental employees on paid federal holiday, solemnly dispensed of at the expense of (to paraphrase Metallica) the government’s “disposable heroes.”

  Where were the protests in the streets after Benghazi? Everybody was hidden, because at the time we were under Obama. When Donald Trump was elected President, a “hiatus” was granted from the nonstop march toward socialism/communism that reached a zenith as never before. Now that hiatus is shrinking, as the Communists and Marxists begin new offensives under their playbook “Rules for Radicals,” offensives targeting every area of the society.

  Their plan should be obvious: to keep the President “backpedaling” and the economy faltering, in order to set the stage for the 2020 election. All of this I have written about before, and it came to pass with the Midterm elections. If they keep the President on the defense and keep pushing the “social issues,” it will render his administration ineffective…not delivering the change back toward the right that the voters wanted to see in 2016.

  The Wall Street Journal published a piece on November 9 entitled “Democrats plan to pursue most aggressive gun-control legislation in decades.” They have been receiving plenty of help on this one, with the Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, and the recent murders by a former Marine last week. Here they come again! All of the legislators…with armed protectors paid for by you, mind you…clamoring for the guns. Here’s a piece of it for you:

  Democrats say they will pass the most aggressive gun-control legislation in decades when they become the House majority in January, plans they renewed this week in the aftermath of a mass killing in a California bar. Their efforts will be spurred by an incoming class of pro-gun-control lawmakers who scored big in Tuesday’s midterm elections, although any measure would likely meet stiff resistance in the GOP-controlled Senate. Democrats ousted at least 15 House Republicans with “A” National Rifle Association ratings, while the candidates elected to replace them all scored an “F” NRA rating. “This new majority is not going to be afraid of our shadow,” said Mike Thompson, a California Democrat who is chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. “We know that we’ve been elected to do a job, and we’re going to do it.”

  Now of course the argument to this rationale will be that the Senate is needed before a law passes. Yes, we all watched “Schoolhouse Rock” and learned about the three-party system of checks and balances. The problem?  Nothing was accomplished when the Republicans held both houses of Congress, and the Reds and Blues counter one another, and more:

  The Democrats’ strategy is not to pass any laws: it is to stir up public controversy, win support of the “Zero” generation, and either force actions through the “tyranny of the majority,” or make it so horrible an arena that it detracts from or prevents any positive efforts and actions from the administration…setting the stage for the 2020 election.

  Ocasio-Cortez just entered the House of Representatives at the “sage/sagacious” age of 29, and she is a self-described “democratic socialist” who favors single-payer healthcare, gun control, abolishing border controls, and declared that she would support the impeachment of the President. She was also part of Bernie Sanders’ campaign movement in 2016.

  Lenin espoused some “gems” that should be considered. Here is one that falls in line with the “newly discovered wonderful possibility of socialism” the Zero-generation and twenty-somethings have fallen in love with hook, line, and sinker:

  “The goal of socialism is communism.”

  New York just placed a “democratic socialist” in Washington… a declared socialist, among all of the hidden Marxists camouflaged under the “progressive” or “democratic” monikers.

  Gun control, coming at us once again, and once more, a quote from Lenin for you:

  “Disarmament is the ideal of socialism. There will be no wars in socialist society; consequently, disarmament will be achieved. But whoever expects that socialism will be achieved without a social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a socialist. Dictatorship is state power based directly on violence. And in the twentieth century – as in the age of civilization generally – violence means neither a fist nor a club, but troops. To put “disarmament” in the program is tantamount to making the general declaration: “We are opposed to the use of arms.” There is as little Marxism in this as there would be if we were to say: “We are opposed to violence!” – Lenin, “The Disarmament Slogan,” from October of 1916

  The next two years should be interesting, to say the least. Keep in mind: the President is not throwing in the towel, however, he has one more year to turn the tide…before he has to campaign. There is still another way, though: I mentioned it in the last article that I wrote. Bush Jr. used this technique successfully when he was trailing Kerry in the polls. Margaret Thatcher used this technique when she was about to be shown the door, and turned it around, remaining in office.

  The “technique” is a war, whether a “quickie” (such as the Falklands War…Malvinas, if you prefer), or a protracted one (Iraq “II” where victory was declared within months of started, and it was achieved…with the decades and a half of Military Industrial Complex contracts…and the transition of the United States into a Surveillance and Police State).

  The technique is a war, and if you keep abreast of what is going on, you will see that Russia and China are gearing up for a war, the nations are “decoupling” themselves incrementally from the dying fiat-backed Petrodollar, and North Korea is once again raising itself as a nuclear threat (on its own, or encouraged by one or more nations). A war could either suspend elections, or propel the incumbent into a victory based on the populace’s perception of what they need. Remember this last quote from Lenin, and let it sink in good:

  “A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power.” – Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917

  The ultimate truth: the elections are akin to the Stock Market, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average. It doesn’t matter how many shares are bought or sold, as long as there are fluctuations and flux. The winners are the brokers, who pocket their commissions on every trade…a sell or a buy. The same exists here. The blue donkeys versus the red elephants. The “tribalism” of men, and their needs of a social order…a cohesive social grouping that reflects what they believe in…is exploited to its maximum advantage. All the while, the paradigm shifts almost imperceptibly, until before you know it….twenty years have elapsed, and you are not looking at the same country anymore.

  The “art” is to make the people think they will be getting what they want…dupe them into believing it is something good, when it’s not. It took the blood of heroes to form and defend this nation.  The downfall is precipitated by traitors from within…bleeding the nation white by circumventing existing laws and replacing them with the greatest injustice and threat to personal liberty of all. What is that greatest threat? A foreign enemy? A spontaneous collapse of everything?

  No. The greatest threat is the acceptance of the people of the illusion of “social justice,” that really translates into something for nothing by taking from those who have earned, and giving it to those who live within the entitlement cesspool of their own sloth. Such a mentality pervades our society today. In order to save the United States, we have to return to our fundamental values and become an ass-kicking, straight-shooting people who fear God and care for their families, neighbors, and nation once more. If we do this, we may emerge from the coming night as a nation once more. Ready your NVGs, and steel your hearts for the challenge before it arrives…now…at the twilight’s last gleaming.

  May Veterans’ Day bring remembrance to your mind, may your heart find peace, and may any who serve in your family be safe and sound.

  

• Former Malaysian PM Warns Of "Economic Crisis" If Brent Trades Below $70

  Najib Razak, the former prime minister of Malaysia, warned that the country is headed for an economic collision of massive proportions should ICE Brent Crude contracts trade below $70. As of Friday, Brent Crude contracts settled at 70.18, which he also warned that Moody’s decision to downgrade the country’s credit rating to negative could be imminent.

  

  The former prime minister, who was previously arrested in July for involvement in the 1MDB scandal, explained in a Facebook post that the recent bear market in oil would see the country’s deficit explode and the Malaysian ringgit continue to depreciate as the Federal Reserve signals further rate hikes.

  “The pressure on the government’s fiscal position will double,” Razak warned.

  This, Razak said, the country would have to issue a higher dividend to cushion the shortfall in revenue for Petronas, the country’s national petroleum company.

  In doing so, he said that could severely impact Malaysia’s credit rating for 2019.

  “This is when oil prices are said to be high and stable. But what if oil prices drop?… What buffer do we have to cushion an oil crisis, if it happens again?,” he questioned. 

  On Thursday, Moody’s affirmed the A1 domestic issuer and foreign currency senior unsecured ratings of Petronas but altered its outlook from stable to negative.

  “The rating agency also affirmed the A1 rating for Petronas Capital Ltd’s senior unsecured notes and the US$15 billion medium-term note (MTN) programme as well as sukuk issued through Petronas Global Sukuk Ltd, but changed its outlook to negative from stable.

  Moody’s said the rating action was due to the government’s announcement that Petronas would be paying RM26 billion in dividends in 2018 and RM54 billion (inclusive of a one-off special dividend of RM30 billion) in 2019,” Free Malaysia Today.

  Moody’s also said the 2019 budget indicates Malaysia’s high debt levels are likely to continue for longer than expected, as deficits break above 3% of GDP for the next several years.

  On November 02, prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad said Petronas could afford to contribute the RM30 billion special dividend to the federal government in 2019 due to higher oil prices.

  “Yet, the Pakatan Harapan government is depending a lot on oil in 2019, and if the price of oil plunges below US$70 as projected, the Malaysian economy could experience an economic crisis,” said Razak.

  Razak’s warning of an immient economic crisis in Malaysia is coming at a time where a global slowdown is beginning to materialize for 2019.

  The sharp drop in global equities in October was a remarkable warning shot that trade wars, monetary tightening, and a commodity bust in energy are some of the fundamental triggers of the next global crisis.

  During a turning point in an economic cycle, the weakest balance sheets, if that is of companies and or countries, tend to break first.

  All eyes of Malaysia for 2019, as it could be the canary in a coal mine for the next economic crisis.

  

• Trouble Brewing In Hong Kong

  Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

  Hong Kong has for decades been one of the most stable places in the world.

  

  When the British took Hong Kong over in the late 1800s, it was nothing more than an irrelevant backwater made up of fishing villages and illiterate fishermen.

  But after a few decades, it became one of the most prosperous places in the world.

  And that wasn’t an accident. Hong Kong allowed unbridled capitalism to dominate and it worked extraordinarily well.

  Sure, a handful of people got super wealthy. But, in general, there’s been bountiful prosperity across the board.

  As a result of the prosperity and bent toward capitalism, Hong Kong has become one of the most important financial centers in the world. And for decades, it’s had a very well capitalized banking system.

  And one of the key reasons for that is the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) has been pegged to the US dollar (USD) since the early 1980’s.

  The peg is a double-edged sword for Hong Kong.

  The key advantage is international stability. As long as the USD remains the global reserve currency, the fact that it’s interchangeable with HKD means economic stability.

  The disadvantage is that the peg doesn’t give Hong Kong any independence. They have to follow US interest rate policy regardless of whether or not it’s good for them.

  And that’s definitely caused problems, which are accelerating this year.

  The US is just coming off a decade of ultra-low interest rates meant to boost domestic growth. But HK, which wasn’t in a dire, economic situation to begin with, has also had a decade of low rates.

  One of the results of that is that Hong Kong has become one of the most expensive property markets in the world. It makes London look cheap.

  And the property market in Hong Kong is highly leveraged. People typically get bank loans to buy property without putting much money down.

  And a lot of those loans are like what we saw in the US in 2008 – no money down, low teaser rates, variable rate loans, etc… the type of lax lending that rocked the entire financial system.

  I expect we’ll see a similar, financial crisis in Hong Kong down the road as a result of this lax lending against property.

  And now that interest rates are rising in the US, they’re rising in Hong Kong…

  So the local mortgages will reset at higher rates that people can’t afford. I expect we’ll see a wave of defaults that will slam the banks big time.

  If that were the only problem in Hong Kong, I wouldn’t be terribly concerned because the banks there are so well capitalized.

  However, the ongoing dispute between the US and China adds another risk.

  The US-imposed sanctions against China are problematic and will force the Chinese to scramble for the dollars they need to engage in international commerce. Even though the dollar isn’t the local currency, China still needs dollars to buy oil, copper and pretty much everything else on the global stage.

  And that takes a steady supply of dollars.

  Right now, China gets a lot of USD from the US, because China runs a big surplus with the US. And those dollars fund China’s deficit with its other trading partners.

  If that dollar supply gets cut off because of a trade dispute, China will need another supply.

  And where is there a giant supply of dollar’s available for the Chinese?

  Hong Kong is sitting on around half a trillion USD.

  In a crisis, China could take those dollars and repeg the HKD to the renminbi.

  I’m not saying that’s likely. But it’s more of a possibility now than it has been in the past. And things change.

  Still, I felt compelled to raise this with you as a potential risk – albeit a somewhat minor one.

  I’ve often discussed holding HKD as a risk-free way to hold USD. If the USD ever tanked, Hong Kong could remove the peg and allow the HKD to float freely.

  But this new risk changes the situation…

  Enough so that I’m taking my money out of HKD and reducing my exposure to Hong Kong banks.

  I don’t think this will become a major catastrophe or that this HKD scenario is even that likely. But it is riskier than it was.

  It’s sensible to take some money off the table. The HKD trades in a tight band with the USD and it costs very little to switch in and out.

  And you can put that money into 28-day T-bills, which are yielding over 2%.

  If I had to choose between making 2%+ in T-bills and the potential threat of the HKD being repegged to renminbi, I’m taking T-bills.

  This week I’m telling Sovereign Man: Confidential readers more about what’s happening with the Hong Kong dollar and what they can do about.

  But for now, I think it makes sense to take some money out of HKD. It makes sense regardless of what may or may not happen in the future.

  And like many things we discuss regarding a Plan B, there’s no downside.

  

• Where Veteran Homelessness Is Rising And Falling

  Despite the end of the Iraq war and efforts to enable the Afghan military to take over their country’s security, the sight of a homeless U.S. veteran struggling to keep warm in a doorway will sadly remain common in major American cities this winter.

  

  Over the past couple of years, the U.S. has made progress in reducing the number of homeless veterans.

  After a slight rise last year, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that the homeless population declined 5.4 percent over the past 12 months. There are currently about 38,000 homeless vets across the country, about half the amount counted in 2010.

  Some states have had more success eliminating the problem than others, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data. The following infographic shows where the homeless veteran population has increases and decreases at state level over the past year.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  While Connecticut, Delaware and Virginia have effectively ended it, solutions are harder to come by in states with high property prices such as California.

  Nevada has seen the number of vets sleeping rough fall by almost 88 percent but Mississippi has experienced a 79 percent increase.

  

• What's Behind China's New Charm Offensive?

  Authored by Tim Daiss via Oilprice.com,

  Australia’s reliance on its giant trading partner China could get a little stickier going forward. Yesterday, Australia’s new Prime Minister Scott Morrison pledged to increase his country’s military and diplomatic engagement in the South Pacific amid concerns the nation’s influence is waning as China continues it headlong regional hegemony pursuits, particularly in the contested South China Sea.

  

  Morrison said that his government will set up an AUD$2 billion (US$1.46 billion) infrastructure fund for the region, increase naval deployments and carry out more military exercises with island nations. In comments released by his office, Morrison said, “This is our patch. It’s where Australia can make the biggest difference in world affairs.” His comments also come amid growing backlash against what many in Australia see as Chinese interference in its political process, while others have warned for years that the country was too reliant on natural resource exports to China.

  This growing anti-China sentiment for long-time U.S. ally Australia also comes as President Trump pushes against China in trade so hard that it has already started to slow down manufacturing expansion and economic growth, with further projects for the same. It also comes as Australia joins the US, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, UK, France, India and others to enforce freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea, much to the angst of Beijing who claims 90 percent of the sea in what it refers to as “historical rights,” a dubious claim that could be used by a myriad of other nations in the region.

  Thawing a diplomatic chill

  However, Beijing replied quickly to Morrison’s vow to increase naval deployments. China’s top diplomat Wang Yi said that China and Australia should be cooperating in the South Pacific and not cast as political rivals.  Reuters said Wang made her remarks after a meeting in Beijing between her and Australian foreign minister Marise Payn, which was widely billed as a step toward re-setting bilateral ties after a lengthy diplomatic chill.

  Wang said that she had agreed that the two countries could combine their respective strengths and embark on trilateral cooperation with Pacific island countries. “We are not rivals, and we can absolutely become cooperation partners,” Wang said, describing the meeting as important after the recent “ups and downs” in the relationship, adding that the discussions were “valuable, full and candid.”

  “We’ve realistically acknowledged today that in a relationship as dynamic as ours … there will be from time to time differences,” she said later at a separate news briefing. “But what is important about that is how we manage those, and we are focused on managing them respectfully, mindful of the tremendous opportunities the relationship presents to both our nations.”

  China’s new charm offensive

  There are several take-aways from both Morrison’s recent pledge and Beijing’s response.

  First, Australia is in an almost no-win situation with China. Since it shares a close and over century old relationship with the U.S. as well as shared political values, a common history, language and concern over human rights, it’s unlikely it would do anything to damage that crucial relationship. On the other hand, Australia’s iron ore, LNG and other natural resources to China has helped transform the Australian economy.

  Another major take-away and one that will be happening more in the future, is a softer tone from China with its other neighbors in the region. Just two weeks ago, China cozied up long time bitter rival Japan in a surprise move that would have been unimaginable five or six years ago.

  The UK-based Independent said the two sides showed a united front on “free and fair” trade as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, along with over 1000 Japanese businessmen, met Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing for talks. The two Asian giants signed a slew of agreements, including a currency swap deal and plans to work together in other markets.

  China’s Premier Li Keqiang said they had signed 500 agreements worth $18 billion.

  “This indicates our cooperation has great potential and a promising prospect,” he said. “As countries with great influence in the region and the world, we should safeguard free trade.”

  As U.S. sanctions continue to hit China hard, expect Beijing to soften its approach with both friend and foe alike in the Asia-Pacific region. Another prime target for China will be improved bilateral and perhaps even military cooperation with long-time rival India. In essence, China, with few allies other than North Korea, has little choice but to try to offset the impact of US sanctions as well as Washington’s harder stance in the South China Sea.

  Beijing, for its part, was waiting to proceed with more trade talks after the mid-term elections in the U.S., hoping for Democrats to take back control of the House. However, though Democrats did indeed take control of the House of Representatives, Republicans picked up two Senate seats to solidify its grip. Nonetheless, most believe that despite a Democratic controlled House which starts at the beginning of the year, both Democrats and Republicans will still allow Trump free reign over his trade war with China. Trump’s EU trade maneuverings could be checked, but China is still in Trumps cross hairs.

  In the short to mid-term, the trade war will continue to hurt the so-called second wave of U.S. LNG projects that need financing and long-term off take agreements, including from China. However, it will also force Beijing into a more conciliatory tone with its other LNG suppliers, including a befuddled Australia, bringing this geopolitical drama full circle.

  

• US Farmers Are Stashing Soybeans In Toolsheds And Caves As They Wait Out Trade War

  Amid China’s worsening trade-war fueled economic slide, the Communist country’s April decision to slap a 25% tariff on imports of US soybeans has remained one of its most rewarding retaliatory maneuvers. So far, at least, the food-price inflation that many feared would follow hasn’t materialized – while the plunge in soybean purchases (imports to China fell 94% between the beginning of September and mid-October) has helped maximize the pressure on Trump-supporting farmers in North Dakota, Iowa and across the US farm belt.

  Still, for China, targeting soybeans was essential if it wanted the agricultural tariffs to have any real impact, as the chart below clearly illustrates.

  

  Analysts had worried that Chinese pork farmers would struggle to find another source of soybeans, causing prices to skyrocket. That hasn’t happened, as other soybean producers (who process the oilseed into food for their hogs) like Brazil, Argentina and now Russia have helped pick up the slack. What’s more, the transition has been relatively fluid. Meanwhile, in the US, soybean prices have fallen $2 per bushel over the past two months. For US farmers, the timing on China’s tariffs couldn’t have been worse, as Chinese demand started to level off just as US production reached record highs.

  And even as the trade war shows no signs of letting up (though markets are perhaps naively optimistic about Trump’s upcoming meeting with President Xi on the sidelines of the G-20 later this month), futures traders are hoping that demand will have rebounded (or that farmers will have the good sense to cut production) by this time next year, when a rebound has already been priced in. Many are hoping that prices will rise if the Trump-Xi trade talks yield even the slightest sign of progress. But seeing as they have few good options, American farmers are choosing to try and wait it out.

  

  According to Bloomberg, American farmers are storing more soybeans than ever before. Storing soybeans isn’t easy, as farmers in North Dakota are quickly learning: The slightest exposure to moisture can cause the crops to quickly rot, transforming the beans into a slick blackish mush with the consistency of mashed potatoes and the stench of roadkill.

  

  Still, with farm profits down in four of the last five years, many farmers have no good options.

  For some farmers, there is little choice but to keep their harvest. Millions of bushels have nowhere to go. Terminals in Portland, a key outlet in the Pacific Northwest to ship to China, are rarely offering bids. Supplies are backed up at terminals and elevators, even as cold, wet weather in North Dakota has left many acres unharvested. The country’s soybean inventories are expected to more than double to about 955 million bushels by the end of this crop year, according to the USDA.

  Iowa grower Robb Ewoldt, who’s been farming since 1996, is storing most of his soy for the first time in about 15 years. His crop usually floats down the Mississippi River, about a half mile from his fields, on barges for export through the Gulf of Mexico to China and other countries. This year he’s stashing beans in his silos, making room for them by selling or storing his corn in commercial storage, to await higher prices.

  “It’s probably more advantageous to store this year than any year in the past,” he said.

  Given that silo capacity is tight, some farmers are experimenting with new methods for storing their beans, like piling them on the ground or stuffing them into large bags. Others are stuffing their beans virtually anywhere they can find space, including tool sheds and caves.

  Space for all the extra soy is tight. That’s leading to some rarely taken measures, such as piling beans on the ground – risking their exposure to bad weather. More farmers also are stuffing them into sausage-shaped bags that can stretch the length of a football field.

  “I’ve heard farmers and commercial companies putting corn and soybeans into tool sheds and caves,” Soren Schroder, chief executive officer of Bunge Ltd., the world’s largest soybean processor, said in an interview last month.

  The tariffs have particularly hit exports from North Dakota, where the expansion of oilseed acreage was a direct result of the growth of Chinese demand. The state plants the fourth-highest number of soybeans in the U.S. and about 70 percent go to Asia, largely because of its geographic accessibility to western ports.

  In North Dakota, which has been the hardest hit by the tariffs given the massive expansion of production capacity in recent years to feed the Asian market, some farmers are planning to store their entire crop. One cooperative in North Dakota expects to store more than 2 million bushels of soybeans this year.

  North Dakota farmer Mike Clemens is so in need of space that he’s breaking out a dozen and a half bins built in the 1960s to store about 45,000 bushels of soybeans, which is half his farm’s production this year. He expects to fill up his five new silos with 300,000 bushels of corn.

  Sarah Lovas, a grower in Hillsboro, North Dakota, has drawn several diagrams to map out storage for her entire crop. Her current plan is to fill up her 400,000 bushels of on-farm storage with 50,000 bushels of soybeans and the rest with corn. She’s renting grain bins for soybeans from a neighbor for the first time, to store about 68,000 bushels.

  “I wish I had more bins,” Lovas said.

  One family owned farm that pioneered the bagging technique for storing corn says it has been inundated with pleas for help by other farms.

  Gingerich Farms in Lovington, Illinois, has used 300-foot plastic white bags for the last seven to eight years to store corn and soybeans. This year, the family operation has gotten as many as 10 calls from neighboring producers asking about how to use the bags, compared with one or two inquiries last year, said Darrel Gingerich, vice president of the farm.

  “Corn is kind of a given,” he said. “They were calling us about bagging beans.”

  The Illinois Department of Agriculture has been overwhelmed by requests for more storage capacity, as the state, which is the largest US producer of soybeans.

  

  As of early October, farmers had requested storage capacity for 11.4 million bushels of soybeans, triple the level from last year.

  Illinois, the largest US soybean producer, may have the biggest storage shortfall, needing as much as 100 million bushels for storing crops, said Tim Brusnahan, an analyst with agriculture brokerage and consulting firm Brock Associates.

  As of the start of this month, the Illinois Department of Agriculture had received requests for 11.6 million bushels of emergency storage capacity, such as bags, nearly triple the amount from a year earlier. Requests for temporary storage such as structures with waterproof covers increased 4 percent.

  While Illinois’s crops are less dependent on China demand, today’s low prices make storing the soy a better choice, Gingerich said.

  “The markets tell us to store it,” Gingerich said. “It’s tight, very tight.”

  To try to alleviate the economic pain, the Trump administration has ordered billions of dollars of subsidies for soybean farmers. It has also earmarked $200 million to help cultivate (no pun intended) new overseas markets for US soybeans. But given the rush for foreign producers to gobble up market share previously belonging to US farmers, anxieties are mounting that the US soybean industry will never recover from the tariffs. And although soybean farmers in Iowa and North Dakota stood by the Republican Party during the midterms, if the pain persists, will they look to punish “the president’s folly”?

  

• Democrat Sinema Wins Arizona Senate Race, Replacing Retiring Jeff Flake

  Almost a week after the midterm elections, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won Arizona’s Senate race, after an extended vote count delivered Democrat an upset victory and a blow to Republicans and President Donald Trump. Democrats had not won a Senate seat in Arizona since 1988, but President Trump carried Arizona by less than 5 points in 2016, a closer margin than previous GOP presidential nominees.

  Sinema defeated Republican Martha McSally in one of the most closely watched Senate races this cycle. Sinema led by a margin of 38,197 votes, or about 1.7 percentage points, out of more than 2.1 million votes cast, when the Associated Press called the race on Monday, replacing retiring GOP Sen. Jeff Flake.

  With almost three-quarters of the state’s voters casting ballots by mail in the close race, it took Arizona officials six days to finish tabulating the results. The outcome leaves the party division in the Senate at 51-47 in favor of Republicans, with the Florida race in a recount and the contest in Mississippi set for a runoff.

  The AP made the call after Sinema, who was first elected to Congress in 2012, increased her lead over McSally for the fifth straight day. Arizona still has about 200,000 ballots left to count, but McSally would have to win an improbable percentage of those remaining votes to overcome Sinema’s edge.

  

  Sinema – who becomes the first female senator elected from Arizona and the first openly bisexual senator – will replace Republican Senator Jeff Flake, an outspoken Trump critic who often attracted the president’s ire. Flake’s sparring with Trump all but assured that if the senator ran again, he would have faced a primary challenge from the GOP’s right wing that Flake decided he probably couldn’t win.

  “I just called Kyrsten Sinema and congratulated her on becoming Arizona’s first female senator after a hard-fought battle,” McSally said in a video posted to Twitter on Monday evening.

  Congrats to @kyrstensinema. I wish her success. I’m grateful to all those who supported me in this journey. I’m inspired by Arizonans’ spirit and our state’s best days are ahead of us. pic.twitter.com/tw0uKgi3oO

  — McSally For Senate (@MarthaMcSally) November 13, 2018

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  The race was one of the year’s most hotly contested, and each contender was ahead in two or more polls since mid-October.

  Sinema, who fashioned herself as a moderate, kept the focus on health care and protections for pre-existing conditions as a wedge issue with McSally, who voted for the GOP’s ObamaCare repeal bill. More from Bloomberg:

  Sinema is a former Green Party activist who over time became a moderate Democrat. Like many on the ballot from her party, she stressed her support for Obamacare and its popular protection for people with pre-existing health conditions. But she also distanced herself from more liberal Democrats by rejecting a push to expand Medicare to cover all Americans.

  In the House, Sinema backed Republican efforts to curb regulations and voted against Nancy Pelosi of California in the 2015 and 2017 speaker elections, backing civil rights icon John Lewis of Georgia instead.

  That said, she is certainly not a republican, siding with Democrats in a number of key areas: she supports abortion rights, gun control, environmental protections and a vigorous government role in providing a social safety net, education, job training and infrastructure.

  McSally’s loss is a political setback for Trump, who carried Arizona in 2016 and spent two days in the state last month in an effort to shore up the candidacy of McSally, a former Air Force pilot. As the vote count dragged on, Trump asserted, without evidence, that there was corruption in the tally. Some state GOP officials pushed back against the assertion and settled a dispute over taking extra time to verify ballots according to Bloomberg.

  During earlier years of service in the Arizona state legislature, Sinema was among about three dozen state lawmakers who served on a health-care task force that President Barack Obama used to develop his Affordable Care Act proposal in 2009.

  Meanwhile McSally overcame two more conservative challengers in the Republican primary, and she aligned herself closely with Trump. She focused much of her campaign messaging on immigration and border security in an effort to boost Republican turnout. McSally also hammered Sinema over her past anti-war protesting and progressive roots.

  Sinema benefited from the help of Latino voters, who make up nearly one-third of Arizona’s voting age population and who have heavily favored Democrats. Sinema’s win suggests potential for further gains by Arizona Democrats in 2020. The state has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate only once since 1948, though Hillary Clinton lost Arizona by just 3.4 percentage points in 2016.

  With Arizona in the rearview mirror, a handful of other races around the country remain too close to call, including high-profile races in Florida and Georgia.

  Recounts have been ordered in Florida’s hotly contested Senate and gubernatorial races, while in Georgia, the governor’s race hasn’t been called, as Democrats hold out hope that remaining ballots could push the race into a runoff, though that remains an uphill battle.

  

• On Veterans' Day, Remember the Lies That Filled Military Cemeteries

  Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute,

  Politicians will be heartily applauded for saluting American’s soldiers today. But if citizens had better memories, elected officials would instead be fleeing tar and feathers. Politicians have a long record of betraying the veterans they valorize.

  

  Veterans Day 2018 has been dominated by the confab of political leaders in Paris to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One. American media coverage fixated on President Trump’s cancellation of one of his two visits to U.S. military cemeteries. In his speech yesterday at a U.S. military cemetery in France, Trump declared that it is “our duty … to protect the peace they so nobly gave their lives to secure one century ago.” But that peace was sabotaged long before the soldiers’ corpses had turned to dust. Though the American media exalted French President Emmanuel Macron’s denunciation of nationalism at the armistice anniversary, it was conniving by French leader George Clemenceau at the Versailles Peace Treaty that helped assure that U.S. sacrifices in 1917 and 1918 were for naught.

  Lying about American wars is a venerable presidential tradition. Four years ago, in a visit to Flanders Field Cemetery in Belgium, President Obama saluted the Americans who died in World War One – “the soldiers who manned the trenches were united by something larger — a willingness to fight, and die, for the freedom that we enjoy as their heirs.” In reality, that war was a disaster for freedom practically everywhere. Thanks to conscription, young American men had the choice of going to prison or being sent to fight a war on false pretenses.

  Neither Trump nor Obama can compete for the title of Supreme Fabulist on World War One – an honorific that President Woodrow Wilson locked up a century ago. After he was narrowly re-elected in 1916 based on a campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war,” Wilson pulled America into the war because “the world must be made safe for democracy.” Wilson acted as if Congress’s declaration of war against Germany also declared war on the Constitution, and he ruthlessly censored and persecuted anyone who did not cheer the war effort. Wilson even urged Congress to authorize detention camps for “alien enemies.” More than a hundred thousand American soldiers died in the war effort, and another half million Americans perished from the Spanish fluepidemic spurred and spread by the war. Rather than a new birth of idealism, World War One unleashed chaos and led directly to the rise of Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler – and a host of tinhorn dictators elsewhere in Europe.

  World War One exemplified the deceptions that propelled U.S. conflicts abroad. Veterans Day should be a time to recognize that the history of America’s wars is also a history of political rascality:

  • In 1846, President James Polk took Americans to war after falsely proclaiming that the Mexican army had crossed the U.S. border and attacked a U.S. army outpost — “shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil,” he claimed. But he never produced evidence to support his causa belli for a conflict that placed vastly expanded the nation’s boundaries and paved the way for the Civil War.

  • In 1898, when President William McKinley took the nation to war against Spain, he pledged not to annex foreign territory. He changed his mind after deciding to “Christianize” the Filipinos (a Catholic nation). Four thousand U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos perished in the merciless crackdowns required to place those islands under the Stars and Stripes.

  • In 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt capped off his reelection campaign by promising voters: “ Your president says this country is not going to war. ” Though FDR portrayed World War Two as an fight for democracy, he secretly signed off on Stalin’s demand for control of almost all of eastern Europe. The result was decades of oppression for Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, and others.

  • President Lyndon Johnson vastly expanded the Vietnam War purportedly to prevent the domino-like spread of communism (which the CIA concluded would not happen regardless). A secret 1965 Pentagon memo admitted that 70% of the U.S. aim in Vietnam was simply to “ avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).” Almost 60,000 American troops died so politicians could ravage the national credibility they pretended to preserve.

  • After 9/11, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to vanquish Al Qaeda. After top Al Qaeda leaders escaped, President George W. Bush pledged to help create a democracy and modernize that nation. Unfortunately, subsequent Afghan elections have been utterly fraud-ridden while corruption multiplied thanks largely to U.S. aid.

  • President Bush justified invading Iraq in 2003 because of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. The WMDs were never found, so Bush claimed the U.S. would bring democracy to Iraqis. But the U.S. government helped rig subsequent elections and supported Iraqi rulers’ brutal repression of their opposition, helping spur pervasive conflicts that continue to ravage that nation.

  Politicians disdain the soldiers they claim to adore.

  U.S. troops are currently fighting in 14 foreign nations, from Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria to Chad, Yemen, and other locales. When 4 U.S. troops were killed last Fall in Niger, many members of Congress were stunned to learn of the U.S. deployment . Congress was similarly negligentregarding rat-infested, unsanitary conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007. Politicians had time for hundreds of speeches touting their devotion to veterans but few congressmen noticed the dilapidated state of the showcase military hospital in their back yard.

  General Patton said that an ounce of sweat can save a pint of blood. Similarly, a few hours studying the lessons of history can prevent heaps of grave-digging in the coming years. President Trump has saber-rattled against Iran, North Korea, Syria, and other nations. His bellicose rhetoric should spur Americans to review the follies and frauds of past wars before it is too late to stop the next pointless bloodbath.

  The best way to honor veterans is to cancel politicians’ prerogative to send troops abroad to fight on any and every pretext. And one of the best steps towards that goal is to remember the lies for which soldiers died.

  

• A $2bn Saudi Plan To Assassinate Iran's Leaders Involved Erik Prince And The Trump Transition Team

  So maybe the Iranians do have much to be paranoid about. An explosive New York Times story citing multiple unnamed sources familiar with the matter details how top Saudi intelligence officials conspired to assassinate Iranian leaders — including Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) Quds force commander Qassim Suleimani — in a plot wherein the Saudis mulled using private contractors, and even approached Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater and at the time adviser to the Trump transition team.

  The discussions took place around two years before the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi as MbS was still deputy crown prince and defense minister, and was in the midst of ramping up intelligence operations outside the kingdom.

  During the March 2017 meeting about the plan to sabotage Iran’s economy, according to the three people familiar with the discussions, the Saudis asked the businessmen whether they also “conducted kinetics” — lethal operations — saying they were interested in killing senior Iranian officials. – NYT report

  According the Times report a group of international businessmen assisted then deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri (recently sacked over the Khashoggi murder) in shopping around the plan to private contractors and Western allies, specifically the United States, and ultimately aimed to “assassinate Iranian enemies of the kingdom” and try to “sabotage the Iranian economy”.

  

  The program to use private operatives to wage a dirty tricks assassination and destabilization campaign against Tehran was pitched during initial secretive meetings for a contract that was worth $2 billion.

  According to the NYT report:

  During the discussion, part of a series of meetings where the men tried to win Saudi funding for their plan, General Assiri’s top aides inquired about killing Qassim Suleimani, the leader of the Quds force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and a man considered a determined enemy of Saudi Arabia.

  The Times identifies George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, and an Israeli named Joel Zamel, who has close ties to Israeli intelligence and owns a company called Psy-Group, as a couple of the key businessmen who attempted to move the plan forward. Notably both are witnesses in the Mueller investigation, but it’s unclear if these late breaking revelations have anything to do with the probe. 

  Interestingly the pair had been deeply involved in “an ambitious campaign of economic warfare against Iran” since at least 2016, when they “sketched out operations like revealing hidden global assets of the Quds force; creating fake social media accounts in Farsi to foment unrest in Iran; financing Iranian opposition groups; and publicizing accusations, real or fictitious, against senior Iranian officials to turn them against one another,” according to the Times report. And further George Nader is a known adviser to the UAE crown prince — a country at the forefront of executing the Saudi coalition war on Yemen. 

  Eventually, the businessmen would pitch the plan to the White House at a moment they thought they could gain a sympathetic ear in the then incoming Trump administration.

  

  This is where controversial Blackwater founder Erik Prince comes in, who long had his own plans of landing major contracts with the Saudis. According to the Times report:

  Mr. Nader and Mr. Zamel enlisted Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater and an adviser to the Trump transition team. They had already discussed elements of their plan with Mr. Prince, in a meeting when they learned of his own paramilitary proposals that he planned to try to sell to the Saudis. A spokesman for Mr. Prince declined to comment.

  In a suite on one of the top floors of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York, Mr. Zamel and Mr. Nader spoke to General Assiri and his aides about their Iran plan. The Saudis were interested in the idea but said it was so provocative and potentially destabilizing that they wanted to get the approval of the incoming Trump administration before Saudi Arabia paid for the campaign.

  The details of these meetings are unknown, but what is known is that Nader did have somewhat routine access to the White House during the period he shopped the proposal around: 

  After Mr. Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, Mr. Nader met frequently with White House officials to discuss the economic sabotage plan.

  

  While it’s unclear the extent to which the ambitious plan was ever put into motion, a number of journalists and analysts have connected it with last month’s bombshell revelation that Green Beret, Navy SEAL, and CIA paramilitary veterans were hired under the aegis of an American based security company called Spear Operations Group to become what a BuzzFeed exclusive described as the private “murder squad” for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ).

  Starting in 2015 the UAE sent a group of about a dozen mostly American private contractors to Yemen to conduct targeted killings of prominent clerics and political figures who had run afoul crown prince MBZ in the war-torn country, where the Emirati military has played a lead role in the ongoing Saudi coalition bombing campaign. The group would receive active “target lists” through the UAE military chain of command while en route to Yemen.  

  MBS-linked saudi deputy intel chief enquired with Nader/zamel about assassinating Iran’s qaasem soleimani. Their lawyer allegedly balked. But this seems related to uae/Dahlan enlisting Abraham Golan/ex US special operatives to target al islah imams in Yemen cc: @AramRoston https://t.co/VIxO46QlE2

  — Laura Rozen (@lrozen) November 11, 2018

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  Interestingly the Saudi deputy intelligence chief Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri who’s been identified in the latest NYT revelations as being involved in arranging an anti-Iranian assassination squad, was also at the time responsible for overseeing intelligence operations in Yemen, where the Saudi coalition is claiming to fight Iranian proxies (the Shia Houthi rebels). 

  We can imagine that even if Nader and Zamel’s plan never materialized as was originally envisioned, the moment Washington pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) it was likely at that point open season in terms of these types of covert dirty tricks operations against the Islamic Republic. 

  We can also only imagine what Iran’s president and his generals must be thinking this morning as they open up the pages of the New York Times to find such a far ranging plan that had the intimate involvement of an Israeli businessman and top Saudi leaders to assassinate themselves detailed for all the world to see. 

  

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• Johnstone: The Best Way To Honor War Veterans Is To Stop Creating Them

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

  The US will be celebrating Veterans Day, and many a striped flag shall be waved. The social currency of esteem will be used to elevate those who have served in the US military, thereby ensuring future generations of recruits to be thrown into the gears of the globe-spanning war machine.

  

  Veterans Day is not a holiday to honor the men and women who have dutifully protected their country. The youngest Americans who arguably defended their nation from a real threat to its shores are in their nineties, and soon there won’t be any of them left. Every single person who has served in the US military since the end of the second World War has protected nothing other than the agendas of global hegemony, resource control and war profiteering. They have not been fighting and dying for freedom and democracy, they have been fighting and dying for imperialism, Raytheon profit margins, and crude oil.

  I just said something you’re not supposed to say. People have dedicated many years of their lives to the service of the US military; they’ve given their limbs to it, they’ve suffered horrific brain damage for it, they’ve given their very lives to it. Families have been ripped apart by the violence that has been inflicted upon members of the US Armed Forces; you’re not supposed to let them hear you say that their loved one was destroyed because some sociopathic nerds somewhere in Washington decided that it would give America an advantage over potential economic rivals to control a particular stretch of Middle Eastern dirt. But it is true, and if we don’t start acknowledging that truth lives are going to keep getting thrown into the gears of the machine for the power and profit of a few depraved oligarchs. So I’m going to keep saying it.

  If you tweet or retweet #SaluteToService the NFL will contribute a small amount of money to the veterans who’ve been flushed down the toilet by the bloodthirsty empire the NFL’s immense wealth is built upon.

  — Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 4, 2018

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  Last week I saw the hashtag #SaluteToService trending on Twitter. Apparently the NFL had a deal going where every time someone tweeted that hashtag they’d throw a few bucks at some veteran’s charity. Which sounds sweet, until you consider three things:

  1. The NFL’s ten wealthiest team owners are worth a combined $61 billion.

  2. The NFL has taken millions of dollars from the Pentagon for displays of patriotism on the field, including for the policy of bringing all players out for the national anthem every game starting in 2009 (which led to Colin Kaepernick’s demonstrations and the obscene backlash against him).

  3. VETERANS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO RELY ON FUCKING CHARITY.

  Seriously, how is “charity for veterans” a thing, and how are people not extremely weirded out by it? How is it that you can go out and get your limbs blown off for slave wages after watching your friends die and innocent civilians perish, come home, and have to rely on charity to get by? How is it that you can risk life and limb killing and suffering irreparable psychological trauma for some plutocrat’s agendas, plunge into poverty when you come home, and then see the same plutocrat labeled a “philanthropist” because he threw a few tax-deductible dollars at a charity that gave you a decent prosthetic leg?

  Taking care of veterans should be factored into the budget of every act of military aggression. If a government can’t make sure its veterans are housed, healthy and happy in a dignified way for the rest of their lives, it has no business marching human beings into harm’s way. The fact that you see veterans on the street of any large US city and people who fought in wars having to beg “charities” for a quality mechanical wheelchair shows you just how much of a pathetic joke this Veterans Day song and dance has always been.

  They’ll send you to mainline violence and trauma into your mind and body for the power and profit of the oligarchic rulers of the US-centralized empire, but it’s okay because everyone gets a long weekend where they’re told to thank you for your service. Bullshit.

  New by me: “I Propose Americans Wear Gas Pumps on Veteran’s Day”#VeteransDay2018 #RemembranceDay2018 #OpioidEpidemic #oilandgas https://t.co/iEguLkJTTb

  — HopeInTheUSA💖 (@HopeInTheUSA) November 10, 2018

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  Veterans Day, like so very, very much in American culture, is a propaganda construct designed to lubricate the funneling of human lives into the chamber of a gigantic gun. It glorifies evil, stupid, meaningless acts of mass murder to ensure that there will always be recruits who are willing to continue perpetrating it, and to ensure that the US public doesn’t wake up to the fact that its government’s insanely bloated military budget is being used to unleash unspeakable horrors upon the earth.

