Today’s News 4th April 2018

  • Tech Giants Race To Create An Alternate Reality

    Submitted by Michael Scott for SafeHaven

    Virtual reality, augmented reality, immersive reality, mixed reality and finally merged reality … Welcome to the world of digital layering, awash with cutting-edge technologies that are mostly powered by rather dorky and clunky hardware, but fascinating nonetheless.

    The digital reality industry is exploding, and tech titans are in an arms race to cut themselves a niche in the sector, earn bragging rights for the snazziest devices that will drive future billion-dollar valuations.

    VR and AR have been creating the most buzz, though the average user might be hard-put to tell one from the other. That’s hardly surprising when the media, and sometimes the innovators themselves, tend to use the two terms interchangeably. But when it comes to alternate realities, either one will emerge to redefine existence, or the two leaders will merge to become an even bigger reality.

    Similar Digital Realities, Different Technologies

    VR and AR are two sides of the same coin though they have significantly different capabilities.

    VR is the grandfather of our alternate reality, with the first VR devices dating all the way back to the era of the head-mounted Telesphere Mask.

    Much earlier attempts at VR had been made in the form of 360-degree murals. And modern examples of VR devices include Oculus VR, Samsung GearVR and HTC Vive.

    AR has been slower off the blocks, mainly because the underlying technology requires more fine-tuning for things like motion controllers, depth sensors and cameras for a truly awesome user experience. Apple’s brand new ARKit, Microsoft’s HoloLens, Snap glasses, Google Cardboard and Magic Leap’s soon-to-come AR glasses all belong to the AR camp.

    VR is a totally immersive experience that completely shuts out the outside world by creating a virtual environment for the user to inhabit. VR experiences can be totally cool but lack a real-world feeling because they involve little or no sensory input from the user or their environment.

    AR, on the other hand, works by mapping the real world and then laying virtual objects on top of it. The real world becomes the backdrop of the AR environment that the user is able to control. AR, unlike VR, is like a half-complete painting that allows you to add your own details.

    Another significant difference is the hardware. VR mostly relies on those unmissable head-mounted-displays (HMD), while AR devices mostly use smartphone cameras as their portal.

    Inflection point for AR

    VR has found a ready market in the entertainment industry, though CAVE automatic virtual environments might be fun for big labs and academia where they can be used to display virtual content in room-sized screens.

    AR, on the other hand, has more potential for long-term commercial applications.

    A case in point is this AR app by IKEA that allows customers to ”virtually” move furniture around and see how it’s going to look in their sitting rooms.

    Similarly, Snapchat has come up with a comparable albeit more goofy idea of a dancing hotdog that can be placed into different camera views. It’s only a matter of time before other marketing teams jump into the AR bandwagon.

    Quite naturally, smartphone companies like Apple have been hyping up AR’s potential over VR. However, they can now back up their claims using this SuperData Report that says consumer AR is set to pull ahead of VR somewhere around 2021, mainly driven by mobile AR and games like Pokémon Go.

    Gartner has placed AR only behind VR in its 2017 Hype Cycle chart of emerging technologies. Remarkably, the two are ranked as the most advanced emerging technologies, implying that an investment in either sector might pay off in the long-run.

  • Lockheed To Build NASA A Supersonic Jet Without The Sonic Boom

    NASA has awarded Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works a $247.5-million contract to design, build and flight test a low-boom X-plane that could lead to a new era of supersonic air travel in the next three to five years, according to a Lockheed Martin press release on Tuesday.

    The experimental aircraft is scheduled to take to the skies in 2021 with a top velocity of 1.5 times the speed of sound, or about 990 miles per hour (1,600 kilometers) at an altitude of 55,000 feet, Lockheed said. While the jet will only have room for a pilot, it will test design principles that soften the sonic boom.

    “It is super exciting to be back designing and flying X-planes at this scale,” said Jaiwon Shin, NASA’s associate administrator for aeronautics. “Our long tradition of solving the technical barriers of supersonic flight to benefit everyone continues.”

    Illustration of NASA’s Supersonic commercial travel is on the horizon. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® has partnered with NASA for more than a decade to enable the next generation of commercial supersonic aircraft.Credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin

    The news comes less than two weeks after President Trump signed the federal budget deal, which funds the Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD) program, according to Space.com. In the budget proposal, the Trump administration noted that the X-plane “would open a new market for U.S. companies to build faster commercial airliners, creating jobs and cutting cross-country flight times in half.”