  The only way to honor veterans, really, truly honor them, is to help end war and make sure no more lives are put into a position where they are on the giving or receiving end of evil, stupid, meaningless violence. The way to do that is to publicly, loudly and repeatedly make it clear that you do not consent to the global terrorism being perpetrated in your name. These bastards work so hard conducting propaganda to manufacture your consent for endless warmongering because they need that consent. So don’t give it to them.

  Your rulers have never feared the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the terrorists, the Iranians, the Chinese or the Russians. They fear you. They fear the American public suddenly waking up to the evil things that are being done in your name and using your vast numbers to shrug off the existing power structures without firing a shot, as easily as removing a heavy coat on a warm day. If enough of you loudly withdraw your consent for their insatiable warmongering, that fear will be enough to keep them in check.

  This Veterans Day, don’t honor those who have served by giving reverence and legitimacy to a war machine which is exclusively used for inflicting great evil. Honor them by disassembling that machine.

  *  *  *

  Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out mypodcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal,buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

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• Khashoggi’s Last Words Revealed As Turkish Media Plans To Publish Audio Death Tape

  A day after President Tayyip Erdogan dropped the latest bombshell related to the Saudi murder of Jamal Khashoggi, saying Turkey had handed over an audio recording of the journalist’s brutal slaying inside the Istanbul consulate to the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Germany, France and Britain, the contents of Khashoggi’s last words have emerged. 

  Editor for the the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah, Nazif Karaman, shared some details from the audio tape with Al Jazeera. Karaman said Khashoggi’s last words were:

  “I’m suffocating… Take this bag off my head, I’m claustrophobic” – according what he confirmed is the authentic audio recording from inside the Istanbul consulate.

  Meanwhile at the conclusion of the centennial anniversary of WWI ceremony in Paris President Erdogan’s office confirmed he and President Trump discussed the Jamal Khashoggi killing on the sidelines of the weekend events. 

  

  The prominent Turkish journalist for the popular pro-government Daily Sabah described further that the tape confirms that Khashoggi suffocated to death while a plastic bag was over his head in a killing that lasted for about seven minutes.

  During the Al-Jazeera interview Karaman also said the group of 15 hitmen responsible for carrying out the murder, and who were reported to have arrived in Istanbul the day before the October 2 killing, spent 15 minutes dismembering Khashoggi’s body.

  And notably, Karaman said his newspaper plans to publish segments of the audio death tape. According to the Al-Jazeera report:

  Karaman said that Daily Sabah would soon publish images of the tools that were brought into the country and used by the Saudi group.

  He added the Turkish newspaper would also publish some of the recordings that document the last moments of Khashoggi’s life.

  If this happens it will likely renew the flood of anti-MbS press coverage that occurred in the weeks after the murder was revealed.

  It will also raise serious questions for Washington and European officials who have apparently heard the recording but did not divulge or confirm that they had direct knowledge of such absolute certain proof that this was an official Saudi hit ordered at the highest levels. 

  At a dinner in Paris that was closed to press, after Turkey said it passed an audio tape of Jamal Khashoggi’s killing to the United States, President Trump sat next to Turkish President Erdogan. The White House confirms to me that they discussed Khashoggi: https://t.co/mxPNsncA3T

  — Francesca Chambers (@fran_chambers) November 10, 2018

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  In a televised speech, Erdogan on Saturday confirmed Turkey handed over recordings to Saudi Arabia, the United States, Germany, France and Britain. According to Reuters Erdogan stated confidently:

  We gave the tapes. We gave them to Saudi Arabia, to the United States, Germans, French and British, all of them. They have listened to all the conversations in them. They know.

  But as we asked before, the pressing question that remains is how long have American authorities known of the contents of the Khashoggi murder tape? When did officials listen to it and why have they kept silent about it even as news of the death and investigation drove headlines? 

  It appears the White House may have only come into possession of the recording as early as only a matter of days ago, not long before Erdogan and Trump met face to face in Paris and discussed the issue. 

  According to the the Daily Mail‘s account of the Trump-Erdogan talks: 

  The men were pictured at a dinner in Paris seated next to one another in photos released by the Turkish government, revealing a lengthy conversation took place on Saturday evening…

  “I can confirm they sat next to one another and they discussed the ongoing tragic situation with Khashoggi,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told DailyMail.com.

  It will be interesting to see if President Trump himself addresses the audio recording in statements this week – something he may be forced to do if the audio is indeed leaked or published by Turkish press, as the Daily Sabah is now vowing to do. 

  

• Margolis: We Are Heading For Another Tragedy Like World War I

  Authored by Eric Margolis via EricMargolis.com,

  We are now upon the 100th anniversary of World War I, the war that was supposed to end all wars. While honoring the 16 million who died in this conflict, we should also condemn the memory of the politicians, officials and incompetent generals who created this horrendous blood bath.

  

  I’ve walked most of the Western Front of the Great War, visited its battlefields and haunted forts, and seen the seas of crosses marking its innumerable cemeteries.

  As a former soldier and war correspondent, I’ve always considered WWI as he stupidest, most tragic and catastrophic of all modern wars.

  The continuation of this conflict, World War II, killed more people and brought more destruction on civilians in firebombed cities but, at least for me, World War I holds a special horror and poignancy. This war was not only an endless nightmare for the soldiers in their pestilential trenches, it also violently ended the previous 100 years of glorious European civilization, one of mankind’s most noble achievements.

  I’ve explored the killing fields of Verdun many times and feel a visceral connection to this ghastly place where up to 1,000,000 soldiers died. I have even spent the night there, listening to the sirens that wailed without relent, and watching searchlights that pierced the night, looking for the ghosts of the French and German soldiers who died here.

  Verdun’s soil was so poisoned by explosives and lethal gas that to this day it produces only withered, stunted scrub and sick trees. Beneath the surface lie the shattered remains of men and a deadly harvest of unexploded shells that still kill scores of intruders each year. The spooky Ossuaire Chapel contains the bone fragments of 130,000 men, blown to bits by the millions of high explosive shells that deluged Verdun.

  The town of the same name is utterly bleak, melancholy and cursed. Young French and German officers are brought here to see firsthand the horrors of war and the crime of stupid generalship.

  Amid all the usual patriotic cant from politicians, imperialists and churchmen about the glories of this slaughter, remember that World War I was a contrived conflict that was totally avoidable. Contrary to the war propaganda that still clouds and corrupts our historical view, World War I was not started by Imperial Germany.

  Professor Christopher Clark in his brilliant book, `The Sleepwalkers’ shows how officials and politicians in Britain and France conspired to transform Serbia’s murder of Austro-Hungary’s Crown Prince into a continent-wide conflict. France burned for revenge for its defeat in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and loss of Alsace-Lorraine. Britain feared German commercial and naval competition. At the time, the British Empire controlled one quarter of the world’s surface. Italy longed to conquer Austria-Hungary’s South Tyrol. Turkey feared Russia’s desire for the Straits. Austria-Hungary feared Russian expansion.

  Prof Clark clearly shows how the French and British maneuvered poorly-led Germany into the war. The Germans were petrified of being crushed between two hostile powers, France and Russia. The longer the Germans waited, the more the military odds turned against them. Tragically, Germany was then Europe’s leader in social justice.

  Britain kept stirring the pot, determined to defeat commercial and colonial rival, Germany. The rush to war became a gigantic clockwork that no one could stop. All sides believed a war would be short and decisive. Crowds of fools chanted ‘On to Berlin’ or ‘On to Paris.’

  Few at the time understood the impending horrors of modern war or the geopolitical demons one would release. The 1904 Russo-Japanese War offered a sharp foretaste of the 1914 conflict, but Europe’s grandees paid scant attention.

  Even fewer grasped how the collapse of the antiquated Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires would send Europe and the Mideast into dangerous turmoil that persists to our day. Or how a little-known revolutionary named Lenin would shatter Imperial Russia and turn it into the world’s most murderous state.

  This demented war in Europe tuned into an even greater historic tragedy in 1917 when US President Woodrow Wilson, driven by a lust for power and prestige, entered the totally stalemated war on the Western Front. One million US troops and starvation caused by a crushing British naval blockade turned the tide of battle and led to Germany’s surrender.

  Vengeful France and Britain imposed intolerable punishment on Germany, forcing it to accept full guilt for the war, an untruth that persists to this day. The result was Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists. If an honorable peace had been concluded in 1917, neither Hitler nor Stalin might have seized power and millions of lives would have been saved. This is the true tragedy of the Great War.

  Let us recall the words of the wise Benjamin Franklin: `No good war, no bad peace.’

  

• Saudi Journalist Tortured To Death After Online Identity Exposed By Regional Twitter HQ

  Another Saudi journalist was reported tortured and killed at the hands of Saudi authorities last week, but this time the Saudis may have actually had assistance from Twitter in uncovering the identity behind a controversial account which led to the detention of the journalist. 

  Arabic news source The New Khaleej was the first to report that Saudi journalist and writer Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser died after being tortured while in detention after his initial arrest last March. According to the report his arrest came after it was learned that he administered the Twitter account Kashkool — which was known for highlighting human rights violations and crimes committed by the royal family and government officials. 

  The Twitter account is still online after it stopped tweeting to its 183,000 followers early lost March — prior to that it appeared to tweet frequently in Arabic and sometimes in English. The New Khalieej report was the first to reveal that authorities identified Al-Jasser’s online identity using informants in Twitter’s regional office located in Dubai.

  

  And following up on the story, the UK’s highest circulation newspaper Metro late last week published an explosive report that quickly went viral as it cited sources confirming leaked information out of Twitter’s offices in the region led to the arrest of the dissident journalist. 

  According to the Metro report:

  “They got his information from the Twitter office in Dubai. That is how he was arrested,” a source, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Metro.co.uk.

  “Twitter has become insecure for dissidents or critics. Everyone speaks under threat and pressure.”

  “The accounts of Saudi dissidents are spied on. We are not safe using Twitter.”

  The source said Saudi authorities have placed moles inside the American social media giant’s office in Dubai, making all dissident activity on Twitter unsafe amidst an increasing crackdown by Riyadh.

  A former top adviser to the Royal Court, Saud al-Qahtani, recently issued threats to Twitter users, stating a year ago that authorities would seek to uncover fake online names. According to the Metro report, Qahtani said, “Does your nickname protect you from the #blacklist?’ Al-Qahtani wrote online. No. 1. States have a way of knowing the owner of the name. 2 – IP can be identified in many technical ways. 3- The secret I’m not going to say.” This suggests the Saudi “secret” backdoor may have been to have an intelligence presence within the Twitter office itself. 

  The Metro report found further:

  The source also claimed that Saud al-Qahtani, the former adviser to the Royal Court, leads a ‘cyber spy ring’ and has contacts inside the Dubai Twitter office. They allege that a so-called ‘Twitter mole’ handed over information on Al-Jasser, leading to his arrest earlier this year.

  Given the current outrage and media scrutiny of Saudi leaders in the wake of the October 2nd murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it’s surprising that the mainstream media has yet to dig further into the details of Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser’s death.

  The “Kashkool” account (@coluche_ar) — believed to be run by Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser who was “disappeared” and now reported killed — routinely mocked crown prince bin Salman, such as in the below tweet about a state visit by President Sisi of Egypt, who appeared humiliated when MbS failed to observe protocol:

  السيسي صاير ملطشة.
  سفير MBS يطرد السيسي من التشريفات.
  سبحان من خلق الذل والخور في قلب هذا السيسي. pic.twitter.com/IklE7TpmsB

  — كشكول (@coluche_ar) March 8, 2018

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Twitter sought to distance itself from these fresh allegations as al-Jasser’s story went viral last week. A Twitter spokesperson issued the following statement to Metro: 

  “We do not comment on individual cases for privacy and security reasons. Twitter has a well-documented, strong track record of protecting user information and data. We require law enforcement to meet a high legal threshold and to undergo strict process when making information requests to Twitter. As a company, we will always err on the side of protecting the voices of those who use our service.

  The statement failed to mention, however, whether or not the company was conducting an internal investigation focused on its Dubai offices. 

  A Middle East Eye report from last year exposed just how aggressive Saudi authorities have been in attempting to root out anonymous dissenting speech on social media. At that time and since the Saudi authorities had posted messages to official state accounts asking citizens to inform on each other over  “information crimes”.

  

• Former CIA Officer: Brennan And Clapper Should Not Escape Prosecution

  Authored by John Kiriakou via ConsortiumNews.com,

  Recently declassified documents show that the former CIA director and former director of national intelligence approved illegal spying on Congress and then classified their crime. They need to face punishment…

  

  Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa made a dramatic announcement this month that almost nobody in America paid any attention to. Grassley released a statement saying that four years ago, he asked the Intelligence Community Inspector General to release two “Congressional Notifications” written by former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

  Grassley had had his requests to declassify the documents ignored repeatedly throughout the last two years of the Obama administration. He decided to try again because all of the Obama people at the CIA and DNI are gone now. This time, his request was approved.

  So what was the information that was finally declassified? It was written confirmation that John Brennan ordered CIA hackers to intercept the emails of all potential or possible intelligence community whistleblowers who may have been trying to contact the Congressional oversight committees, specifically to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

  Simply put, Brennan ordered his people to hack into the Senate email system—again. Grassley is the longtime chairman of Judiciary Committee, and he was understandably appalled.

  First, let me explain what a Congressional Notification is. The CIA is required by law to inform the Congressional oversight committees whenever one of its officers, agents, or administrators breaks the law, when an operation requires Congressional approval because it is a “covert action” program, or whenever something happens at the CIA that’s potentially controversial and the Agency wants to save itself the embarrassment of explaining itself to Congress later. 

  Brennan apparently ordered his officers to spy on the Senate. Remember, back in 2014 his officers spied on Intelligence Community investigators while they were writing the Senate Torture Report. This time, he decided to inform Congress. 

  But Brennan and Clapper classified the notification. It was like a taunt. “Sure, I’m spying on Congress, which is illegal. But it’s classified, so what are you going to do about it?”

  Grassley went through the proper channels. And even though Brennan and Clapper essentially gave him the middle finger, he didn’t say anything until the documents were finally declassified. He’s a bigger man than I.

  

  John Brennan, left, and James Clapper. (LBJ Library / Flickr)

  I think Grassley missed an opportunity here, though.

  First, it’s my own opinion that John Brennan belongs in prison. He has flouted U.S. national security laws with impunity for years. That’s unacceptable. In these declassified notifications, he’s confessing to hacking into the Senate’s computer system. That’s a violation of a whole host of laws, from illegal use of a government computer to wire fraud to espionage. There ought to be a price to pay for it, especially in light of the fact that Brennan was the leading force behind the prosecutions of eight national security whistleblowers during the Obama administration, almost three times the number of whistleblowers charged under the Espionage Act by all previous presidents combined.

  Second, it’s a crime, a felony, to overclassify government information. Most Americans have no idea that that’s the case. Of course, nobody has ever been charged with it. But it’s a serious problem, and it’s antithetical to transparency.  The CIA Inspector General said of the notifications, “I could see no reason to withhold declassification of these documents. They contained no information that could be construed as sources and methods.” That’s an admission that the notifications were improperly classified in the first place.

  Grassley added,

  “There is a strong public interest in (the notifications’s) content.  I do not believe they need to be classified at all, and they should be released in their entirety.”

  Grassley went so far as to call out Brennan and Clapper by name.

  “What sources or methods would be jeopardized by the declassification of these notifications? After four-and-a-half years of bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper, we finally have the answer: None.”

  So why weren’t they declassified four years ago? Remember, it’s illegal to classify a crime. And it’s illegal to classify something solely for the purpose of preventing embarrassment to the CIA. Yet those were the very reasons for classifying the documents in the first place. It was because Brennan and Clapper think they’re somehow special cases. (Recall that it was Clapper who lied directly to the Senate Intelligence Committee about intercepting the communications of American citizens. He also did that with impunity.) 

  Brennan and Clapper think the law doesn’t apply to them. But it does. Without the rule of law, we have chaos in our country. The law has to apply equally to all Americans. Brennan and Clapper need to learn that lesson the hard way. They broke the law. They ought to be prosecuted for it. 

  

• Hedge Fund CIO: When Investing Is Like Waging War

  Submitted by Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  Warfare

  “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

                – Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 650 BC

  “Out of every one-hundred men you send us, ten shouldn’t even be here, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they the battle make. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”

               – Heraclitus, 500 BC

  “The only easy day was yesterday – Get comfortable being uncomfortable – Don’t run to your death – Have a shared sense of purpose – Move, shoot, communicate – No plan survives first contact with the enemy – All in, all the time.”

               – US Naval Special Ops

  “Capital markets and combat are not turn-based games like chess,” said the Deputy CIO, top decile performer, Marine Force Recon veteran.

  “This means that there’s no such thing as waiting to make a decision, because waiting is a decision,” he continued. “Waiting can frequently be correct near-term, but you need to be intentional about how to use that time – to gather information, prioritizing the data that will have the most significant impact on your probability of a favorable outcome.”

  There’s a vast difference between incomplete and insufficient information. “Defining the threshold for information sufficiency is an art, honed through experience, often indistinguishable from intuition.” Acting with insufficient information imposes an unnecessary risk that will get you killed in combat or cause avoidable losses as an investor.

  “But waiting for complete/perfect information is foolish because it’s an illusion – it’s not possible, because events move in real time.” You cannot fall victim to the zero-defect mentality – the search for perfect information cripples your ability to execute.

  “There are two contrasting philosophies in military science about the best use of reserves; plugging holes or reinforcing success.” The US Marine Corps has decisively adopted the latter. “We don’t apply resources evenly across a front.” Our forces search for gaps.

  “As a battle develops we don’t deploy reserves to areas where we experience the most resistance. We deploy them to the areas where we’re experiencing the most success.” The Germans pioneered this doctrine between WWI and WWII, devastating their neighbors through the lightning of Blitzkrieg.

  “Portfolio rebalancing is an expression of this philosophy. It’s a rules-based process that forces you to do what everyone says they’re trying to do, but few do.” Which is to redeploy resources through selling high and buying low, applying pressure to gaps in the market.

  “The Special Operations community selects and trains with the expectation that we will always be outnumbered but must never be outmanned,” he said. “We only play away games. And we’re expected to win every one.”

  

• Illinois Adjusts Course… Directly Into The Abyss

  Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.com,

  How much closer to Detroit or Puerto Rico must Illinois go before it reforms?

  

  That’s now the central question, and this week we’ve learned we have much further to go. The primary culprits in Illinois’s collapse ran the field – Chicago machine Democrats retained firm control of both houses of the General Assembly and won every statewide office.  Congressional election results were just as dismal.

  Plenty of Republicans share blame. Bruce Rauner was a failure, deeply alienating even his base. The number of genuine Republican reformers who understand Illinois’ problems who are candid enough to speak about them remain few.

  None of that came as a surprise, except the race for Attorney General, and that result is terrifying. Erika Harold was a solid candidate but was trounced by Kwame Raoul. Raoul will present a special obstacle to reform and Illinois’ economy, politicizing law enforcement on behalf of his sponsor, House Speaker Michael Madigan, just like his predecessor. Raul’s race was a straight up test of Illinois’ sanity, and it failed.

  In almost all other races, Illinois voters effectively chose to believe they can “vote themselves money,” as Benjamin Franklin put it, which, he said will “herald the end of the Republic.”

  Their lesson will come, though when remains unclear.

  They chose, more  precisely than ever, the malfeasance and corruption that long ago set the state’s trajectory into the abyss, and offered no indication of what or when would be enough to convince them they’ve reached the bottom. A bottom will come, but when? Something then will arise, but what?

  

  Personally, it’s one of my favorite, historical pictures that haunts the short term but inspires hope for a later day. It shows the first business to reopen in Chicago after the Great Fire, marking the start of a hundred rip roaring years when Chicago was among the most dynamic cities on the planet.

  A similar day, far, far off, is all we can hope for.

  

• When The Guns Fell Silent: Hear The Eerie Quiet That Followed The End Of WWI

  On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, an Armistice was declared that ended what had been, up until that point, the bloodiest conflict in human history. Millions of citizens in the US and Europe greeted the peace – declared 100 years ago on Sunday – with jubilation as it meant the end of four years of brutal trench warfare and mechanized slaughter that killed 16 million had finally come to an end.

  But the impact of the Armistice was especially palpable on the front, where heavy artillery had been firing right up to the minute that peace was declared. In a stunning recording released by the British Imperial War Museum on observance of the anniversary, listeners can hear the guns firing on the American front near the River Moselle one minute before the Armistice was declared – then the stunning silence that followed one minute after.

  As the boom of the guns faded, the silence was punctuated only by chirping birds and a rustling wind.

  After the recording’s release, comments poured in from users on Twitter, many of whom were amazed to learn that the guns had been firing up to the minute the war ended.

  This soundpiece took me completely by surprise. So moving. I never realised the big guns were firing right up to the hour. I can only wonder at what the silence of the ceasefire meant to those in the trenches. This, then silence, then then The Last Post. Imagine. Well done @I_W_M https://t.co/viJ415D0WF

  — Tom Davidson (@TomDavidsonCP) November 7, 2018

  According to Metro, the audio clips were patched together by sound designers Coda to Coda.

  

• Foreign Capital Has Been Propping Up China’s Currency. Here’s What Happens When It Leaves

  By Benn Steil and Benjamin Della Rocca

  

  “I think China’s manipulating their currency, absolutely,” President Trump said back in August. Yet the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) was, and has been, intervening to keep the RMB up, and not to push it down, as Trump was alleging. And we believe such interventions are about to get much larger. Here is why.

  Over the past two years, as our left-hand figure above shows, foreign portfolio investors have piled prodigiously into Chinese assets, helping to support the RMB. But history suggests this trend is about to reverse. While inflows have been rising, Chinese stocks have been tumbling—they are down over 20 percent from their January peak. Dreadful performance like this typically drives funds out of emerging markets. We may be seeing the beginning of such outflows in China.

  Repatriation of liquid foreign capital will make it far more challenging for China to keep its currency up. Of course, China could change course and let it fall, but that risks exacerbating the foreign-debt burden of its highly leveraged corporates. It could raise interest rates, but that would further slow a slowing economy. It could, to keep capital at home, demand higher returns on its foreign lending, but that would mean sacrificing its efforts to subsidize its companies operating abroad, as well those aimed at putting dollars to the service of geostrategic objectives—like Belt and Road.

  In short, then, there is every reason to expect that the PBoC will boost its support for the RMB by selling dollar reserves. This is what it did back in 2015, when a plunging stock market scared away foreign capital.

  So in spite of President’s Trump’s repeated charges that China is manipulating its currency for competitive advantage in trade, all evidence suggests that it will continue to do the opposite. But if China were to sell reserves at the same pace as in 2015, its reserve levels would, by mid-2020, actually fall below the safety threshold implied by the IMF’s framework for reserve adequacy—as shown in the right-hand figure above.

  The prospect of a balance-of-payments crisis, in which China would struggle to pay for imports and service foreign debt (a prospect considered outlandish a decade ago), highlights the urgency with which China must begin addressing the problem of high and rising corporate and local-government debt levels. The PBoC has no easy fix for these problems.

  

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• The 'War Party' Wins The Midterm Elections, Accelerating Transition To A Multipolar World Order

  Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The outcome of the American midterm elections gives us an even more divided country, confirming that the United States is in the midst of a deep crisis within its establishment.

  

  The midterm elections represented a substantial draw for Democrats and Republicans, a defeat for the Trump administration and a clear victory for the “war party” in Washington. The House of Representatives ended up in the hands of the Democrats, who managed to overturn the results of 2016 by winning 26 seats and bringing their majority to 219, with the Republicans with 193 seats. The Republicans, despite the feared “blue wave”, have increased their representation in the Senate, with 51 senators against the 45 of the Democrats. In terms of governors, Republicans remain ahead, with 25 red states against 21 blue. After two years of fake investigations on Russiagate, continuous attacks by the US media (except for the few pro-Trump channels like Fox News), the blue Democratic wave seemed inevitable. Instead, we witnessed a minor repetition of the 2016 elections, with Trump managing to perform above expectations.

  The House of Representatives performs functions mainly related to domestic politics, while the Senate is responsible for confirming important appointments such as those to the Supreme Court. The Democrats holding the majority in the House makes Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign an uphill battle. Trump will need to be able to present to his constituents from 2019 with a series of 2016 promises fulfilled. Getting one’s legislative agenda passed with the House in the hands of one’s opponents is difficult at the best of times. For Trump the task becomes almost impossible.

  For this reason, we are faced with a scenario that delivers the country to the war party, that faction composed of Republicans and Democrats who respond to the interests of specific conglomerates of power and not to the citizens who elected them. The real winners of the midterms appear to be the intelligence agencies, Wall Street and the banks, the ratings agencies, the Fed, the mainstream media, think-tanks, policy-makers, and the military-industrial complex. Donald Trump has come to discover, in his first two years as president, how little autonomy he has in foreign policy, thanks to the warmongering of the US establishment.

  The realist view of foreign policy on which Trump based his election campaign was swept away just a few days after his victory. Hoping to bribe the hawks in Washington, Trump surrounded himself with neoconservatives, who only ended up trying to box him into something that resembles the Washington Consensus, where every attempt at dialogue with opponents is seen as a surrender or sign of weakness.

  Washington and its elites live trapped in a unipolar bubble, still convinced that the United States is the only world power left on the geopolitical chessboard. Even the Pentagon’s military planners have confirmed in two official documents (the Nuclear Posture Review and National Defence Review) how international relations have shifted into a multipolar reality where the United States will have to deal with peer competitors like Russia and China.

  Washington’s neoliberal inner circle views international relations in a very unrealistic and ideologically spoiled manner. This was masterfully explained by Mearsheimer in his latest book, suitably entitled The Great Delusion, where he compares the three most important “isms” of nationalism, liberalism and realism. Those who make up the overwhelming majority of the foreign-policy establishment are convinced that the United States is a benign hegemon that has a moral duty to remake the world in its own image and likeness.

  In the process, bombing a country, destroying its social fabric and killing hundreds of thousands of innocents is justified by this supposedly noble end. This end-justifies-means mentality is behind the overwhelming majority of Washington’s foreign-policy actions. Of course only people who are victims of their own propaganda can really believe that they are acting in the greater good by bringing about so much chaos and destruction. On the contrary, the rest of the world has for decades observed with disgust and dismay the imperialism of a warmongering country committed to consuming the resources of others, vainly hoping, especially since 1990s, that the unipolar moment would be cut short through the counterbalancing effect of other powers. Ultimately, it is not only Russia and China that awaits a multipolar world, but all those countries that do not intend to submit to American diktats over how they conduct their own foreign or domestic policies.

  The outcome of the midterm elections could speed up this process. With the House of Representatives in the hands of the Democrats, Trump will have to abandon his realist foreign policy even more so than he has done over the last two years. The accumulation of foreign-policy concessions is starting to become disturbing. Just think of the enmity towards Iran, fomented by Israel and Saudi Arabia, the main partners of the Trump administration. The same goes for China, with the antagonism fomented by Trump himself to justify the impoverishment of the US middle class who voted in force for him to change this situation. And of course there remains the endemic hatred of Russia, a sworn enemy of the Washington establishment.

  Trump still seems to possess a bit of Mearsheimerian realism in foreign policy. But following his defeat in the House, if he wants to get anything passed, he will need to grant much more of a free hand in foreign policy to the neoliberals, who are chomping at the bit to revive the Bush and Obama foreign policy. Without any concessions from the House, all of Trump’s domestic promises to his constituents will be hobbled.

  The permanent political civil war in the United States seems destined to intensify over the next two years, and the prospect of an even less independent administration in foreign policy will impel the rest of the world to rely less and less on Washington and begin to look elsewhere. Even European countries like France, Germany and Italy seem to have understood that an exclusive alliance with Washington is not beneficial and is in fact destined to fail as a result of of the chaos in US politics. In this context, the events of the past few days are particularly important and certainly worthy of elaboration in a future article. While many Eurasian countries like India, Japan, Turkey, Iran, Russia, China, Afghanistan and Pakistan try to overcome their differences by creating international cooperation frameworks, Washington pushes unnecessarily on the accelerator of disorder. A shining example of what Washington’s decline means can be clearly seen in Korea. Without the direct involvement of the United States, Seoul and Pyongyang seem to be heading towards peaceful reconciliation. Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un interact every day, and the progress made on the DMZ speaks for itself, such as with renewed railway connections. Such an example, reflecting the global model that tends towards resolving problems, represents the basis on which to build bilateral, direct and negotiated solutions between relevant parties.

  Such examples are numerous and concern, for example, the disagreements between India and China, as well as the territorial disputes between Japan and China and Japan and Russia. The goal is always the same: to overcome obstacles that stand in the way of mutual gain. It is a way of approaching international relations that differs from the bipolar past, but above all from the unipolar one where the attention of all international actors has been focused on the interests of Washington above even one’s own.

  The continuing division within the American political class will only accelerate the loss of America’s pre-eminence in the existing the world order. The United States finds itself in the middle of an evident decline, without even a united and compact political front as was the case during the days of Bush and Obama. But with Trump in office, the House in the hands of the Democrats, and the Senate in the hands of Republicans, we are facing a situation that is set to downsize Washington’s role in international affairs.

  There is still an even crazier and more devastating scenario for America’s role in the world. Trump’s impeachment, which can be initiated by the House of Representatives, would significantly add to the chaos in the United States and risk bringing the country to the brink of socio-political collapse. While this scenario is very unlikely, it cannot be totally excluded, especially given the ideological folly of the Washington establishment.

  A Pence presidency would best represent the interests of evangelical conservatives, who are closely linked to Israeli Zionism. For this reason, the impeachment of Trump could find allies in the Republican minority, not to mention the fact that such a move by the Democrats would open the way for the Republicans to win in 2020, stamping the Democrats as spoilers only able to oppose and unable to build anything. Such a possibility cannot be excluded, and with the victory of the war party in the midterms, a President Pence would represent the greatest effort of the American establishment to impose its will on the rest of the world on the basis of “American exceptionalism”.

  Prolonging the unipolar dream seems to be the new goal of the war party, and the reconquest of the House is the first step in this endeavour. Trump can adapt or give battle, but observing how he immediately came to terms after his victory in 2016, it is no surprise that if he stays in charge and tries to win the 2020 election, he will cede foreign policy to the neocons, neoliberals, Zionists and Wahhabis.

  Allies and enemies alike must prepare to withstand the shock waves emanating from the struggle between the elites in Washington, understanding that it is not possible to rely on Trump, let alone the war party, especially when the damage produced by both has negative effects on even allies. Europe, for example, suffers from the blowback of a Middle East and Africa sunk into chaos by the war party, and also suffers economically from the sanctions placed on Russia and Iran.

  What is more, Trump’s economic warfare, using tariffs and sanctions, has only worsened the international financial economic arrangement, accelerating the complete de-dollarization of world economies.

  The midterms were what Washington’s allies and enemies had been waiting for in order to understand the direction of US foreign policy in the next few years. The election results present allies and enemies with an even more divided and chaotic United States, suggesting that it is time for them to stop waiting for Washington. Given that Trump does not control his foreign policy, any attempt to engage in dialogue with him is pointless. The sooner allies and enemies realize this, and act accordingly, the better off they will be.

  Washington and her elite seem too caught up in domestic dynamics to notice that their behaviour is only accelerating the transition to a multipolar world order

  The next two years will settle the question over whether our present reality is already multipolar, or whether the unipolar order remains, with Washington the indispensable nation for friends and enemies alike.

  

• In Almost Every San Francisco Neighborhood, The Average Home Is Worth More Than $1 Million

  As luxury housing markets in New York City, Vancouver and San Francisco show signs of wobbling after nearly nine years of torrid price growth that has already more than compensated for the Bush-era housing collapse, a report by Trulia Analytics offered the latest insight into where some of the most painful retrenchment might occur for home owners and mortgage holders who risk seeing a large chunk of their net worth wiped out (the losses could be particularly painful if Nassim Taleb is right about the next debt crisis beginning in the housing market).

  In the report, Trulia examined which cities among the largest 100 US metro areas saw the largest increases in the number of million dollar homes, as well as the number of neighborhoods where the median home value is one million dollars.

  Unsurprisingly, the markets that saw the largest increases in the number of million-dollar homes were almost exclusively on the West Coast, with Long Island, NY the only east-coast market to crack the top ten. No markets in the midwest or south made the cut.

  But digging deeper into the data, this is possibly the most glaring stat to suggest that last year might have seen a pre-bust run-up equivalent to the rate of home appreciation in 2005 and 2006. Of the 838 million-dollar-neighborhoods currently in the US, more than 105 crossed the threshold in the past year alone. Seven of these were located in San Francisco, joining the 80 neighborhoods in the city that had already shared this designation. These new additions include South of Market, Portola, Ingleside and ever-popular Fisherman’s Wharf neighborhoods. Across SF, only 15 neighborhoods remain with a median home value below $1 million.

  

  While San Francisco has the largest number of million dollar homes and neighborhoods, other California cities are quickly catching up.

  

  Across the US, among the cities and towns that featured at least 10 large neighborhoods (according to Trulia’s methodology), more than eight that saw the largest jump in neighborhoods joining the $1 million club were in coastal California. And the cities with the largest numbers of million dollar homes and neighborhoods were San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, all located within the Bay Area.

  

  But as debt-burdened, home-ownership averse millennials continue to favor urban hubs over the traditional “home in the suburbs”, home valuations in trendy neighborhoods are climbing in many smaller cities. Among the 100 largest cities, three got their first million-dollar neighborhood in the past of year. In Austin, the median home value in Barton Creek increased to $1.02 million in October, up from $935,000 a year ago.

  In other words, while the price tag might look outrageous, this vacant lot in SF is actually a great deal at a cool $15 million.

  

• Are Trump's Anti-Iranian Sanctions-Waivers Strategic Or Signs Of Weakness?

  Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

  The US temporarily waived its anti-Iranian sanctions for a handful of countries and the breakaway Chinese province of Taiwan.

  Some observers interpreted this as a sign of weakness indicating the Trump Administration’s inability to enforce its unilateral sanctions in the face of the emerging Multipolar World Order, but the truth is that these waivers are highly strategic because of the geopolitical goals that they progressively set out to accomplish.

  

  The first is that some of the recipients such as India can’t immediately stop all of their imports of Iranian resources without suffering serious domestic economic damage, which in that country’s context could derail Prime Minister Modi’s reelection bid next year and offset the American-Indian Strategic Partnership if he loses.

  There’s also an interest in rewarding countries like India for decreasing their purchases as much as they realistically could, which incentivizes them to continue with that trend.

  Along a similar vein of pragmatism, the US also wanted to prevent global prices from spiking if it forced the largest consumers of Iranian resources to cut their imports off cold turkey, which the most pro-American ones among them would have probably done if push came to shove. This could have been catastrophic for the Republicans ahead of the recent midterm elections, so it was better for Trump to work with each of the waiver recipients on a bilateral basis as opposed to immediately punishing them.

  Furthermore, this policy could play into his larger plans of pressuring some of them into reaching other sorts of deals with the US, such as China when it comes to the so-called “trade war” and Turkey in the sense of general bilateral relations.

  It’s unclear at this moment whether that ancillary strategy will succeed with either of them, but it nevertheless can’t be discounted that it was part of the US’ motivation in granting them waivers.

  Even in the scenario of those two Great Powers refusing to go along with Washington’s will and instead openly defying America’s anti-Iranian sanctions regime, then that might in and of itself still not be enough to save the Iranian economy if India decides that it’s in its best interests – whether it truly is or not – to comply with the US’ demands just like the other recipients are expected to do. Once again, India is positioning itself as a pivot state whose stance one way or another is becoming crucial to determining the success or failure of unipolar and multipolar initiatives.

  

  And finally, by temporarily withholding the full brunt of its sanctions, the US is giving Iran a few more months to consider whether its independent foreign policy is really worth the impending costs.

  

• Unsafe Military Encounters Are Getting More Frequent

  This week, a U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft flying in international airspace over the Black Sea was intercepted by a Russian fighter jet. The Navy released video footage of the incident, labeling the intercept “unsafe” and “irresponsible”.

  The footage shows the Russian SU-27 turning on its afterburners and banking in front of the U.S. EP-3 Aries, creating vibrations which the crew could feel inside.

  However, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, even though U.S. Navy encounters with the Russians have created headlines in recent years, notably when the USS Ross was buzzed by Russian jets in the Black Sea in 2015, incidents have proven rare in the past two years.

  Dangerous encounters with the Chinese military in the Pacific have become more frequent, however, according to U.S. military statistics published by CNN.

  They reveal that the Navy had 18 unsafe or unprofessional encounters with the Chinese military since 2016. In late September, there was a showdown in the South China Sea between a Chinese destroyer and the USS Decatur. The American vessel was conducting a routine freedom-of-navigation operation at the time and the Chinese warship sailed within 45 yards of it, almost causing a collision.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Over the past two years the Navy experienced 50 unsafe or unprofessional encounters with Iran. There were 36 in 2016, 14 last year and none so far in 2018. That level of contact was due to Iranian naval forces operating in narrow stretches of water such as the Strait of Hormuz, making close contact occur frequently.

  

• Doug Casey: How To Survive The Deep State

  Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

  Almost everyone looks for a political solution to problems. However, once a Deep State situation has taken over, only a revolution or a dictatorship can turn it around, and probably only in a small country.

  

  Maybe you’re thinking you should get behind somebody like Ron Paul (I didn’t say Rand Paul), should such a person materialize. That would be futile.

  Here’s what would happen in the totally impossible scenario that this person was elected and tried to act like a Lee Kuan Yew or an Augusto Pinochet against the Deep State:

  • First, there would be a “sit-down” with the top dogs of the Praetorian agencies and a bunch of Pentagon officers to explain the way things work.

  • Then, should he survive, he would be impeached by the running dogs of Congress.

  • Then, should he survive, whipped dog Americans would revolt at the prospect of having their doggy dishes broken.

  Remember, your fellow Americans not only elected Obama, but re-elected him. Do you expect they’ll be more rational as the Greater Depression deepens? Maybe you think the police and the military will somehow help. Forget it…they’re part of the problem. They’re here to protect and serve their colleagues first, then their employer (the State), and only then the public. But the whipped dog likes to parrot: “Thank you for your service.” Which is further proof that there’s no hope.

  So what should you do, based on all this? For one thing, don’t waste your time and money trying to change the course of history. Trying to stop the little snowball rolling down the mountainside might have worked many decades ago, but now it’s turned into a gigantic avalanche that’s going to smash the village at the bottom of the valley. I suggest you get out of the way.

  What, you may ask, would I do if I were dictator of the U.S. and had absolutely no regard for my personal safety? Here’s a seven-part program, for entertainment purposes only:

  1. Allow the collapse of all zombie corporations – banks, brokers, insurers, and government contractors. The real wealth they supposedly own will still exist.

  2. Abolish all regulatory agencies. Although Boobus americanus believes they exist to protect him, and that may have been an intention when they were created, they, at best, serve the industries they regulate. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for instance, kills more Americans every year than does the Department of Defense in a typical decade. The SEC, the Swindlers Encouragement Consortium, lulls the average investor into thinking he’s protected. They, and other agencies, extract scores of billions out of the economy to feed useless mouths in return for throwing sand in the gears of the economy.

  3. Abolish the Fed…you need a strong currency to encourage saving. Actually, you don’t need a currency at all. Gold is vastly better as money.

  4. Cut the size of the military by 90% and abolish the Praetorian agencies. In addition to bankrupting the U.S., the military is now a huge domestic danger, even while it’s mainly an instrument for creating enemies abroad.

  5. Sell essentially all U.S. government assets. Although some actually have value, they are all a drain on the economy. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service loses $5 billion a year; Amtrak loses another billion or so per year. The Interstate Highway System, airports and the air-traffic-control system, the 650 million acres of U.S. government land, and many thousands of other assets should all be distributed in shares or sold. This would liberate an immense amount of dead capital. The proceeds could be used to partially satisfy some government obligations.

  6. Eliminate the income tax, as a start, which will be possible if the other six things are done. The economy would boom.

  7. Default on the national debt and contingent liabilities. That’s somewhere between $21 trillion and $200 trillion. There are at least three reasons for that. First is to avoid turning future generations into serfs. Second is to punish those who have enabled the State by lending it money. Third is to make it impossible for the State to borrow in the future, at least for a while.

  I like this program from a practical point of view, because when a structure is about to collapse, it’s much wiser to conduct a controlled demolition than to just let it fall when no one expects it.

  But I also like it from a philosophical point of view because, as Nietzsche observed, that which is falling deserves to be pushed.

  There are, however, two very important reasons for optimism: science and savings.

  Science: Science and technology are the mainsprings of progress, and there are more scientists and engineers alive today than have lived in all previous history put together. Unfortunately for Western civilization however, most of them are Asians. Most American PhDs aren’t in Rocket Science but Political Science, or maybe Gender Studies. Nonetheless, the advancement of science offers some reason to believe that not only is all this gloom and doom poppycock, but that the future will not only be better than you imagine, but, hopefully, better than you canimagine.

  Savings: Things can recover quickly because technology and skills don’t vanish overnight. Everybody but university economists knows that if you want to avoid starving to death, you have to produce more than you consume and save the difference. The problem is twofold, however. Most Americans have no savings. To the contrary, they have lots of debt. And debt means you’re either consuming someone else’s savings or mortgaging your own future.

  Worse, science today is capital intensive. With no capital, you’ve got no science. Worse yet, if the U.S. actually destroys the dollar, it will wipe out the capital of prudent savers and reward society’s grasshoppers. Until they starve.

  Of course, as Adam Smith said, there’s a lot of ruin in a nation. It took Rome several centuries to collapse. And look at how quickly China recovered from decades of truly criminal mismanagement.

  On the other hand, Americans love their military, and this heavily armed version of the post office seems like the only part of the government that works, kind of. So maybe the U.S. will start something like World War III. Then, the whole world can see a real-life zombie apocalypse. Talk about free entertainment…

  Action

  But let’s return to the real world. What should you do? And how will this all end?

  From a personal standpoint, you should preserve capital by owning significant assets outside your native country, because as severe as market risks are, your political risks are much greater.

  1. I suggest foreign real estate in a country where you’re viewed as an investor to be courted, rather than a milk cow. Or maybe a beef cow.

  2. Gold. It’s no longer at giveaway prices, but remains the only financial asset that’s not someone else’s liability.

  3. Look for depressed speculations. At the moment, my favorites are resource companies, which are down more than 90% as a group. And look to go long on commodities in general. Soybeans, wheat, corn, sugar, coffee, copper, and silver are historically undervalued.

  4. Short bubbles that are about to burst, like bonds in general, and Japanese bonds denominated in yen, in particular. If you have a collectible car from the ‘60s that you hold as a financial asset, hit the bid tomorrow morning. Same if you have expensive property in London, New York, Sydney, Auckland, Hong Kong, or Shanghai, among other places.

  The Second Law to the Rescue

  From a macro standpoint, don’t worry too much. The planet has been here for 4.5 billion years and it has a life of its own. You don’t have to do anything to save the world. Instead, rely on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

  There are very few laws I believe in, but this is one of them. There are many ways of stating the law, and its corollaries, but this isn’t an essay on physics. In essence, it states that all systems wind down over time. Entropy conquers all. That all systems collapse without constant new inputs of energy. And that the larger and more complex a system becomes, the more energy it requires. The Second Law is why nothing lasts forever.

  In human affairs, you can say stupidity is a corollary to the Second Law, in that it throws sand in the gears of society and accelerates the tendency of things to collapse. But stupidity doesn’t always mean low intelligence…most of the destructive sociopaths acting as top dogs have very high IQs. I want to draw your attention to more useful definitions of stupidity.

  One definition of stupidity is an inability to predict not just the immediate and direct consequences of an action (which a typical six-year-old can do) but also to fail to predict the indirect and delayed consequences.

  An even more helpful definition is: Stupidity is an unwitting tendency towards self-destruction. It’s why operations run by bad people always go bad. And why, since the Deep State is run by bad people – the sociopaths who are actively drawn to it – it will necessarily collapse.

  The Second Law not only assures that the Deep State will collapse but, given enough time, that all “End of the World” predictions will eventually be right, up to the heat death of the universe itself. It applies to all things at all levels…including, unfortunately, Western civilization and the idea of America. As for Western civilization, it’s had a fantastic run. Claims of the politically correct and multiculturalists aside, it’s really the only civilization that amounts to a hill of beans.

  Now, it’s even riskier calling a top in a civilization than the top of a stock or bond market. But I’d say Western civilization peaked just before World War I. In the future, it will be a prestige item for Chinese families to have European maids and houseboys.

  As for America, it was an idea – and a very good one – but it’s already vanished, replaced by the United States, which is just one of 200 other nation-states covering the face of the Earth like a skin disease. That said, the U.S. peaked in the mid ’50s and has gone down decisively since 1971. It’s living on stored momentum, memories, and borrowed Chinese money.

  Let me bring this gloomy Spenglerian view of the world to a close with some happy thoughts. You want to leave them laughing. Not everybody went down with the Titanic.

  Looking further at the bright side: Just being born in America in the 20th century amounted to winning the cosmic lottery…an accident of birth could have placed us in Guinea or Zimbabwe. On the other hand, if I wanted to make a fortune in today’s world, I’d definitely head to Africa.

  But just as the Second Law dictates that all good things, like America, must come to an end, so must all bad things, like the Deep State in particular. That’s a cosmic certainty. We all love the idea of justice, even if most people neither understand what it is, nor like its reality.

  Finally, it occurs to me that, while I hope I’ve explained why the Second Law will vanquish the Deep State, I’ve neglected to explain how whipped dogs can profit from the collapse of Western civilization.

  The answer is that they can’t.

  Fortunately, parasites can only exist as long as their host. Which is actually a final piece of good news I want to leave you with…

  The socialists are rising in the US, and they are hungry to take the product of your labor and use it to augment their stupidity (the unwitting tendency to self-destruction). Now would be a great time to start looking for a bolt hole – a place that you own that is elsewhere. To learn more, read our free PDF on foreign real estate.

  

• Visualizing The World's 10 Largest Economies By GDP (1960-Today)

  Just weeks ago, Visual Capitalist showed you a colorful visualization that breaks down the $80 trillion global economy.

  While such a view provides useful context on the relative size of national economies, it’s also a static snapshot that doesn’t show any movement over time. In other words, we can see the size of any given economy today, but not how it got there.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, today’s animation comes to us from Jaime Albella and it charts how GDP has changed over the last 57 years for the world’s 10 largest economies.

  It provides us with a lens through time, that helps show the rapid ascent of certain countries and the stagnation of others – and while there are many noteworthy changes that occur in the animation, the two most noticeable ones have been described as “economic miracles”.

  Vídeo buenísimo de evolución de PIB mundiales. @dlacalle @Feelcapital @finect @comunidadfinan @david_cano_m pic.twitter.com/ldH632YBMd

  — Jaime Albella (@Jalbella) October 31, 2018

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  JAPAN’S ECONOMIC MIRACLE

  You may have heard of the “Japanese economic miracle”, a term that is used to describe the record-setting GDP growth in Japan between the end of World War II and the end of the Cold War.

  Well, the above animation shows this event better than pretty much anything else.

  In 1960, Japan had an economy that was only 10% of the size of the United States. But in just a decade, Japan would see sustained real GDP growth – often in the double digits each year – that allowed the country to rocket past both the United Kingdom and France to become the world’s second-largest economy.

  It would hold this title consecutively between 1972 and 2010, until it was supplanted by another Asian economic miracle.

  ECONOMIC MIRACLE, PART DEUX

  The other rapid ascent in this animation that can be obviously seen is that of China.

  

  Despite falling off the top 10 list completely by 1980, new economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s helped pave the way to the massive economy in China we know today, including the lifting of hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty.

  By 1993, China was once again one of the world’s largest economies, just squeezing onto the above list.

  By 2010 – just 17 years later – the country had surpassed titans like the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and even Japan to secure the second spot on the list, which it continues to hold today in nominal terms.

  

  

• Two Huge Events For The Pot Industry Happened Last Week: Here's What They Mean For Pot Stocks

  Two huge bullish events for the marijuana industry happened in just the last several days: 3 out of 4 US states passed marijuana legalization & cannabis opponent Jeff Sessions resigned as AG.

  What does this mean for the marijuana market and stocks ahead? DataTrek’s Jessica Rabe explains:

  Three out of four ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana in some form passed in the US midterms this week. Michigan approved recreational marijuana, while Utah and Missouri voted in favor of medical marijuana; each proposal received +53-66% of voter support. Sixty percent of residents in North Dakota voted against legalizing retail cannabis use, however. Here’s where they all stand:

  • Recreational marijuana: Michigan residents voted in favor of legalizing retail cannabis use and sales, making it the first Midwestern state and tenth US state to do so. Now one in five states allow recreational marijuana use, and a quarter of Americans (nearly 80 million people) live in a state where they can smoke or consume the drug if they’re of age.
    • How this will work: Recreational marijuana will be legal in Michigan ten days after the election results are certified, which could take a few weeks. That said, adults aged 21 and older living in Michigan will eventually be able buy, possess and use marijuana for recreational purposes. They will also be allowed to grow up to 12 plants in their home for personal use.
    • Sales won’t likely happen for a year as the state government needs to establish regulations and issue recreational licenses, although it has a head start since medical cannabis is already legal there. Once all that happens, retail sales of marijuana and edibles will be subject to a 10% excise tax that will go towards implementation costs, clinical trials, roads, schools, and general municipal expenses where marijuana businesses are located.
    • Lastly, although North Dakota rejected recreational use of marijuana, it still allows medical cannabis.
  • Medical marijuana: 33 states now allow medical cannabis after Utah and Missouri approved their measures to do so yesterday. Utah will let patients with certain conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, cancer and HIV get medical marijuana cards.
    • Out of 3 ballot initiatives that would legalize medical marijuana use in Missouri, voters chose Amendment 2. This measure will impose a 4% tax on sales of medical marijuana, which will pay for the program as well as help fund the state’s veterans commission.
  • Other election progress for marijuana: Chairman of the House Rules Committee Pete Sessions (Republican congressman from Texas) was defeated by Democrat Colin Allred. Sessions has blocked many federal amendments to protect legal marijuana at the state level, even those meant to allow VA doctors to recommend medical marijuana to veterans in states where it is legal. Allred, by contrast, criticized Sessions for this stance over the summer.
    • In addition, earlier this year Vermont’s legislature passed recreational use and residents in Oklahoma approved medical use. There are also other states going forward that could pass recreational use through the legislature, such as New Jersey and New York.
    • In New Jersey, the State Senate President and State Assembly Speaker said the legislature will vote on legalizing recreational marijuana by the end of this year. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo put together a workgroup to draft legislation for a regulated adult-use marijuana program in August. Given that the state legislature would need to pass the proposal, it should help that Democrats just won a majority in the New York State Senate. Especially since Governor Cuomo was re-elected and Democrats also have a majority in the state Assembly.

  Arguably the biggest news of all on the marijuana front actually came with Attorney General Jeff Sessions submitting his resignation. He is a staunch opponent of marijuana and rescinded important memos put in place under the Obama administration to not interfere with legal states so that marijuana businesses could have banking access if they followed certain rules. This move caused a lot of concern and uncertainty for an already cautious industry. While pot stocks gave up their early gains from the election results, they rallied right after this news into the close on the Sessions news: Canopy Growth (+8.17%), Tilray (+30.64%), Cronos Group (+8.40%), Aurora Cannabis (+9.19%) and Aphria (+3.93%). Who knows who will permanently replace Jeff Sessions, but few are more against the drug than him.

  Bottom line, momentum on marijuana legalization continues to strengthen, especially with support from two-thirds of Americans which is the highest ever recorded according to Gallup. Every state that legalizes adult use of marijuana is one more step towards national legalization, something many investors have been waiting for given their caution as the drug is still illegal federally. Jeff Sessions out is another cherry on top of the sundae.

  

• Democratic Lawyers Object To 'Non-Citizen' Florida Ballot Being Thrown Out

  If there’s one overriding lesson to be learned from the ballot-counting debacle in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, it’s that, if you’re trying to ensure an accurate vote count in Florida, then you’re a racist.

  That theme, which Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz learned this lesson the hard way when a liberal group employed the r-word in response to Gaetz’s attempts to figure out exactly what is going on in Broward County.

  And soon, trying to exclude votes cast by non-citizens could be construed as racist, because, in a shocking report culled directly from an unofficial transcript from the review of provisional ballots in Broward County, lawyers for Democratic candidates Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson – who narrowly lost their bids for governor and senator, respectively – can be heard trying to stop a ballot cast by a non-citizen from being excluded from the official count. The ballot review was held earlier this week, before Florida’s Secretary of State ordered the recount on Saturday.

  Michael Barnett, the chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party, vouched for the validity of the transcript to the Federalist, which published the report.

  

  Barnett told The Federalist that several Republican lawyers overheard the discussion during a back and forth between the canvassing board and attorney’s from the Gillum and Nelson campaigns.

  “I would think this is something we could all agree on – that non-citizens shouldn’t vote, but evidently that’s not the case with Democrats,” Barnett said.

  “It’s really sad that we are having to deal with this in a close election. It just goes to show the depths they will go to in order to win.”

  The ballots were being reviewed after Broward County’s results showed significantly fewer votes than other races on the ballot, 25,000 to be exact. Election officials scrambled to add early in-person votes – including a “mystery” truckload of ballots – that, as fate would have it, increased the totals for Democrats.

  

  Barnett said that Republicans are closely monitoring the recount as the canvassing boards review the ballots. “We want to make sure the Democrats don’t steal this election.”

  Meanwhile, Gillum, who conceded to his Republican opponent Ron DeSantis on Tuesday night, has decided to withdraw his concession and fight to “count every vote.”

  I am replacing my earlier concession with an unapologetic and uncompromised call to count every vote.

  — Andrew Gillum (@AndrewGillum) November 10, 2018

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• The Drug Catastrophe In Afghanistan

  Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  On November 5 yet another US soldier was killed by a member of Afghanistan’s military forces, as the country continues to be wracked by violence in its seventeenth year of war.

  

  Donald Rumsfeld was US Secretary for Defence from 2001 to 2006 under President George W Bush. They, along with other psychotic figures such as Vice-President Dick Cheney, were responsible for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and their legacy is apparent in many spheres, one of which is the drug production bonanza in Afghanistan.

  In August 2004 NBC News reported Secretary Rumsfeld as declaring “The danger a large drug trade poses in Afghanistan is too serious to ignore. The inevitable result is to corrupt the government and way of life, and that would be most unfortunate.”

  He issued the warning that: “It is increasingly clear to the international community that to address the drug problem here is important for the people of Afghanistan.”

  Rumsfeld, for once during his catastrophic years as chief war-maker, was absolutely right, and his pronouncement about likely danger and impending corruption was spot on. The US invasion and subsequent operations led to Afghanistan becoming the fourth most dangerous and fourth most corrupt country in the world.

  The “drug problem” to which he referred has expanded rapidly over the years. It is destroying Afghanistan. It is a main reason for the place being ungovernable.

  It’s all very well to blame Afghans for growing poppies and producing opium and heroin, but what they are doing is meeting international demand. After all, there would be no drug industry in Afghanistan if there wasn’t a welcoming market in the drug-loving prosperous West — although it has to be noted that only about four per cent of its massive narcotics production ends up in the US, which gets most of its heroin from South America.

  Mr John Sopko, the US Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), has just produced his latest quarterly report for the US Congress in which he observes that “From 2002 through September 2018, the United States has committed an average of more than $1.5 million a day to help the Afghan government combat narcotics. Despite this, 2017 poppy cultivation is more than four times that reported by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime for 2002, the first full year of US intervention in Afghanistan,” so there is small wonder that the country is “the largest source of street heroin in Europe and Canada.”

  Mr Sopko observed that efforts to combat drugs “have cost US taxpayers more than $8 billion since 2002, yet Afghanistan’s opium crisis is worse than ever,” and the increase in the area and quantity of poppy cultivation has been impressive and depressing.

  Washington is well aware of the shattering effects of Afghan drug production, but the SIGAR writes that “counternarcotics seems to have fallen completely off the US agenda. The State Department’s new ‘Integrated Country Strategy’ for Afghanistan no longer includes counternarcotics as a priority, but instead subsumes the issue into general operations. Meanwhile, the US military says it has no counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan, and USAID says it will not plan, design, or implement new programs to address opium-poppy cultivation.”

  It is amazing that “The US military says it has no counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan.”

  What happened to the campaign against drug processing that began in November 2017 when “US and Afghan forces launched a series of attacks on narcotics laboratories in southern Afghanistan”?

  The massive aerial bombardment of ten drug-processing laboratories included strikes by some Afghan air force Tucano aircraft, but the main assault was by the US Air Force which for the first time in Afghanistan used its F-22 Raptor aircraft, flown from the United Arab Emirates. B-52 strategic nuclear bombers based in Qatar attacked targets, and F-16s joined in from the Bagram base near Kabul. The operation also involved KC-10 and KC-135 refuellers, every surveillance means that could be deployed, and command and control aircraft. This was a major — and very expensive — operation.

  The commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, US General John Nicholson, told a news conference “We hit the labs where they turned poppy into heroin. We hit their storage facilities where they kept their final products, where they stockpiled their money and their command and control.” Not only that, but “The strikes that were prosecuted last night will continue… This is going to be steady pressure that’s going to stay up and we are not going to let up.” He said “the Drug Enforcement Administration estimates there are 400 to 500 opium laboratories across Afghanistan”. So after that first attack in November 2017 there were ten down and about 400 to go.

  But SIGAR tells us in October 2018 that “the US military says it has no counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan.” Why?

  There is nobody better placed to explain this than Mr Sopko, who had already observed that the Pentagon’s airstrike campaign against drug laboratories might not have the intended effect, as its “longer-term impact on narcotics remains uncertain.” Not only this, but “there is also the risk that air strikes could result in civilian deaths, alienate rural populations, and strengthen the insurgency.”

  He was right on the button, because, as reported by The Washington Post, in January to June 2018 the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan “documented 353 civilian casualties, including 149 deaths, from airstrikes, a 52 percent increase from the same period in 2017.”

  There is no doubt that these casualties alienate the rural population, given the example of one strike in July 2018 when the New York Times wrote that “Fourteen members of a family, including three small children, were killed when an American airstrike destroyed their home, several Afghan officials confirmed on [July 20]. In what has become a familiar litany, particularly in Taliban-dominated Kunduz Province, Afghan and American officials had initially denied that any civilians had been killed in the strike . . . claiming the victims were Taliban fighters. Then 11 bodies belonging to women and children appeared at the hospital in Kunduz City, about four miles from the site of the attack in Chardara District. The Taliban do not have women fighters and the children were very young.”

  Time after time the US-NATO and Afghan authorities “initially deny” that there have been civilian deaths or casualties caused by airstrikes and are then found to be disguising the truth because there can be no denial of facts when shrapnel-ridden bodies of little children are laid out on the ground. Such absurd statements play right into the hands of the militants and, in the predictive words of the SIGAR, “strengthen the insurgency.”

  This might explain why the massive and much-publicised air campaign against opium-processing facilities has been abandoned. But what happens now?

  The US State Department and the Pentagon were told by experts that the narcotics problem was immense. For example, in a speech at Georgetown University in 2014 the SIGAR said:

  “By every conceivable metric, we’ve failed. Production and cultivation are up, interdiction and eradication are down, financial support to the insurgency is up, and addiction and abuse are at unprecedented levels in Afghanistan.”

  Nothing has changed since then. The 2017 aerial blitz failed utterly, as have so many plans and operations to attempt to reduce narcotics production, and the US-NATO military alliance in Afghanistan continues to flounder in a quagmire of insurgency. The drug catastrophe is plain for all to see, and after seventeen years of war and expenditure of eight billion dollars the illegal narcotics industry is thriving.

  Can this be indicative of the general level of competence of the US Department of State and the Pentagon? Can they get anything right?

  

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• Why The U.S. Military Is Woefully Unprepared For A Major Conventional Conflict

  Via Southfront.org,

  Written and produced by SF Team: Brian Kalman, Daniel Deiss, Edwin Watson

  Introduction

  In the Department of Defense authored summary of the National Defense Strategy of the United States for 2018, Secretary James Mattis quite succinctly sets out the challenges and goals of the U.S. military in the immediate future. Importantly, he acknowledges that the U.S. had become far too focused on counter-insurgency over the past two decades, but he seems to miss the causation of this mission in the first place. U.S. foreign policy, and its reliance on military intervention to solve all perceived problems, regime change and imperialist adventurism, resulted in the need to occupy nations, or destroy them. This leads to the growth of insurgencies, and the strengthening of long simmering religious radicalism and anti-western sentiment in the Middle East and Central Asia. The U.S. military willfully threw itself headlong into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  The United States engaged in unnecessary wars, and when these wars were easily won on the immediate battlefield, the unplanned for occupations lead to guerilla insurgencies that were not so easy for a conventional military to confront. The U.S. Army was not prepared for guerilla warfare in urban areas, nor for the brutal and immoral tactics that their new enemies were willing to engage in. They obviously had not reflected upon the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, nor the nature of their new enemies. As casualties mounted due to roadside IEDs, snipers, and suicide bombers hidden amongst civilians, the U.S. military and the defense industry were forced to find ways to protect soldiers and make vehicle less vulnerable to these types of attacks. This resulted in vehicles of every description being armored and new IED resistant vehicles being designed and fielded in large numbers. This in turn, equated to a vast amount of time, effort and money. It also focused both the U.S. military services and the defense industry away from fighting conventional wars against peer adversaries.

  After a decade of fighting an insurgency in Afghanistan and almost as long in Iraq, the U.S. leadership decided to destroy the sovereign nation of Libya, and foment a war in Syria immediately afterward. There is no doubt with the knowledge of historic events today, that the CIA and State Department facilitated a foreign invasion of Syria of Islamist radicals. They funded and armed these groups, provided clandestine training, and facilitated the logistical movement of fighters and weapons into a sovereign nation to cause its disintegration. In these two examples they decided not to occupy these countries, but to destroy all semblance of ordered society and replace it with brutally violent chaos. The U.S. political and military leadership seems to have learned that their past adventurism resulted in costly occupations, yet instead of refraining from using the military option as a tool to alter geopolitical realities they did not like, they merely opted to abandon the responsibility of occupation and reconstruction all together.

  

  Benghazi, Libya. An example of democratic progress and stability in North Africa courtesy of U.S. led “humanitarian intervention”.

  While Secretary Mattis describes the “near peer” nations China and Russia as “revisionist powers”, it was not these nations that made the irresponsible and reckless decisions that have weakened the U.S. military establishment, nor aim to revise the ill-conceived and executed catastrophes of their American “peers”. They have reached a state of military and technological parity with, and in many cases a position of superiority vis a vis the United States, because they exercised better judgement over the past two decades, invested their time, talent and treasure in developing powerful conventional and nuclear forces, and refrained from using their national defense assets to punish their perceived adversaries in such a way that more damage was caused to themselves. In many ways, the poor example of the United States and its ill-conceived military expeditions, influenced both Russia and China to advance along different paths. Now, without recognizing and acknowledging the failures of leadership and decision making that have lead the U.S. military to a weakened state, the United States has declared that it is now in a period of strategic competition with the two other strongest kids on the block.

  In order to understand how Secretary Mattis has come to such a declaration, we have to look at the U.S. military decisions, actions, mistakes, and failures of leadership at the highest levels that have brought us to this point. A brief analysis of the resultant metamorphosis of the United States military from a robust and balanced conventional fighting force, backed up by a viable nuclear deterrent into a force obsessed with occupation and counterinsurgency must be conducted. This must be followed by a study of how the U.S. military has decided to invest its extensive funding, the weapons systems it has pursued, and how it envisions that it is best suited to protect the national security interests of the state. Finally, a comparison must be conducted of the capabilities of its declared strategic adversaries. A conclusion can then be made regarding the ability of the United States military to successfully engage and defeat these adversaries in a future conflict.

  Imperial Expansion, Regime Change and Occupation

  When the Soviet Union dissolved in December of 1991, a global power vacuum was immediately created. Regardless of the many assurances given to the Gorbachev government (which were finally revealed in the December 2017 National Security Archive releases of official NATO correspondence) that NATO would not expand and that the former Soviet federated states would be included in the established European economic and security apparatus, the United States immediately embarked on a policy of NATO expansion and economic exploitation of post-Soviet territories.

  Just scant months earlier, the United States deployed military forces to Saudi Arabia as the backbone of an international coalition to confront and reverse the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This resulted in Operation Desert Shield, the greatest deployment of combined military forces on the part of the U.S. military since the Vietnam War. By January of 1991, not even a month since the U.S.S.R. ceased to be, Operation Desert Shield transitioned to Operation Desert Storm, with the invasion of Iraq and Kuwait. The conventional military power utilized by the U.S. was greatly effective, and most combat systems worked extremely well on the battlefield. Air superiority was soon absolute, as the Iraqi Air Force largely left the skies uncontested. The great success of Operation Desert Storm largely gave the military planners of the Pentagon a false sense of superiority, which as we shall see, led to a number of wrong assumptions and poor decisions being made regarding the future development and transformation of the U.S. military.

  

  M1A2 Abrams tank platoon advancing during Operation Desert Storm. The armored combat vehicles of the U.S. Army proved very effective against a far inferior opponent in this conflict, yet they proved capable and reliable. Logistical requirements; however, did prove to be a challenge.

  The first post-Cold War military “humanitarian intervention” conducted by the U.S. was the Yugoslavian civil conflict interdiction of 1995. Predicated upon escalating ethnic atrocities, the NATO intervention was actually designed to make the fracturing of the former Yugoslavian Republic permanent, and to establish a number of pro-NATO, or pro-U.S.-Atlantic establishment nations on the Balkan periphery of Russia. Slovenia became a NATO member state in 2004, followed by Croatia in 2009, and then Montenegro in 2017. At the same time that a civil war was raging in the former Republic of Yugoslavia, the U.S. and its Gulf State allies fomented and aided Islamic insurgencies in the Caucasus Republics of the newly comprised Russian Federation in an attempt to further weaken and encircle it. At the conclusion of U.S. intervention in the Balkans, which included the deployment of U.S. ground forces as part of multiple NATO-led operations including Operation Joint Endeavor, Operation Joint Guard and Joint Forge in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Kosovo Force (KFOR), the United States would de facto create the statelet of Kosovo. As many as 43,000 NATO troops were serving as part of these operations at any given time between 1995 and 2002.

  

  U.S. Camp Bondsteel in the U.S. sponsored protectorate of Kosovo located in southwestern Serbia. The intervention in Kosovo had nothing to do with humanitarian concerns as usual, but in establishing a permanent military foothold in the Balkans.

  As I have described and explained in an earlier analysis entitled “U.S. Army Armored Vehicle Developments in the 21st Century; The Future Combat System gives way to Mobile Protected Firepower”, although the U.S. military leadership was pleased with the performance of its legacy armored vehicles and weapons systems in both Operation Desert Storm and its Operation Joint Endeavor, it was not satisfied with the amount of time required to deploy large combined Arms units via available sealift and airlift capacity. The complex logistics involved in mobilizing and moving heavy armored units does not lend well to rapid deployments, especially over significant distances. Even pre-deployment of heavy armored equipment, either in host countries or loaded in sealift vessels kept on stand-by at forward deployed bases (such as Diego Garcia) or berthed at major seaports of the continental United States, present a whole host of logistical challenges.

  The desire to streamline U.S. military logistics, and to create a fighting force that was more rapidly deployable, flexible and yet maintained the highest levels of lethality, and that leveraged advanced information technologies and communications systems led to the genesis of the Future Combat System (FCS). Embracing the FCS concept, the Army set very high deployment goals, which would prove to be unattainable. General Eric Shinseki, then Chief of Staff of the Army, stated that the Army would strive to attain the ability to deploy a combat brigade anywhere in the world within 96 hours, a full division within 120 hours, and no less than five divisions in 30 days. Then Secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was a vocal supporter of the FCS concept. The U.S. Army would eventually pursue the FCS program, the largest defense acquisition program in U.S. military history with a price tag of approximately $200 billion USD. The program was eventually cancelled in 2009, yet its influence in transforming the U.S. Army have proven substantial, and have had a negative influence on the Army’s ability to fight near peer adversaries in today’s warfighting environment.

  The United States military would become a force for invasion and occupation during the Neo-Con era spanning from 2000 to the present. BY 2003, the U.S. was once again invading Iraqi territory, this time during Operation Iraqi Freedom. By this time the U.S. Army had partially realized some aspects of FCS, mainly in the area of rapidly deploying combat ready forces of the Brigade size. Operation Iraqi Freedom was envisioned as a rapid invasion utilizing highly mobile, self-contained, combined-arms combat teams supported by overwhelming airpower. The Iraqi military was far weaker in 2003 than it had been in 1991. It was a shadow of its former self and had been repeatedly targeted over the intervening decade, especially its air-defense and command and control networks. A combined ground force of approximately 148,000 men was deployed and ready for offensive operations in approximately a month and a half. Ground operations of the invasion lasted from March 20th until May 1st, 2003. The initial victory was impressive, but it soon became quite obvious that there was no realistic and pragmatic plan to occupy the country and render aid to a stable and capable new government.

  What followed was a time of crisis for the U.S. military. When the U.S. soldiers were not greeted as liberators, and a number of organized and ruthless anti-occupation insurgencies formed, some motivated my patriotism, some my tribal and religious factions, and still others by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, the soldiers tasked with the occupation of Iraq were woefully unprepared for the task asked of them. U.S. troops deployed to a nation whose minimal civil infrastructure they had just destroyed, were tasked with reconstruction and nation building in a country producing a growing anti-occupation insurgency on many different levels. Convoys and patrols were increasingly the targets of ambushes by insurgents operating along key roadways and within urban centers. Light vehicles and military transports were targeted and destroyed in significant numbers, and the crews had no protection from weapons ranging from small arms and RPGs to extremely powerful improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

  The Bush administration at the time, who had claimed that the U.S. troops would be widely embraced as liberators, began to scramble for ways to reduce the mounting U.S. casualties. The answer was to add armored protection to all existing vehicles, whether they be HMMWVs, or the LMTVs and HEMMTs of the logistics units. Adding armor to logistical support vehicles not meant to see front line combat greatly reduced their fuel efficiency (of great importance in the logistics arm) and was only accomplished at great cost. The U.S. Army only had one armored security vehicle in active service at this time, the M1117, albeit in small numbers. The decision was made to armor the ubiquitous HMMWV and to give it the tasks of armored patrol, internal security and crowd control vehicle. The HMMWV was designed and used quite effectively as a light utility vehicle and had always performed well in such a role; however, it was never intended for the roles it was called upon to perform after 2003.

  An Obsession with MRAPs

  A number of different armor packages were developed for the HMMWV, mainly to increase the likelihood of crew survivability. The armored Hummer was merely a stopgap until purpose-built armored vehicles could be developed and fielded in greater numbers. Although effective against high caliber small arms, shrapnel and mines, the M1117 was fielded in very limited numbers in 2003 with military police units, mostly in security duties on U.S. military installations. Large orders of the vehicle were placed after the 2003 Iraq invasion, and the number grew from approximately 50 to over 1,800 units in active service.

  

  M1117 at the head of a column of HMMWVs and an LMTV halted along a road in Iraq sometime after the 2003 invasion.

  The U.S. military enlisted the help of both the U.S. and international defense industry to produce an armored vehicle that could better serve the needs of an army now faced with occupying not only one rebellious nation, but two. Between 2003 and 2007, the U.S. military would suffer increasing casualties in both the Iraq and Afghanistan theatres of occupation. In the case of Afghanistan, casualties would continue to increase until 2010 before decreasing over consecutive years. Most of these casualties were the result of ambushes with IEDs. Such attacks increased six fold from 2003 to 2007.

  The DOD would award billions of dollars in contracts for Mine Resistant Ambushed Protected vehicles (MRAP) between 2003 and the present. The total acquisition cost of the various MRAPs ordered and put into service conservatively exceeds $45 billion USD. The U.S. military has no less than seven different types of MRAPs in service as of today, more than any other nation by far. As the U.S. has reduced its active footprint in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it has sold many of these vehicles to local security forces, and even U.S. domestic police forces, as they are of little use on a contested battlefield where the U.S. military would be fighting a conventional conflict with a powerful adversary. The following list details the main types of MRAPS in use by the U.S. military and costs associated:

  M-ATV

  The genesis of the MRAP All Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV) was the desire to gain both the IED level protection of an MRAP and the mobility of a lighter all-terrain vehicle. It was realized early on that the armored M1114 HMMWV variant sacrificed much of its off road performance with the addition of heavy armor plate, yet failed to provide adequate protection. A purpose-built light MRAP was called for. Oshkosh Corporation was awarded the initial $1 billion USD contract to supply the new M-ATV to the U.S. Army, USMC, Air Force and Special Operations Command (which employs special operations elements of all the military services) in mid-2009. The initial contract order grew four fold within a few years, and total M-ATVs produced to date has approached 10,000 units of different variants. The acquisition cost not corrected for inflation likely exceeds $4 billion USD, and additional contracts have been awarded to update and refit all units retained in U.S. service. Many units have since been handed over to allied governments in the Middle East and Europe at far reduced prices. NATO recipients include both Poland and Croatia.  Both the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia have made use of the M-ATV in the conflict in Yemen, and have lost a significant number in combat.

  

  Comparative size of the armored HMMWV and the M-ATV. The ubiquitous “Hummer” was never meant to be an armored car, and hundreds were destroyed by IEDs in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Cougar

  The Cougar is a much more robust vehicle than the M-ATV, resembling a heavily armored truck. It comes in a 4 x 4 and larger 6 x 6 version, with several variants based on these two platforms, depending on the intended role. The Cougar was developed by Force Protection, Inc. in 2004. The company was later acquired by General Dynamics in 2011. The Cougar was rushed into service after a very simple and rudimentary testing program in 2004, as the U.S. military wanted thousands of MRAPs for service in Iraq as soon as possible. The Cougar can trace its lineage to earlier South African designed and fielded vehicles, and was also adopted into British and Canadian service as well.

  The Cougar was produced in great numbers between 2004 and 2010 for the U.S. military, with further orders filled by the British military, who have fielded the Cougar in at least 4 different variants. A number of Cougars have also be gifted to other NATO countries with contingents serving in Afghanistan. The U.S. military spent approximately $2.5-3.0 billion USD to acquire its Cougars, and additional funds have been spent to upgrade the roughly 20% of the surviving fleet selected to remain in service.

  

  British Army variants of the 4×4 and 6×6 Cougar (Mastiff and Ridgeback) in a convoy protecting military transports in Afghanistan.

  Caiman

  Probably the most cost effective MRAP to be developed to meet the requirements of the MRAP Vehicle Program is the Armor Holdings (since acquired by BAE Systems) Caiman. The Caiman initially shared 85% of its construction components with the Stewart & Stevenson/Oshkosh family of military tactical vehicles (FMTV). This family of light to medium trucks have been produced since the early 1980s, with over 74,000 units of varying configuration put into service. This commonality of construction reduced manufacturing, maintenance and inventory carrying costs. The total cost of the Caiman contract (including a later contract to upgrade and improve vehicles to the Multi-Terrain Vehicle standard) amounted to over $1.15 billion USD. The United States sold 1,150 Caiman MRAPs that had been put in surplus status to the U.A.E. to aid in their operations in Yemen.

  MaxxPro

  Manufactured by Navistar Defense, a subsidiary of the Navistar International Corporation, the MaxxPro MRAP is based on a commercial truck chassis and makes use of a bolt-on armor construction as much as possible. This reduces manufacturing cost when compared to welded construction, and allows for easier repair in the field. Approximately 9,000 MaxxPro MRAPs were built for the U.S. Army, Marine Corps and Air Force. At an average per unit cost of $515,000 USD, the Maxxpro cost the United States military over $4.6 billion USD, not counting a number of upgrade contracts. Of the 9,000 units constructed and delivered, the U.S. military services announced in 2013 the intension of keeping only a third of these units in service beyond 2014.

  Buffalo MPRC

  The largest MRAP in the U.S. inventory, the Buffalo was designed as an IED and mine clearance vehicle. Manufactured by Force Protection Inc., it is based on the Casspir MRAP that has been in service with the South African Army for decades. The Buffalo in a 6×6 armored vehicle with a maximum service weight of 25,000 kgs. (56,000 lbs.). After building the first 200 units, the Buffalo was upgraded to the A2 standard in 2009, after which an additional 450 units were produced. Over 750 total Buffalos have been produced in total, with 650 of these in service with the U.S. military at a cost of over $1 billion USD.

  

  Force Protection Buffalo IED and Mine Clearance MRAP removing an explosive devise by use of its articulated, hydraulically-operated claw.

  The Buffalo’s origins are clearly a response to the dangers posed by a prolonged military occupation in an environment of active guerilla warfare. It was based on a proven design, and has been extremely effective in its intended role. The traditional vehicle for mine clearance or IED disposal would normally be an MBT fitted with mine clearance apparatus. The Buffalo is cheaper to manufacture, maintain and operate than an MBT, and is slightly more flexible in a multitude of environments. It also can accommodate 12 soldiers in addition to a normal crew of two.

  Nyala RG-31/33

  Manufactured by Land Systems OMC (BAE Land Systems) of South Africa and FNSS of Turkey, the RG-31/33 NyalaMRAP is produced in a 4×4 (RG-31) and 6×6 (RG-33) version to meet the requirements of the Mine Resistant Ambushed Protected Vehicle Program. Although used by the U.S. military in the highest numbers (almost 2,000 vehicles), ten other nations use this MRAP to some degree. The USMC ordered 1,385 of the Mark 5E variant, and operate more RG-31s than any other military service. The total cost of RG-31/33 acquisition is easily in excess of $2.7 billion USD.

  JLTV

  The most ambitious of all of the MRAP programs, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) is meant to replace the HMMWV in use by all of the U.S. military branches. Although the design of the new vehicle is meant to allow it to exceed at a number of military tasks, it is at its core a mine resistant, ambush protected vehicle. The JLTV is suited to take over the tasks of light armored reconnaissance, armored security, special operations, utility and convoy protection. The JLTV is meant to be flexible enough to perform all of these tasks and its very design allows for the upgrading or downgrading of armor and weapons systems tailored to the task required.

  The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated in 2015 that the total acquisition cost of the JLTV across all services would likely be $53.5 billion USD, with a total of 5,500 units for the UMC and 49,099 for the U.S. Army requested. In 2016, the Department of Defense claimed that the total cost of the program would be reduced due to revised unit costs and corrected “cost estimate methodologies”; however, past experience has proven that the Pentagon is usually quite bad when it comes to managing finances. The procurement timetable proposed has the first JLTVs being delivered beginning in 2018, and not being completed until 2040 for the U.S. Army. The 5,500 units requested by the USMC should be delivered between 2018 and 2022.

  The JLTV program clearly embodies the U.S. military’s fixation on its experiences in both Iraq and Afghanistan with occupation and the resultant insurgencies motivated by inevitable anti-U.S. and anti-Western sentiments. Invaders are never seen as liberators, but always as subjugators and occupiers. Occupiers are never safe, as the frontline is everywhere. The U.S. military reacted to protect itself by armoring everything. Light utility vehicles and logistics transport of all categories were armored for protection. Only a nation that plans to invade and occupy other countries, and that will find itself always in a hostile environment will require so many MRAPs and armored transports. No other major military in the world has decided to follow this new U.S. model. Perhaps that is due to the fact that the main duty of their armed forces is to fight defensively in defending their own territory. Armies of national defense have no need to prepare themselves to fight a hostile native population.

  

  A side-by-side comparison of an unarmored HMMWV and an armored JLTV. The new vehicle is twice as heavy as the standard HMMWV.

  The JLTV is an armored, all-terrain monster that can carry a payload between 1,600 and 2,300 kgs. (3,500 – 5,100 lbs.), weapons as large as the SHORAD (Short Range Air Defense variant of the Hellfire missile) or the 30mm M230LF automatic cannon, and provide crew survivability in most IED attacks. The DOD has decided to replace both MRAPs and the HMMWV family of utility vehicles with the new JLTV platform. The JLTV is equipped with a 6.6 liter diesel V8 which can generate at least 300 horse power. The vehicle weighs in at between 14,000 and 15,639lbs. depending on the variant. By comparison, the unarmored HMMWV weighed in at 7,700 lbs. fully loaded and made use of a diesel V8 (some models used a turbo diesel) generating a maximum 190 hp. Even considering greater efficiencies achieved through modern internal combustion engine technology, a vehicle that weighs twice as much and requires greater horsepower will lead to higher fuel consumption and require higher levels of maintenance.

  Counter Insurgency

  Not only did the U.S. military experience with occupation and counterinsurgency shape the armored vehicle procurement projects and design priorities of future armored vehicle acquisitions, but it also resulted in an over-focusing of resources toward a traditionally elite, limited and specialized subset of conventional fighting forces; special operations. All effective modern national defense forces operate a small cadre of special operations units. These units are made up of highly motivated, highly trained and highly skilled soldiers who can perform any number of military tasks, but are specifically focused on asymmetrical, hybrid and very specialized warfare subsets. They complement and enhance conventional fighting forces, and often act as significant force multipliers in any conflict.

  Prior to the U.S. wars of occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States operated a robust special operations force comprising of units from all services. The considerable investment in these highly selective forces, the high standards demanded, and the extremely difficult training requirements have always kept these forces small; however this has changed a great deal over the past 17 years. The need for soldiers with a skill set specific to counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan lead to increased focus and demand on special operations. From 2001 to the present, the special operations forces under the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) have expanded from 42,800 to approximately 63,500 today. Special operations specific funding has grown four fold in the same time period, from $3.1 billion USD to $12.3 billion USD. According to SOCOM, an average of 8,300 special operators are deployed in missions in as many as 149 nations across the globe on a weekly basis, and 70 nations on any given day.

  

  U.S. Special Operations Command has access to uniquely qualified units from across all branches of the U.S. military.

  There is little doubt that the Pentagon’s over-focus on counterinsurgency (the State Department is guilty here as well) has lead to U.S. military adventurism involving it in the internal conflicts of 75% of the countries of the world. Does this clandestine military involvement in the civil or regional strife of most of the planet really have anything to do with U.S. national security? Does it make the U.S. any safer, or is it only creating more enemies? SOCOM has even deployed assets to clandestinely train amongst the civilian population of the United States itself, a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

  This disproportional over-emphasis on special operations has resulted in an atrophying of more traditional martial structures and establishments. While the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have stayed at the forefront of modern armor and artillery development, and have advanced the related tactics, the United States has fallen far behind. Even the Peoples Liberation Army has made great strides in these conventional warfare realms in comparison to the United States. The United States surely has the economic resources, and the technical capability to close the gap, but the focus of the military needs to be realigned toward conventional warfighting.

  Secretary Mattis has obviously recognized the need to focus higher procurement towards conventional forces, as well as fund R&D efforts into better field artillery, rocket artillery, armored fighting vehicles such as the AMPV, and a new main battle tank (MBT). In identifying near peer adversaries as the greatest national security threat, Secretary Mattis realizes that the U.S. must waste no time in closing the technological and quality gap that now exists between the conventional fighting forces of the United States and Russia and China respectively.