    With the funding in place, Lockheed Martin will build the full-scale experimental aircraft, combining NASA’s Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) into the airframe’s design. It has been over forty years since the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banned commercial supersonic travel over skies of the United States, and subsequently, other nations such as Europe followed suit.

    However, the X-plane is expected to reverse the decades-old ruling, by utilizing NASA’s QueSST technology that would dramatically reduce the noise from a sonic boom.

    “This piloted X-plane would be built specifically to fly technologies that reduce the loudness of a sonic boom to that of a gentle thump,” Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator of NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, said during a news conference today.

    The X-plane would start test trials over select cities across the United States in mid-2022 and NASA will “ask the people living and working in those communities to tell us what they heard, if anything”, Shin added.

    Low-Boom Flight Demonstration aircraft as outlined during the project’s preliminary design review in 2017. NASA has selected Lockheed Martin to build the new supersonic jet. Credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin

    NASA will then compile the data from the human subjects, and submit the “scientifically collected human response” data to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), “so they can use the data to change the current rule that completely bans civil supersonic flights over land,” Shin said.

    “When the rule is changed, the door will open to an aviation industry ready to enter [a] new supersonic market in our country and around the world,” Shin said. “This X-plane is a critical step closer to that exciting future.”

    The maiden flight of the aircraft is scheduled for summer 2021. Shortly after that, NASA will conduct “Mach 1.4 flight tests at an altitude of 55,000 feet over 50-square-mile testing areas in the American Southwest,” said Popular Mechanics.

    At 940 mph, the X-plane is projected to “create a sound about as loud as a car door closing, 75 Perceived Level decibel (PLdB), instead of a sonic boom,” said Lockheed Martin. Compared to the Concorde, a retired British-French turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, the X-plane would have a 31 percent reduction in noise when the aircraft breaks the speed of sound.

    Popular Mechanics indicates that the X-plane will be “affordable” using parts from preexisting American military aircraft.

    ”The supersonic plane is designed to be affordable by using parts taken from other jets, such as the canopy of a T-38, the landing gear of an F-16, and various components from the F/A-18. The engine is a GE 414-400, the same engine used on the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The contract awarded to Lockheed Martin to build the jet is worth $247.5 million.”

    “We’re honored to continue our partnership with NASA to enable a new generation of supersonic travel,” said Peter Iosifidis, Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator program manager, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. “We look forward to applying the extensive work completed under QueSST to the design, build and flight test of the X-plane, providing NASA with a demonstrator to make supersonic commercial travel possible for passengers around the globe.”

    If everything goes as plan, NASA and Lockheed could usher in a new, quieter era of supersonic air travel, with commercial service available some time in the mid-2020s.

  • Why Nassim Taleb Thinks Leaders Make Poor Decisions

    Authored by Laurence Siegel of Advisor Perspectives

    Why do experts, CEOs, politicians, and other apparently highly capable people make such terrible decisions so often? Is because they’re ill-intentioned? Or because, despite appearances, they’re actually stupid? Nassim Nicholas Taleb, philosopher, businessman, perpetual troublemaker, and author of, among other works, the groundbreaking Fooled by Randomness, says it’s neither.

    It’s because these authorities face the wrong incentives.

    They are rewarded according to whether they look good to their superiors, not according to whether they are effective. They have no skin in the game.

    Seasoned readers of Taleb will be pleased to see the so-called “experts problem” pop up in living color in Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, Taleb’s latest collection of essays on risk, rationality, and randomness. According to Taleb, dentists, pilots, plumbers, structural engineers, and “scholars of Portuguese irregular verbs” are real experts; sociologists, policy analysts, “management theorist[s], publishing executive[s], and macroeconomist[s]” are not.

    The difference is that, when people from the first list are wrong about something, it’s obvious from the results and they suffer; they have skin in the game. Bad teeth, crashed planes, and leaky pipes are bad for business. People from the second list rationalize by substituting a different theory. They were not really wrong but just early, and, if they’re lucky, which is to say skillful at apple-polishing, earn promotion after promotion by not failing utterly. (Financial advisors can argue that the fiduciary standard is the most powerful tool for putting them in the first list.) Skin in the Game is full of insights like this, some recycled from his earlier work but many of them new. It is well worth the relatively quick read.