  A Navy in Disarray

  While the ground forces of the United States have suffered from two decades of occupation and counterinsurgency, which has morphed them from a balanced, combined arms conventional fighting force, into a force obsessed with IEDs, insurgents and guerilla warfare, the U.S. Navy seems to have lost any idea of its national security role. After two decades of enjoying uncontested control of the seas and the ability to use aircraft carrier-borne airstrikes to pummel inferior adversaries, none of which possessed a viable navy or air force, nor a modern air defense network or shore-based anti-naval capability, the U.S. Navy has seemed determined to sail further into the realm of irrelevancy in any future conflict. Unless it intends to engage in battle against significantly weaker opponents, the U.S. Navy will not possess an advantage over its two most powerful possible adversaries, Russia and China.

  The United States Navy has not engaged in a major naval engagement with a major adversary since the closing days of World War Two. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union largely kept one another at bay, with very close competition leading to significant advancements in naval warfare. They did not engage in any verified hostile actions. Although the U.S. Navy engaged in combat with Libyan military forces in 1986 in the Gulf of Sidra, as well as sunk a small force of Iraqi Navy vessels of small displacement at the “Battle of Bubiyan” (not really much of a battle at all and UK Navy helicopters did most of the fighting), these engagements were largely one-sided and no one could ever say that the outcomes were a surprise. Regardless, the U.S. Navy apparently has decided that it is an indomitable force that can go wherever it pleases and no one can stand in its way. Such hubris and arrogance are one of the reasons why it is in such poor shape today. The other reason must surely be attributed to a military industrial complex that has sold the service on an expensive pipe dream of wonder weapons that have failed to live up to their hype. All to the tune of huge profits. The following are the most egregious examples:

  The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)

  Based on a flawed concept from the start, of a small surface combatant that could make use of modularity to tailor it to specific tasks as opposed to a traditional multi-purpose design, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) was largely doomed for a number of reasons. Two different designs were awarded contracts, the trimaran Independence Class designed by General Dynamics, and the mono-hull Freedom Class designed by Lockheed Martin. The decision to produce two different designs to meet the needs of a single class should have been seen as problematic. Here the Navy accepted the responsibility and costs associated with maintaining two different platforms, with separate maintenance needs and schedules, not to mention two separate training programs for LCS crews.

  The concept of the LCS was also divergent in many respects, and quite frankly, too much was expected of a ship that was smaller in size than a conventional frigate. The U.S. Navy expected the vessels to marry significant striking power, with modularity tailored to just about every form of modern naval warfare, and new networking and information technologies that would reduce the required crew to a minimum. What resulted was what those serving in the force would begrudgingly coin the “Little Crappy Ship”. The aluminum and composite (Independence Class) and lightweight steel (Freedom Class) hulls of the ships provide little armored protection, offensive striking power is far from adequate for either surface warfare or fire support for forces deployed inland, the platform has yet to meet anti-submarine requirements, and the reduced crew size has been determined to be unmanageable.

  

  This image of the construction of USS Independence LCS-2, clearly illustrates the aluminum structure of the hull. Aluminum offers little armored protection, burns vigorously at high temperature, and led to increased corrosion of steal propulsion components in areas where the dissimilar metals were in close proximity below the waterline.

  As a result of its overwhelming failure to meet the expectations of the U.S. Navy or Congressional oversight, the total fleet size of LCS vessels has been reduced from the original 50 planned down to 32. Project cost overruns, a number of high profile system failures, and the smaller fleet size have resulted in a total cost of $12.4 billion USD for the first 26 vessels. The U.S. Congress capped the per-unit cost at $480 million per ship, bringing the theoretical total cost to $15.5 billion USD. All for a ship that has a minimal chance of surviving most modern naval combat scenarios. There is little wonder why the U.S. Navy has decided to start building a multi-purpose frigate, dubbed the FFG(X), to pick up where the LCS has failed.

   DDG 1000 Zumwalt Class

  If the LCS was not a huge and unequivocal disappointment, then the much vaunted stealth destroyer, the DDG-1000 Zumwalt Class was a total embarrassment and unmitigated failure.  Envisioned as a high-tech game changer, the DDG-1000 was supposed to make use of powerful new technologies, overwhelming firepower, and massive power generation, all wrapped in stealth that would render it invisible. Although designed as a multi-mission surface combatant, added emphasis was put on naval surface fire support (NSFS) while operating in littoral waters. Due to a number of factors, mostly the exorbitant cost of the program, the Navy is now trying to find a role for the Zumwaltclass vessels.

  Originally, the Navy intended to build 32 of these stealth destroyers, yet the exorbitant initial cost plus huge cost overruns led the Navy and the U.S. Congress to reduce the fleet to 24, then 16, then 7, and finally to only 3 vessels. Correspondingly, the cost per vessel increased tremendously, as did the cost of all class-specific systems including weapons systems, power generation and propulsion systems. Cost per vessel stands at over $7.5 billion USD.

  The 155mm Mark 51 advanced gun system (AGS) deck guns designed specifically for the DDG 1000s were made to fire guided rounds over a range in excess of 80 nautical miles, with a circular error probable (CEP) of just 50 meters (160ft.). Each DDG 1000 is equipped with two AGS on the forward deck. These guns were designed to strike shore targets accurately from coastal waters in support of allied ground forces and amphibious landing forces. Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems developed the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) for use in the AGS, but due to the now 3 vessel fleet, the per unit cost of each LRLAP had risen to over $800,000 USD. The Navy had already procured 90 rounds before the decision was made to cease purchasing the rounds due to the prohibitive costs.

  The DDG-1000 utilizes the same MT-30 Rolls Royce gas turbine engines as the Freedom Class LCS vessels; however, in the case of the destroyers the gas turbine is linked to a massive electrical grid that not only powers the electric motors that propel the vessel, but just about every other system onboard, including the weapons systems. The arrangement is proving problematic, as the first two vessels in class have both experienced main engine failures and damages. The USS Michael Monsoor DDG-1001 suffered damage to the turbine blades of one of its main engines during sea trials in February of this year. The MT-30 engine will have to be replaced at the cost of $20 million USD. The USS Zumwalt DDG-1000 famously broke down during its transit from Maine to San Diego and had to be towed from the Panama Canal to its new home port.

  The U.S. Navy is now struggling to find a new niche for the DDG-1000s. Now that its NSFS mission is a non-starter, it is being adapted as a platform to strike inland targets with land-attack cruise missiles (LACM) and engage other surface ships with an anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) that has yet to be accepted into the service. The DDG-1000s lack a strong anti-air warfare (AAW) capability, and would thus be tied to other fleet components such as the Arleigh Burke Class DDG-51s and Ticonderoga Class CGs which have strong AAW capabilities. In an attempt to utilize the USS Zumwalt, the Navy has added legacy weapons systems, radars and communications antennas to the stealthy superstructure, undoubtedly negating its minimal radar signature. It remains to be seen what munitions will be provided for the two AGS turrets, as no munitions other than the cost prohibitive LRLAP exist.

  

  The latest revision of the DDG-1000 Zumwalt Class lead vessel’s once smooth and unblemished superstructure is now marred by various external sensory and communications arrays. Two rear deck guns for close-in defense have also been added.

  CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford Class

  As if the U.S. Navy was not content with wasting $38 billion USD on the failed LCS and DDG-1000 programs, an even more grandiose undertaking was envisioned for the service that would revolutionize the all too important and largely obsolete “super carrier”. It is a widely accepted fact that the U.S. Navy has been obsessed with the aircraft carrier since World War II and the pivotal naval battles between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. This obsession is alive and well to this day, seemingly immune to the realities of modern missile technology, especially in regard to guidance, speed, range, and the advent of armed and semi-autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) of increasing lethality.

  The U.S. Navy embarked on a program to replace the existing Nimitz Class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers currently comprising the central component of the aircraft carrier strike groups (ASG), of which the service operates 10 (with the additional CVN-65 Enterprise in reserve), in 2005 with the advanced construction of CVN-78. In 2008 the U.S. Navy signed a contract with Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding worth approximately $5.1 billion USD to build the first in a series of four such carriers. The goal is to build each carrier in four year periods under the current funding schedule. The Gerald R. Ford Class was supposed to take advantage of a number of new technologies and experience significantly improved efficiencies in aircraft carrier operations over the preceding Nimitz Class.

  While the initial cost estimate for CVN-78 was around $10 billion USD (U.S. Congress had caped it at $10.5 billion USD in 2007), the total cost for the vessel has exceeded $13 billion USD as of May of this year when it was revealed that the Advanced Weapons Elevator and a main thrust bearing had suffered damage in sea trials and required repair. The CVN-78 is by far the most expensive warship ever constructed. In a controversial move, it was decided to try and incorporate a number of new, unproven systems in the new design. In retrospect, this decision was bound to result in cost overruns and a more problematic breaking-in period. New systems integrated into the Gerald R. Fordinclude an electro-magnetic launching system (EMALS), advanced aircraft arresting system, advanced weapons elevator system, dual band radar (DBR), and a more powerful nuclear reactor.

  There was much discussion in the Navy regarding the wisdom of introducing so many new technologies in a single platform. Many senior officers argued that there were bound to be serious delays in working through both the foreseeable and unforeseeable problems associated with rendering so many new technologies operational. This opinion turned out to be of merit, as the Gerald R. Ford immediately experienced problems with just about all of its new systems. The vessel has experienced two main propulsion malfunctions over the past year, the advanced arresting gear has proven unreliable, and the EMALS (as well as other “critical systems”) has displayed “poor or unknown reliability” according to the Navy Operational and Test Evaluation Force. In early testing, the EMALS was unable to launch F-18 strike aircraft at weights even close to a full combat load. All of these problems or shortcomings were revealed during sea trials and the vessel returned to shipyard in Newport News, Virginian on July 15th, 2018 to undergo extensive repairs and improvements.

  In should have been of little surprise to most naval architects, engineers, and naval line officers who have held vessel commands, that the above mentioned problems were inevitable. The big question is why the leadership of the Navy decided upon such a platform at all. What is the point of investing so much money and effort into such a large and advanced vessel, regardless of the unproven nature of many of the critical systems, when aircraft carriers have become so vulnerable to modern anti-ship missiles? Of even greater significance, why invest so much in a new carrier and not invest in increasing the range and striking power of the carrier air wing? An aircraft carrier is worthless without a powerful and flexible air wing element.

  Carrier Air Wing Vulnerabilities

  As much as President Trump and various administration officials and Senators tout the power of the U.S. military, often citing an increasing defense budget as an indicator of strength, efficiency and effectiveness, there is little doubt that U.S. naval aviation has atrophied over decades of misuse, neglect and poor decision making at the highest levels. U.S. naval aviation is arguably in its worse state since the opening days of the Pacific Theatre of operations during the Second World War. Not only is it in disrepair, but it is ill-equipped for a fight against a peer adversary.

  Let us address the first issue, the ever shrinking air wing with its shrinking range. In the last decade of Cold War naval competition between The U.S. and the U.S.S.R., the Nimitz Class aircraft carriers deployed with nine, or even ten squadrons of fixed-wing aircraft. Today, that has been reduced to six. Of greater importance, the only aircraft utilized for combat operations is the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet with all of its inherent shortcomings, most importantly its limited operational range of 370 nautical miles (full strike combat weapons load and fuel). The aircraft it replaced, the A-7 Corsair II and A-4 Skyhawk in the Navy and the F-4 Phantom in the USMC, all had much longer operational ranges and all but the A-4 had greater weapons payload capacity. The F/A-18 is a jack of all trades and a master of none. In an attempt to lower costs (although few combat aircraft has ever operated at lower cost than the A-4 Skyhawk) by using one airframes for all roles, the U.S. Navy has put all of its eggs in one basket, and that basket is not up to the task. This is not to say that the F/A-18 Hornet and F-/A-18E/F Super Hornet are poor aircraft. The plane merely cannot do all of the things asked of it as well as many other aircraft. What has resulted, is an aircraft carrier air wing that is less capable in all respects, and cannot compete and excel in a future conflict with a peer adversary.

  

  This image clearly illustrates the ordinance payload capacity of the A-4 Skyhawk. It could carry 9,900lbs. of munitions on 5 external hardpoints. It had an effective combat radius from an aircraft carrier of over 700 miles, and a maximum range of 2,000 miles.

  Although the improved F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is significantly larger than its predecessor, and gains about 100 nautical miles in range due to larger internal fuel capacity, it still lacks the required range needed to protect its carrier. Not surprisingly, even though there was a better option, the Navy decided to use F/A-18s for aerial refueling duties as well. The S-3 Viking had been kept in service as a carrier borne aerial tanker, having given up its original role as an ASW aircraft, and was superior to the F/A-18 in this respect. Although most S-3s in service still have approximately 12,000 hours of service life left on their airframes, the Navy pushed ahead with their retirement in 2009. With a much greater range than the F/A-18 and a fuel capacity of 16,000 lbs., the S-3 was a better and far cheaper solution. The fact that it was a far cheaper option was probably its downfall. Profit drives the U.S. military industrial complex, not efficiency or performance.

  

  The only fixed wing aircraft that operate from U.S. Navy aircraft carriers today are the F/A-18 Hornet, F/A-18E Super Hornet and E-2C and E2-D Hawkeye AEW&C aircraft.

  The second issue, which is perhaps more damning, is the fact that the F/A-18 squadrons that the Navy relies on to conduct almost all carrier air wing duties including attack/strike missions, air superiority, fleet defense, buddy refueling, anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and surveillance, are in an alarming state of disrepair. The Navy announced in February of 2017, that two thirds, or 62% of all F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets were unserviceable due to maintenance issues. Twenty-seven percent of these aircraft were undergoing major maintenance depot work, not minor or preventive maintenance. Of the 542 total F/A-18 and E/F-18 Hornets, only 170 were mission capable. Fast forward one year and a new and increased defense budget, and the Navy is still a long way from solving the shortfall in available replacement parts just to meet normal maintenance requirements. The decision was also made to take 140 of the oldest single seat Hornets (A/C variants) in the Navy and either cannibalize them for parts or transfer them to USMC squadrons that are experiencing similar maintenance issues. In the case of the USMC, they have been waiting so long for new F-35Bs that their legacy F-18s are falling into disrepair.

  

  Maintenance crews performing repairs on an F/A-18 aboard a carrier. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps must address the maintenance crisis plaguing the services, yet the problem cannot be remedied at this level. Only a reduction in the tempo of deployments, flight operations or the provision of added funding will alleviate the issue which will be determined by the White House and Congress.

  Has anyone asked the question, “What good is an advanced, gigantic aircraft carrier with an air wing that is limited in range and capability?” If the U.S. Navy does manage to get the first three Gerald R. Ford Class carriers in service, how many F/A-18E Super Hornets will be mission capable to fly from them? Will the F-35C and F35B Joint Strike Fighters meant to complete the complement of strike and fighter aircraft going to finally be available for deployment? Seeing that the F-35 does not close the “missile gap” that threatens U.S. aircraft carriers in general, is the Navy soliciting the defense industry to produce a carrier-borne aircraft, whether manned or unmanned, to correct this obvious weakness? Russian and Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles and hypersonic cruise missiles can strike U.S. CSGs long before their aircraft can get within range of striking the territories of either of these near peer adversaries. This “missile gap” will not be rectified anytime soon.

  The One-Size-Fits-All Fighter Aircraft

  After a short review of the Navy’s decision to settle on a single airframe to fill all of the roles of the carrier air wing, it should come of little surprise that the Pentagon would come to a similar decision on a much broader scale. A cursory study of combat aviation history has proven that there is no one-size- fits-all solution to the many combat functions performed by military aviation. It appears that the decision to introduce a multi-role fighter making use of many new technologies and heavily reliant on stealth to be effective in modern aerial warfare for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and USMC was more about making huge profits for the defense industry and providing jobs to American workers than it was about providing the U.S. military with a superior tool.

  The story of the development of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a cautionary tale of a weapons development program that was ill conceived and soon spiraled out of control.  Perhaps the most controversial and scandalous of any such program, the JSF is the costliest weapons program in world history. Newly revised estimates from the Pentagon put the cost of development and procurement of the 2,056 fighters that the DOD wants at $406.1 billion USD. The total cost to procure these aircraft and maintain them over the 20 year life span of the aircraft exceeds $1.5 trillion USD.

  While the F-35A first flew in 2006, the only U.S. military branch to declare the F-35 operation and to use it in combat is the USMC. The F-35 was developed from the outset for export to allied nations, and Israel has used the F-35 for strikes against targets in Syria. It is important to note that Israel has relied heavily on its decades old squadrons of F-15 and F-16 multi-role aircraft to bear the brunt of most combat missions. Approximately 300 units of all versions have been produced so far for both the U.S. military and foreign militaries, yet only Israel and the USMC have declared the aircraft combat ready. A major issue facing the program is the fact that aircraft manufacturing began years before the plane was deemed fit for operational deployment, largely because so many deficiencies have been identified and have had to be rectified. This was the result of concurrency, a procurement process that allowed for production of the aircraft prior to final approval of the design. It was agreed that all deficiencies identified would eventually be addressed and rectified in airframes already manufactured at a later date in order to bring them up to the latest standard.

  Not only has the F-35 not attained wide operational status seventeen years after its first flight, but it has pulled an exorbitant amount of funding from existing, combat proven aircraft. What could have been done to maintain and improve existing squadrons of F-15 Eagles, F-16 Fighting Falcons, A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, and F/A-18 Hornets currently in varying states of disrepair and serviceability? The idea of replacing all of these front line aircraft with the F-35 is laughable. What kind of imperial hubris and institutional tunnel vision could have led to such an ill-advised decision?  The answer is the institutionalized corruption and waste of the U.S. military industrial complex. It continues to leave the United States less protected, and sends American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen into combat with increasingly less capable weapons.

  Atrophy and Exhaustion

  The U.S. military has been engaged in counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan for over seventeen years. The disastrous invasion of Iraq, the destruction of Libya, and counterinsurgency operations in a host of nations including, but not limited to Yemen, Somalia, Niger and Nigeria, have all taken a toll on the U.S. military. Not only has a great deal of military hardware been destroyed, but a great deal of equipment has been worn out and essentially must be retired from service. More importantly, the constant deployments have undermined the personnel needs of all services, with thousands of men having been killed or physically and psychologically maimed for life. Tens of thousands of the most skilled commissioned and non-commissioned officers have left the services, many of them having served multiple combat deployments.

  The fact that 62% of U.S. Navy’s F-18s are not mission capable is not an anomaly. In 2017, approximately 72% of all U.S. Air Force aircraft were not flight worthy. Many of the airframes are quite old, yet well within their engineered service life, but most are in need of maintenance. Both the Navy and Air Force claim that there is not enough money in their respective budgets to procure the needed spare parts to keep these aircraft flying. One would wonder that if this is the case, why tens of billions of dollars are being poured into new aircraft when existing fleets are being left in disrepair. The decisions being made in the upper echelon of the DOD are quite perplexing for the thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen struggling to keep weapons and vehicles ready for action.

  The U.S. Army finds itself looking for buyers of surplus MRAPs, vehicles of little utility in a major conventional war with a peer adversary, while at the same time lacking spare parts and munitions for armored vehicles and artillery systems. While the Army has made some progress in procuring the first of the 49,099 JLTVs it wants, it is far behind in all other armored vehicle procurement and development programs. BAE has delivered the first batch of 29 AMPVs to the U.S. Army for extensive testing before the decision can be made to start low rate initial production (LRIP). Once the LRIP begins, it is estimated that BAE will be able to produce approximately 262 units annually, unless the company’s main manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania is expanded. The initial contract is worth $1.6 billion USD. The Army wants at least 3,000 AMPVs of six different main variants to replace the thousands of M113 armored vehicles still in service. The M113 first saw service in 1962 and a replacement for the venerable vehicle has been required for decades.

  Defense Secretary James Mattis made it crystal clear in his National Defense Strategy that the U.S. must rebuild its conventional warfare capabilities. The U.S. Army’s proposed 2019 budget lays bare the new priorities of a service facing a major transition in priorities. Procurement of tracked combat vehicles, as well as artillery rounds, rockets and missiles account for much of this latest budget request. Procurement is up by 18.4% over the previous year, with procurement of weapons and tracked vehicles up 84% over the previous year. Although upgrading of the M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer to the M109A7 level is down by 56% compared to 2018, procurement of 155mm artillery rounds is up a whopping 800%.

  

  The percentage of total procurement directed toward weapons and tracked combat vehicles in the 2019 proposed budget denotes that the U.S. Army recognizes its weakness in conventional warfighting capability.

  

  This chart clearly shows the desire on the part of the U.S. Army to upgrade and rearm conventional capabilities. 155mm artillery rounds and Army Tactical Missile System upgrades to the M207 MLRS are at the top of the list, followed by MBT upgrades and acquisition of new AMPV vehicles.

  As the U.S. Army attempts to rebuild its aged and depleted armored brigade combat teams and conventional and rocket artillery, the U.S. Navy and Air Force are facing their own challenges. The Navy finds itself in a position that is far from enviable, but was very easy to predict. Having dumped $38 billion USD into two failed new classes of warships and a further $13 billion into a new aircraft carrier that will likely not become operational until 2022, the service is currently in the process of realigning its priorities. The service is struggling to procure the new VirginiaClass SSN and Columbia Class SSBNs that are required to ensure the viability of the nation’s nuclear deterrent triad well into the foreseeable future. These defensive weapons programs, which are integral to U.S. national security, could have benefitted greatly from the $50 billion wasted on the LCS, DDG-1000 and Gerald R. Ford programs. Russia and China have spent the same time wasted by the U.S. Navy on updating and modernizing their own submarine forces, chiefly their ballistic missile submarines.

  Institutional Corruption

  If one had to identify the main reason behind the utter failure of the U.S. political establishment and military leadership, both civilian and in uniform, to identify and prioritize weapons programs and procurement that was truly in line with the national defense needs of the country, it would be the institutional corruption of the U.S. military industrial complex. This is not a fault of one party, but is the inevitable outcome of a thoroughly corrupted system that both generates and wastes great wealth at the expense of the many for the benefit of the few.

  Massive defense budgets do not lead to powerful military forces nor sound national defense strategy. The United States is the most glaring example of how a nation’s treasure can be wasted, its citizens robbed for generations, and its political processes undermined by an industry bent on maximizing profitability by encouraging and exacerbating conflict. At this point it is questionable that the United States’ could remain economically viable without war, so much of its GDP is connected in some way to the pursuit of conflict.

  There is no doubt that the War Department was renamed the Department of Defense in an Orwellian sleight of hand in 1947, just a few years after end of World War II. The military industrial complex grew into a monolith during the war, and the only way to justify the expansion of the complex, was by finding a new enemy to justify the new reality of a massive standing military, something that the U.S. Constitution expressly forbids. This unlawful state of affairs has persisted and expanded into a rotten, bloated edifice of waste. Wasted effort, wasted wealth and the wasted lives of millions of people spanning every corner of the planet. Tens of thousands of brave men and women in uniform, and millions of civilians of so many nations, have been tossed into the blades of this immoral meat grinder for generations.

  President Donald Trump was very proud to announce the largest U.S. military budget in the nation’s history last year. The United States spent (or more accurately, borrowed from generations yet to come) no less than $874.4 billion USD. The declared base budget for 2017 was $523.2 billion USD, yet there are also the Overseas Contingency Operations and Support budgets that have to be considered in determining the total cost. The total DOD annual costs have doubled from 2003 to the present. Yet, what has the DOD really accomplished with so much money and effort? Very little of benefit to the U.S. tax payer for sure, and paradoxically the exorbitant waste of the past fifteen years have left every branch of the U.S. military weaker.

  The U.S. Congress has the duty and responsibility of reigning in the military adventurism of the executive branch. They have the sole authority to declare war, but more importantly, the sole authority to approve the budget requests of the military. It is laughable to think that the U.S. Congress will do anything to reign in military spending. The Congress and the Senate are as equally guilty as the Executive in promoting and benefitting from the military industrial complex. Envisioned as a bulwark against executive power, the U.S. Congress has become an integral component of that complex. No Senator or Representative would dare to go against the industry that employs so many constituents within their state, or pass up on the benefits afforded them through the legalized insider-trading exclusive to them, or the lucrative jobs that await them in the defense industry and the many think tanks that promote continued prosecution of war.

  Possible Reforms

  It would be quite simple for the U.S. Department of Defense to rectify the current endemic problems that have rendered it weaker and less prepared for a major conventional conflict with a peer adversary. The greater challenge is transforming the relationship between the federal and state governments back to the constitutionally intended one, and to dissolve the powers of the now allied executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. This would undermine the ability of the military industrial complex to coerce the nation into working against the interests of the states and the citizenry. The military industrial complex and the Deep State that serves it can only exist when power is greatly concentrated in a federal system.

  For the sake of argument, if the political will could be found to work against the military industrial complex in the interests of true national defense and fiscal responsibility, the following steps could be taken immediately to rectify the many problems facing the military services of the United States:

  The U.S. Army

  Abandon the obsession with counterinsurgency and occupation and realign the focus of the Army on the defense of the homeland and a handful of historical allies. Rebuild the Army as a lean and well-equipped conventional fighting force. The most highly trained and experienced cadres of special operations forces should be retained, with other members dispersed to more conventional infantry, airborne and reconnaissance units. Most of these men would be moved to reserve status. Personnel should be cut by at least 25%, the majority retained moved to reserve status, and many overseas bases and operations ceased. The focus should be on defense of the nation’s own territories, while also safeguarding the economic interests and maritime trade lanes that are the lifeblood of any nation.

  All legacy systems that have proven capable and efficient on the modern battlefield should be refurbished and upgraded to the most modern standard. The M2 Bradley modernization program should be continued, and the AMPV program given increased priority so that the thousands of M113 vehicles can finally end their 56 year tour of duty. MRAP inventories should be reduced to the very minimum and all surplus units sold off to recoup some of the expense incurred in their procurement and the money directed into offsetting procurement costs of new AMPVs and JLTVs.

  The JLTV platform is a modular, easily upgradable light tactical vehicle that can be tailored to fit the mission. Although most units should be the basic utility variant, many will need to be acquired to fill the roles of light armored reconnaissance, armored security, convoy security, and light special operations vehicles. An air-droppable airborne armored fighting vehicle should be developed based on the JLTV. The U.S. airborne forces have lacked any real armored fighting vehicle that can accompany them in parachute operations since the M551 was retired in 1996. An up-armored JLTV equipped with a 30mm autocannon would serve as a good stopgap until a purpose built tracked vehicle could be designed. The venerable and ubiquitous HMMWV should maintain its utility role in all non-combat formations, as well as the basis for the Avenger light anti-aircraft missile system for years to come.

  Of greatest importance is the rejuvenation of the armored and mechanized units of the U.S. Army. The M1126 Stryker family of wheeled armored vehicles cannot bear the weight of a conventional conflict with either Russia or China. The M1A2SepV3 MBT upgrade, including the addition of the Trophy APS should be afforded adequate funding, yet the greatest need of the Army is the replacement of the M113 in combat units.  The U.S. Army’s proposed 3,000 unit procurement of AMPVs is a good start.

  The artillery arm of the U.S. Army must gain the attention it has lacked since the dissolving of the Soviet Union and the success of Operation Desert Storm. U.S. military planners and the leadership of the DOD must realize the continued importance of both conventional and rocket artillery on the modern battlefield. The U.S. Army only operates two self-propelled artillery systems, the M109 Paladin and M270 MLRS. This is not necessarily a bad thing as long as both systems are maintained, upgraded and fielded in sufficient number. The M109A7 upgrade program must gain greater funding in the immediate future.

  The U.S. Navy

  The LCS and DDG-1000 programs are a national disgrace and should be declared as such. The two existing DDG-1000s should be used as test beds for future engineering and weapons systems. The third vessel should be cancelled immediately. As for the LCS, the existing fleet should be used for littoral patrol duties, and all units currently under construction or planned should be cancelled. Enough money has been wasted on these horribly conceived and even more horribly manifested examples of the monumental corruption and waste so integral to the U.S. defense industry.

  

  Freedom Class LCS (background) and Independence Class LCS (foreground). Arguably two of the most monumental failures of warship design in modern history. A cautionary tale of waste and ineptitude.

  The FFG(X) program to design a modern yet conventional multi-purpose frigate for the U.S. Navy should be fully embraced. The new frigate should adhere to the traditional naval warfare duties of a frigate and should be designed to sufficiently fulfill a balance of AAW, ASW, and surface warfare missions.  In conjunction, priority should be given to procurement of the new DDG-51 Arleigh Burke Flight III. The Arleigh Burke has been the backbone of the U.S. Navy since it entered service. It is a well-designed, balanced, flexible and powerful naval combatant of significant displacement. It puts the LCS and the Zumwalt to shame in every respect, and has existed as a symbol of U.S. Navy power and presence across the length and breadth of the globe since 1991.

  It is almost unconscionable that with the richest and most accomplished history of aircraft carrier aviation under its belt, that the U.S. Navy could not come up with a better design for the next generation of CVNs than the Gerald R. Ford Class. Perhaps the namesake of the lead vessel in the class was well chosen, as President Ford was far from a memorable performer; however, the wisdom of the entire program from its very inception must be questioned. The U.S. Navy must outgrow the “super carrier” fixation. There is a future for aircraft carriers, yet on a far different pattern than what the U.S. Navy has operated for the past 50 years.

  The greatest area of concern for the U.S. Navy is the weakness of the carrier air wing, a weakness that will not be fundamentally corrected by the introduction of the F-35 in U.S. Navy and USMC service aboard U.S. carriers. A new, longer range fleet defense aircraft akin to a modern F-14 Tomcat must be developed. In addition, a new attack aircraft must be developed with a range that exceeds that of the F-18 Super Hornet by a factor of 100%. It is hard to believe that the F-4 Skyhawk had an operational combat radius exceeding 700 miles (2,000 mile maximum range), twice that of a Super Hornet. Additionally, the S-3 Viking must be re-tasked as a carrier borne aerial tanker, and the many airframes now mothballed, yet with thousands of hours of use left, need to be repurposed to this task. The current carrier air wing as it stands, even with the introduction of the F-35, is of little utility against a peer adversary such as Russia or China.

  

  S-3 Viking in use as a carrier borne aerial refueling tanker. Even without significant modification, this stout little aircraft can carry 16,000 lbs. of fuel. The US Navy has 108 of these aircraft sitting in storage at a military aircraft storage facility in Arizona.

  The United States must acquire both an SSN and SSBN to replace the Los Angeles and Ohio Class vessels that are approaching the end of their service lives. There is no greater defensive role for the U.S. Navy in ensuring the security of the nation than the continued operation of its attack and ballistic missile submarine forces. Both Russia and China understand this, and have greatly modernized their own submarine forces. Much of the success they have achieved in pushing the envelope of submarine design was due to their intense competition with a U.S. Navy submarine force that was always at the cutting edge of sub-surface warfare.

  Conclusion

  The United States stands at a crossroads in many respects, and the nation’s military equally so. All empires experience a period of over-expansion, military, economic and political over-reach and imbalance. The United States has followed in the wake of the many imperialist endeavors before it, with apparently little lessons having been learned. Imperialism is the inevitable result of power devoid of wisdom and humility. A nation borne out of a revolution against empire and absolutism has itself devolved into a much more dangerous and immoral avatar of its former oppressor. This must change.

  While Defense Secretary Mattis clearly acknowledged the need to transform the U.S. military and realign it in a direction more focused on fighting and winning a conventional conflict with the near peer adversaries he identified as Russia and China, one can only hope that he realizes how the U.S. military that he served in for decades, got to the deplorable state that it now finds itself in. The greatest enemy that the U.S. military has fought for the past seventy years is undoubtedly the military industrial complex that it is an integral component of. The Soviet Union, North Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and Syria were never as much of a threat to the U.S. Armed Services as the corrupt military industrial complex and the Deep State that serves as its guardian.

  The United States military is in the weakest state of material strength and readiness since the conclusion of the Cold War. The conventional ground forces of the Army have been transformed into a force bent on occupation and counterinsurgency. Its heavy armored formations are in a state of disrepair and material inferiority vis-a-vis its most capable theoretical adversaries. The cornerstone of American power projection and intimidation, the aircraft carrier strike groups, are a sad shadow of their former self. The carrier air wing, the entire reason that an aircraft carrier exists in the first place, has devolved into a tool of increasingly limited utility, with an ever diminishing reach.

  The corrupt military industrial system that permeates every facet of American economic, political and even cultural life has sucked the very lifeblood from the nation, eroded its morality, bankrupt its economic future, and stolen a generation of its most patriotic and selfless sons and daughters. While James Mattis acknowledges the challenges facing the national security of the United States, he clearly misattributes the blame and misidentifies the very real adversary. Russia and China are not existential threats to the continued welfare of the American state. James Mattis need only look in the mirror to see the real threat, for he has come to represent the cabal of special interests that enslaves the nation and constitution he has pledged to serve, and holds the remainder of the world equally hostage.

  There is very little chance that the reforms mentioned in this analysis will be adopted, or that the United States will move in a direction that brings it back to its inception as a constitutional republic. The interests of the military industrial complex in promoting conflict, and maximizing financial profit will continue to steer the United States military, and the nation as a whole, on an unsustainable and self-destructive path. There is little doubt that if the Deep State pushes the nation to war against Russia or China, and likely an alliance of the two, that the United States military has ever been in a weaker position. Such a conflict would be of no benefit to any of the nations concerned, yet many potential flash points exist that could lead to a conflict, including the South China Sea, Syria or Ukraine. As the United States plays catch-up after decades of military adventurism, China and Russia have spent that same time patiently and judiciously gathering their strength. The scenario of a one-sided victory in favor of the United States is pure fantasy, existing only in the daydreams of the emperor who wears no clothes.

  

• "How Central Bankers Rigged The World": An Interview With Nomi Prins

  Former Goldman managing director, Nomi Prins, join Chris Blasi on The Great Reset Opportunity Report to discuss her new release Collusion, as well as current geopolitical and macroeconomic issues. 

  In this interview Nomi makes the case that central bankers have been rigging markets for the sake of the bankers at the expense of regular citizens, and will continue to do so. Nomi further shares her conclusion that should the ongoing machinations of the central bankers lead us into another global financial crisis they have no plan B.

  The details supporting Nomi’s thesis and conclusions can be heard here along with her personal investing strategy

  

• Will The "Taiwan Question" Give Rise To A World War III Scenario?

  Authored by Darius Shahtamasebi, op-ed via RT.com,

  The United States and China are set to go head-to-head over disputes in relation to Taiwan and the South China Sea, with deadly consequences on the immediate horizon.

  

  You wouldn’t know it with all the media hype over the US mid-term elections, but the US and China are on a deadly collision path in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. In the last two months, the US military has flown B-52 bombers and carried out its so-called “freedom of navigation” operations in the South China Sea. There have also been instances of US warships sailing through the Taiwan Strait in support of Taiwan, an island which China considers to be a rogue part of Chinese territory.

  On a side note, it is amazing to say the least that the US believes it should have the “freedom to navigate” in the South China Sea, yet seems to get up in arms when Iranian ships expect the same kind of freedom in the Persian Gulf.

  Near-collisions in the South China Sea

  Last September, US and Chinese warships almost collided when sailing near an islet claimed by Beijing in the Spratly Islands. Reportedly, the Chinese warship threatened the US Destroyer that it would “suffer consequences” if it did not move, as it sailed within 45 yards of the American vessel.

  In a last-ditch effort to avert this collision course, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defence James Mattis will host their Chinese counterparts Yang Jiechi and China’s Defence Minister Wei Fenghe this Friday for talks on reducing tensions. However, I think we can say with some confidence that these talks will be absolutely meaningless. Firstly, China already canceled the first round of talks set for September due to their frustration over US-enforced sanctions. Secondly, Chief of US Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson just recently, and quite openly stated that the US and China “will meet each other more and more on the high seas”; with Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis saying in Mid-October that the US and its allies would “continue to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows and our national interests demand.”

  And of course we know how much the US loves to travel even well beyond the realms of international law, so we can expect to take Mattis at his word quite literally.

  Barely a few days ago, Pompeo for his part also warned China that it should “behave like a normal nation on commerce and with respect to the rules of international law” – whatever that means.

  The Taiwan question

  Since the near-collision in September, a US Navy research ship has also visited Taiwan and two US warships have sailed through the Taiwan Strait. According to Stratfor, the US is possibly attempting to standardize patrols in the area, even potentially paving the way for an aircraft carrier group to transit through.

  At the end of October, China strengthened its resolve to protect its interests in Taiwan, vowing to never give up an inch of its territory. Incidentally, it was Wei Fenghe who stated that “if someone tries to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese armed forces will take action at any price.” He also vowed the same regarding China’s interests in the South China Sea, where it has heavily fortified at least seven islands or reefs, loading them with military bases, airfields, and advanced weapons systems.

  Wei’s remarks echoed the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s comments in a speech to the 19th Party Congress last year, when he said that “we have firm will, full confidence, and sufficient capability to defeat any form of Taiwan independence secession plot” adding that China “will never allow any person, any organization or any political party to split any part of the Chinese territory from China at any time or in any form.”

  Supposedly, China intends to be ready to carry out a full-scale resumption of hostilities against Taiwan by 2020. Naturally, such hostilities will likely draw in some other notable players on the world stage. At the end of October, retired Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges warned that it was likely the US and China will be at war within 15 years.

  Speaking about the near collisions referred to above, Hodges made the remarks, stating that: “you’re going to see us … permanently assign forces for the eventuality that in 10 or 15 years we’re going to be having to fight in the Pacific.”

  In similar fashion, the Chinese president recently told the military region responsible for monitoring the South China Sea and Taiwan to “prepare for war.”

  Just this week, Taiwanese Defense Minister Yen Teh-fa told legislators that his government was considering allowing the US Navy access to Taiping Island if Washington requested such access for humanitarian or regional security operations, but only if Washington’s interests were aligned with Taiwan’s. Taiping Island bears incredible strategic importance thanks to its location and resources. Allowing the US access to Taiping would give the US the mobility in the South China Sea that it has been hoping for, as well as giving Washington greater leverage over countries like Vietnam and the Philippines who incidentally, also find themselves in a territorial dispute with Beijing.

  A World War III scenario

  According to Foreign Policy’s T. Greer, a recent study by political scientist Michael Beckley and another one by Ian Easton, a fellow at the Project 2049 Institute showed that any war with China and Taiwan, even without US involvement, would be nothing short of a long, drawn-out catastrophe. A Chinese invasion would require the largest amphibious operation in human history with tens of thousands of vessels, incessant rocket and missile attacks, and at least one million Chinese troops. If a Chinese victory does not occur swiftly, it will have some 2.5 million Taiwan reservists to contend with, not to mention the likely pending Japanese and/or American counter-attack.

  Despite this grim reality, a recent poll found that the majority of Taiwanese people think its military cannot defend against a Chinese invasion, with less than half of respondents confident that the US would send troops to help defend Taiwan.

  A 2018 report by the US Department of Defense argued that China now possessed “the world’s largest and most capable maritime militia.” The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has over 300 surface combatants, submarines, amphibious ships, patrol craft and specialized types, making it the largest navy force in the Indo-Pacific region (comparatively, the US has some 282 deployable battle force ships).

  Regardless, Taiwan and the US are reportedly pushing ahead with their plans to repel any alleged Chinese invasion, with military drills set for the end of November between the two already in the works. Funnily enough, the drills will most likely take place in the area around Taiping Island. Taiwan’s military is also hoping to purchase MQ-8 Fire Scout uncrewed helicopters and MK-62 Quickstrike mines from the US. Taiwan may also seek to lay these mines in its waters close to Taipei as well as other key ports and bases, a plan which eerily echoes that of Greer’s report in Foreign Policy above.

  People don’t need to be well-versed in international politics to see and feel the warning signs. A recent Military Times poll of active-duty troops showed that 46 percent of US troops believe the US will be drawn into a major war soon, with a focus on Russia and China in particular. Only 5 percent said the same thing in a similar poll conducted approximately a year ago.

  In September, the Pentagon released a 146-page document entitled “Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States” which appeared to show that the US is preparing for a large, long-term war effort against Russia and China.

  All the signs are there, and some countries are taking the issue more seriously than others. At the end of last month, Australia walked away from plans for a free trade agreement with Taiwan after China warned of repercussions between Canberra and Beijing. The fact that Australia was prepared to walk away should be quite telling of how important the Taiwan question is to China, with very few countries willing to challenge China on this position.

  One can only hope that cooler heads will prevail but for those of us who understand what’s at stake, eventually, someone will have to back down in order for there to be any chance of averting a third world war scenario. When one of those countries is the United States, the likelihood of that nation backing down and pursuing a peaceful path of diplomacy instead grows thinner and thinner.

  As American socialist Eugene V. Debs once said: “sooner or later every war of trade becomes a war of blood.”

  

• Millennial Congresswoman Says She Can't Afford A Washington Apartment

  Here’s a problem that will make Alexandria Ocasio Cortez infinitely more relatable to her base of “Democratic socialist” millennials.

  Cortez – who became the youngest woman ever elected to the House on Tuesday – is preparing to take her seat as the representative for New York’s 14th Congressional district. But first, she needs to find an apartment that she can afford.

  In a fawning interview with the New York Times, where Ocasio-Cortez discussed how she’s planning to balance the pressures of satisfying her progressive base with the internal pressures to conform to the Democratic Party’s agenda, the Congresswoman-elect offhandedly shared that she still hasn’t figured out “the logistics” of moving to Washington – “logistics” like finding an apartment, a task that is being made more difficult by the fact that she won’t start drawing a salary until she’s sworn in early next year.

  

  Her situation is unusual since, before embarking on the primary campaign that led to her historic upset of Democratic leader Joe Crowley, Ocasio-Cortez had been working as a bartender at a Union Square restaurant, and, like many millennials, has been struggling to pay back her student loans.

  

  But fortunately, Ocasio-Cortez said that she and her partner had been “squirreling away” some savings to help her smoothly transition to Washington.

  Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said the transition period will be “very unusual, because I can’t really take a salary. I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress. So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real.” She said she saved money before leaving her job at the restaurant, and planned accordingly with her partner. “We’re kind of just dealing with the logistics of it day by day, but I’ve really been just kind of squirreling away and then hoping that gets me to January.”

  Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said she will skip a popular postelection meeting, which begins Friday, that draws many New York Democratic politicians to Puerto Rico because it conflicts with an orientation for new congressional members. And, as she put it, “I need a minute.”

  In the meantime, she’s focused on meeting with constituents, managing her twitter account and juggling the massive influx of media requests.

  Campaign aides are focused on closely managing Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s time, in response to the enormous amounts of media obligations she’s had the past few months.

  She’s also had a regular presence on social media, where she has more than a million followers. That’s likely to continue, along with all her appearances in Queens and in the Bronx. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said it’s vital to meet people in person, for handshakes, selfies and conversations.

  “It’s not just about a photo-op,” she said. “People tell you things. And they tell you what they believe. And they tell you what they want for themselves, for you, they tell you their stories.”

  While Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t committed to backing Nancy Pelosi in the Democratic leader’s bid for speaker, many of her supporters will be watching to see if Ocasio-Cortez falls in line with the Democratic leadership and backs Pelosi, or instead throws her support behind a progressive challenger.

  Regardless, hopefully, by that time, she’ll have found a place to crash.

  

• Superbugs Pose A Very Real Threat To Humanity

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  Superbugs, those pesky bacteria that have evolved to become resistant to antibiotics, are on the rise and pose a very real threat to humanity. Antimicrobial resistance is a large and growing problem, with the potential for enormous health and economic consequences for the United States and the rest of the world.

  

  According to CNBC, the media outlet which reported on a new OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) report, released Wednesday, superbug infections could cost the lives of about 2.4 million people in North America, Europe, and Australia over the next 30 years unless more is done to stem antibiotic resistance, which is already high across the globe.

  Resistance is also projected to grow even more rapidly in low- and middle-income countries. In Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia, for example, between 40 percent and 60 percent of infections are already resistant, compared to an average of 17 percent in OECD countries. In these countries, the growth of antimicrobial resistance rates is forecast to be 4 to 7 times higher than in OECD countries between now and 2050.

  About 29,500 persons die each year on average in the United States from infections related to eight drug-resistant bacteria. By 2050, that number is expected to rise sharply.  It is estimated that antimicrobial resistance will kill about 1 million people in the United States, in just over 30 years.

  The economic toll of this superbug crisis is huge: In the United States alone the health-care costs dealing with antimicrobial resistance could reach $65 billion by 2050, according to the OECD report. That is more than the flu, HIV, and tuberculosis. If projections are correct, resistance to backup antibiotics will be 70 percent higher in 2030 compared to 2005 in OECD countries. In the same period, resistance to third-line treatments will double across EU countries. –CNBC

  Earlier this year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned it had detected 221 strains of a rare breed of “nightmare bacteria.” This bacteria is virtually untreatable by antibiotics and have special genes that enable them to spread their resistance to other germs. Nightmare bacteria is particularly deadly in the elderly and people with chronic illnesses. The probability of developing a resistant infection is also significantly higher for children up to 12 months of age, and men are also more likely to develop resistant infections than women. Nearly half of the resulting infections prove fatal.

  The best thing to do right now is educating on antibiotic-resistant superbugs and how to prevent them. As with the HIV epidemic, knowing how to prevent infection is tantamount to getting these superbugs under control. It’s also something that can be done on your own without anyone else’s help.  Promoting better hygiene and sanitation among health-care workers, ending the overprescription of antibiotics, testing patients more quickly to determine whether they have viral or bacterial infections, delaying antibiotic prescriptions by three days, and creating more public awareness campaigns could all help counter one of the biggest threats to humanity.

  

• Watch China Show Off Its Newest Stealth Jet In Dazzling Flight Demo

  Beijing’s fifth-generation stealth jets displayed a dazzling fifteen-minute performance earlier this week at Airshow China 2018. The jets wowed more than 20,000 spectators by performing combat maneuvers in Zhuhai, South China’s Guangdong Province, said People’s Daily Online.

  The J-20 stealth jets were first unveiled to the public at Airshow China 2016.

  Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military expert, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the J-20s sported a new camouflage look for improved stealth capability.

  

  The J-20’s longer flight demo this year shows that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force is now confident that China has mastered fifth-generation flight technology, Wei said.

  

  Yang Wei, the jet’s chief designer, said the plane’s superior “flight performance is quite obvious.” He also said the full capability of the stealth fighters would only be known during a war.

  China’s newly domestic-built J-20 #stealth fighter has been unveiled to the public for the first time at China’s International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition. pic.twitter.com/YKzUN3fYHd

  — China Daily (@ChinaDaily) November 7, 2018

  Wei made the comments at a press conference hosted by his employer, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, the manufacturer of the J-20.

  J-20 stealth fighter jets take to the sky at Airshow China in Zhuhai.#J20 #Airshow pic.twitter.com/7UcCXX11QD

  — China Xinhua News (@XHNews) November 6, 2018

  People’s Daily Online also said some of the stealth jets were outfitted with a new engine and thrust vectoring control nozzle during the airshow. That allowed the planes to make advanced air combat maneuvers, including the J-turn, the Cobra, and the Falling Like A Leaf moves.

  “In the past, the engine was a well-known weakness of Chinese fighter jets, since we relied heavily on imports, but the J-10B proves that China can build first-class, thrust-vectoring engines to power our advanced fighters,” a People’s Liberation Army Air Force lieutenant colonel told the Global Times, adding that this new engine technology could give China an advantage in close-combat dogfights.

  The J-20 stealth fighter jets, one of China’s most advanced jets, looked like ballerinas as they performed over the exhibition hall of the #AirshowChina 2018. pic.twitter.com/9fc5ZSnpxq

  — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) November 6, 2018

  Zhou Chenming, a military expert in Beijing, told the South China Morning Post that the “J-10 is finally able to show its real fighting capability after being equipped with the new engines.”

  Another Chinese military expert, Song Zhongping, told the Global Times that the engine would likely result in the development of the next iteration of the J-20 stealth fighter, called the J-20A.

  It seems that China’s fifth-generation stealth capabilities could be on par with the US. This threat will certainly not going unanswered by the West. China is preparing for war with new stealth technology, as a trade war between both countries is spiraling out of control. When trade stops, that is when a hot conflict could develop over the South China Sea.

  

• Russian State-Owned Bank VTB Funded Rosneft Stake Sale To Qatari Fund

  Authored by Irina Slav via Oilprice.com,

  Russian VTB, a state-owned bank, funded a significant portion of the Qatar Investment Authority’s acquisition of a stake in oil giant Rosneft, Reuters reports, quoting nine unnamed sources familiar with the deal.

  

  VTB, however, has denied to Reuters taking any part in the deal.

  “VTB has not issued and is not planning to issue a loan to QIA to finance the acquisition,” the bank said in response for a request for comment.

  The Reuters sources, however, claim VTB provided a US$6 billion loan to the Qatar sovereign wealth fund that teamed up with Swiss Glencore to acquire 19.5 percent in Rosneft last year.

  

  Reuters cites data regarding VTB’s activity issued by the Russian central bank that shows VTB lent US$6.7 billion (434 billion rubles) to unnamed foreign entities and the loan followed another loan of US$5.20 billion (350 billion rubles) from the same central bank.

  The news first made headlines in December, taking markets by surprise, as Rosneft’s partial privatization was expected by most to be limited to Russian investors. The price tag on the stake was around US$11.57 billion (692 billion rubles), of which Glencore agreed to contribute US$324 million. The remainder was forked over by the Qatar Investment Authority, as well as non-recourse bank financing.

  Russia’s budget received about US$10.55 billion (710.8 billion rubles) from the deal, including US$ 270 million (18 billion rubles) in extra dividends. Rosneft, for its part, got an indirect stake in Glencore of 0.54 percent.

  Later, it emerged that QIA and Glencore planned to sell the majority of the stake they had acquired in Rosneft to China’s energy conglomerate CEFC, but the deal fell through after Beijing set its sights on CEFC and launched an investigation that saw the removal of its chief executive. The investigation was reportedly part of a wide crackdown on illicit business practices on the part of private Chinese companies favored by Beijing.

  

• Chinese Auto Sales Suffer Historic Collapse; Set For First Annual Decline In 30 Years

  China was supposed to be the saving grace of the global auto market, pitched by auto makers and analysts as an endless area of opportunity and growth. Instead, China’s October auto sales numbers have been another disaster, a harbinger for an accelerating global slowdown for the industry. Automobile sales were down 12% y/y in October, sliding to 2.38 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. And with this dreadful annual comp, 2018 has now turned negative for overall Chinese auto market.

  A quick breakdown: passenger car sales fell 13% in the month to 2.05 million, down 8% for the third quarter. Passenger car sales were off 1% for the first 10 months of the year.  That puts them down 1% for the first 10 months of the year, on course for their first yearly decline in nearly three decades.

  

  Sales of commercial vehicles were down 3% last month to 333,000, but at least remain slightly positive, up 5.5% for the year.

  The silver lining were electric vehicles: they were the sole area of growth last month, posting a gain of 51%. For the first 10 months of the year, sales were up 76% to 860,000 fueled by government subsidies and favorable policies, as well as still prevailing novelty. However, keep in mind the sample size is still small enough to barely register.

  This 12% drop for China follows a similar drop in September and a 4% decline in both July and August. It was the steepest drop since late 2012, which also marked the fourth consecutive month of declines at the time.

  Yao Jie, vice secretary general of CAAM (the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers) commented at a press conference in Beijing: “Maintaining positive growth to the end of the year won’t be easy. There could be negative growth.” As noted above, if that happens, it would be the first time since at least the early 1990s that annual car sales in China have contracted.

  CAAM had originally forecast a 3%  rise for the year, in line with last year’s growth, though sharply down from a 13.7% gain in 2016.

  What is remarkable, is that unlike many other slowdowns the Chinese government has so far refused to intervene and stimulate the market. In the past, during periods of sharp slowdown, Beijing has proceeded with tax cuts, and while some analysts still believe that this is possible even despite the ongoing trade war with United States, the Chinese manufacturers association doesn’t think that a tax cut is the answer.

  Shi Jianhua, the association’s deputy secretary-general, told the Wall Street Journal, “We do not advocate short-term stimulus measures. We support long-term policies that can help the industry to grow at a slow and steady pace.”

  As a result, China has now conceded that 2018 vehicle sales, in total, will fall short of the 28.8 million that were sold last year.

  

  Further weighing on the auto industry is the ongoing stubborn bear market in Chinese stock prices leaving citizens with less disposable income.

  China could wind up a huge (and somewhat unexpected) contributor to a major global pull back in the automotive sector because it has widely been seen over the last decade as an opportunistic spot for growth by auto makers. For instance, companies like Tesla (of course) have recently cited China as a way to gain a bigger slice of the global auto market. Auto sales in the United States and Europe have already started to plateau or fall, but China was widely seen as a remaining area for opportunity. Obviously, that changes now.

  Just weeks ago, we noted that China was mentioned very cautiously by automakers, many of whom were offered pessimistic forecasts for the remainder of this year. Renault recently blamed its poor numbers on a global slowdown in sales in places like China and Europe, as well new emissions standards. Volkswagen also recently cut its sales forecast for China, citing a slowdown in the country as well as the looming trade war with the United States. 

  China’s slowdown has also hit names like General Motors which last month reported a 15% drop in China deliveries for the three months ended Sept. 30, the first quarterly report since the trade tensions with the U.S. began escalating in July.

  When we last looked at the Chinese auto sector last month we quoted  Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Steve Man who said that “the slump may be the biggest that auto manufacturers have ever experienced in China.” And just like in the US, weaker brands will be hit disproportionately, forcing price cuts to boost sales, Man said. Some carmakers may also be forced to shutter factories to reduce inventories and lower costs. The end result could be another deflationary wave coupled with China’s biggest nightmare: mass layoffs.

  

• Politics: The Cancer That Must Be Eradicated Once And For All

  Authored by Paul Kindlon via TheDuran.com,

  In the United States two political parties have now divided the nation with the kind of violent partisan rhetoric that erupted just before the Civil War…

  

  The 2016 election of Donald Trump as president set off a tidal wave of anger and resentment that has divided America into two bitterly opposed camps. Those on the left consider Trump to be the embodiment of evil whereas many on the right see him as a “disrupter” and champion of the common man. The recent mid-term elections revealed that this conflict between pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces continues unabated.

  The political divide in America now is characterized by revenge-minded Democrats who are determined to remove Trump from office and those who will fight to prevent this from happening. As a result, the country will be mired in a lengthy political power struggle while important issues affecting the lives of millions will be neglected. America – sad to say – is currently a nation in crisis.

  If a team of scientific crisis management experts were assembled to assess the cause of this problem they would surely arrive at the conclusion that it is “politics” pure and simple. The solution, therefore, would be the abolition of all political parties.

  This is actually not a new idea. The French philosopher Simone Weil made this suggestion more than seventy years ago. This seemingly radical proposal has been resurrected and supported by the award-winning Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk. As he pointed out this past summer:

  “In the United States two political parties have now divided the nation with the kind of violent partisan rhetoric that erupted just before the Civil War. Across the Western world, political parties have turned parliaments into digital circuses, provoking waves of contempt among ordinary people…by actively preventing party members from speaking for truth or justice, modern political parties cultivate mendacity the way cell phones archive selfies. Party politics demand that politicians must, on a daily basis, lie to the party, lie to the public and lie to themselves.”

  This is a damning indictment of politics not just political parties. And it should be clear to any clear-thinking citizen that the time has come to abandon this morally bankrupt system that has mismanaged our affairs through influence peddling and legal bribery innocuously labeled “campaign contributions”.

  Weil and Nikiforuk are not anarchists and they are not proposing some form of extreme libertarianism requiring the dismantlement of government. Governing should be left to capable administrators and professional managers who are not beholden to wealthy donors or special interest groups. Rather than being “elected” they should be hired, paid a decent salary and evaluated for performance by a non-partisan committee of informed citizens.

  If we fail to take this step then we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes of the past – suffering from a deeply flawed system that only produces corruption, conflict and economic woe.

  We must declare total independence from the tyranny of politics before we are crushed under its weight. To borrow the immortal words of Thomas Paine: “The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries: ‘tis time to part”.

  

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• These Are The States With The Most Hate Groups

  Funerals for those killed during the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg were held last week.

  

  Eleven people were killed, and several others were injured during Saturday morning service when a gunman opened fire on congregants.

  While horrific, it was by no means a one-off, as Statista’s Sarah Feldman explains, in 2017, the Anti-Defamation Leagues recorded a 57 percent increase year-over-year in anti-Semitic hate crimes.

  Jews are the largest target of religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States.

  Hate crimes in the United States are on the rise generally. The Southern Poverty Law Center has uncovered 953 registered hate groups across the United States.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The states with the most hate groups include California with 75 groups, Florida with 66, and Texas with 66 registered hate groups.

  

• Written In History: The Death Of America's Hyper-Power Fantasy

  Authored by Martin Siff via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  In 1987, Paul Kennedy, a British professor of history at Yale University, unleashed a political and intellectual firestorm with the publication of his great (677-page) book, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.” Kennedy produced a magisterial overview of the competition for global power over the past 500 years from 1500 AD to the present.

  Kennedy proposed the thesis that any power that achieved, imagined it had achieved or sought to achieve and maintain a dominant hyper-power role of global dominance was doomed to lose it and then rapidly decline in overall power, wealth, prosperity and influence.

  

  Kennedy argued – with a wealth of detail drawn from different nations over his vast period of half a millennium – that the very attempt to achieve and maintain such power forced every nation that attempted it into a ruinous pattern of strategic overstretch.

  This demanded every major global empire in their turn to devote ruinously far too many economic resources to unproductive military power and ever more costly global commitments and conflicts.

  The more ambitious the commitments, the quicker came military defeat, economic ruin and national collapse, Kennedy documented.

  Kennedy published his book however at exactly the wrong moment for its abundantly documented conclusions and arguments to be taken seriously in the United States. The Cold War was just ending. The heroic actions of the Russian people in rejecting communism and leading in the dismantling of the Soviet Union were being misinterpreted as an eternal and lasting victory for the United States and for the forces of free market capitalism and minimum government regulation.

  Kennedy was therefore subjected to a furious firestorm of abuse, especially from the emerging neoconservatives who under President George W Bush succeeded in imposing their reckless policies on nations across the Middle East and Eurasia. Kennedy, unlike his enraged critics was a gracious and tolerant gentleman as well as great scholar and took the firestorm in his stride.

  Now more than 30 years after Kennedy published his great work, we can see how prescient, wise and visionary it truly was.

  In 2016 President Donald Trump was elected on a platform of dealing with domestic crises raging from economic ruin and impoverishment to an out of control drug and opioid abuse epidemic and the collapse of law and order across the long US land border with Mexico.

  That outcome provided telling testimony to the previous US policies of wasting at least $2 trillion on entirely unsuccessful nation-building and government-toppling projects ranging from Iraq to Afghanistan and since extended into such nations as Ukraine, Syria, and Libya

  All the national pathologies of bankruptcy, exhaustion, decline and ever spreading human misery that Kennedy in his book traced in previous empires can now be clearly delineated in the policies of the post-Cold War United States.

  The bottom line lesson to be drawn from Kennedy’s great book that so outraged neoconservatives at the time was a simple and stunning clear one: Unipolar Moments are just that and nothing more. They last for moments not ages.

  

  Instead, the very attempt to maintain a unipolar moment of apparent global supremacy by any power automatically instead will raise up a host of challenges to that power that will rapidly exhaust and then doom it.

  Kennedy traced this process of inexorable over – commitment and decline in 17th century Habsburg Spain. He followed it again in 18th century Bourbon France. He documented it once more in the rise, pride and inevitable fall of the British Empire and in the rash German attempts to create dominant global empires in both world wars of the 20th century.

  A generation before Kennedy published his great work, British historian Correlli Barnett, focusing only on the British Empire, published in 1972 his own classic “The Collapse of British Power.” Barnett focused on a one, single unipolar moment – the 1920s and 1930s when the British ruling class, like their American successors today imagined that they were the divinely-appointed global policeman charged by Providence with maintaining their own conceptions of right and wrong over the whole world.

  The British at least were reluctantly forced to cede independence to their vast global territories. It is doubtful whether the American people will be so lucky: The US Deep State establishment and their tame, unthinking media puppets remain blindly committed to inflexible expansion, conflict and strategic gambling with the peace and even survival of the world.

  Thirty years after his magnum opus was published, Paul Kennedy’s message of warning remains unheeded. America’s Unipolar Moment is long since dead and gone. America’s pretensions to rule supreme as the world’s unchallenged hyper-power have become a dangerous and unsustainable fantasy.

  A wakening to sanity is long overdue and the hour is late: National catastrophe can be the only other outcome.

  

• Travel Trends Index: "Perfect Storm" Threatens US Domestic And Inbound Travel

  The US Travel Association warned in a new report that US domestic travel is about to “level off” after achieving 105 straight months of overall expansion. The report indicates a “perfect storm” of factors is brewing that is currently suppressing international demand for travel to the US.

  The organization highlighted a strong dollar as one of the significant factors in deterring foreigners from visiting. Another issue presented is the global slowdown and political uncertainties in Asia, Europe, and Latin America spurred by the ongoing trade war.

  “We’re seeing something of a perfect storm of factors that could suppress international demand for travel to the U.S.,” said David Huether, U.S. Travel senior vice president for research.

  “The U.S. dollar has been on another very robust strengthening trend since April of this year, while the global economy has been cooling off considerably overall. That, coupled with political uncertainty in Europe and rising trade tensions, is a bad-news recipe for inbound travel.”

  Furthermore, the international Leading Travel Index (LTI) forecasts that the market will not expand any further at all in the next six months, which coincides with our thoughts of a significant economic slowdown that is currently festering in Asia and Europe and could soon rear its ugly head in US macro data in the next several quarters.

  The monthly Travel Trends Index (TTI) is prepared for US Travel by the research firm Oxford Economics. The TTI is based on public and private sector source data which are subject to revision by the source agency.

  TTI draws from advanced search and bookings data from ADARA and nSight; airline bookings data from the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC); IATA, OAG and other tabulations of international inbound travel to the U.S.; and hotel room demand data from STR.

  TTI shows that overall travel to and within the US grew 1.6% y/y in September, but warns of declining domestic travel rates, with business travel appearing to have plateaued and leisure travel accounting for the small growth. International travel was up 4.4% in September y/y, but US Travel said that since inbound had dropped 2.2% in September 2017, the y/y improvement “is liable to appear over-inflated.”

  US Travel Association Chartpack-

  Overall Current Travel Index

  

  International Current Travel Index

  

  Domestic Current Travel Index

  

  Domestic Business Current Travel Index

  

  Domestic Leisure Current Travel Index

  

  Finally, the Dow Jones Travel & Leisure Index, an index that provides coverage on 95% of market capitalization of travel and leisure stocks, confirms the industry has fallen under hard times in recent months.

  

  d

  

• China Infiltrates American Campuses

  Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

  Beijing, in seeking influence on American college and university campuses, has been infringing on academic freedoms, violating American sovereignty, and breaking U.S. law. U.S. officials, neglecting their responsibilities to the American people, have allowed this injurious behavior to continue, in some instances for decades.

  

  As an initial matter, some of this impermissible Chinese conduct is harmless, even amusing. As detailed by Anastasya Lloyd-Damnjanovic in a landmark study for the Wilson Center, Chinese officials in 2004 and 2007 threatened then Columbia University professor Robert Barnett, the prominent Tibet expert, that if he did not adopt a more favorable view of China’s policies they would — heavens! — stop speaking to him.

  Most of the time, however, impermissible conduct has taken on a more ominous tone. Barnett, for instance, was also the target of an effort, by a Chinese student at Columbia and a faculty member from China (at another institution), to “depose” him for trying to protect Tibetan exiles from harassment by Chinese students and Chinese consular officials.

  In 2009, an official from the Chinese Consulate in New York got in touch with Ming Xia, a faculty member at City University of New York, and demanded he stop work on a documentary on the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The official, saying China could offer more “financial rewards” than he was getting for the documentary, essentially offered Xia a bribe; when that did not work, the official directly threatened him.

  Then there was the Yang Shuping incident in June 2017. Yang gave the commencement speech at the University of Maryland, criticizing Beijing’s environmental record and praising American democratic values. She was targeted by the infamous Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA), which called her speech “intolerable”, a word inconsistent with the notions of an open campus. Her family back in China was threatened.

  China’s Communist Party, especially its United Front Work Department, has targeted institutions of higher learning as part of an intensive, multi-decade effort to influence American society. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has placed great emphasis on international propaganda efforts, in May 2015 identified students as “a new focus of United Front Work,” suggesting they should be promoters and implementers of Party efforts.

  As a result of this direction from the top of the Chinese political system, United Front Work Department activity, according to one “senior US official” quoted in the Financial Times, has “reached an unacceptable level.”

  Unacceptable? What the official may have found “unacceptable” was that students from China have acted in ways that have intimidated faculty, staff, and other students at American universities. Chinese students have done this by, among other things, demanding schools remove research materials, by insisting that faculty change teaching content to suit Beijing, by trying to prevent others from criticizing China, and by trying to force the cancellation of academic activities.

  Chinese students, not surprisingly, are becoming a part of what is known as “China’s long arm.” Far more worrying than the activities of students, however, are the actions of Chinese diplomats. Chinese diplomats, as Lloyd-Damnjanovic wrote in her September 2018 report, have been “employing intimidating modes of conversation.”

  Diplomats have also infringed on academic freedom by complaining about on-campus speakers and events, by trying to coerce faculty, and by threatening retaliation against American university programs in China.

  The main instruments of Chinese power on American campuses are the Confucius Institutes and CSSA chapters.

  CIs, as the Confucius Institutes are known, were first established in 2004 to provide Chinese language instruction, but they now teach Chinese society, culture, and other topics. They have also, incredibly, organized demonstrations on American soil, often to welcome Chinese leaders or to hound the Dalai Lama.

  The CIs operate at Beijing’s direction. The 107 or so Confucius Institutes in the U.S. formally report to the Hanban, the National Chinese Language Office, “affiliated” with the Chinese Ministry of Education.

  In reality, the Hanban appears to be a front for the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, which is charged with managing relations with other organizations and individuals. Liu Yunshan, once head of the Party’s Propaganda Department, in 2010 exhorted CIs to “actively carry out international propaganda battles.” CIs appear, in fact, to be funded by the Propaganda Department. A party-state, especially one as problematical as China’s, disseminating information as a formal unit of an institution of higher learning is nothing short of alarming, especially considering the Party’s renewed emphasis on undermining freedom and democracy worldwide.

  Possibly even more alarming are the arrangements between China and American educational institutions. The contracts establishing Confucius Institutes are rarely public. One might well wonder why.

  According to Rachelle Peterson, director of research projects at the National Association of Scholar:

  The contractual language the Hanban pushes on universities poses a more substantive threat to academic autonomy. The Confucius Institute constitution requires all universities to avoid “tarnish[ing] the reputation of the Confucius Institutes” — an offense punishable by revocation of the contract, immediate loss of all Hanban funds, and potential unspecified “legal action.” I examined eight signed contracts between American universities and the Hanban, all eight of which duplicate this language almost verbatim.

  The institutes, therefore, have been set up from the get-go to be exempt from criticism. This immunity, by itself, undermines the ability of administrators to supervise the CIs.

  Even more dangerous are the 150 or so chapters of the CSSA and their closely affiliated groups. These organizations are sometimes covertly sponsored, funded, and, most disturbingly, directed by China’s embassy and five consulates in the U.S.

  Sometimes these links are openly admitted, but often the chapters try to hide their connections to Beijing. The website of the University of California San Diego chapter once said it was “a subordinate organization” of the Los Angeles Chinese Consulate. The George Washington University chapter says it is “directed by” and “works with” the Chinese embassy. The chapter at the University of Tennessee requires members to swear adherence to certain positions advocated by the Chinese government. The constitution of Southwestern CSSA — a group of chapters in Arizona, California, Hawaii, and New Mexico — states that all local CSSA presidential candidates must be approved by China’s Los Angeles consulate.

  The main points of contact for CSSA chapters are often intelligence officers in the embassy and consulates. China’s Ministry of State Security uses CSSA students to inform on other Chinese on campus. Sulaiman Gu, a student at the University of Georgia, told Radio Free Asia that MSS agents tried to get him to inform on fellow Chinese. Gu actually provided RFA with tapes of MSS agents giving him requests for information on certain targets.

  Moreover, the Chinese state has, for several decades, been organizing — and paying for — Chinese students to engage in demonstrations on U.S. soil outside campuses, thereby impermissibly interfering in the American political process.

  So, what should be done about all this?

  Let us start with what should not be done. America should not, as President Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller proposed this year, ban all Chinese students. The U.S. is an open society, and Americans should keep it open. That is why their country is so strong. Americans do not need to create a climate of intimidation and fear against a racial group.

  Americans also should not vilify Chinese students as a group or forget that Chinese students and faculty members of Chinese descent are often the targets of Beijing’s influence and interference operations. In short, let us not punish victims.

  So what should America do?

  First, universities can take over many of the functions of CSSA chapters. In addition to their malign activities, CSSA chapters provide important support services, such as helping Chinese students adjust when they first arrive on campus. The Communist Party should not be the only institution providing those services. U.S. colleges and universities benefit from the tuition of about 340,000 students from China, and these institutions can certainly offer services to support their stay.

  Second, Washington should rely on existing norms, rules, and laws. American institutions certainly can deal with whatever Beijing throws at them. So, for instance, any CSSA chapter that hides funding from Beijing — a violation of college and university rules — should be disbanded.

  Most of all, let us get the FBI to round up Ministry of State Security agents who, up to now, have been given free rein to operate in America. Putting these agents behind bars or even just revoking their visas will end many of the activities that endanger American campuses. The Chinese kill CIA agents in China. The least Washington can do is declare China’s agents personae non gratae.

  The Chinese feel emboldened to violate American sovereignty and break laws because American administrations have let them do these things — sometimes openly — since at least the early 1990s. This is as much a Washington problem as a Beijing one.

  Third, Congress can also change laws to make life inhospitable for Confucius Institutes. The John McCain 2019 National Defense Authorization Act provides that an educational institution cannot receive Defense Department funds for any program that involves a Confucius Institute.

  That is a good start, but the Trump administration should try to extend the prohibition. Legislation should bar an educational institution from receiving any federal funds if it hosts a CI.

  Rachelle Peterson of the National Association of Scholars told Gatestone that there are now three bills before Congress — the Foreign Influence Transparency Act, the Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act, and the Aim Higher Act — addressing the problems posed by Confucius Institutes.

  Fourth, U.S. and campus officials must make sure that Communist Party members do not abuse their First Amendment rights. The First Amendment gives China’s Party committees the freedom to convene, but they do not have the freedom to intimidate others, especially Chinese and American students and scholars, a violation of civil liberties.

  The existence of a Party cell on a U.S. campus — there are now several of them — signals to Chinese students and faculty that, although they are in the United States, they are still subject to Beijing’s supervision.

  This issue of Chinese intimidation on campus for me is personal. My father, born in China, came to Cornell University in 1945 on a Chinese government scholarship. For Chinese students in the United States, I wish for them what my father had, the experience to study — and live — without fear.

  

• As Employment Soars, These Are The US Cities Losing The Most Skilled Workers

  As the US labor market continues its record-setting streak of jobs growth, torpedoes (or hurricanes) be damned, skilled workers are enjoying more opportunities than ever before.

  So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people living in areas blighted by drought or drug abuse – or that are simply struggling with a shortage of well-paying jobs – are opting to leave for greener pastures. According to Bloomberg’s Brain Drain index, California’s Central Valley and opioid-ridden West Virginia are seeing some of the largest outflows of skilled workers.

  Even as the rest of the state booms, California’s struggling Central Valley is home to the metropolitan area seeing the highest degree of brain drain in the US: Hanford-Corcoran. Situated about 175 miles southeast of the Silicon Valley, losses of white collar jobs and reductions in pay in the STEM fields are driving skilled workers away. The index measures the outflow of advanced degree holders, as well as any drops in business formation.

  

  Hanford’s economy is also dependent on agriculture. And the state’s stubborn drought has taken its toll.

  “The small group of educated workers in the region are drawn to economies that offer more opportunity,” said Matthew Horton, associate director of the Milken Institute’s California Center. Only 12% of Hanford’s population over age 25 holds a bachelor’s degree.

  Still, the region holds some promise. Faraday Future, a manufacturer of electric vehicles, is preparing to move into a warehouse abandoned nearly two decades ago by Italian manufacturer Pirelli & C. SpA, according to the chief executive of the Kings County Economic Development Corporation Lance Lippincott.

  “Historically, the Central Valley has had a usually higher unemployment, lower attainment rate for four-year degrees overall compared to California,” Lippincott said. “But it kind of seems like there’s a shift in what’s going on in Hanford.”

  The runner-up for largest brain drain is post-industrial Kankakee, Illinois. The city started losing manufacturers back in the 1980s. As one long-time resident pointed out, the city is trying to rebuild. But when it comes to rectifying the collapse of America’s industrial base, there’s no easy solution. “We’re a nose-to-the-grindstone type community. We rebuilt over time. There is no silver bullet,” said Lisa Wogan, director of marketing and business attraction at the Economic Alliance of Kankakee County.

  

  

  In recent years, Kankakee has lost 300 jobs at agribusiness Bunge SA and 50 positions at chemical maker BASF. Fortunately, some of those cuts have been offset by an expansion of CSL Behring’s local pharmaceutical operation, which acquired Bungee’s old 74-acre site in 2017.

  Coming in at No. 3 is Charleston, West Virginia – the capital of one of the states hardest-hit by the opioid epidemic. Adding to its problems, the state has been wracked by coal industry bankruptcies and poverty as well. In September, a poll by MetroNews Dominion Post revealed that 50% of West Virginians “say they have a friend or family member who has been addicted to prescription pain medications.” Four other cities in West Virginia made it on the brain drain list as well. They are Bluefield (No. 9), Huntington (No. 14), Weirton (No. 45) and Clarksburg (No. 46).

  Thanks in no small part to the burgeoning US marijuana industry, the Colorado metropolitan areas of Boulder and Fort Collins have ranked as No. 1 and No. 2 on the index, while San Jose, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, ranks No. 3 in brain concentration.

  

• The Chinese Government Identifies Citizens By The Way They Walk

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  Communist Chinese authorities are using “gait recognition” technology to identify Chinese civilians by the way that they walk. The new technology uses body shapes and movement to identify people even when their face is not in the camera.

  

  This dystopian big brother nightmare is quickly becoming a reality for the souls residing in the People’s Republic of China.  Already used by police on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai, “gait recognition” is part of a push across China to develop artificial intelligence and data-driven surveillance that is raising concerns about how far the technology will go.

  The software, built by a Chinese artificial intelligence company called Watrix, extracts a person’s silhouette from video and analyses the silhouette’s movement to create a model of the way the person walks. It can identify people from 50 meters away and requires no special camera to do so.

  China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens. As if the “social credit” scoring system wasn’t terrifying enough, the country continues to cross the line with surveilling its own people.

  “Gait analysis can’t be fooled by simply limping, walking with splayed feet or hunching over, because we’re analyzing all the features of an entire body,” said Watrix chief executive officer Huang Yongzhen.

   “You don’t need people’s cooperation for us to be able to recognize their identity,” Huang added.

  Huang is a former researcher and quite obviously an authoritarian control freak who said he left academia after seeing how promising the technology had become. He then co-founded Watrix in 2016, and his company was incubated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Though the software isn’t as good as facial recognition, Huang said its 94 percent accuracy rate is good enough for commercial use.

  But not everyone is excited about being tracked and monitored while minding their own business. Shi Shusi, a Chinese columnist and commentator, said it was unsurprising the technology was catching on in China faster than the rest of the world because of Beijing’s obsession and emphasis on social control.

  “Using biometric recognition to maintain social stability and manage society is an unstoppable trend,” he said.

  “It’s great business.”

  

• The Social Cost Of De-Industrialization? 47,238 Gun Incidents In The U.S In 2018

  There have been 47,238 gun incidents across the United States in 2018 — and thanks to Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a not for profit advocacy group offering information about gun-related incidents in the United States, they all presented in charts below.

  As we reported last week, eleven people were killed, and at least six more were injured — including four law enforcement officers — when a gunman opened fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning.

  “It’s a very horrific crime scene,” Alleghany Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich told reporters during a press conference Saturday afternoon. “It’s one of the worst that I’ve seen.”

  As the nation comes to grips with yet another mass shooting carried out by an angry man with a gun, the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks anti-Semitism in the U.S., said the attack was “likely the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States.”

  “It is simply unconscionable for Jews to be targeted during worship on a Sabbath morning, and unthinkable that it would happen in the United States of America in this day and age,” the group wrote.

  

  In 2018, including this weekend’s mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, there have been 47,238 gun-related incidents resulting in 11,991 deaths. GVA shows gun death concentrations are the highest in Northeast and Southeast regions.

  

  Over 23,359 injuries from gun-related incidents were recorded so far this year.

  

  Of the total gun deaths, 548 were children, while 2,321 were teenagers.

  

  

  Mass shootings incidents in 2018 are heavily concentrated in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic area.

  

  Home invasions involving guns are mostly concentrated in Northeast and Southeast regions.

  

  GVA shows gun-related defensive use incidents mainly occurred in the Southeast and Northeast area.

  

  “There are, of course, arguments from staunch gun-rights supporters that an armed citizenry is a safer citizenry. Nothing stops a bad guy with a gun like a good guy with a gun, is a popular National Rifle Association talking point. And President Trump pondered aloud on Saturday whether guns inside the synagogue might have led to a less tragic outcome, said MarketWatch.

  President Trump, asked about gun laws, says the Pittsburgh synagogue should have had armed security at the bris and the gunman wouldn’t be able to do what he did pic.twitter.com/y9Cq59wPM5

  — Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) October 27, 2018

  While the data above certainly supports America could have a gun problem, we do not find it odd that most of the shootings have occurred in the Northeast and Southeast regions. Many of these areas have been de-industrialized over the years, which has resulted in widespread social and economic woes for its residents. It seems that the social costs of de-industrialization are finally being realized in gun-related violence.

  

• What Are The Chances America's Disunion Devolves Into Civil War?

  Authored by Ian Morris via MarketWatch.com,

  Strong rhetoric and violence on both sides of the political spectrum are reaching a fever pitch…

  

  Is the United States on the brink of a new civil war?

  According to Newsweek magazine’s polling, a third of all Americans think such a conflict could break out within the next five years, with 10% thinking it “very likely to happen.”

  Plenty of experts agree. Back in March, State Department official Keith Mines told Foreign Policy magazine: “It is like 1859, everyone is mad about something and everyone has a gun.” He rated the odds of a second American Civil War breaking out within the next 10-15 years at 60%.

  October’s awful events — pipe bombs sent to leading Democratic politicians and supporters, the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh — have only amplified these fears. “We are now nearing a point comparable to 1860,” my Stanford University colleague Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote in the National Review.

  The historian Niall Ferguson, another Stanford colleague, suggested in The Sunday Times of London that if someone were to design a “Civil War Clock” comparable to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock,” the designer would probably now be announcing that it is “two minutes to Fort Sumter.”

  Ferguson himself is more upbeat, thinking that “the time on the civil war Doomsday Clock looks more like 11.08 than 11.58.” It seems to me, though, that all these speculations are deeply misleading — so much so, in fact, that the main thing they illustrate is how not to use the past to understand the present.

  Similarities, differences and broad patterns

  There are certainly some striking similarities between the American political scene in the late 2010s and that of the late 1850s. Both periods saw extreme polarization over issues of intense economic and emotional importance. At both times, the country divided geographically, with more urban and educated regions leaning one way and more rural and less educated regions the other. In both periods, highly partisan media inflamed passions, sometimes brazenly peddling “fake news”; and at both stages, the country was recovering from a severe financial crisis.

  It is all very alarming — but that does not put us minutes away from Fort Sumter. In the nearly four years that I have been writing columns for Stratfor, I have repeatedly drawn attention to a distinction that logicians like to make between “formal” and “relational” analogies. A formal analogy involves finding similarities between a case about which we know a lot (such as what happened in the United States at the end of the 1850s) and one about which we know less (such as what is just beginning to happen in the United States at the end of the 2010s), and extrapolating from them to variables that cannot be observed in the less well-known case — concluding, here, that if polarization, sectionalism, financial problems and political violence produced civil war in the 1850s, they will have the same result in the 2010s.

  The problem with formal analogies is, of course, that no two cases are identical. The modern rage over globalization and its discontents does not come close to the moral intensity of the 19th-century arguments over slavery, while the consequences of the 1857 financial meltdown were nowhere near those of the 2008 collapse.

  Even more striking, the forms of political violence in the two periods are very different. The 1850s experienced nothing like last month’s pipe bombs, the 2017 shooting of Republican Rep. Steve Scalise and three others or the 2011 shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others; and the 2010s have seen nothing like U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks’ near-fatal 1856 attack on Sen. Charles Sumner on the floor of the U.S. Senate, let alone the “Bleeding Kansas” insurrection of 1855-56 or John Brown’s raid on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry in 1859.

  The devil is in the details, which means that differences are just as important as similarities when we try to learn from the past. But how do we weigh up the pros and cons of comparisons? This is where the second kind of analogy comes in. Rather than cherry-picking convenient similarities and either ignoring or arguing away inconvenient differences, relational analogies begin from broad patterns in multiple well-known cases and proceed by understanding how a less well-known case fits into the larger structure. So, rather than wringing our hands over how much 2018 resembles 1860, we should be looking at how civil wars began in a wide range of different contexts, and then asking how well the late 2010s fit into that pattern.

  Sufficient and necessary causes

  The most obvious point is that the polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package is not just shared by 1850s and 2010s America. It was also common in many other eras that ended in civil war.

  The English Civil War of 1642-51, for instance, was preceded by decades of comparable disturbances. The population split into “court” and “country” factions (nowadays more familiar as “Cavaliers” and “Roundheads”). Each had its own geographical base and religious affiliation, with High Church Royalists and Puritan Roundheads literally ready to mutilate and burn each other over their differences.

  Distrust of institutions was even worse than in 2010s America: Royalists accused Parliamentarians of blasphemy and corruption, while Parliamentarians replied that Royalist corruption was even worse, and was magnified by the royal court’s sexual deviance and willingness to sell the country to foreigners. Throughout the 1630s, financial crises paralyzed government and political violence mounted. Pro-Parliament mobs murdered bishops and besieged royal favorites in their mansions, and, in the 17th-century equivalent of sending anthrax spores through the mail, a leading Parliamentarian received a package containing a rag soaked in pus from the sores of a plague victim. He suffered no ill effects — then as now, biological terrorism was difficult to do well — but within a year, the two sides would fight their first pitched battle.

  The Roman Republic provides another classic case. In the 50s B.C., the political elite was deeply divided between what Romans called populares — men such as Julius Caesar, who presented themselves as champions of the masses — and optimates such as Pompey the Great, who claimed to stand for virtue, tradition and the nation as a whole. Webs of patronage and debt bound much of the population to one faction or the other. Escalating financial crises ruined cities and regions, and entire provinces lined up behind strongmen who claimed to be able to save them — Gaul with Caesar, Italy with Pompey. Politicians fortified their homes against mob violence, street gangs regularly stopped elections from being held and assassination became almost commonplace. The civil wars that began in 49 B.C. would leave millions dead.

  However, although England and Rome provide alarming formal analogies, things get more complicated as soon as we start looking for relational analogies. While the polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package regularly leads to civil war, it does not always do so. In Rome, for instance, the package was in some ways even more prominent in the 130s B.C. than in Julius Caesar’s day. Tiberius Gracchus, usually seen as the first popularis politician, tried to cancel the debts of poor farmers and redistribute elite properties to them. A constitutional crisis ensued, splitting the ruling class. To conservatives, Gracchus seemed to be rallying the impoverished peasants of Etruria against Roman urban interests to make himself king. In political violence going far beyond Brooks’ assault on Sumner, a meeting of the Roman Senate in 133 B.C. ended with conservatives breaking up the wooden benches on which they sat and using the pieces to beat Gracchus and 300 of his followers to death. Twelve years later, his brother Gaius also died in political violence over much the same issues. Yet civil war did not erupt in either case.