    Despite the many good qualities of Skin in the Game, Taleb’s work, including the present volume, is often infuriating. He is too sure of himself, too unkind to his enemies, too full of bluster and obscure humor. Acting on his belief that some kinds of experts are worthless, he has populated the book’s dust jacket with anonymous tweets instead of celebrity testimonials. Here’s the first tweet: “The problem with Taleb is not that he’s an ass— (spelled out in full on the jacket). He is an ass—. The problem with Taleb is that he is right.” I agree.

    Asymmetry, or why we are ruled by the most easily offended

    In chapter two of Skin in the Game, entitled “The Most Intolerant Wins,” Taleb asks why we seem to be governed by the most easily offended. You have to refrain from smoking in the non-smoking section, but you don’t have to smoke (that is, refrain from not smoking) in the smoking section, which, by the way, is much smaller. Few people really care whether you say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, but the latter has become de rigueur in some circles. Almost all soft drinks are kosher.

    The reason, Taleb explains, is that, for any given issue, there are a few people who care deeply about it and a great many people who do not. Those who care are spurred to action, even violent action in the case of religious or political passions. The rest of us, wishing to be left alone, rarely fight back with equal vigor. The results of this process include the increasing domination of Taleb’s beloved, multi-religious Lebanon by Muslims, for whom conversion to Islam is irreversible. Conversion away from Islam is at least theoretically punishable by death; Christians and Jews don’t much care if you leave the faith.

    In ancient Roman times, Taleb explains, Christians were the intolerant minority that pushed their views on the Roman majority. That’s how Christianity eventually became the official religion of the empire in 323 A.D. Times and players change but the principles of human nature remain the same.

    Almost all soft drinks are kosher because it’s relatively easy to make a drink kosher. So manufacturers put forth this small effort rather than have two kinds of each drink, one for observant Jews – a fraction of a percent of the total population – and one for everybody else.

    If this argument sounds familiar, it’s recycled in much more general form from Frédéric Bastiat, the great 19th century French economist. Bastiat wrote that, for any given government action, such as a tax levied to subsidize some activity, there are a few people who will benefit greatly by it and they will work day and night to see it enacted. The great many who stand to lose will typically only lose a few pennies and will put forth little or no effort to prevent it. Thus the number of rules, regulations, taxes, handouts, and special favors granted by government grows exponentially with very little acting to restrain the growth.

    These are just a few of the asymmetries of daily life to which Taleb’s subtitle refers. Once you understand the principle, you’ll see it in everything.

    Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup

    The New York deli called Lindy’s is famous for its clientele of Broadway actors and comedians, and for having food so bad that it has inspired a bevy of jokes including the one that starts with, “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.” But, Taleb tells us, it is also well-known among mathematicians and other scholars as the place where the Lindy effect was first observed. This is the idea that the age of an inanimate object is a good indicator of its future longevity:

    Broadway shows that lasted for, say, one hundred days, had a future life expectancy of a hundred more. For those that lasted two hundred days, two hundred more. The heuristic became known as the Lindy effect.

    Likewise, Judaism, 3,500 years old, will probably last another 3,500; Scientology will be lucky to get another 60. Shakespeare will last longer than Stephen King. Even living things that do not age on a particular schedule, like trees, tend to follow this rule. It could be because the old ones, having survived, are anti-fragile, a concept from Taleb’s earlier book by that title; they are not just robust, but gain further robustness from exposure to stresses. Or maybe, like Shakespeare, they’re just better.

    This principle is very powerful and Taleb applies it to many topics, with the Lindy theme running through the whole book. Academia, for example, sometimes resembles an athletic contest in which the hardest-working or most aggressive participants appear to win. It should not. “The winner is the one who finishes last,” said the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein; that is, the academic whose theories are least easily overturned, most enduring, had the best theories.

    Investors would do well to understand the application of the Lindy principle to their enterprise. Indexing as a concept is about 75 years old; value investing is even older. These great ideas are unlikely to be overturned any time soon. Instead, improvements around the edges are the best we can expect. The latest idea for earning alpha, whatever it is at the moment, will almost certainly turn out to be a flash in the pan, easily arbitraged away by the time it can be widely implemented.

    Why are there so many employees?

    To illustrate how the principle of skin in the game applies to labor contracting, Taleb compares the behavior of two private jet pilots. Bob is a freelance contract pilot who is sometimes useful to your little airline but is at other times too busy hauling Saudi princes to fancy resorts to do the work you need done. The result, an occasional stranded planeload of people, is disastrous for your business.