  Similarly, following Henry VIII’s break with the Roman church and dissolution of the Catholic monasteries in the 1530s, England experienced just as much polarization, regionalism, financial crisis and political violence as it would in the 1630s. However, it did not tip into civil war, although it came close. The United States was arguably almost as divided and haunted by political violence in the 1960s as in the 1850s, yet it too escaped civil war. We can only conclude that the polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package was not a sufficient cause for civil war in Rome, England or the United States.

  Nor was it a necessary cause. In Rome and England at least, civil wars broke out in the absence of polarization, regionalism or financial crisis (although political violence is, by definition, always part of civil war). In A.D. 69, which became known as “The Year of the Four Emperors,” multiple civil wars convulsed Rome, but they were driven almost entirely by generals’ ambitions to seize the throne. Similarly, between 1135 and 1153, England was torn apart by such severe civil wars that the period came to be called “The Anarchy.” The violence was so extreme, one chronicler recorded, that “Men said openly that Christ and his saints slept”; yet the polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package was largely absent in the 1130s. A royal succession crisis and fragile state institutions were all it took.

  The polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package that 2010s America shares with 1850s America can be present without leading to civil war, and civil wars can break out without the package being present. We can only conclude that these forces are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for civil war. The dark prophecies of a second Civil War within the coming decade might well be nothing more than bad scholarship.

  It’s the Army, stupid

  So, the obvious questions: Why do the polarization/regionalism/financial crisis/political violence package and civil war sometimes go together and sometimes not, and will they go together in America’s short-term future?

  Fortunately, the answer to the first question was worked out long ago, by the Roman historian Tacitus. Looking back on the Year of the Four Emperors some 50 years after the event, he recognized that “Now was divulged the secret of the empire — that emperors could be made elsewhere than Rome.” What he meant by this was that although the empire’s political institutions were all concentrated in the city of Rome, if the armies out in the provinces decided to intervene in the political process, they always had the final say. Rome lurched into civil war in 49 B.C. because Caesar and Pompey each had armies to back their political ambitions. It did so again in A.D. 69 because no fewer than four rivals found themselves in this position. It did not lurch into civil war in 133 B.C., though, because its mighty armies remained aloof from politics.

  England stumbled into civil war in 1642 because it had no standing army at all. When relations between the Royalists and Parliamentarians broke down, each could safely set about raising its own armed forces with no fear that Leviathan would intervene and stop them. This was Thomas Hobbes’ central point in his 1651 masterpiece Leviathan; only a powerful government with terrifying armed force can scare people straight and deter them from using violence to pursue their own ends. Things had been even worse in 1135, because in addition to there being no strong central army, dozens of barons had their own private armies, which they gleefully unleashed on rivals. In the 1530s, by contrast, despite the mass uprising in defense of Catholicism known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, the barons largely remained loyal to Henry VIII and civil war was avoided.

  When relations between Northern and Southern states broke down in 1861, the United States had more in common militarily with England in 1642 than with any of the other cases discussed here. It did have a professional army, but it contained just 16,367 men, and 179 of its 197 companies were stationed west of the Mississippi, so far from the initial areas of fighting as to render them irrelevant. In any case, one in five of the U.S. Army’s officers promptly resigned their commissions to join the Confederate states and thousands of noncommissioned men simply deserted and followed them. The government in Washington effectively had no army to enforce its will, and both sides — like King Charles I and the English Parliament in 1642 — had to set about raising forces almost from scratch.

  Nothing could be less like the United States’ position in 2018. It has the most powerful and professional armed forces the world has ever seen, and there is absolutely no doubt about their loyalty to the legitimate government or commitment to the principle of civilian command. American soldiers, sailors and airmen do have political opinions, but they currently can be relied on to put their duty first. The United States therefore has far more in common with Rome in 133 B.C. than with any of the other cases. Even if U.S. senators start killing each other with chair legs, the armed forces will not take sides, other than to implement orders — so long as the orders are legitimate and legal — from their elected commander-in-chief.

  When we look at the recent civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya, or at places such as Egypt where civil war has been averted, nothing matters so much as the stance and strength of the armed forces. We have to conclude that the American Civil War Doomsday Clock does not stand at two, or even 52, minutes to midnight. The very idea is ridiculous. So long as the armed forces remain true to their highest traditions, it will not matter how angry the American people get or how badly their politicians behave. There will be no second Civil War.

  

• China's First Drone Missile Boat On Display At Airshow China

  Earlier this week, we reported how the 12th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition (Airshow China) in Zhuhai, South China’s Guangdong province, is a traditional event for Beijing to demonstrate its expanding defense sector in front of world leaders and arms dealers from over 40 countries.

  Throughout the week, state-run media has been releasing reports of defense exhibits and demonstrations of China’s next-generation of weapons.

  In particular, what caught our attention on Thursday morning, is that China has developed an autonomous boat that can conduct reconnaissance missions and fire up to four image-guided missiles, said China Daily.

  

  The drone boat, called the Liaowangzhe-2, is the country’s first and second globally to fire missiles successfully. Israel’s “Protector,” a drone ship, fired rockets during an exercise last year.

  This is the first time that Liaowangzhe-2 has been released for public viewing and or allowed coverage by state-run media outlets.

  Zhuhai-based shipping developer Oceanalpha, Xi’an Institute of Modern Control Technology and Huazhong Institute of Electro-Optics are Liaowangzhe-2’s shipbuilders, according to China Daily.

  

  The vessel is 7.5 meters long and 2.7 meters wide, has a maximum speed of 45 knots. It can sail about 310 nautical miles at a rate of 22 knots. It is rated for all type of sea conditions leveled below rough, or waves below 2.5 meters high.

  Liaowangzhe-2 is considered a reconnaissance and strike vessel, and it is equipped with a missile launcher on the bow with a maximum range of 5 kilometers under an image-aided terminal guidance system.

  

  It seems that China has found a new autonomous vessel for reconnaissance and strike missions around its militarized islands in the South China Sea.

  

  With trade war tensions spiraling out of control between Washington and Beijing, and the US continuing to sail its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers around the militarized islands — further angering China. Global trade momentum is rapidly slowing, with the risk of a full-blown trade war in 2019, which seems both world superpowers are preparing for the inevitable: a hot clash.

  Maybe Beijing is indirectly warning Washington that the South China Sea is about to be flooded with rocket launcher drone boats as a deterrent.

  Tensions are high, when trade stops, that is when a military conflict starts…

  

  

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• UK Government Bans The "Fake News" Label To Facilitate Further Censorship

  Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

  The UK is banning the term “fake news” in official documents.

  

  The motivation behind this move is that the government thinks that the word is too broad and is urging people to employ more specific phrases such as “disinformation” and “misinformation” instead.

  This isn’t just due to some bureaucrats’ personal preferences, however, but because the state plans to more effectively wage information warfare and defend itself from the same, which is why it needs to be as precise as possible when it comes to tackling these tasks. The two suggested replacement terms practically mean the same thing though with the important difference being that disinformation is deliberately false while misinformation is unintentionally so, but both work to sow discord and division in societies and are much more easily weaponizable in today’s interconnected age.

  One of the most important functions of any intelligence agency is to determine the intent of their targets or whoever pops up on their radar, whether they’re an internal actor or an external one. In the context of fighting “fake news”, the UK is trying to improve the operational efficiency of its analysts by forcing them to discern between disinformation and misinformation instead of just lumping together whatever politically relevant narratives that they come across as “fake news” for convenience’s sake.

  There’s a big difference between a fabricated news story, an analysis that deceives its intended audience through the omission of key facts, and a poorly written op-ed that inadvertently confuses people more than it conveys whatever it is that the author wants to opine about.

  The most troubling aspect about all of this, however, is that the British government could abuse this new stance to censor free speech on social media. The Telegraph reported that the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sports (DCMS) Committee, whose inquiry prompted this policy, wrote in its interim report earlier this summer that “With such a shared definition, and clear guidelines for companies, organisations, and the Government to follow, there will be a shared consistency of meaning across the platforms, which can be used as the basis of regulation and enforcement.”

  This makes it obvious that the government is indeed preparing to crack down and “regulate” disinformation and misinformation, which might even lead to shutting down accounts that criticize Prime Minister May’s Brexit strategy if they’re determined to have met that subjective criterion.

  After all, the difference between disinformation and misinformation is largely intent, and determining that in the highly charged political context of Brexit will probably come down to the overseer’s opinion.

  

• In Huge Shift, UAE To Reopen Embassy In Damascus As Gulf Rapprochement With Assad Likely

  Regional Middle East media have been circulating early reports that the United Arab Emirates is preparing to re-open its embassy in Damascus after six years of closure, which is to kickstart a new regional shift. This comes as Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are reportedly strongly considering the restoration of diplomatic ties with the Assad government after all GCC states had closed their Syrian embassies in 2012.

  The significance of this is huge, coming after seven years of war driven by an official policy of Syrian regime change by these very GCC governments, foremost among them Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Restoration of ties also means countries like the UAE could be major sources of financing reconstruction projects at a key moment when the United States is attempting to block all aid that could benefit the Syrian government. 

  

  According to Al Masdar News Abu Dhabi has “ordered full maintenance works to its Syrian embassy to be ready for opening within the next two weeks.” 

  Such a speedy turn around signals the UAE is ready to acknowledge Assad as the legitimate leader of Syria after emerging victorious as the international proxy war continues to wind down, and likely with other Gulf states to follow.

  Prominent Syria analyst Joshua Landis noted this week there’s currently a monumental realignment underway as regional powers hasten to restore ties with Damascus: 

  Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt and Jordan are reopening relations with the Syrian government. This suggests that they are not fighting “Sunnis,” but extremists that they seem to consider common enemies. No longer Sunni vs Shia – but Conservative vs Radical. Or Governments vs insurgents.

  The rationale for this is also tied up in regional rivalries and the continuing fallout of the internal GCC schism, which has pitted Saudi Arabia and the UAE against Qatar. 

  

  Among the first to report the news is an expert who goes by the name Ehsani and writes for the influential analysis blog, Syria Comment — he’s obtained rare insider commentary from senior Syrian government sources concerning the historic shift and potential restoration of relations with GCC countries.

  Ehsani presented his analysis based on insider sources as follows…

  * * *

  Syria, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia are on the cusp of forming a new regional alliance to defeat the ideology and expansion of the Muslim Brotherhood long championed and supported by Qatar and Turkey. 

  This important shift comes on the back of intense and comprehensive meetings that took place recently in Abu Dhabi. The common objective of the parties is to stabilize Syria and ensure the return of the secular state that existed prior to 2011.

  SIGNIFICANT: #SYRIA #UAE #SAUDI ARE ON CUSP OF FORMING A NEW REGIONAL ALLIANCE TO DEFEAT THE IDEOLOGY AND EXPANSION OF THE MOSLEM BROTHERHOOD LONG CHAMPIONED AND SUPPORTED BY #QATAR #TURKEY

  EXPECT REOPENING OF UAE EMBASSY IN DAMASCUS TO KICK START THE NEW REGIONAL SHIFT pic.twitter.com/pyTDFFn2RQ

  — EHSANI2 (@EHSANI22) November 7, 2018

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  There is no doubt that this new shift will create a challenge for Damascus when it comes to its relations with its long ally Iran. At the same time, this shift will also be a perfect opportunity for Damascus to prove its independence when it comes to foreign policy.

  The thinking in Gulf capital revolves around the idea that a stronger and more stable Syria is the best way to slow and reverse the expansion of Iran in the region. After all, Tehran’s influence was seen as to have grown as the Syrian state got weaker since 2011.

  Meanwhile the Trump administration has launched its most concerted effort yet to pressure the Saudis to end the conflict in Yemen. Both Mattis and Pompeo in recent days have said “the time has come to halt more than three years of conflict”.

  Once the war on Yemen subsides and soon comes to a halt following US pressure, this is likely to have positive impact on the region and will add traction to this UAE/Saudi/Syrian rapprochement. The money that is now wasted on this war can be better spent stabilizing Syria.

  

• Trump, Gorbachev, And The Fall Of The American Empire

  Authored by Raja Murthy via The Asia Times,

  “The only wealth you keep is wealth you have given away,” said Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), last of the great Roman emperors. US President Donald Trump might know of another Italian, Mario Puzo’s Don Vito Corleone, and his memorable mumble: “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

  Forgetting such Aurelian and godfather codes is propelling the decline and fall of the American empire.

  Trump is making offers the world can refuse – by reshaping trade deals, dispensing with American sops and forcing powerful corporations to return home, the US is regaining economic wealth but relinquishing global power.

  As the last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika (restructuring) led to the breakup of its vast territory(22 million square kilometers). Gorbachev’s failed policies led to the dissolution of the USSR into Russia and independent countries, and the end of a superpower.

  Ironically, the success of Trump’s policies will hasten the demise of the American empire: the US regaining economic health but losing its insidious hold over the world.

  This diminishing influence was highlighted when India and seven other countries geared up to defy Washington’s re-imposition of its unilateral, illegal sanctions against Iran, starting Monday.

  The US State Department granting “permission” on the weekend to the eight countries to buy Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station

  The US State Department granting “permission” on the weekend to the eight countries to buy Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station.

  The law of cause and effect unavoidably delivers. The Roman Empire fell after wars of greed and orgies of consumption. A similar nemesis, the genie of Gorbachev, stalks Pennsylvania Avenue, with Trump unwittingly writing the last chapter of World War II: the epilogue of the two rival superpowers that emerged from humanity’s most terrible conflict.

  The maverick 45th president of the United States may succeed at being an economic messiah to his country, which has racked up a $21.6 trillion debt, but the fallout is the death of American hegemony. These are the declining days of the last empire standing.

  Emperors and mafia godfathers knew that wielding great influence means making payoffs. Trump, however, is doing away with the sops, the glue that holds the American empire together, and is making offers that he considers “fair” but instead is alienating the international community– from badgering NATO and other countries to pay more for hosting the US legions (800 military bases in 80 countries) to reducing US aid.

  US aid to countries fell from $50 billion in fiscal year 2016, $37 billion in 2017 to $7.7 billion so far  in 2018. A world less tied to American largesse and generous trade tarrifs can more easily reject the “you are with us or against us” bullying doctrine of US presidents. In the carrot and stick approach that largely passes as American foreign policy, the stick loses power as the carrot vanishes.

  

  Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) in The Godfather. Big payoffs needed for big influence. A presidential lesson for Don Trump

  More self-respecting leaders will have less tolerance for American hypocrisy, such as sanctioning other countries for nuclear weapons while having the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet.

  They will sneer more openly at the hysteria surrounding alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, pointing to Washington’s violent record of global meddling. They will cite examples of American hypocrisy such as its sponsorship of coups against elected leaders in Latin America, the US Army’s Project Camelot in 1964 targeting 22 countries for intervention (including Iran, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia), its support for bloodthirsty dictators, and its destabilization of the Middle East with the destruction of Iraq and Libya.

  Immigrant cannon fodder

  Trump’s focus on the economy reduces the likelihood of him starting wars. By ending the flood of illegal immigrants to save jobs for US citizens, he is also inadvertently reducing the manpower for illegal wars. Non-citizen immigrants comprise about 5% of the US Army. For its Iraq and Afghanistan wars, US army recruiters offered citizenship to lure illegal immigrants, mostly Latinos.

  Among the first US soldiers to die in the Iraq War was 22-year old illegal immigrant Corporal Jose Antonio Gutierrez, an orphan from the streets of Guatemala City. He sneaked across the Mexican border into the US six years before enlisting in exchange for American citizenship.

  On March 21, 2003, Gutierrez was killed by friendly fire near Umm Qasr, southern Iraq. The coffin of this illegal immigrant was draped in the US flag, and he received American citizenship – posthumously.

  Trump policies targeting illegal immigration simultaneously reduces the availability of cannon fodder for the illegal wars needed to maintain American hegemony.

  Everything comes to an end, and so too will the last empire of our era.

  The imperial American eagle flying into the sunset will see the dawn of an economically healthier US that minds its own business, and increase hopes for a more equal, happier world – thanks to the unintentional Gorbachev-2 in the White House.

  

• Travel Trends Index: "Perfect Storm" Threatens US Domestic And Inbound Travel 

  The US Travel Association warned in a new report that US domestic travel is about to “level off” after achieving 105 straight months of overall expansion.

  The report indicates a “perfect storm” of factors is brewing that is currently suppressing international demand for travel to the US.

  The organization noticed a strong dollar had been one of the significant factors in deterring foreigners from visiting. Another issue presented, in the report, is the global slowdown and political uncertainties in Asia, Europe, and Latin America spurred by the trade war.

  “We’re seeing something of a perfect storm of factors that could suppress international demand for travel to the U.S.,” said David Huether, U.S. Travel senior vice president for research.

  “The U.S. dollar has been on another very robust strengthening trend since April of this year, while the global economy has been cooling off considerably overall. That, coupled with political uncertainty in Europe and rising trade tensions, is a bad-news recipe for inbound travel.”

  Furthermore, the international Leading Travel Index (LTI) forecasts that the market will not expand any further at all in the next six months, which coincides with our thoughts of a significant economic slowdown that is currently festering in Asia and Europe and could soon rear its ugly head in US macro data in the next several quarters.

  The monthly Travel Trends Index (TTI) is prepared for US Travel by the research firm Oxford Economics. The TTI is based on public and private sector source data which are subject to revision by the source agency.

  TTI draws from advanced search and bookings data from ADARA and nSight; airline bookings data from the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC); IATA, OAG and other tabulations of international inbound travel to the U.S.; and hotel room demand data from STR.

  TTI shows that overall travel to and within the US grew 1.6% y/y in September, but warns of declining domestic travel rates, with business travel appearing to have plateaued and leisure travel accounting for the small growth. International travel was up 4.4% in September y/y, but US Travel said that since inbound had dropped 2.2% in September 2017, the y/y improvement “is liable to appear over-inflated.”

  US Travel Association Chartpack– 

  Overall Current Travel Index 

  

  International Current Travel Index

  

  Domestic Current Travel Index 

  

  Domestic Business Current Travel Index

  

  Domestic Leisure Current Travel Index 

  

  Dow Jones Travel & Leisure Index, an index that provides coverage on 95% of market capitalization of travel and leisure stocks, shows the industry has fallen under hard times in 2018. The index is down .14% YTD.

  

  Yet, this more data informing us that yes, in fact, an economic slowdown is headed for the “greatest economy ever” in 2019.

  

• US Declares War On "Troika Of Tyranny", Pushing Them Closer To Russia

  Authored by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The US is going to extend its “combat operations” – the sanctions war aimed at reshaping the world – to Latin America.

  

  Tough new penalties are planned against the “troika of tyranny,” consisting of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua “in the very near future.” This announcement was made by National Security Adviser (NSA) John Bolton on Nov.1 — a few days before the US mid-term elections — in an attempt to draw more support from Hispanic voters, especially in Florida. An executive order on sanctions against Venezuela has already been signed by President Trump, but that’s just the beginning.

  It was rather symbolic that on the same day the NSA delivered his bellicose speech, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) voted overwhelmingly in support of a resolution calling for an end to the US economic embargo against Cuba. The document did not include amendments proposed by the US that would put pressure on Havana to improve its human-rights record.

  This is a prelude to a massive escalation in US foreign policy, which will include the formation of alliances, in addition to the active confrontation of those who dare to pursue policies believed to be anti-US.

   “Under this administration, we will no longer appease dictators and despots near our shores,” Bolton stated, adding,

   “The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua – has finally met its match.” 

  Sounds like a declaration of war. Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Peru are probably some of the nations the US is eyeing for a potential alliance.

  Bolton’s “troika” includes only countries ruled by governments that are openly “red” or Communist.  The list of nations unfriendly to the US is much longer and includes Bolivia, Ecuador, Dominica, Grenada, Uruguay, and some other states ruled by leftist governments. Andrés Obrador, the president-elect of Mexico, takes office on Dec. 1. The Mexican leader represents the country’s left wing and looks like a tough nut to crack. Outright pressure may not be helpful in this particular case.  

  Now that this new US policy is in place, Moscow and Washington appear to have another divisive issue clouding their relationship. The “troika of tyranny” against which Washington has declared war enjoys friendly relations with Russia.

  With Cuba facing tougher restrictions, new opportunities are opening up that will encourage the Russian-Cuban relationship to thrive.   The chairman of the Cuban State Council and Council of Ministers, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his official visit to Moscow Nov. 1-3.  Their joint statement reaffirmed the strategic and allied relations between the two counties. Their long list of joint projects includes the deployment of a Russian GLONASS ground station in Cuba, which will give it access to a broad array of technical capabilities for satellite and telecommunications services and for taking remote readings of Earth. Russia will modernize Cuba’s railways. Sixty contracts are scheduled to be signed during President Putin’s visit to Cuba next year. Rosneft, the Russian state oil giant, has recently resumed fuel shipments to Cuba and is negotiating a major energy agreement. 

  Military cooperation is also to get a boost. The military chiefs are to meet this month to discuss the details. Moscow is considering granting Havana €38 million for Russian arms purchases.

  The US-imposed restrictions are a factor spurring Russian exports to Cuba and other regional countries. When the US cut aid to Nicaragua in 2012, Russia increased its economic and military cooperation with that country. The memorandum signed between the Russian and Nicaraguan governments on May 8, 2018 states that the parties are to“mark a new step to boost political dialog” in such areas as “international security and cooperation through various international political platforms.”  Russia accounts for about 90% of Nicaraguan arms and munitions imports. It has far-reaching interests in building the Nicaraguan Canal in its role as a stakeholder and partner responsible for security-related missions. 

  President Vladimir Putin offered support for his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro after the United States rejected his reelection in May.  Russian energy giant Rosneft plays an important role in that country’s energy sector. It was Russia that came to Venezuela’s rescue in 2017 with a debt-restructuring deal that prevented the default that was looming after the US sanctions were imposed. This was just another example of Moscow lending a helping hand to a Latin American nation that was facing difficult times.

  Russia is currently pursuing a number of commercial projects in the region, in oil, mining, nuclear energy, construction, and space services. It enjoys a special relationship with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), which was founded by Cuba and Venezuela and includes Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, among other countries. This grouping is looking to create economic alternatives to Western-dominated financial institutions. This cooperation with Latin American nations goes far beyond ALBA. For instance, the Peruvian air force is in the process of contracting for 24 additional Mi-171s, as well as establishing a maintenance facility for their helicopters near the La Joya base in Arequipa. A contract to upgrade its aging Mig-29 fighters is under consideration. In January 2018, Russia signed a number of economic agreements with Argentina during President Macri’s visit to Moscow.  All in all, trade between Russia and Latin American countries reached $14.5 bln in 2017 and is growing.

  RT Spanish was launched in 2009, featuring its own news presenters and programming in addition to translated content, with bureaus operating in Buenos Aires, Caracas, Havana, Los Angeles, Madrid, Managua, and Miami.  Russia’s Sputnik media outlet has been broadcasting in Spanish since 2014, offering radio- and web-based news and entertainment to audiences across Latin America.

  Some countries may back down under the US sanctions and threats, but many will not. There’s a flip side to everything. The policy could backfire. The harder the pressure, the stronger the desire of the affected nations to diversify their international relations and resist the implementation of the Monroe doctrine that relegates them to the role of America’s backyard. 

  

• Meet The Ultra-Elite Tenants Of Manhattan's Most Secretive New Skyscraper

  Step aside 15CPW, 432 Park and One57th: New York City’s 220 Central Park South is now considered the city’s most exclusive and expensive new residential development.

  Sitting on the south end of Central Park, it is also starting to garner a reputation as one of the most secretive places to live: its developer has not released images of the unit interiors and the chief executive of the tower refuses to take interviews about it, according to a new Wall Street Journal article.

  However, an offering plan that was filed with the attorney general’s office reveals that sale prices for the property’s units are going to range from about $12 million to $250 million and the list of some of the buyers – no longer hidden behind anonymous LLCs – is also starting to leak out; it includes Daniel Och, who is chairman of Och-Ziff capital management. Other on the list are Andrew Zaro, chairman of Cavalry Portfolio Services and his wife, and Ofer Yardeni, CEO of Stonehenge Management, is also said to be on the list of buyers. Musician Sting and his wife are also set to be buyers.

  

  Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin has also contracted to spend more than $200 million on apartments in the building. If Griffin decides to combine these apartments, the resulting unit could be “the most expensive home ever sold the United States”. Still, it wasn’t immediately clear how much any of these prospective buyers actually paid for the units and whether there were any price adjustments.

  Many of the contracts for these purchases date back to 2015, a time when the Manhattan real estate boom was in full swing and a money-laundering haven for offshore oligarchs. Many of these contracts are closing only now as the building is finishing completion. Prospective buyers either declined to comment or couldn’t be reached by the WSJ, and representatives from Vornado Realty Trust, the company that is responsible for building the tower, didn’t have any comment.

  Since then, Manhattan’s real estate market has slowed down significantly. One real estate agent, Frances Katzen, said she hopes that the closing of these units will help bolster the real estate market in Manhattan yet again, despite the fact that many of the contracts are from three years ago.

  Meanwhile, real estate agents are already predicting that the building will set the record for the highest price per square-foot ever obtained for New York City apartment. The previous record was held by 15 Central Park West, which in 2012 sold for $13,000 a foot when Sandy Weill sold his penthouse for $88 million.

  

  Donna Olshan of Olshan Realty disagrees that the building could sway the barometer for the market. “This building cannot be considered a proxy for the market. It’s its own country,” she told the Wall Street Journal.

  To be sure, the bad news engulfing the broader Manhattan real estate market have so far skipped this “country” – Vornado announced on a conference call that the building is already 83% sold with 26 of 27 full floor apartments under contract, and each one is said to be priced at $50 million or more. It also revealed that more than half of these deals were done within a year of sales opening in 2015 and Vornado’s chairman stated on its most recent conference call that “220 Central Park South has exceeded all expectations, and is well into a record-setting territory.”

  In selling units at 220 Central Park South, secrecy was the right strategy at the time. In 2015, during the midst of the Manhattan real estate boom, keeping things secret instead of touting amenities proved to be a successful strategy in attracting the attention of the tragically hip “savvy” deep pocketed buyers. Whether or not the same strategy would work in 2018 is another story.

  “What used to work in those markets does not work now,” Donna Olshan continued.

  People familiar with the building have stated that the building includes private dining rooms, an athletic club, a juice bar, a library, a basketball court, a golf simulator and a children’s play area. The building was designed by Robert A.M. Stern, who also designed 15 Central Park West; the building real estate agents most frequently compare 220 Central Park South to. 15 Central Park West has itself has attracted numerous billionaire and celebrity buyers since it was erected in the mid 2000’s. Daniel Och also owns a unit in that building and Sting recently sold his unit there for $50 million.

  Meanwhile, away from this bastion of extravagant opulence things are slowing: one month ago we reproted that the Manhattan luxury market was experiencing a rout. When the first signs of stress in Manhattan’s luxury real-estate market started to appear roughly one year ago, we anticipated that the weakness in the high-end would soon spread to the broader market.

  

  In early October, Bloomberg reported that during the three months through September, the number of homes purchased in Manhattan declined for the fourth straight quarter, dropping 11% from a year earlier to 2,987, according to a report Tuesday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Meanwhile, the number of listings climbed 13% to 6,925 homes, the most since 2011.

  So in retrospect, those looking for the “top tick” in the Manhattan real estate market, perhaps the days when the ultra-wealthy new buyers at 220 Central Park South were putting pen to paper in 2015 should be a great place to start.

  

• A Badge Of Shame: The Government's War On America's Military Veterans

  Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “For soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming home is more lethal than being in combat.” 

  – Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston

  Not all heroes wear the uniform of war.

  In the United States, however, we take particular pride in recognizing as heroes those who have served in the military.

  Yet while we honor our veterans with holidays, parades, discounts at retail stores and restaurants, and endless political rhetoric about their sacrifice and bravery, we do a pitiful job of respecting their freedoms and caring for their needs once out of uniform.

  

  Despite the fact that the U.S. boasts more than 20 million veterans who have served in World War II through the present day, the plight of veterans today is America’s badge of shame, with large numbers of veterans impoverished, unemployed, traumatized mentally and physically, struggling with depression, suicide, and marital stress, homeless, subjected to sub-par treatment at clinics and hospitals, and left to molder while their paperwork piles up within Veterans Administration offices.

  Still, the government’s efforts to wage war on veterans, especially those who speak out against government wrongdoing, is downright appalling.

  Consider: we raise our young people on a steady diet of militarism and war, sell them on the idea that defending freedom abroad by serving in the military is their patriotic duty, then when they return home, bruised and battle-scarred and committed to defending their freedoms at home, we often treat them like criminals merely for having served in the military.

  The government even has a name for its war on America’s veterans: Operation Vigilant Eagle.

  As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, this Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program tracks military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”

  Coupled with the DHS’ dual reports on Rightwing and Leftwing “Extremism,” which broadly define extremists as individuals, military veterans and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” these tactics bode ill for anyone seen as opposing the government.

  Yet the government is not merely targeting individuals who are voicing their discontent so much as it is taking aim at individuals trained in military warfare.

  Don’t be fooled by the fact that the DHS has gone extremely quiet about Operation Vigilant Eagle.

  Where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be fire.

  And the government’s efforts to target military veterans whose views may be perceived as “anti-government” make clear that something is afoot.

  In recent years, military servicemen and women have found themselves increasingly targeted for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, labeled as extremistsand/or mentally ill, and stripped of their Second Amendment rights.

  An important point to consider, however, is that under the guise of mental health treatment and with the complicity of government psychiatrists and law enforcement officials, these veterans are increasingly being portrayed as threats to national security.

  This is not the first time that psychiatry has been used to exile political prisoners.

  Many times throughout history in totalitarian regimes, such governments have declared dissidents mentally ill and unfit for society as a means of rendering them disempowering them.

  As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum observes in Gulag: A History: “The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can ‘pay their debt to society,’ make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself. The rulers of ancient Rome and Greece sent their dissidents off to distant colonies. Socrates chose death over the torment of exile from Athens. The poet Ovid was exiled to a fetid port on the Black Sea.”

  For example, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally through the use of electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures.

  Insisting that “ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure,” the psychiatric community actually went so far as to provide the government with a diagnosis suitable for locking up such freedom-oriented activists.

  In addition to declaring political dissidents mentally unsound, Russian officials also made use of an administrative process for dealing with individuals who were considered a bad influence on others or troublemakers.

  Author George Kennan describes a process in which:

  The obnoxious person may not be guilty of any crime . . . but if, in the opinion of the local authorities, his presence in a particular place is “prejudicial to public order” or “incompatible with public tranquility,” he may be arrested without warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then be removed by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there be put under police surveillance for a period of from one to ten years. Administrative exile–which required no trial and no sentencing procedure–was an ideal punishment not only for troublemakers as such, but also for political opponents of the regime.

  Sound familiar?

  This age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in psychiatric wards for extended periods of time is a common practice in present-day China.

  What is particularly unnerving, however, is how this practice of eliminating or undermining potential critics, including military veterans, is happening with increasing frequency in the United States.

  Remember, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) opened the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists—technically, anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government qualifies.

  It doesn’t take much anymore to be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the government’s dictates.

  In fact, as the Washington Post reports, communities are being mapped and residents assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about a person’s potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether they’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.

  The case of Brandon Raub is a prime example of Operation Vigilant Eagle in action.

  Raub, a 26-year-old decorated Marine, actually found himself interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys.

  On August 16, 2012, a swarm of local police, Secret Service and FBI agents arrived at Raub’s Virginia home, asking to speak with him about posts he had made on his Facebook page made up of song lyrics, political opinions and dialogue used in a political thriller virtual card game.

  Among the posts cited as troublesome were lyrics to a song by a rap group and Raub’s views, shared increasingly by a number of Americans, that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job.

  After a brief conversation and without providing any explanation, levying any charges against Raub or reading him his rights, Raub was then handcuffed and transported to police headquarters, then to a medical center, where he was held against his will due to alleged concerns that his Facebook posts were “terrorist in nature.”

  Outraged onlookers filmed the arrest and posted the footage to YouTube, where it quickly went viral. Meanwhile, in a kangaroo court hearing that turned a deaf ear to Raub’s explanations about the fact that his Facebook posts were being read out of context, Raub was sentenced to up to 30 days’ further confinement in a psychiatric ward.

  Thankfully, The Rutherford Institute came to Raub’s assistance, which combined with heightened media attention, brought about his release and may have helped prevent Raub from being successfully “disappeared” by the government.

  Even so, within days of Raub being seized and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences.

  “Oppositional defiance disorder” (ODD) is another diagnosis being used against veterans who challenge the status quo. As journalist Anthony Martin explains, an ODD diagnosis

  “denotes that the person exhibits ‘symptoms’ such as the questioning of authority, the refusal to follow directions, stubbornness, the unwillingness to go along with the crowd, and the practice of disobeying or ignoring orders. Persons may also receive such a label if they are considered free thinkers, nonconformists, or individuals who are suspicious of large, centralized government… At one time the accepted protocol among mental health professionals was to reserve the diagnosis of oppositional defiance disorder for children or adolescents who exhibited uncontrollable defiance toward their parents and teachers.”

  Frankly, based on how well my personality and my military service in the U.S. Armed Forces fit with this description of “oppositional defiance disorder,” I’m sure there’s a file somewhere with my name on it.

  That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the means by which to immobilize (and disarm) these veterans is diabolical. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these veterans are being declared mentally ill, locked away against their will, and stripped of their constitutional rights.

  If it were just being classified as “anti-government,” that would be one thing.

  Unfortunately, anyone with a military background and training is also now being viewed as a heightened security threat by police who are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

  Feeding this perception of veterans as ticking time bombs in need of intervention, the Justice Department launched a pilot program in 2012 aimed at training SWAT teams to deal with confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.

  The result?

  Police encounters with military veterans often escalate very quickly into an explosive and deadly situation, especially when SWAT teams are involved.

  For example, Jose Guerena, a Marine who served in two tours in Iraq, was killed after an Arizona SWAT team kicked open the door of his home during a mistaken drug raid and opened fire. Thinking his home was being invaded by criminals, Guerena told his wife and child to hide in a closet, grabbed a gun and waited in the hallway to confront the intruders. He never fired his weapon. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. The SWAT officers, however, not as restrained, fired 70 rounds of ammunition at Guerena—23 of those bullets made contact. Apart from his military background, Guerena had had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.

  John Edward Chesney, a 62-year-old Vietnam veteran, was killed by a SWAT team allegedly responding to a call that the Army veteran was standing in his San Diego apartment window waving what looked like a semi-automatic rifle. SWAT officers locked down Chesney’s street, took up positions around his home, and fired 12 rounds into Chesney’s apartment window. It turned out that the gun Chesney reportedly pointed at police from three stories up was a “realistic-looking mock assault rifle.”

  Ramon Hooks’ encounter with a Houston SWAT team did not end as tragically, but it very easily could have. Hooks, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran, was using an air rifle gun for target practice outside when a Homeland Security Agent, allegedly house shopping in the area, reported him as an active shooter. It wasn’t long before the quiet neighborhood was transformed into a war zone, with dozens of cop cars, an armored vehicle and heavily armed police. Hooks was arrested, his air rifle pellets and toy gun confiscated, and charges filed against him for “criminal mischief.”

  Given the government’s increasing view of veterans as potential domestic terrorists, it makes one think twice about government programs encouraging veterans to include a veterans designation on their drivers’ licenses and ID cards.

  Hailed by politicians as a way to “make it easier for military veterans to access discounts from retailers, restaurants, hotels and vendors across the state,” it will also make it that much easier for the government to identify and target veterans who dare to challenge the status quo.

  Remember: no one is spared in a police state.

  Eventually, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we all suffer the same fate.

  It stands to reason that if the government can’t be bothered to abide by its constitutional mandate to respect the citizenry’s rights—whether it’s the right to be free from government surveillance and censorship, the right to due process and fair hearings, the right to be free from roadside strip searches and militarized police, or the right to peacefully assemble and protest and exercise our right to free speech—then why should anyone expect the government to treat our nation’s veterans with respect and dignity?

  So if you really want to do something to show your respect and appreciation for the nation’s veterans, here’s a suggestion: skip the parades and the retail sales and the flag-waving and instead go exercise your rights—the freedoms that those veterans risked their lives to protect—by pushing back against the government’s tyranny.

  Freedom is not free.

  It’s time the rest of the nation started to pay the price for the freedoms we too often take for granted.

  

• "We Feel Comfortable Back-to-Back”: The Unlikely Comrades Of Trump's Trade War

  “There is no sense of threat from Russia. We feel comfortable back-to-back.” A new deep dive by Bloomberg examining the growing closeness of Russia and China as both face down increased U.S. pressures and sanctions contains some deeply revealing quotes by analysts as well as a high official in the Chinese communist government reacting to Trump’s trade war. 

  Russia and China, Bloomberg begins, are currently “as close as at any time in their 400 years of shared history.”

  

  This is due to a perhaps “forced” and largely externally driven developing reconfiguration of the Eastern hemisphere’s superpowers — for most of their history longtime rivals — which involves, as Bloomberg summarizes:

  Chinese investment and energy purchases make it easier for Russia to resist economic pressure over Ukraine; Russian sales of oil, missile defense systems, and jets are changing U.S. calculations in the Pacific by raising the potential cost of any future showdown with China.

  Fu Ying, the chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China’s National People’s Congress, said while confirming the reality that China and Russia now find themselves in the same trenches: “I just hope that if some people in the U.S. insist on dragging us down the hill into Thucydides’ trap, China will be smart enough not to follow.”

  Indeed to step back and review the breadth of Russia-China cooperation over the past couple years alone reveals the full potential “cost” of a US-China conflict, given the ways Russia could easily be pulled in. Fu Ying articulated the increasingly common view from Beijing, that “There is no sense of threat from Russia” and that “We feel comfortable back-to-back.”

  And participants in a recent study by the National Bureau of Asian Research, a Seattle-based think tank, actually agree. They were asked whether American policy was at fault for pushing China and Russia into closer cooperation, and alarmingly, as Bloomberg notes: “Some among the 100-plus participants called for Washington to prepare for the worst-case scenario the realignment implies: a two-front war.”

  Here’s but a partial list of the way Sino-Russian relations have been transformed in recent years:

  • China is now Russia’s biggest single trade partner.
  • Since 2015 Russia has been China’s top supplier of crude oil, displacing Saudi Arabia. Early this year Russia ramped up its capacity to pipe crude oil to China, to about 600,000 barrels per day, which is about double the prior capability
  • Increased coordination at the U.N. Security Council.
  • Regional coordination in Asia, such as Russia supplying the engines for Chinese-Pakistani fighter jets, resulting in an increasingly worried India which is seeing Russia move into the Chinese orbit instead of being an arbiter in Chinese-Pakistani relations
  • The cooperative “NATO-lite” Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
  • The “bromance” at recent summits between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who meet each other with increased regularity.
  • Joint military exercises between the two are now routine.
  • This year Russia supplied China with its most advanced S-400 air defense system as well as Sukhoi SU-35 fighter aircraft
  • Increased willingness on the part of Russia to thwart Washington’s argument that China is a threat to Moscow’s aims in the East.
  • The new “Power of Siberia” natural gas pipeline set to start pumping 38 billion cubic meters (1.3 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas per year to northern China in December 2019. 
  • Increasingly discovering non-conflicting interests: Europe and China “are two independent destinations and two independent routes” for gas and oil, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in an October interview. “We do not see any need to redirect volumes.”

  

  One observer of Sino-Russian relations and their increased military cooperation, Florence Cahill, recently summarized, “Both Beijing and Moscow are looking to demonstrate that trade wars and sanctions will only push them to develop new alliances.” 

  Cahill explained further, “As long as their prevailing worldview is shaped by an animus towards a US-led international order, co-operation on all levels between Moscow and Beijing will likely be more pronounced than competition between them.”

  This echoes precisely what President Xi affirmed to Putin  during their last major summit: “Both nations have to oppose unilateralism and trade protectionism, and build a new type of international relations and shared human destiny,” he said. 

  It appears the blowback from Trump’s trade war with China will be a hastening in this “new type of relations” between the two superpowers in the East — and it may soon reach a point at which the U.S. will have fewer and fewer options, but only to sit back and watch. 

  

• Marijuana Federalism Won In The 2018 Midterms

  Authored by Brian Darling, op-ed via The Daily Caller,

  While the nation was gripped by House, Senate and governor races, there was another important contest on the ballot in Tuesday’s midterms related to the future of adult-use and medical-use marijuana. With several ballot initiatives in states that would liberalize laws on marijuana, it was a great day for the idea of federalism in marijuana laws.

  

  Federalism is a core value of America. It is the idea that states, not the federal government, hold powers that are not specifically enumerated to the feds. Police powers have traditionally resided in states and with local officials, yet the federal government has slowly creeped into the law enforcement business when it comes to all forms of crime.

  The history of marijuana regulation started with states outlawing the drug early last century, before the issue was federalized with passage of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 1970.

  As Americans have become more accepting of medical uses of the drug and allowing responsible use by adults, states have passed laws that have changed the law to allow different uses for marijuana.

  The polling going into election day showed that the American people are becoming more accepting of differing levels of marijuana federalism. The Pew Research Center released a poll on Oct. 8 indicating that 62 percent of all Americans supported legalizing marijuana. The results on election day confirm the shift of the American people to support that idea.

  A number of state initiatives on the ballot allowed different levels of legalization of the use of marijuana. Michigan was a big test case with an initiative to legalize adult use marijuana on the ballot. That vote was on the idea that anybody over 21 could possess marijuana and the state was empowered to set up a regulatory framework for growers and retailers. In Michigan Proposition 1 passed with significant support. A state as large as Michigan has followed the lead of California, Colorado and seven states that have allowed adults to use marijuana.

  North Dakota was another test with a measure that expanded medical marijuana laws to allow anybody 21 or over to be allowed to use marijuana and, according to Forbes, “would have set no limit on the amount of marijuana that people could possess or cultivate” and mapped out no rules or regulations for the industry. That initiative was a bridge too far for the voters of North Dakota, yet two other states voted to allow medical marijuana. Utah had a medical marijuana initiative pass and becomes one of the most conservative states to adopt a liberalized approach to marijuana as medicine. In Missouri, there were three ballot initiatives that allowed medical marijuana, and at least one of those passed.

  One important aspect of protecting federalism in marijuana laws is the candidates the people send to Washington. One race that had the potential to impact the future of marijuana legislation was the race between Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) versus Colin Allred. Sessions is very anti-marijuana federalism and used his position as chairman of the House Rules Committee. Sessions to block votes protecting states that allowed medical marijuana. Sessions lost and many think his strong stance against allowing votes to protect state that have passed medical marijuana laws hurt him.

  The big fight going into 2019 will be over something called the STATES Act. With divided congressional power between the Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled House, there will be some opportunity for bipartisanship on a limited number of issues. The STATES Act may be one. That legislation would protect individuals in the “manufacture, production, possession, distribution, dispensation, administration, or delivery” of marijuana from federal prosecution.

  In the Senate, this bill has support from conservative Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in addition to progressive Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.). The House version has support from Republican Reps. David Joyce (R-Ohio), Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), in addition to Democrat Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). This is one of the few bipartisan issues that has a chance to pass in a divided Congress.

  Although it was not such a great day for many incumbent politicians, it was a great day for marijuana federalism. Politicians should take note and support the STATES Act and other initiatives that protect banking and individuals from federal bullying on the issue when the Justice Department has taken such a strong stand against this idea.

  Although Attorney General Jeff Sessions has fought to continue the federal war on marijuana [and has now resigned], former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci proclaimed just before the election, “I think he (President Trump) is going to legalize marijuana” after the midterms.

  That would be a smart, and popular, move.

  

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• Iran's 'Ghost Ships' Evade Oil Sanctions By Turning Off Trackers

  In anticipation of the US sanctions against Iranian oil exports, which were reimposed by the Trump Administration on Monday (along with additional sanctions on everything from Iranian shipping to banking and insurance), oil tankers bearing the Iranian flag have embraced a stealthy approach to keeping the oil flowing: They’re ‘ghosting’ international trackers by turning off their transponders, rendering the ships impossible to track by anything aside from visual cues.

  

  Iran, which is already suffering from a drop in exports to 1.8 million barrels per day, down from 2.8 million barrels at the peak, is doing everything it can to keep the crude (along with 300,000 barrels of condensate) flowing. Though Iran received a temporary reprieve from the Trump Administration’s sanctions waivers granted to eight of its biggest customers, those waivers are temporary, and they were also granted with the understanding that the applicants would gradually reduce their reliance on Iranian oil.

  That means the kingdom is going to need to do everything it can to help any and all customers avoid detection, and possible US sanctions (which could include barring a given country’s largest banks from accessing dollars and the global dollar-based financial system). Already, the ghosting method is proving surprisingly effective: In an interview with Sputnik, the founders of one of the most popular oil-tanker tracking services, tankertracker.com, have been “utterly exhausted” trying to track Iranian ships.

  “It’s the first time I’ve seen a blanket black-out. It’s very unique,” said TankerTrackers co-founder Samir Madani.

  “Iran has around 30 vessels in the Gulf area, so the past 10 days have been very tricky, but it hasn’t slowed us down. We are keeping watch visually,” said co-founder Lisa Ward.

  Meanwhile, the “special purpose vehicle” – a kind of SWIFT alternative designed explicitly to help European companies avoid detection by the US – is helping to facilitate clandestine payments for Iranian crude, eliminating another methodology for tracking who, exactly, is buying Iranian crude. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has said Iran will defy US sanctions, though both sides have insisted that they remain “open” to negotiations surrounding a new deal.

  Iran has also employed another strategy from the pre-Iran deal era. The Republica is keeping six ships with a total capacity of 11 million barrels anchored offshore, allowing the “floating storage tankers” to make speedy deliveries to try and mitigate buyers’ anxieties as, once they leave port, the ships will be essentially impossible to track.

  

• The Unraveling Of The Netanyahu Project For The Middle East

  Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Nahum Barnea, a leading Israeli commentator, writing in Yedioth Ahronoth in May (in Hebrew), set out, unambiguously, the ‘deal’ behind Trump’s Middle East policy:

  In the wake of the US exit from JCPOA [which occurred on 8 May], Trump, Barnea wrote, will threaten a rain of ‘fire and fury’ onto Tehran … whilst Putin is expected to restrain Iran from attacking Israel using Syrian territory, thus leaving Netanyahu free to set new ‘rules of the game’ by which the Israel may attack and destroy Iranian forces anywhere in Syria (and not just in the border area, as earlier agreed) when it wishes, without fear of retaliation.

  This represented one level to the Netanyahu strategy: Iranian restraint, plus Russian acquiescence to coordinated Israeli air operations over Syria.

   “There is only one thing that isn’t clear [concerning this deal]”, a senior Israeli Defence official closest to Netanyahu, told Ben Caspit, “that is, who works for whom? Does Netanyahu work for Trump, or is President Trump at the service of Netanyahu … From the outside … it looks like the two men are perfectly in sync. From the inside, this seems even more so: This kind of cooperation … sometimes makes it seem as if they are actually just one single, large office”.

  There has been, from the outset, a second level, too:

  This entire ‘inverted pyramid’ of Middle East engineering had, as its single point of departure, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS).

  It was Jared Kushner, the Washington Post reports, who “championed Mohammed as a reformer poised to usher the ultraconservative, oil-rich monarchy into modernity. Kushner privately argued for months, last year, that Mohammed would be key to crafting a Middle East peace plan, and that with the prince’s blessing, much of the Arab world would follow”. It was Kushner, the Post continued, “who pushed his father-in-law to make his first foreign trip as president to Riyadh, against objections from then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – and warnings from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis”.

  Well, now MbS has, in one form or another, been implicated in the Khashoggi murder.  Bruce Riedel of Brookings, a longtime Saudi observer and former senior CIA & US defence official, notes, “for the first time in 50 years, the kingdom has become a force for instability” (rather than stability in the region), and suggests that there is an element  of ‘buyer’s remorse’ now evident in parts of Washington.

  The ‘seamless office process’ to which the Israeli official referred with Caspit, is known as ‘stovepiping’, which is when a foreign state’s policy advocacy and intelligence are passed straight to a President’s ear – omitting official Washington from the ‘loop’; by-passing any US oversight; and removing the opportunity for officials to advise on its content.  Well, this has now resulted in the Khashoggi strategic blunder.  And this, of course, comes in the wake of earlier strategic ‘mistakes’: the Yemen war, the siege of Qatar, the Hariri abduction, the Ritz-Carlton princely shakedowns.

  To remedy this lacuna, an ‘uncle’ (Prince Ahmad bin Abdel Aziz) has been dispatched from exile in the West to Riyadh (with security guarantees from the US and UK intelligences services) to bring order into these unruly affairs, and to institute some checks and balances into the MbS coterie of advisers, so as to prevent further impetuous ‘mistakes’.  It seems too, that the US Congress wants the Yemen war, which Prince Ahmad consistently has opposed (as he opposed MbS elevation as Crown Prince), stopped. (General Mattis has called for a ceasefire within 30 days.) It is a step toward repairing the Kingdom’s image.

  MbS remains – for now – as Crown Prince. President Sisi and Prime Minister Netanyahu both have expressed their support for MbS and “as U.S. officials contemplate a more robust response [to the Khashoggi killing], Kushner has emphasized the importance of the U.S.-Saudi alliance in the region”, the Washington Post reports. MbS’ Uncle (who as a son of King Abdel Aziz, under the traditional succession system, would be himself in line for the throne), no doubt hopes to try to undo some of the damage done to the standing of the al-Saud family, and to that of the Kingdom.  Will he succeed?  Will MbS accede now to Ahmad unscrambling the very centralisation of power that made MbS so many enemies, in the first place, to achieve it?  Has the al-Saud family the will, or are they too disconcerted by events?

  And might President Erdogan throw more wrenches into this delicate process by further leaking evidence Turkey has, if Washington does not attend sufficiently to his demands.  Erdogan seems ready to pitch for the return of Ottoman leadership for the Sunni world, and likely still holds some high-value cards up his sleeve (such as intercepts of phone calls between the murder cell and Riyadh).  These cards though are devaluing as the news cycle shifts to the US mid-terms.

  Time will tell, but it is this nexus of uncertain dynamics to which Bruce Reidel refers, when he talks of ‘instability’ in Saudi Arabia.  The question posed here, though, is how might these events affect Netanyahu’s and MbS’ ‘war’ on Iran?

  May 2018 now seems a distant era.  Trump is still the same ‘Trump’, but Putin is not the same Putin. The Russian Defence Establishment has weighed in with their President to express their displeasure at Israeli air strikes on Syria – purportedly targeting Iranian forces in Syria.  The Russian Defence Ministry too, has enveloped Syria in a belt of missiles and electronic disabling systems across the Syrian airspace. Politically, the situation has changed too: Germany and France have joined the Astana Process for Syria. Europe wants Syrian refugees to return home, and that translates into Europe demanding stability in Syria. Some Gulf States too, have tentatively begun normalising with the Syrian state.

  The Americans are still in Syria; but a newly invigorated Erdogan (after the release of the US pastor, and with all the Khashoggi cards, produced by Turkish intelligence, in his pocket), intends to crush the Kurdish project in north and eastern Syria, espoused by Israel and the US.  MbS, who was funding this project, on behalf of US and Israel, will cease his involvement (as a part of the demands made by Erdogan over the Khashoggi murder). Washington too wants the Yemen war, which was intended to serve as Iran’s ‘quagmire’, to end forthwith.  And Washington wants the attrition of Qatar to stop, too.

  

  These represent major unravelings of the Netanyahu project for the Middle East, but most significant are two further setbacks:

  First, the loss of Netanyahu’s and MbS’ stovepipe to Trump, via Jared Kushner, by-passing all America’s own system of ‘checks and balances’.  The Kushner ‘stovepipe’ neither forewarned Washington of coming ‘mistakes’, nor was Kushner able to prevent them. Both Congress and the Intelligences Services of the US and UK are already elbowing into these affairs.  They are not MbS fans.  It is no secret that Prince Mohamed bin Naif was their man (he is still under ‘palace arrest’).

  Trump will still hope to continue his ‘Iran project’ and his Deal of the Century between Israel and the Palestinians (led nominally by Saudi Arabia herding together the Sunni world, behind it).  Trump does not seek war with Iran, but rather is convinced of a popular uprising in Iran that will topple the state. 

  And the second setback is that Prince Ahmad’s clear objective must be other than this – instability in, or conflict with, Iran.  His is to restore the family’s standing, and to recoup something of its leadership credentials in the Sunni world, which has been shredded by the war in Yemen – and is now under direct neo-Ottoman challenge from Turkey.  The al-Saud family, one may surmise, will have no appetite to replace one disastrous and costly war (Yemen), with another – an even greater conflict, with its large and powerful neighbor, Iran.  It makes no sense now.  Perhaps this is why we see signs of Israel rushing to hurry Arab state normalisation – even absent any amelioration for the Palestinians.

  Nehum Barnea presciently noted in his May article in Yediot Ahoronot:

  “Trump could have declared a US withdrawal [from the JCPOA], and made do with that. But under the influence of Netanyahu and of his new team, he chose to go one step further. The economic sanctions on Iran will be much tighter, beyond what they were, before the nuclear agreement was signed. “Hit them in their pockets”, Netanyahu advised Trump: “if you hit them in their pockets, they will choke; and when they choke, they will throw out the ayatollahs””.

  This was another bit of ‘stovepiped’ advice passed directly to the US President. 

  His officials might have warned him that it was fantasy.  There is no example of sanctions alone having toppled a state; and whilst the US can use its claim of judicial hegemony as an enforcement mechanism, the US has effectively isolated itself in sanctioning Iran: Europe wants no further insecurity. It wants no more refugees heading to Europe. Was it Trump’s tough stance that brought Kim to the table?  Or, perhaps contrarily, might Kim have seen a meeting with Trump simply as the price that he had to pay in order to advance Korean re-unification?  Was Trump warned that Iran would suffer economic pain, but that it would nonetheless persevere, in spite of sanctions? No – well, that’s the problem inherent in listening principally to ‘stovepipes’.

  

• Bonds Jump, Dollar Dumps After Dems Win House

  US equity futures are fading off earlier highs, bond yields are tumbling along with the dollar after several media outlets have called the House for Democrats (while Republicans maintain control of the Senate).

  It was quite a roller-coaster for the dollar but it’s been a one-way-street lower since the odds of a Dem House triggered the calls…

  

   

  And as the dollar fades, safe-haven buying in bonds and gold is evident…

  

  

   

  For now S&P futures are still green but clinging to a critical support level at the 200DMA

  

  

  Still a long way to go until the cash market open tomorrow in New York.

  

• "Flashpoint For War": U.S. And Japan Plan Military Response To Chinese Incursions Of Disputed Islands

  Things are again rapidly heating up in the East China Sea amidst already heightened tensions in a region where Washington is increasingly asserting the right of navigation in international waters against broad Chinese claims and seeking to defend the territorial possessions of its allies. 

  According to a bombshell new Reuters report the tiny and rocky Senkaku Islands which lie between northern Taiwan and the Japanese home islands are “rapidly turning into a flashpoint for war”. Alarmingly, Japanese government sources have been quoted as saying Tokyo and the United States are drawing up an operations plan for an allied military response to Chinese threats to the disputed Senkaku Islands. 

  

  From nearly the start of his entering the White House, President Trump has said he’s committed to upholding Article 5 of the US-Japan security treaty signed the post-war years of the mid-20th century: “We are committed to the security of Japan and all areas under its administrative control and to further strengthening our very crucial alliance,” Trump had promised from the first official reception of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe back in February 2017, and since consistently maintained. 

  Japanese government sources have told regional media that the joint plan of response with the United States involves “how to respond in the event of an emergency on or around the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea” — which is set to be completed by next march, according to the statements. 

  Beijing claims the islands as part of its historical inheritance — as it does neighbouring Taiwan, despite failing to seize the protectorate during the Chinese Civil War.

  Taiwan, however, was a Japanese protectorate before World War II.

  It’s a messy historical scenario, thought resolved through United Nations conventions and treaties established after the conflict. — Reuters/news.com.au

  The Japan Times reports that “The plan being drawn up assumes such emergencies as armed Chinese fishermen landing on the islands, and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces needing to be mobilized after the situation exceeds the capacity of the police to respond.”

  The situation is now taking on a greater urgency as both the US and Japan participate in the two nations’ largest ever join war games, which involves the nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier. The exercise, called Keen Sword began on Monday and is set to run through Thursday, and involved a combined force of 57,000 sailors, airmen and marines — with Japan contributing 47,000 of those military personnel. Canadian warships are also involved in the exercises. 

  

  Japan is seeking greater direct commitment and resolve on the part of the United States to defend its territorial claims against Chinese encroachment, which Japan says is already beginning to happen through informal provocative raids of fishing boats organized by Beijing. 

  Reuters reports that “ongoing aggressive incursions by Chinese fishing boats — organised as a state militia — and a freshly militarized coast guard has seen tensions in the East China Sea flare.” And the report further confirms: “The plan being drawn up assumes such emergencies as armed Chinese fishermen landing on the islands, and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces needing to be mobilized after the situation exceeds the capacity of the police to respond.”

  Right now nearly 100K US, allied, & partner-nation military pers are conducting exercises #TridentJuncture & #KeenSword: each involving ~50K troops, dozens of ships, & 100s of aircraft across Europe and the Pacific. #GlobalReach #AnyWhere #AnyTime #WeAreNATO #PacificPartnerships pic.twitter.com/DqIeAszjmJ

  — William Seely (@william_seely) November 2, 2018

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  Though the United States has in the past expressed deep reluctance on outright defending claims to the Japan-administered islands (indicating it will take no official position on the issue), which China calls the Diaoyu, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces says the focus of talks with the US has involved how to incorporate the US military’s strike capabilities in any potential Chinese invasion of the Senkaku Islands scenario. 

  One Japanese military analyst was quoted as saying: “Given that military organizations always need to assume the worst possible situation, it is natural for the two countries to work on this kind of plan against China.”

  The two already have a framework for such talks based on recently created 2015 defense guidelines known ans the Bilateral Planning Mechanism, or BPM. It stipulates the US and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces will “conduct bilateral operations to counter ground attacks against Japan by ground, air, maritime, or amphibious forces”. Currently there’s a similar contingency plan in place for a potential emergency threat on the Korean peninsula.

  Between now and the spring – when the plan is set to be finalized and agreed upon – China will likely ramp up its incursions on the islands, or just seize them altogether before US commitments can be firmed up, in which case the great unknown will be whether the United States actually steps up to come to Japan’s aid while risking war with China — something that up until now has been carefully avoided.

  

• Are You One Of Those 'End-Of-The-World' Guys?

  Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

  Periodically, I’ll encounter someone who has read one of my essays and has decided not to pursue them further, stating, “You’re one of those ‘End of the world’ guys. I can’t be bothered reading the writings of someone who thinks we’re all doomed. I have a more positive outlook than that.”

  In actual fact, I agree entirely with his latter two comments. I can’t be bothered reading the thoughts of a writer who says we’re all doomed, either. I, too, have a more positive outlook than that.

  My one discrepancy with such comments is that I don’t by any means think that the present state of events will lead to the end of the world, as he assumes.

  

  But then, neither am I naïve enough to think that if I just hope for the best, the powers that be will cease to be parasitical and predatory out of sympathy for me. They will not.

  For any serious student of history, one of the great realisations that occurs at some point is that governments are inherently controlling by nature. The more control they have, the more they desire and the more they pursue. After all, governments actually produce nothing. They exist solely upon what they can extract from the people they rule over. Therefore, their personal success is not measured by how well they serve their people, it’s measured by how much they can extractfrom the people.

  And so, it’s a given that all governments will pursue ever-greater levels of power over their minions up to and including the point of total dominance.

  It should be said that, on rare occasions, a people will rise up and create a governmental system in which the rights of the individual are paramount. This was true in the creation of the Athenian Republic and the American Constitution, and even the British Magna Carta.

  However, these events are quite rare in history and, worse, as soon as they take place, those who gain power do their best to diminish the newly-gained freedoms.

  Such freedoms can almost never be destroyed quickly, but, over time and “by slow operations,” as Thomas Jefferson was fond of saying, governments can be counted on to eventually destroy all freedoms.

  We’re passing through a period in history in which the process of removing freedoms is nearing completion in many of the world’s foremost jurisdictions. The EU and US, in particular, are leading the way in this effort.

  Consequently, it shouldn’t be surprising that some predict “the end of the world.” But, they couldn’t be more incorrect.

  Surely, in 1789, the more productive people of France may have felt that the developing French Revolution would culminate in Armageddon. Similarly, in 1917, those who created prosperity in Russia may well have wanted to throw up their hands as the Bolsheviks seized power from the Romanovs.

  Whenever a deterioration in rule is underway, as it is once again now, the observer has three choices:

  Declare the End of the World

  There are many people, worldwide, but particularly in the centres of the present deterioration – the EU and US – who feel that, since the situation in their home country is nearing collapse, the entire world must also be falling apart. This is not only a very myopic viewpoint, it’s also quite inaccurate. At any point in civilization in the past 2000 years or more, there have alwaysbeen empires that were collapsing due to intolerable governmental dominance and there have alwaysconcurrently been alternative jurisdictions where the level of freedom was greater. In ancient Rome, when Diocletian devalued the currency, raised taxes, increased warfare and set price controls, those people who actually created the economy on a daily basis found themselves in the same boat as Europeans and Americans are finding themselves in, in the 21st century.

  It may have seemed like the end of the world, but it was not. Enough producers left Rome and started over again in other locations. Those other locations eventually thrived as a result of the influx of productive people, while Rome atrophied.

  Turn a Blind Eye

  This is less dreary than the above approach, but it is nevertheless justas fruitless. It is, in fact, the most common of reactions – to just “hope for the best.”

  It’s tempting to imagine that maybe the government will realise that they’re the only ones benefitting from the destruction of freedom and prosperity and they’ll feel bad and reverse the process. But this clearly will not happen.

  It’s also tempting to imagine that maybe it won’t get a whole lot worse and that life, although not all that good at present, might remain tolerable. Again, this is wishful thinking and the odds of it playing out in a positive way are slim indeed.

  Accept the Truth, But Do Something About It

  This, of course, is the hard one. Begin by recognising the truth. If that truth is not palatable, study the situation carefully and, when a reasonably clear understanding has been reached, create an alternative.

  When governments enter the final decline stage, an alternative is not always easy to accept. It’s a bit like having a tooth pulled. You want to put it off, but the pain will only get worse if you delay. And so, you trundle off to the dentist unhappily, but, a few weeks after the extraction, you find yourself asking, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”

  To be sure, those who investigate and analyze the present socio-economic-political deterioration do indeed espouse a great deal of gloom, but this should not be confused with doom.

  In actual fact, the whole point of shining a light into the gloom is to avoid having it end in doom.

  It should be said here that remaining in a country that is tumbling downhill socially, economically and politically is also not the end of the world. It is, however, true that the end result will not exactly be a happy one. If history repeats once again, it’s likely to be quite a miserable one.

  Those who undertake the study of the present deterioration must, admittedly, address some pretty depressing eventualities and it would be far easier to just curl up on the sofa with a six-pack and watch the game, but the fact remains: unless the coming problems are investigated and an alternative found, those who sit on the sofa will become the victims of their own lethargy.

  Sadly, we live in a period in history in which some of the nations that once held the greatest promise for the world are well on their way to becoming the most tyrannical. If by recognizing that fact, we can pursue better alternatives elsewhere on the globe, as people have done in previous eras; we may actually find that the field of daisies in the image above is still very much in existence, it’s just a bit further afield than it was in years gone by.

  And it is absolutely worthy of pursuit.

  *  *  *

  Clearly, there are many strange things afoot in the world. Distortions of markets, distortions of culture. It’s wise to wonder what’s going to happen, and to take advantage of growth while also being prepared for crisis. How will you protect yourself in the next crisis? See our PDF guide that will show you exactly how. Click here to download it now.

  

• There Are "Absolutely" Middle Easterners Among Caravan: DHS Secretary Nielsen

  Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen doubled down on a claim that Middle Easterners are among those traveling in the Central American caravans currently making their way north in hopes of gaining asylum in the United States. 

  Speaking with Fox News Intelligence on Monday, Nielsen said: “We absolutely see people from the Middle East, from southeast Asia, from other parts of the world,” adding “They are not just from Central America.”

  “We don’t always know exactly who they are … What I can tell you is we stopped 3,000 people last year at the southwest border who had patterns of travel similar to a terrorist. We call those special interest aliens.“

  

  Nielsen also added that the migrants are using women and children as “barriers,” which are sent up to the front of the group to frustrate federal military and police, and that the rest of the caravans – which appear to be organized and financed – are comprised of “mostly single men.” She added that the timing and origin of the groups are suspicious in nature. 

  Nielsen’s comments come amid a CNBC report suggesting that President Trump’s decision to send thousands of US troops to reinforce border security in California, Arizona and Texas will cost upwards of $220 million. 

  Last week footage emerged of several groups of migrants becoming violent with Mexican authorities, including this clip of them throwing rocks at a helicopter. 

  Here is video of the migrant caravan throwing rocks & molotov cocktails at Mexican security forces on the Guatemalan border.

  I reached out to the man who took this video.

  He confirms it’s authenticity.

  Watch it.

  The caravan is violent. pic.twitter.com/WqnffoH6yH

  — Benny (@bennyjohnson) November 1, 2018

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  President Trump in response said that the US military would treat rocks as “rifles,” a comment he later walked back while still stressing that the caravan was a dangerous threat to the United States. 

  Meanwhile, according to Mexico News Daily, a fourth caravan of 4,000 asylum-seekers is now making its way north, bringing the total number of migrants headed towards the US above 12,000. 

  The first caravan started out with approximately 7,000 people, however around half either turned back or accepted asylum from Mexico. 

  Between 7,000 and 15,000 US troops will be stationed in Southern Border states, while the actual number of migrants which reach the US-Mexico border will undoubtedly be much smaller than the estimated 12,000 currently traveling north. An April caravan of approximately 1,200 people dwindled to several hundred people, who were granted asylum at the US border. 

  

• No, Voting Doesn't Mean You "Support The System"

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  I admit it. I voted…

  In my home state of Colorado, all voting is by mailed paper ballots. That means, if you’re a registered voter, the county clerk sends you a ballot every election.

  And then — at least in my case — it sits there on a table near my desk.

  One is supposed to fill it out and then mail it back. Or drop it off in one of the mailbox-like boxes scattered around the city.

  Sometimes I do it.

  This time around, as the ballot sat there on the table, I kept thinking about the proposed tax increases I could vote “yes” or “no” on.

  Like many states in the Western half of the United States, this state makes frequent use of ballot initiatives and referenda in elections. Voters are asked to vote up or down any number of regulations and taxes which the policymakers will be more than happy to implement if they can muster a “yes” from the majority of voters.

  I’m certainly not willing to stand in line at a polling place, and I don’t care about getting an “I Voted!” sticker. But I had to admit the opportunity cost of sending in the ballot was really quite low. So, as I am not a big fan of new taxes, I filled out the ballot according to my whims, and sent it in.

  Does Voting Mean You Support the Regime?

  Nothing about this little anecdote would strike most people as remarkable in any way.

  Since at least the nineteenth century, though, there has been a debate over whether or not voting somehow means the voter has agreed to submit to – or even support – whatever the state does. In some cases, libertarians and anarchists who agree with the “voting = consent” claim conclude that voting is therefore immoral, or perhaps even a form of violence.

  Anarchist extraordinaire Lysander Spooner, however, disagreed:

  It cannot be said that, by voting, a man pledges himself to the Constitution, unless the act of voting be a perfectly voluntary one on his part. Yet the act of voting cannot properly be called a voluntary one on the part of any very large number of those who do vote. It is rather a measure of necessity imposed upon them by others, than one of their own choice.

  In other words, let’s imagine a small business owner were given the choice between Candidate A who promises to tax small businesses into oblivion, and Candidate B, who promises to lower taxes. It hardly follows that the small business owner who casts a ballot in this case was supporting the whole system and apparatus that had put him in such an unenviable position to begin with.

  Spooner continues:

  In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former.

  …it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes [the voters], was one which they had voluntarily set up, or even consented to.

  In fact, when one adopts the position that voting indicates consent to the regime and all its acts, one is agreeing with the state’s apologists who repeatedly assert that, yes, voting means the voter acquiesces to the results of the election and the state overall.

  

  They don’t stop there, though. Herbert Spencer notes that, in the minds of the voting-as-consent ideologues, not voting counts as consent too. As does voting against the victorious side in any election. Thus, it is claimed:

  [T]he citizen is understood to have assented to everything his representative may do, when he voted for him.

  But suppose he did not vote for him; and on the contrary did all in his power to get elected some one holding opposite views – what then?

  The reply will probably be that, by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority.

  And how if he did not vote at all?

  Why then he cannot justly complain of any tax, seeing that he made no protest against its imposition.

  So, curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted – whether he said yes, whether he said no, or whether he remained neuter!

  A rather awkward doctrine this.

  Here stands an unfortunate citizen who is asked if he will pay money for a certain proffered advantage; and whether he employs the only means of expressing his refusal or does not employ it, we are told that he practically agrees; if only the number of others who agree is greater than the number of those who dissent.

  And thus we are introduced to the novel principle that A’s consent to a thing is not determined by what A says, but by what B may happen to say!

  The only alternative, we are told, is to move thousands of miles from friends, family, and property, learn a new culture (and probably a new language), and take up residence under a different regime..

  To define consent in this manner, though, sets the bar of consent so low as to render it utterly meaningless.

  “No” Doesn’t Mean “No” After All?

  The horrors of such a definition can be plainly seen if applied to the case of women and sexual consent. By the logic of the sort of “consent” Spencer describes, we are forced to conclude: if a women says “yes,” she consents. If she says “no,” she also consents. If she can’t run away, then she’s still consenting.

  One suspects that this would not be a terribly successful argument if employed by a rapist in a court of law.

  And yet, here we are, being told that no matter what you do at election time, nothing – short of self-imposed exile – is to be interpreted as actual opposition to the state.

  Expanding a “No” Vote for Candidates

  To be fair, voting for candidates would appear to be harder to defend in this vein than voting against specific policies.

  Voting “no” on a tax increase is fairly unambiguous, and can hardly by taken as support for any other policy. With candidates, however, there is far more room for state action. Even a candidate who might campaign on a tax cut will, after winning the election, take his election as a mandate to enact all sort of other objectionable laws that those who voted for him based on the tax issue would oppose.

  Thus, voting “yes” for any candidate is inherently more dangerous than simply voting “no” on a tax increase.

  For this reason, one might suggest that all ballots offer an “abstain” or “none of the above” option. Even if no further steps were taken — such as requiring a run-off in cases where “abstain” won the a majority — the option of voting against everyone could do wonders to illustrate the lack of legitimacy that political candidates truly have. This of course, is how we ought to interpret the vote of every eligible voter who prefers to not vote at all. Every non-vote is essentially a none-of-the-above vote, and many people choose to express their opposition to the candidates in this way.

  That’s a perfectly acceptable course of action. But it’s not the only acceptable one.

  

• Sydney's Housing Crash Could End Up Being The Longest On Record 

  After a parabolic rise in Sydney home prices over the past cycle, mostly aided by a fear of missing out, property prices plateaued then rapidly moved lower midway through 2017, catching many by surprise.

  Sydney home prices have dropped 7.4% over the past year, according to CoreLogic’s latest Home Value Index, the sharpest annual percentage decline since February 1990.

  Cameron Kusher, a Research Analyst at CoreLogic, posted a series of charts on Twitter showing Australia’s largest and most expensive housing market has declined 8.2% from its cyclical peak 15 months ago, making this the fastest reversal in over three decades.

  To October 2018, Sydney dwelling values are -8.2% lower than their peak. Since 1980, the only larger decline recorded in Sydney was a -9.6% fall in values which started just before the last recession. This decline is now longer and deeper than most with little sign of abating. pic.twitter.com/hAhhmnA2VC

  — Cameron Kusher (@cmkusher) November 4, 2018

  As shown in the next chart by Kusher on Twitter, in the past, it has taken several years for Sydney home prices to revert to prior cyclical peaks whenever values have plummeted.

  Following the ugly downturn in the early 1990s, it took five years for home prices to return to their prior nominal peaks.

  The other question is how long will values take to return to peak levels, Historically it has been pretty quick but has tended to happen on the back of falling interest rates or Government stimulus. Neither is out of the question but both look unlikely at this stage. pic.twitter.com/COdMYBsibQ

  — Cameron Kusher (@cmkusher) November 4, 2018

  Many of the country’s top economists forecasted home prices to increase in 2018; one forecaster even expected prices to jump 9%. However, this was not the case, as house prices have experienced their most significant and longest peak to trough decline in modern history – spurred by housing affordability constraints, tightening of lending standards, and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s restrictions on new investor loans.

  The Australian Financial Review surveyed five top economists that now expect the national house value index would continue to deteriorate into 2019, with Sydney, the epicenter of the downturn.

  Stephen Koukoulas, of Market Economics, was the most downbeat of the bunch, with expectations prices would fall in Sydney between 7.5% and 10% in 2019 after a drop of 7.5% in 2018.

  Nationally, he predicted house prices would fall by between 5% and 7.5%

  “From the 3rd quarter in 2019, I am forecasting some stability in prices as supply and demand forces underpin new activity,” Koukoulas told The Australian Financial Review.”From the 3rd quarter in 2019, I am forecasting some stability in prices as supply and demand forces underpin new activity,” Koukoulas told The Australian Financial Review.

  Once a floor is found in prices, he then expects first-home buyers would enter the market and take advantage of increased levels of affordability.

  

  Five economist predictions for national house prices across 2019

  

  Most of the economists agreed that the downturn has mainly been driven by tighter lending standards, not an interest rate hike cycle seen in prior turning points, there is evidence this bear cycle could be the longest in history.

  The official policy rate of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has hovered at 1.50% since September 2016, which is at its lowest point on record, and some economists think the RBA could start hiking to get ahead of the next recession. An obvious negative for real estate markets.

  Also, recent tightening in mortgage lending standards has now mostly run its course, at least according to Australia’s banking regulator, it is unlikely that lending standards will be relaxed given Australia’s already-high household debt to income ratio, a tailwind for the real estate market that has now turned into a headwind.

  On top of everything mentioned above, an unprecedented supply of new housing is about to come online in Sydney, which will further tilt the supply side of the equation.

  It all points to a continuation of the Australian housing market crash, one that will surely go into the record books.

  

• Once Again, Warren Buffett Has Given Us A Major Warning That Everything Is Expensive

  Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

  Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, just announced a blockbuster quarter, earning nearly $7 billion.

  And Buffett’s still sitting on over $100 billion of cash. That means he’s got enough money to buy almost any company he wants, anywhere in the world.

  But the only move Buffett made in the last quarter was buying $928 million of Berkshire Hathaway stock.

  Some people might say this is a sign that Buffett thinks Berkshire’s stock is incredibly undervalued.

  To be fair, nobody knows Berkshire better than Buffett. And shares may present a good value at this level – an all-time high price.

  But it’s clear to me that Buffett simply can’t find anything else worth buying.

  

  Remember, Buffett’s got over $100 billion in cash (and he could use debt to fund an even larger acquisition).

  So he could buy stock in any publicly traded company. Or he could buy most any private company (the last time he did this was Precision Castparts in 2016 for $32 billion).

  He’s got so much cash he could even buy any one of the 451 out of 500 largest companies in the US – Nike, Starbucks, Goldman Sachs, etc.

  But, nope… He just bought back some Berkshire stock.

  In addition, he’s selling longtime holdings like drywall maker USG and IBM (for a $1 billion loss).

  I wrote about Buffett and his giant cash pile in February, just after Berkshire released its annual report.

  Back then, Buffett had a whopping $116 billion. But still couldn’t find anything to buy. As he said:

  In our search for new stand-alone businesses, the key qualities we seek are durable competitive strengths; able and high-grade management; good returns on the net tangible assets required to operate the business; opportunities for internal growth at attractive returns; and, finally, a sensible purchase price.

  That last requirement proved a barrier to virtually all deals we reviewed in 2017, as prices for decent, but far from spectacular, businesses hit an all-time high.

  As we wrote back then, it seems people are still willing to pay far too high a price for not that great of businesses.

  Buffett is famous for saying “be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” And he’s sticking by that mantra today.

  Like Buffett, I’ve also been raising cash. In fact, I’m sitting on more cash today than at any other time in my life.

  And, like Buffett, I’m mostly holding that cash in 28-day T-bills.

  However, unlike Buffett, I don’t have $100 billion to spend.

  If I make a 20-50% return on a $5 million investment, that’s meaningful to me. But that’s peanuts to a guy like Buffett.

  He’s got to put billions of dollars to work to generate enough cash to make a difference. And that severely limits the areas he can hunt for value.

  But I’m able to look at all kinds of opportunities – like loans backed by fine wine, loans backed by bullion or European real estate and various, small-cap stocks around the world.

  Despite most markets trading at or near all-time highs, there’s still a ton of value if you’re willing to do some extra work and look outside the US.

  In The 4th Pillar, Tim Staermose just identified a consumer products company in South Korea trading for a 12% discount to its net cash backing.

  He’s also recommended a security that holds portfolio of blue-chip stocks (including companies like Starbucks) trading for over a 20% discount to their market value.

  And those are just two of the many opportunities you can take advantage of today in his 4th Pillar portfolio.

  Value investing has been left for dead as the dumb money has chased up the value of companies like Uber and Tesla.

  But when you can buy a profitable company for less than the amount of cash it has in the bank, it’s pretty hard to go wrong.

  I’ll bet Buffett would make those investments if he could.

  

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• China Set To Unveil New Aircraft, Drones, Missiles, & Lasers At Zhuhai Airshow 

  China’s largest air show will be held in the coastal city of Zhuhai from Tuesday to Sunday, is a traditional event for Beijing to demonstrate its expanding aviation sector in front of aerospace executives, world leaders and defense buyers from over 40 countries.

  

  According to the Asia Times, four J-20 stealth fighters from the People’s Liberation Army Air Force buzzed Zhuhai last week ahead of the event.

  

  Warplanes and civil aircraft from Chinese to foreign manufacturers have already descended on the city.

  #Pakistani military aircraft have arrived in Zhuhai to attend the upcoming air show, including a C-130 transport aircraft and three JF-17 fighters. pic.twitter.com/jktzMDQE4q

  — China Plus News (@ChinaPlusNews) November 1, 2018

  Urumqi Air debuts its COMAC ARJ21 at Zhuhai International Airshow. The airline becomes the 3rd operator of ARJ21. pic.twitter.com/woJIoSuau5

  — ChinaAviationReview (@ChinaAvReview) November 3, 2018

  Here they come! China’s J-20 stealth fighters on Saturday conducted flight test above S China’s Zhuhai Airport for the forthcoming 12th Zhuhai Airshow on Nov 6 #J20 #AirshowChina pic.twitter.com/wB39vzKOhU

  — People’s Daily,China (@PDChina) November 4, 2018

  Welcom @AirBaltic @Airbus to China , AIRSHOW (Zhuhai) ! Airbus A220 😉 pic.twitter.com/hqFANbl3ks

  — Harry Lee (@HarryLe75405629) November 5, 2018

  Gulfstream’s G650ER and special mission G550 make Airshow China debut https://t.co/GUTWtNiJK5@GulfstreamAero #airshowchina pic.twitter.com/erqyK5Ytah

  — Business Jet Operator (@BizJetOperator) November 5, 2018

  Pakistan’s JF-17 Thunder at Zhuhai Airshow. Its Chinese designation “FC-1 Xiaolong” 枭龙 means “Fighter China-1 Fierce Dragon” pic.twitter.com/Vfzw4K2fcL

  — Carl Zha (@CarlZha) November 5, 2018

  The six-day event is located at Zhuhai Jinwan Airport will feature J-20 aerobatic performances, even though the Chinese Civil Aviation Authority had yet to confirm the PLA’s fifth-generation fighter is on the list of scheduled events, the Global Times reported. 

  The South China Morning Post also quoted one military source as saying this would be the public’s first glimpse of the J-20.

  

  The PLA’s heavy transport plane Y-20, the H-6K bomber, the KJ-500 early warning aircraft, the GJ-2 unmanned aerial vehicle, and the J-10B fighter will be other aircraft featured at the airshow.

  

  Chinese state-run media has also revealed that a tiltrotor drone, developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. and named the CH-10, will have its maiden flight at the airshow.

  

  Here are other drones that are currently being featured at the airshow-

  China’s new drone makes debut at air show #China #drones https://t.co/QQPo5pBmK9 pic.twitter.com/gUq15lgC6E

  — CCTV+ (@CCTV_Plus) November 5, 2018

  An unmanned aerial vehicle believed to be the CH-7 is displayed at the booth of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. ahead of the Airshow China 2018 in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province on Sunday. (Photos: Yang Sheng/GT) https://t.co/gHdJeCSrxN pic.twitter.com/mxFhZUX07B

  — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) November 4, 2018

  Combat drones get star billing at Airshow as China moves closer to US capability in drone design, production. https://t.co/xVQ3Z9aJ51 #AirshowChina pic.twitter.com/mvHkSPhz15

  — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) November 5, 2018

  According to Army Recognition, the CM-401 anti-ship missile will be another weapon system featured at the airshow. 

  

  The CM-401 missile is a new type of supersonic anti-ship missile, using near space trajectory, and capable of all-course high supersonic maneuverable flight. It seems as the missile system is geared towards protecting China’s militarized islands in the South China Sea. 

  

  Also, the Defense blog reported that an unknown Chinese defense company will unveil a new LW-30 laser weapon system prototype.

  The LW-30 is a short-range laser weapon designed to counter unmanned aerial vehicles, light aircraft, and commercial drone threats.

  

  Other exhibits at the airshow include space stations modules, rocket engines, and unmanned land-based robots with mounted machine guns.

  Replicas of China’s manned launch vehicles, space station core modules, new generation of carrier rockets and other spacecraft were debuted at Air Show China 2018 on Monday. https://t.co/Rhs4cCN1AX pic.twitter.com/cUrICMyef6

  — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) November 5, 2018

  Take me fly in China ZHUHAI air show pic.twitter.com/jXylmwYCgY

  — MarkGuo (@kwokairforce) November 5, 2018

  Unusual unmanned vehicle displayed at the Zuhai Air Show#china #UGV #unmanned #AutonomousVehicles #zuhai #airshowchina pic.twitter.com/VSw9ERXTsM

  — Melanie Rovery (@MelanieRovery) November 5, 2018

  Overhead view of the tracked, combat UGV tracked fitted with remote weapon station (RWS) at Zuhai airshow#UGV #China #AutonomousVehicles #Zuhai #airshowchina @SamBendett pic.twitter.com/c11Afddxfw

  — Melanie Rovery (@MelanieRovery) November 5, 2018

  Seems as though the airshow has given us a glimpse of the war machines that China plans to use against the US if the trade war spirals out of control into a hot war. 

  

• Are You Prepared For Lockdown? How To Stay Safe When All Hell Breaks Loose In America

  Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

  Tensions are incredibly high in the United States right now. I realized that over the past three years, I’ve written that they’re “at an all-time high” far too many times. So, I’ll just say, they’re high enough that all hell could break loose at any moment given the right (wrong) application of fuel to the flame. The number one thing you can do for this situation to keep your family safe is to be prepared for lockdown.

  

  Pretending that it isn’t happening or hoping to hug it out is not a rational response to the chaos that is coming.  I know that some cling to their misguided views on the way the world works with the ferocity of a mother bear protecting cubs, but for the rest of us, there’s this thing called reality. When we accept it, we can prepare for it.

  People near the border are quite reasonably concerned that if thousands of immigrants push through our border illegally, they and their families could be at risk. People in other parts of the country are concerned about the aftermath of whatever happens when these people arrive at the border. Regardless of what occurs, somebody is going to be unhappy. Add in the fiercely-fought midterm elections and the threat of civil unrest is high.