    The other, a pilot-employee – I’ll call him Bill – does more or less what you want, including working overtime in a pinch. Why the difference? Taleb writes,

    People you find in employment love the regularity of the payroll, with that special envelope on their desk the last day of the month, and without which they would act as a baby deprived of mother’s milk… [H]ad Bob been an employee rather than something that appeared to be cheaper, that contractor thing, then you wouldn’t be having so much trouble.

    Economics dictates that employment is just one of many ways to contract for labor, and a particularly inflexible one that requires you to pay the employee whether you can keep them busy or not. You’ve probably considered replacing employees with contractors in whatever business you operate or work. Yet there are a lot of employees! Taleb’s tale provides a clue to why: “Every organization wants a certain number of people associated with it to be deprived of a certain share of their freedom.” Employment is the only legal way to achieve that sort of dependent relationship.

    What’s the connection to skin in the game? We tend to think of freelancers and entrepreneurs, such as Bob the pilot-contractor, as risk takers, skin-in-the-game players. And they are. But, as Taleb reminds us, “skin in the game is not [about] incentives, but disincentives.” You don’t want the employee to do what is best for himself in the short run – that’s what contractors do – so you set up an alignment of interest between his long-run welfare and yours. As an employee with a family and a mortgage, and considerable costs if he has to get another job and relocate, he has skin in your game.

    That’s why we have so many employees.

     

    Two very different kinds of risk

    Since investing is applied philosophy, Taleb’s whole book is relevant to investors, but the most directly applicable part is Chapter 19, “The Logic of Risk Taking.” He draws the distinction, fundamental but rarely fully understood, between ensemble probability and time probability. (Like double-entry bookkeeping, this is one of those wonderful ideas that’s obvious once you’ve heard it; less so in advance.) Ensemble probability involves a risk faced by a population at a given point in time, such as that of a hundred people visiting a casino once, where each person can make a one-time, double-or-nothing bet involving his or her entire fortune. In that single visit, about half of them will be ruined. The other half, having doubled their money, will be perfectly fine.

    Time probability, in contrast, involves an ongoing risk faced by an individual over time. Consider someone visiting a casino 100 times in succession, also making a double-or-nothing bet involving his entire fortune. In 100 visits, that person will be ruined; usually ruin will occur after just a few visits. No one who behaves this way will ever be fine.

    With ensemble probability, then, as Taleb explains, “the ruin of one does not affect the ruin of others.” With time probability it’s the opposite: once you get a sufficiently bad outcome, the game is over and you cannot become un-ruined.

    This distinction is relevant to investing because the risks investors face involve time probability, not ensemble probability. In most aspects of life, we are accustomed to thinking about risk in the ensemble sense: a football team has a 2-in-3 chance of winning a game, a disease has a 10% mortality rate. So we are familiar with that kind of risk, and comfortable extending the concept to other aspects of life.

    But, in investing, the state of a person’s wealth at any point in time is contingent on her wealth at the previous point in time; returns are cumulative; investing exposes us to time risk, cumulative risk. We are not typically able to do the mental approximations needed to think about that – if the risk of getting in a car accident on the way to work is one in 10,000, what is the risk of driving to work 10,000 times? (It’s not 100%, nor is it insignificant; it’s 64%. You should go to work anyway.)

    Thus, we need to be very careful when relying on intuition to tell us about investment risk. Investing involves more risk than you think. We also need to be wary of extrapolating from the past (and avoid the temptation that comes from the fact that it’s so readily accessible). Paul Samuelson famously said that “we have only one sample of the past,” meaning that far more things could have happened than did happen; there’s only so much you can learn from studying history. But it’s just as important that we will get only one sample of the future! The return pattern that we will experience is just one of the infinitely many possible ones, and it will not be the one that we “expect” statistically; it will be something different, possibly very different.

    Are you an IYI? I hope not

    Consistent with his famously combative persona, Taleb takes pot shots – frequent and vigorous ones – at intellectuals, or, in his acronym, IYI. An intellectual yet idiot (IYI) is someone who is beloved by the public for his or her knowledgeable airs but who is actually full of baloney, having no practical sense. Taleb considers Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now and a current darling, to be an example, and calls him a “journalistic professor,” not the psychologist and linguist that he obviously is. (I’m reviewing Pinker’s book, favorably, in an upcoming Advisor Perspectives.)