  Are you prepared for lockdown?

  Which leads me to a very important subject. As the situation in the United States devolves, how prepared are you really? If you had to go into lockdown mode and keep your family safely at home, how long would you last with the supplies you have on hand? If the answer is “a few days” or “a couple of weeks” you need to work on that. Immediately.

  By planning ahead, we can avoid the fear, panic, and confusion that leads people to rush to the store and clear the shelves like a horde of hungry locusts.  We can stay away from the angry masses, the rioters who will use any excuse to steal, and the hungry people who are determined to feed their kids no matter who stands in their way.

  Whether the next few weeks lead to pandemonium due to violent protests provoking some type of martial law, a prepared mindset, a defense plan, and a well-stocked home can help to keep you and your family out of harm’s way.

  Keep in mind that the decision may not be entirely in your hands. In a martial law situation, it’s not unusual for the authorities to force people to stay in their homes. Remember in Boston when law enforcement was searching for the young man who, with his brother, was accused of setting off the bomb at the marathon?  Residents were not allowed to leave their homes due to a “shelter in place directive.”  The directive was presented as voluntary, but if you didn’t wish to have SWAT teams pointing guns in your face during this period of de facto martial law, staying home was the only option. Some people ran out of supplies the same day. Don’t be one of those people.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve written about the potential need to lock down. It’s a viable response to a variety of crises. For example, had the Ebola cases on US shores turned into a pandemic, a lockdown period would have been the very best way to keep your family safe.

  With situations of civil unrest, it isn’t as clear-cut.  It depends on where you live. In a small town, far away from riots and protests, your lockdown area could be much greater than your own home. It could encompass your immediate community, too, and life might go on as it always has for you, aside from the need to stay just a little closer to home than before.

  However, if you live in a city or suburb, it may become essential to make a decision quickly. Do you lock your doors and stay home? Or do you get out of Dodge?  It is a question only you can answer. One thing that is very important is this: if you need to go, do NOT miss your window of opportunity to do so safely. If the entire city feels the same way, you’ll most likely be stuck in traffic and trapped in your car. Protesters have shut down the highways more than once in recent years, and you’ll be far safer behind the brick and mortar of your home than you will be in your car.

  By the way, there’s always someone who chimes in with a snide remark about how cowardly it is to lockdown with your family in order to stay safe. If you want to go get involved in a battle to make a political point, that’s certainly your prerogative. However, my priority is the safety of my family, and as such, I hope to avoid engaging altogether.

  First, get home.

  If you happen to be away from home when violence erupts, your first task is safely navigating your way home. In a perfect world, we’d all be home, watching the chaos erupt on TV from the safety of our living rooms.  However, reality says that some of us will be at work, at school, or in the car when unrest occurs.  You need to develop a “get-home” plan for all of the members of your family, based on the most likely places that they will be.

  • Devise an efficient route for picking up the kids from school, camp, or daycare.  Be sure that anyone who might be picking up the children already has permission to do so.

  • Keep a get-home bag in the trunk of your car in case you have to set out on foot.

  • Stash some supplies in the bottom of your child’s backpack – water, a snack, any tools that might be useful, and a map.  Be sure your children understand the importance of OPSEC.

  • Avoid major thoroughfares.  If you need to go through the city, avoid the areas that are most likely to be the subject of unrest. Listen to the local news and traffic reports to help avoid the worst areas.  Take the safest route, not the shortest route.

  • Find multiple routes home – map out alternative backroad ways to get home as well as directions if you must go home on foot.

  • Find hiding places along the way.  If you work or go to school a substantial distance from your home, figure out some places to lay low now, before a crisis situation.  Sometimes staying out of sight is the best way to stay safe.

  • Avoid groups of people.  It seems that the mob mentality strikes when large groups of people get together.  Often folks who would never ordinarily riot in the streets get swept up by the mass of people who are doing so.

  • Keep in mind that in many civil disorder situations the authorities are to be avoided every bit as diligently as the angry mobs of looters. Who can forget the scenes of innocent people being pepper sprayed by uniformed thugs in body armor just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

  • Know when to abandon the plan to get home. Sometimes, you just can’t get there. Going through a war zone is not worth it. Find a different place to shelter. Pay attention to your instincts.

  Prepping for lockdown

  Once everyone is safely home, you need to commit to your decision to lockdown. This could last a day, a week, or longer. There’s really no way to predict it. It’s most likely that you will have electrical power throughout this crisis, but you should be prepared just in case the grid goes down due to damage during riots or attempts by the authorities to gain control of the situation.

  You should be set up with the following (at the minimum – hopefully you have these supplies and more):

  • Water

  • Necessary prescription medications

  • A well-stocked pantry – you need at least a one-month supply of food for the entire family, including pets

  • An off grid cooking method like an outdoor burner, a barbecue, a fire pit, or a woodstove)

  • Or food that requires no cooking

  • A tactical quality first aid kit

  • Lighting in the event of a power outage

  • Sanitation supplies (in the event that the municipal water system is unusable, this would include cleaning supplies and toilet supplies)

  • A way to stay warm in harsh winter weather

  • Over-the-counter medications and/or herbal remedies to treat illnesses at home

  • A diverse survival guide, a very thorough preparedness book, and a first aid manual (hard copies in case the internet and power grid are down)

  • Alternative communications devices (such as a hand-crank radio) so that you can get updates about the outside world

  • Off-grid entertainment:  arts and craft supplies, puzzles, games, books, crossword or word search puzzles, needlework, journals (here are some more ideas to keep the kids entertained.)

  If you are completely unprepared for this type of thing, order some buckets of emergency food. Keep them in the back of your closet – they last for up to 25 years. This is absolutely the fastest way to create an emergency supply.

  Try to stay under the radar.

  Your best defense is avoiding the fight altogether. You want to stay under the radar and not draw attention to yourself.  The extent to which you strive to do this should be based on the severity of the unrest in your area. Some of the following recommendations are not necessary for an everyday grid-down scenario, but could save your life in a more extreme civil unrest scenario.

  • Keep all the doors and windows locked.  Secure sliding doors with a metal bar.  Consider installing decorative gridwork over a door with a large window so that it becomes difficult for someone to smash the glass and reach in to unlock the door.

  • Put dark plastic over the windows. (Heavy duty garbage bags work well.)  If it’s safe to do so, go outside and check to see if any light escapes from the windows. If your home is the only one on the block that is well-lit, it is a beacon to others.

  • Keep pets indoors. Sometimes criminals use an animal in distress to get a homeowner to open the door for them. Sometimes people are just mean and hurt animals for “fun”.  Either way, it’s safer for your furry friends to be inside with you.

  • Don’t answer the door.  Many home invasions start with an innocent-seeming knock at the door to gain access to your house.

  • Keep cooking smells to a minimum.  The goal here is not to draw attention. The meat on your grill will draw people like moths to a flame.

  • Keep the family together.  It’s really best to hang out in one room. Make it a movie night, go into a darkened room at the back of the house, and stay together. This way, if someone does try to breach your door, you know where everyone is who is supposed to be there. As well, you don’t risk one of the kids unknowingly causing a vulnerability with a brightly lit room or an open window.

  • Remember that first responders may be tied up.  If the disorder is widespread, don’t depend on a call to 911 to save you. You must be prepared to save yourself.  Also keep in mind, as mentioned earlier in the article – the cops are not always your friends in these situations.

  For more discussion or to get questions answered about securing your home, pop on over and join the discussions at our forum.

  Be prepared to defend your family.

  If, despite your best efforts, your property draws the attention of people with ill intent, you must be ready to defend your family. Sometimes despite our best intentions, the fight comes to us.  (Have you seen the movie The Purge?)

  Many preppers stockpile weapons and ammunition for just such an event.  I know that I certainly do. Firearms are an equalizer. A small woman can defend herself from multiple large intruders with a firearmif she’s had some training and knows how to use it properly. But put a kitchen knife in her hand against those same intruders, and her odds decrease exponentially. I know this is true about the firearm, because I have been in this situation personally, and the gun in my hand was enough of a deterrent to make 3 men leave.

  When the door of your home is breached, you can be pretty sure the people coming in are not there to make friendly conversation or borrow a cup of sugar.  Make a plan to greet them with a deterring amount of force.

  • Don’t rely on 911. If the disorder is widespread, don’t depend on a call to 911 to save you. You must be prepared to save yourself.  First responders may be tied up, and in some cases, the cops are not always your friends.  In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, some officers joined in the crime sprees, and others stomped all over the 2nd Amendment and confiscated people’s legal firearms at a time when they needed them the most.

  • Be armed and keep your firearm on your person.  When the door of your home is breached, you can be pretty sure the people coming in are not there to make friendly conversation over a nice cup of tea.  Make a plan to greet them with a deterring amount of force. Be sure to keep your firearm on your person during this type of situation, because there won’t be time to go get it from your gunsafe. Don’t even go to the kitchen to get a snack without it. Home invasions go down in seconds, and you have to be constantly ready.

  • Know how to use your firearm. Whatever your choice of weapon, practice, practice, practice. A weapon you don’t know how to use is more dangerous than having no weapon at all. Here’s some advice from someone who knows a lot more about weapons than I do.

  • Make sure your children are familiar with the rules of gun safety. Of course, it should go without saying that you will have pre-emptively taught your children the rules of gun safety so that no horrifying accidents occur. In fact, it’s my fervent hope that any child old enough to do so has been taught to safely and effectively use a firearm themselves. Knowledge is safety.

  • Be ready for the potential of fire.  Fire is a cowardly attack that doesn’t require any interaction on the part of the arsonist. It flushes out the family inside, leaving you vulnerable to physical assaults. Have fire extinguishers mounted throughout your home. You can buy them in 6 packs from Amazon. Be sure to test them frequently and maintain them properly. (Allstate has a page about fire extinguisher maintenance.) Have fire escape ladders that can be attached to a windowsill in all upper story rooms.  Drill with them so that your kids know how to use them if necessary.

  • Have a safe room established for children or other vulnerable family members. If the worst happens and your home is breached, you need to have a room into which family members can escape. This room needs to have a heavy exterior door instead of a regular hollow core interior door. There should be communications devices in the room so that the person can call for help, as well as a reliable weapon to be used in the unlikely event that the safe room is breached. The family members should be instructed not to come out of that room FOR ANY REASON until you give them the all clear or help has arrived. You can learn more about building a safe room HERE.  Focus the tips for creating a safe room in an apartment to put it together more quickly.

  Even if your plan is to bug in, you must be ready to change that plan in the blink of an eye. Plan an escape route.  If the odds are against you, if your house catches on fire, if thugs are kicking in your front door… devise a way to get your family to safety.  Your property is not worth your life. Be wise enough to accept that the situation has changed and move rapidly to Plan B.

  Stay home.

  If trouble comes to your neighborhood and you decide to stick around, stay home.

  It’s the number one way to keep yourself safer from during a civil unrest situation. If you find yourself in an area under siege, the odds will be further on your side for every interaction in which you avoid taking part. Every single time you leave the house, you increase your chances of an unpleasant encounter.  Nothing will be accomplished by going out during a chaotic situation.

  

• In The "Greatest eCONomy Ever" – Renters Are Struggle More Than Homeowners 

  Here are a few quotes from President Trump’s constant cheerleading of the American economy in the last several months leading up to next week’s midterms.

  “In many ways, this is the greatest economy in the HISTORY of America”

  — President Trump tweeted, June 04

  “We have the strongest economy in the history of our nation.”

  — Trump told reporters, June 15

  “We have the greatest economy in the history of our country.”

  — Trump said in an interview with Fox News, July 16

  “We’re having the best economy we’ve ever had in the history of our country.”

  — Trump, said in a speech in Illinois, July 26

  “This is the greatest economy that we’ve had in our history, the best.”

  — Trump said at rally in Charleston, W.Va., Aug. 21

  “You know, we have the best economy we’ve ever had, in the history of our country.”

  — Trump said in an interview on “Fox and Friends,” Aug. 23

  “It’s said now that our economy is the strongest it’s ever been in the history of our country, and you just have to take a look at the numbers.”

  — Trump said on a White House video log, Aug. 24

  “We have the best economy the country’s ever had and it’s getting better.”

  — Trump told the Daily Caller, Sept. 03

  Democrats are anticipating a blue wave during the November midterm elections, but according to President Trump, the “strong” US economy could propel Republicans to victory next week.

  “History says that whoever’s president always seems to lose the midterm,” Trump said on an Oct. 16 interview with FOX Business’ Trish Regan.

  “No one had the economy that we do. We have the greatest economy that we’ve ever had.”

  President Trump’s cheerleading sounds great and certainly helps animal spirits, but a new study warns that more than 25% of American renters are not confident they could cover a $400 emergency. About 18% of homeowners report record low emergency savings. And if you thought that was bad, more than 30% of renters feel insecure about eating, as do 19% of homeowners, the Urban Institute study, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, reported.

  The main takeaway from the report: renters are struggling more than homeowners in the “greatest economy ever.”

  “Rental costs are rising much faster than renters’ salaries. Between 1960 and 2016, the median income for a renter grew by just 5%. During the same period, the median rent ballooned by more than 60%, according to The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (Both figures account for inflation.)

  To be sure, buying a house has also become harder for many Americans — to do so now costs four times the median household income. The homeownership rate fell to 63% in 2016 – the lowest rate in half a century,” said CNBC.

  Corianne Scally, a senior research analyst at the Urban Institute and a co-author of the study, told CNBC that “renters seem to be worse off.” Scally said the report was derived from its 2017 well-being and basic needs survey, which received about 7,500 responses from people aged 18 to 64.

  2017 living arrangements for Americans 

  

  About half of renters in the survey reported financial hardships since President Trump took office, compared with 33% of homeowners. More than 25% of renters in the survey were not confident they could cover a $400 emergency. Around 18% of homeowners reported low emergency savings. Almost 20% of renters saw large and unexpected declines in pay in the past year, compared with 14% of homeowners.

  Reported problems paying family medical bills 

  

  More than 12% of renters said they could barely pay rent, compared with 9% of homeowners who warned their mortgage payments were getting too expensive. 15% of renters said they were on the brink of not being able to afford utilities during the last 12 months, while 11% of homeowners said the same.

  Households unable to consistenly access or afford food

  

  Scally made it clear to CNBC that renters are much worse off than ever before, but it is also clear that some homeowners are feeling the pain as well.

  “It seems that some of them are having to make trade-offs in just meeting their basic needs,” she said.

  Maybe the “greatest economy ever,” is not so great?

  If so, then why is the Trump administration creating smoke and mirrors about the economy?

  The simple answer: it is all about winning the midterms by any means necessary. As for after the midterms, then into 2019, a global slowdown lingers, that is the reason why the stock market had one of its worst months since the 2008 crash. Trouble is ahead.

  

• Iran Is Preparing For A Long Siege As The Global Squeeze Begins

  Authored by Elijah Magnier, Middle East based chief international war correspondent for Al Rai Media

  On Monday the harshest and highest level economic and energy sanctions that can be imposed on any country have been imposed unilaterally on Iran. The US establishment will try its best to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees and Tehran will do its best to cross the US minefield. Whatever the outcome, Iran will never submit to Washington’s twelve conditions.

  Iran is not a fledgling country ready to collapse at the imposition of the first tight sanctions, nor will Iran allow its oil exports to be frozen without reacting. In fact, US and UN sanctions against Iran date to the beginning of the Islamic Revolution and the fall of the Shah in 1979.

  No doubt the Iranian economy will be affected. Nevertheless, Iranian unity today has reached new heights. President Trump has managed to bring reformists and radicals together under the same umbrella!

  

  Iranian General Qassem Soleimani has said to President Hassan Rouhani: “You walk and we stand ahead of you. Don’t respond to Trump’s provocations because he is insolent and not at your level. I shall face him myself”. Rouhani believes “US policy and its new conspiracy will fail”. All responsible figures in the Iranian regime are now united under the leadership of Imam Ali Khamenei against the US policy whose aim is to curb the regime.

  Under the previous worldwide sanctions regime, Iran began developing missile technology and precision weapons. Iran has never yielded in support of its allies because these alliances are an integral part of its ideology.

  Today, Tehran is not standing alone against the US and is waiting to see what course global sanctions will take before reacting. Officials in Tehran, convinced that Trump will win a second term, are preparing for a long siege.

  Sayyed Ali Khamenei said his country will never strike any deal with the US and won’t be a party to any future agreement because the US is fundamentally untrustworthy. Iran relies on the unity of its own citizens and on the support of its partners in the Middle East, Europe (a crucial strategic ally), and Asia.

  Europe, notably, is trying to disengage itself from the US sanctions, but so far with little success. Its leaders are begging in vain for an exemption for trade in food and medicine to reduce the population’s suffering.

  Trump is determined – even if these measures are harmful to the European economy – to prevent any transactions between Iran and Europe. This is one of the main reasons why the European continent is looking at implementing a long-term strategy specifically to disengage itself from the Swift messaging service used by banks and financial institutions for all trade transactions worldwide.

  

  The UK, Germany and France have stood firm against the US establishment’s decisions and sanctions for the first time since World War II. Trump shows no concern for principles, laws or international agreements (like the Nuclear Deal) and is instead engaged in a naked quest for profits. The US is trying to maintain its global hegemonic power and its long-standing efforts for world domination, at the expense of its European partners and its Middle Eastern allies who are constantly bled by the US’s extortion racket.

  Several European companies have an interest in ignoring Trump’s warnings: they could decide to trade with Iran solely on the basis of local currency exchange, provided there are no US-based assets involved.

  One of the main problems that remains is Iraq. The US aims to create internal struggle within Baghdad’s political circles, notably between pro-Iran and pro-USA factions. Nevertheless, Mesopotamia will never close its doors on Iran’s trade and will maintain the flow of goods between the two countries, regardless of consequences.

  If Trump decides to deal more harshly with Iraq, he will push the country further into the arms of Iran. Trump has already shown signs of weakness: he granted a temporary sanctions waiver to eight countries, including Russia, China, Turkey, Japan, India and South Korea.

  And Russia, China and Turkey have announced that they will not abide by any sanctions, with or without US blessing. This means that Iran will not be completely surrounded; these countries will trade extensively with the Islamic Republic. Iranian exports of 2.5 million barrels per day will be reduced but will never be shut down completely. Thus US plans–to hit Iran’s economy, change the regime, stop innovative military production and curtail Iranian support to its allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan—are not feasible.

  For a case in point: the “Islamic State” (ISIS) terrorist group managed to sell its oil for several years. Stolen oil from Iraq and Syria reached the Mediterranean and was even exported outside the Middle East. By the same token, a long-established country like Iran will not find it very difficult to export its oil.

  Trump’s sanctions have terrorized his allies more than his enemies. These allies are seriously looking today for other alternatives. What was inconceivable has become a reality; US actions respect no limits or boundaries. The new sanctions will help Iran to become even more independent and self-sufficient in many fields.

  Furthermore, the number of countries concerned by and determined to escape US hegemony is increasing. The US is showing a few diplomatic skills: in reality, it has become a giant, indeed, very strong, entity with a lot of muscle but few brains.

  At the same time, there are strong indications that the US is extremely concerned about its worldwide position. Europe is not hiding signs of rebellion against the US; China and Russia are emerging as potential world leaders, while Turkey may reassert a leadership role in the divided Arab world. These countries will certainly remain outside the US orbit, and many other countries, realizing that their interests are no longer served by an alliance with the United States, will slowly but surely join them.

  

• Millennial Men Failing To Find Jobs Amid Hottest Market In Decades

  Millennial men – those aged between 25 and 34, are seriously lagging when it comes to participating in the hottest jobs market in decades – with unemployment the lowest its been since 1969, according to Bloomberg. 

  

  Ten years after the Great Recession, 25- to 34-year-old men are lagging in the workforce more than any other age and gender demographic. About 500,000 more would be punching the clock today had their employment rate returned to pre-downturn levels. Many, like Butcher, say they’re in training. Others report disability. All are missing out on a hot labor market and crucial years on the job, ones traditionally filled with the promotions and raises that build the foundation for a career.

  …

  Men — long America’s economically privileged gender — have been dogged in recent decades by high incarceration and swollen disability rates. They hemorrhaged high-paying jobs after technology and globalization hit manufacturing and mining. –Bloomberg

  Perhaps they’re just waiting for all those jobs they were promised to make the first move? 

  

  “At some point, you can have a bit of an effect of a lost generation,” says University of Zurich economist, David Dorn. “If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point.“

  As former Trump strategist Steve Bannon said in September (and more recently in a debate with David Frum): 

  “Millennials, please understand one thing. You’re better fed, better educated, in better shape, you’re more culturally aware than 19th-century Russian serfs, but you are nothing but serfs.”

  

  “You don’t own anything and you’re not going to own anything,” he continued. “You are just going to be on the continual wheel of the gig economy, two paychecks away from financial ruin.”

  Many millennials left high school a decade ago to a world of outsourced manufacturing and middle-skill job opportunities – and then the great recession hit. When unemployment spiked during the 2007 – 2009 downturn, 25-34-year-old men fell behind their older counterparts. 

  Though employment rates have been climbing back from the abyss, young men never caught up again. Millennial males remain less likely to hold down a job than the generation before them, even as women their age work at higher rates. –Bloomberg

   

  

  And as David Dorn, the Zurich Economist touched on, this failure to launch marks a loss of human talent that can carry long-lasting penalties as young men struggle to play catch-up. Economists have even blamed the slide in marriages and out-of-wedlock births on a decline in employed, marriageable men. 

  25-year-old Nathan Butcher, pictured above, was sick and tired of earning minimum wage at a pizzaria – quitting his job in June. “He wants new employment but won’t take a gig he’ll hate,” reports Bloomberg. “So for now, the Pittsburgh native and father to young children is living with his mother and training to become an emergency medical technician, hoping to get on the ladder toward a better life.”

  Butcher has a high school diploma and a resume stacked with low-wage jobs from places like Walmart and Target. We can’t imagine why he’s unable to find a higher paying job, however perhaps the phrase “the bigger the gauges the lower the wages” applies. 

  

  “I’m very quick to get frustrated when people refuse to pay me what I’m worth,” Butcher told Bloomberg. Meanwhile, his mother worked to support her three kids, “whether she liked her job or not.” 

  “That was the template for that generation: you were either working and unhappy, or you were a mooch,” he said. “People feel that they have choice nowadays, and they do.” 

  In other words, millennials feel entitled to a better job. 

  There is no one explanation for what’s sidelining men — data suggest overlapping trends — but Butcher sits at a revealing vantage point. His demographic has seen the single biggest jump in non-participation among prime-age men over the past two decades: About 14 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds with just a high-school degree weren’t in the labor force in 2016, up from 6.4 percent in 1996, according to Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City analysis by economist Didem Tuzemen. –Bloomberg

   

   

  So – are young millennial men choosing to remain on the sidelines until the perfect job presents itself on a silver platter?

  Bloomberg even speculates that better video games might make leisure time more attractive, while opioid use is possibly affecting others. Another thought is that “Young adults increasingly live with their parents, and cohabitation might be providing a “different form of insurance,” said Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago.”

  Meanwhile, millennial men are reporting higher rates of school and training as a reason for their non-employment, according to a Labor Department survey, while a large percentage say that disability and illness are keeping them on the couch.

  If this problem doesn’t correct itself, there are going to be a lot of homeless people in the coming decades who have blown through any inheritance their boomer parents left them, should they be fortunate enough to receive one.

  

• Pentagon Socialism: Militarizing The Economy In The Name Of Defense

  Authored by William Hartung via TomDispatch.com,

  Given his erratic behavior, from daily Twitter eruptions to upping his tally of lies by the hour, it’s hard to think of Donald Trump as a man with a plan. But in at least one area — reshaping the economy to serve the needs of the military-industrial complex — he’s (gasp!) a socialist in the making.

  

  His plan is now visibly taking shape — one we can see and assess thanks to a Pentagon-led study with a distinctly tongue-twisting title: “Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States.” The analysis is the brainchild of Trump’s adviser for trade and manufacturing policy, Peter Navarro, who happens to also be the key architect of the president’s trade wars.

  Navarro, however, can hardly take sole credit for the administration’s latest economic plan, since the lead agency for developing it was also the most interested of all in the project, the Pentagon itself, in particular its Office of Defense Industrial Policy.  In addition, those producing the report did so in coordination with an alphabet soup of other agencies from the Department of Commerce to the Director of National Intelligence.  And even that’s not all.  It’s also the product of an “interagency task force” made up of 16 working groups and 300 “subject matter” experts, supplemented by over a dozen industry “listening sessions” with outfits like the National Defense Industrial Association, an advocacy organization that represents 1,600 companies in the defense sector.

  Before jumping into its substance and implications for the American economy and national defense, let me pause a moment to mention two other small matters.

  First, were you aware that the Pentagon even had an Office of Defense Industrial Policy? It sounds suspiciously like the kind of government organization that engages in economic planning, a practice anathema not just to Republicans but to many Democrats as well.  The only reason it’s not a national scandal — complete with Fox News banner headlines about the end of the American way of life as we know it and the coming of creeping socialism — is because it’s part of the one institution that has always been exempt from the dictates of the “free market”: the Department of Defense.

  Second, how about those 300 subject matter experts? Since when does Donald Trump consult subject matter experts?  Certainly not on climate change, the most urgent issue facing humanity and one where expert opinionis remarkably unified. The Pentagon and its contractors should, however, be thought of as the ultimate special interest group and with that status comes special treatment. And if that means consulting 300 such experts to make sure their “needs” are met, so be it.

  A Slogan for the Ages?

  Now for the big stuff. 

  According to Peter Navarro’s summary of the new industrial base report, which appeared as an op-ed in the New York Times, the key to the Trump plan is the president’s belief that “economic security equals national security.” When it comes to weapons manufacturing, the administration’s approach involves building a Fortress America economy that will depend as little as possible on foreign suppliers. Consider it just the latest variation on Trump’s “America First” economic strategy, grounded in its unapologetic embrace of nationalism. As a slogan, “economic security equals national security” doesn’t have quite the populist ring of “Make America Great Again,” but it’s part of the same worldview.

  In a flight of grandiosity (and flattery) that must have made his boss swell with pride, Navarro suggested in his op-ed that the slogan might go down in the annals of history alongside other famed pearls of presidential wisdom.  As he put it:

  “McKinley’s… ‘Patriotism, protection and prosperity’… catalyzed strong economic growth. Roosevelt’s ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’ helped transform the Navy into a military force capable of projecting power around the world. And Reagan’s ‘Peace through strength’ inspired an unprecedented rebuilding of the military that brought the Soviet Union to its knees… History will judge whether Donald Trump’s ‘economic security is national security’ joins the ranks of great presidential maxims.”

  The essence of the Pentagon’s scheme for making America safe for a never-ending policy of war preparations (and war) is to organize as much of the economy as possible around the needs of military production. This would involve eliminating what Navarro describes as the “300 vulnerabilities” of the defense economy — from reliance on single suppliers for key components in weapons systems and the like, to dependence on foreign inputs like rare earth minerals from China, to a shortage of younger workers with the skills and motivation needed to keep America’s massive weapons manufacturing machine up and running. China figures prominently in the report’s narrative, with its trade and investment policies repeatedly described as “economic aggression.”

  And needless to say, this being the Pentagon, one of the biggest desires expressed in the report is a need for — yes, you guessed it! — more money. Never mind that the United States already spends more on its military than the next seven nations in the world combined (five of whom are U.S. allies).  Never mind that the increasein Pentagon spending over the past two years is largerthan the entire military budget of Russia.  Never mind that, despite pulling tens of thousands of troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, this country’s spending on the Pentagon and related programs (like nuclear warhead work at the Department of Energy) will hit $716 billionin fiscal year 2019, one of the highest levels ever. Face it, say the Pentagon and its allies on Capitol Hill, the U.S. won’t be able to build a reliable, all-weapons-all-the-time economic-industrial base without spending yet more taxpayer dollars.  Think of this as a “Pentagon First” strategy.

  As it happens, the Pentagon chose the wrong 300 experts.  The new plan, reflecting their collective wisdom, is an economic and security disaster in the making.

  Consider it beyond ironic that some of the same experts and organizationsnow suggesting that we bet America’s future on pumping up the most inefficient sector of our economy — no, no, I didn’t mean the coal industry, I meant the military-industrial complex — are conservative experts who criticized the Soviet Union for the very same thing.  They still claim that it imploded largely because Washington cleverly lured its leaders into devoting ever more of their resources to the military sector.  That, they insist, reinforced a rigidity in the Soviet system which made it virtually impossible for them to adapt to a rapidly changing global economic landscape.

  Our military buildup, they still fervently believe, bankrupted the Soviet Union. Other analysts, like the historian Lawrence Wittner, have questionedsuch a view. But for the sake of consistency, shouldn’t conservatives who claimed that excessive military spending did in the Soviets be worried that President Trump’s policy of massive tax cuts for the rich, increased Pentagon spending, and trade wars with adversaries and allies alike might do something similar to the United States?

  

  What Would a Real Industrial Policy Look Like?

  Industrial policy should not be a dirty word.  The problem is: the Pentagon shouldn’t be in charge of it.  The goal of an effective industrial policy should be to create well-paying jobs, especially in sectors that meet pressing national needs like rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure and developing alternative energy technologies that can help address the urgent dangers posed by climate change.

  The biggest economic challenge facing the United States today is how to organize an economic transition that would replace jobs and income generated by dysfunctional activities like overspending on the Pentagon and subsidizing polluting industries.  The argument that the Pentagon is crucial to jobs production in America has been instrumental in blocking constructive changes that would benefit both the environment and true American security.  Members of Congress are, for example, afraid to jettison questionable weapons programs like the F-35 combat aircraft — an immensely costly, underperforming fighter plane that may never be ready for combat — for fear of reducing jobs in their states or districts.  (The same is true of the coal and petroleum industries, which endlessly play up the supposed job-creating benefits of their activities.)

  Where could alternatives to Pentagon job-creation programs come from?  The short answer is: invest in virtually anything but buying more weapons and waging more wars and Americans will be better off.  For instance, Pentagon spending creates startlingly fewer jobs per dollar than putting the same taxpayer dollars into infrastructure repair and rebuilding, alternative energy creation, education, or health care.  A study conducted by University of Massachusetts economist Heidi Garrett-Peltier for the Costs of War Project at Brown University found that, had the government invested in civilian activities the $230 billion per year wasted on America’s post-9/11 wars, that sum would have created 1.3 million additional jobs.  A more equitable tax policy that required wealthy individuals and corporations to pay their fair share could similarly fund a $2 trillion infrastructure program that would support 2.5 million new jobs in its first year, according to a proposal put forward by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

  As for the president’s much touted, dramatically overblown claims about the jobs to be had from arms exports, the global arms market represents only a tiny fraction of the growing market for renewable energy technologies. If the goal is to produce jobs via exports, developing technologies to tap the huge future market in renewables, which one study suggests could hit $2.1 trillionby 2025, would leave weapons systems in the dust. After all, that’s about 20 times the current size of the total global arms trade, which clocks in at about $100 billion annually. But an analysis by Miriam Pemberton and her colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies indicates that the United States spends 28 times as much on its military as it does on genuinely job-creating programs designed to address the threat of climate change.

  Such actions would be a good start — but just a start — when it comes to reducing the dependency of the United States economy on guns and pollution.  Of course, the Trump administration doesn’t have the faintest interest in any of this.  (It would apparently rather cede the lucrative future market in renewable energy to China, with barely a fight.) 

  Still, the question remains: What would such a shift in priorities mean for the defense industrial base?  If you accept the premise that the U.S. government needs to run a permanent war economy (and also fight never-ending warsacross a significant swath of the planet), some of the Pentagon’s recommendations might almost make sense.  But a foreign policy that put more emphasis on diplomacy — one that also thought it important to address non-military dangers like climate change — wouldn’t require such a large military production network in the first place. Under this scenario, the alarmist argument that the U.S. won’t be able to defend itself without stepping up the militarization of our already exceedingly militarized economy suddenly becomes unpersuasive.

  But let’s give the weapons sector some credit.  Its CEOs are working assiduously to build up local economies — overseas.  Saudi Arabia’s long-term economic plan, for instance, calls for 50% of the value of its weapons purchases to be spent building up its own military industry.  U.S. weapons giants like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have been quick to pledge allegiance to that plan, setting up subsidiaries there and agreeing to have systems like helicopters assembled in Saudi Arabia, not the United States. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin is helping the United Arab Emirates develop the capability to produce robot-controlled machine tools that are in great demand in the defense and aerospace industries.  And the F-35 program is creating production jobs in more than a dozen countries, including assembly plants in Italy and Japan. 

  Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy summed up this approach when he discussed his company’s growing partnership with Saudi Arabia: “By working together, we can help build world-class defense and cyber capabilities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” And keep in mind that these are the jobs from so many of those Saudi weapons sales that President Trump keeps bragging about.  Of course, while this may be bad news for American jobs, it works just fine as a strategy for keeping the profits of U.S. arms makers stratospheric.

  Making the transition from Peter Navarro’s “economic security equals national security” to an economy far less dependent on over-the-top military spending would mean a major shift in budget priorities in Washington, a prospect that is, at the moment, hard to imagine.  But if the Pentagon can plan ahead, why shouldn’t the rest of us?

  

• Amazon Said To Pick Long Island City As Second Headquarters

  Just when one thought life could not get any more bizarre, here comes the world’s richest man to have a joke at everyone’s expense.

  One day after the WaPo reported that Northern Virginia’s Crystal City was in advanced talks with Amazon for the online retail giant’s second headquarters – at the same time as the Wall Street Journal said not only Crystal City but also Dallas and New York City were in late-stage discussions with the company – and just hours after the WSJ also reported that Amazon plans to split its second headquarters evenly between two cities instead of picking one winner, the NYT reported late on Monday that Amazon is nearing a deal to move to the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens.

  And confirming the WaPo’s previous report (because if anyone should know the answer it the newspaper that is owned by Jeff Bezos), the NYT also said that Amazon is close to a deal to move to the Crystal City area of Arlington, Va..

  Why these two east coast venues? Because, according to the gray lady, Amazon already has more employees in those two areas than anywhere else outside of Seattle, its home base, and the Bay Area.

  

  Naturally, since Amazon would never have picked either location without some incentives, the NY Times reports that ahead of the decision to pick LIC – which is a short subway ride from Midtown Manhattan – Amazon executives met two weeks ago with NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the governor’s Manhattan office, with the state offering “potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies.”

  “I am doing everything I can,” Governor Cuomo told reporters when asked Monday about the state’s efforts to lure the company. “We have a great incentive package,” he said.

  Unlike the prince of Zamunda who ended up in Queens in search for a bride, Bezos is already happily married and what has been the reported driving force behind the search – and the decision – was the need to hire tens of thousands of high-tech workers, leading many to expect it to land in a major East Coast metropolitan area. Many experts have pointed to Crystal City as a front-runner, because of its strong public transit, educated work force and proximity to Washington.

  For those very reasons, almost nobody picked Long Island City, which has been said to have “affordable housing, robust infrastructure, terrific airports, short commutes, business friendly local government” one with an overdose of sarcasm.

  Affordable housing, robust infrastructure, terrific airports, short commutes, business friendly local government. Hard to believe we didn’t have LIC pegged as victor from the start.

  — modest proposal (@modestproposal1) November 6, 2018

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  If Bezos does pick Long Island City, the transition could be seamless: Amazon already employs 1,800 people in advertising, fashion and publishing in New York, and roughly 2,500 corporate and technical employees work in Northern Virginia and Washington.

  Now the question is whether Queens residents will be excited to learn that a new tenant is coming, one which will dramatically transform the city landscape and infrastructure on day one

  “HQ2 would be “full equal to our current campus in Seattle,” the company said. If Amazon goes ahead with two new sites, it is unclear whether the company would refer to both of the locations as headquarters or if they would amount to large satellite offices.

  Meanwhile, those wondering why Bezos decided not on one but two HQ2s, the answer is simple: money.

  Picking multiple sites would allow it to tap into two pools of talented labor and perhaps avoid being blamed for all of the housing and traffic woes of dominating a single area. It could also give the company greater leverage in negotiating tax incentives, experts said.

  And now comes the bad side: as Amazon’s search dragged on, residents in many of 20 finalist cities worried about the impact such a massive project could have on housing and traffic, as well as what potential tax incentives could cost the community.

  And New Yorkers, already tormented by some of the highest taxes in the nation, are about to find out, which is why Jeff Bezos may find the locals less than hospitable even before the foundations are laid.

  

  

• Professor Asks Students To Compare Trump, Nazi Policies

  Authored by Celine Ryan via Campus Reform,

  A University of Arizona student has reported that she was asked to compare President Donald Trump’s policies to those of the Nazis in a course based on the history of the Holocaust.

  “Now that you have studied the Vichy Anti-Jewish Laws, the German Ordinances, and pre-Vichy laws imposed on the Jews (French, immigrant, and refugee) and the repercussions that they had for Jews in France, examine and analyze more current anti-immigrant laws in the United States,” the extra credit assignment reads.

  

  As examples of these “anti-immigrant laws,” the assignment referenced the DACA, Arizona SB 1070, and Executive Order 13769, which the professor described as a “Muslim ban requested by the Trump administration.”

  

  Students were asked to answer, “What populations are targeted by these laws? In what ways are they being used? Would the term ‘scapegoating’ be applicable here and therefore, what did (does) President Trump hope to achieve by invoking them?”

  “This was only an extra credit assignment, but regardless it still feels extremely one-sided and [like] full-on indoctrination,” L’wren Tikva, a student taking the class, told Campus Reform.  

  Tikva said she responded to the assignment by telling her professor that it was unproductive and “anti-Trump,” and that it would “cause more division.”

  “As a Jewish American who has ties to those who survived the Holocaust it’s pretty trivializing comparing Trump’s policies to the Holocaust,” Tikva wrote to her professor.

   “Almost all of these policies are in no way comparable and the President is in his legal authority to implement these policies.”

  Tikva went on to call the comparison “quite offensive,” “insensitive,” and an “insult to the victims of one of the worst mass murders in modern history.” Tikva said the course name in which the extra credit assignment appeared is titled “The Holocaust in France and Italy.” According to the University of Arizona’s website, Kara Tableman, whom Tikva named as the instructor of the online course, is “currently teaching” two courses by that same name.

  Tikva said the professor responded by stating that she was also the descendant of Holocaust survivors, adding that her “intent was not to compare Trump to Hitler.”

  “Perhaps I should have stated my discussion more clearly and precisely on the pre-Vichy laws that targeted immigrant populations in general in the late 1930’s in France and did have a great impact on the Jewish community in France before the Second World War even started,” she explained, insisting that she was “not [at] all comparing what eventually transpired in Vichy, France to what is happening now in the U.S.A.”

  “I am certainly not cheapening the Holocaust by looking at the laws emphasized in pre-war France and examining the focus and rhetoric of certain immigration laws in the recent past and current moment in the States,” she continued.

  The professor then went on to insist that current “anti-immigrant discourse” in the U.S. is “very heated and coded,” referencing the recent anti-Semitic shooting in Pittsburgh as well as the “pipe bombs” recently sent to “people who have spoken openly against our current President.”  

  “Thank ‘G-d’ that Trump is not Hitler and that we still have our constitution. But, having said that, Petain was not Hitler either and his followers (at first) were not Nazis, but they were members of a very conservative vision which wanted to return France to a time even before the French Revolution when Jews had not yet been emancipated and society had not yet been contaminated by foreign elements…’”

  The University of Arizona did not return a request for comment in time for publication. 

  

• Navy's Priciest Aircraft Carrier Delivered Without Elevators To Lift Bombs

  The F-35 finally has some competition for costliest boondoggle in American military history.

  According to Bloomberg, the most expensive Navy warship to date, the $13 billion Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, was delivered last year without the elevators it needed to lift bombs from below deck for loading on to fighter jets. The “advanced weapons” elevators were supposed to have been installed by the ship’s delivery date of May 2017. However, technical problems have caused repeated delays to the installation. While answering questions from reporters, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer described the elevator system as “our Achilles heel.”

  

  One government analyst described the system as “just another example of the Navy pushing technology risk into design and construction, without fully demonstrating it.”

  The problems are raising the possibility that the Navy won’t have enough money left over to bundle a third and fourth carriers into the $58 billion contract to develop the Ford class of ships. The initiative is part of the Navy’s effort to expand its fleet to 355 from 284 by the mid-2030s. However, one Navy weapons buyer said “considerable progress” had been made on the Ford, including on the elevators, in a memo released back in July.

  Another spokesman said six of the eleven elevators are close enough to being finished that the shipbuilder can operate them.

  William Couch, a spokesman for the Naval Sea Systems Command, said the elevators are “in varying levels of construction and testing.”

  Six are far enough along to be operated by the shipbuilder, and testing has started on two of those, he said. All 11 “should have been completed and delivered with the ship delivery,” according to Couch.

  He said the contractor has corrected “all issues,” including the “four uncommanded movements over the last three years that were discovered during the building, operational grooming, or testing phases.”

  Meanwhile, a recent segment on PBS’s “Nova”, a science-focused show, heralded the electromagnetic elevators as the “elevators of tomorrow”, positing that, one day, our vertical travel might be facilitated by electromagnets instead of cables.

  A November 2010 program on PBS’s “Nova” science series extolled the “Elevator of Tomorrow” being developed by Federal Equipment Co., a Cincinnati-based subcontractor to Huntington Ingalls.

  “In the not-too-distant future the Advanced Weapons Elevator will be lifting bombs to the flight deck of a new aircraft carrier,” the narrator said. “If it survives the rigors of Navy life, someday we might all be passengers on elevators powered like this one.”

  Doug Ridenour, president of Federal Equipment Co., said the elevator’s key technologies “have been consistently demonstrated for years” in a test unit in the company’s plant and any programming or software-related issues have been fixed.

  But “shipboard integration involves many other technology insertions not controlled by” his company, he said.

  Right now, that’s looking like one big “if”.

  

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