    When one gets past the gratuitous insult, however – Taleb doesn’t think much of journalists or professors – he has a point. When a real expert strays from his own field, he is susceptible to making the foolish mistakes of an amateur, except that an amateur is likely to be humbler.

     

    Taleb has not convinced me that Pinker is a wandering amateur; maybe it’s Taleb, not Pinker, who is wandering too far from the core of his knowledge. Intellectuals, whether or not IYI, must, when turning against their kind, be on guard against becoming AIYA: anti-intellectual yet ass­­­­—. (Pardon my French; Taleb inspires it.) At 16, I fit the description; I do not think Pinker does.

    Dedicated to the one I love?

    Book dedications are rarely interesting; they usually feature one’s parent, spouse, or teacher. But, in an odd twist that allows us to see (a little) into Nassim Taleb’s mind, he dedicates Skin in the Game to two well-known people whom I would have praised less lavishly. First, Ron Paul, “a Roman among Greeks”; second, Ralph Nader, “a Greco-Phoenician saint.”

    In a self-referential joke, Taleb’s comment about Ron Paul reverses the dedication of his earlier book, The Black Swan, to the great mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, “a Greek among Romans.” It took me a bit of effort to find out, by searching through Taleb’s tweets, that he admires the Romans’ practicality:

    As I came to realize…[,] the Romans were no-B.S. Fat Tonys; they resented grand theories and favored prudent and progressive tinkering. Much of what they built, from constitution, to Roman law, to bridges, to low income housing, to their literature, to their imperial administration (still around in the structure of the Catholic church), has survived 2000 years.

    Paul, a doctor and former congressman from Texas, is an honorable man who often stands alone in objecting to his colleagues’ expedient political follies. I’m not sure (and Taleb doesn’t say) why that makes him a Roman, but maybe an encomium is deserved; I would not have singled him out.

    But Ralph Nader a saint? He certainly sacrificed personal income, and subjected himself to harassment, when making the case that U.S. auto companies were making dangerous cars; he had skin in that game. But Nader has a dark side. Despite having taken a poverty vow and very publicly living like a monk, he revealed a personal fortune of $3.8 million in his 2000 presidential election filing – not a large fortune but not monkish either. He has also founded nonprofit organizations that do research of dubious quality, and his latest crusade is a meaningless fight against share buybacks (an important mechanism for enabling investors to get cash flow out of their portfolios). Nader is an odd choice for sainthood.

    Skin in the game everywhere

    Like many authors who’ve discovered a principle that they believe applies in many aspects of life, Taleb isn’t shy about discussing every aspect he can identify. They include the role of looks in choosing a surgeon: don’t choose a dignified, handsome one – one who looks more like a butcher “had to have much to overcome in terms of perception.” Military interventionism? He’s against it, arguing that policy analysts who make war from comfortable offices don’t know what it’s really like on the ground and have no personal stake in the consequences. Religions, at least at first, demand extreme sacrifices from their adherents because their leaders know they can only hold the tribe together if its members can see that fellow members have sacrificed too: “The strength of a creed,” Taleb writes, “did not rest on ‘evidence’ of the powers of its gods, but evidence of the skin in the game on the part of its worshippers.”

    This campfire-style storytelling makes the book seem, in places, more like a collection of loosely related essays, as I referred to it at the outset, than a coherent book. This approach has an upside and a downside. It’s easy to read parts of the book without losing the train of thought, since many of the parts were written as magazine articles and stand well on their own. The downside is that, if you try to read the book as a coherent whole, you’ll find it too full of interruptions and asides.

    Conclusion

    Taleb’s writing is nothing if not lively. What other philosopher, let alone investment writer, creates characters like Fat Tony, a worldly-wise trader who cares little for book learning; Yevgenia Nikolayevna Krasnova, a neuroscientist with three philosopher ex-husbands who writes a runaway best-seller called A Story of Recursion; and Nero Tulip, a thinly disguised version of Taleb himself? Taleb entertains, educates, and infuriates all at once, a heady combination for readers who score high on curiosity but frustrating for those who are just in a hurry to gather information and get on with it. This is Sunday afternoon, not Monday morning, reading.

    Mercifully, Skin in the Game is also relatively short, unlike Taleb’s previous book, Antifragile. It can be consumed effectively by a casual reader and does not require sustained attention.

    Skin in the Game is not Taleb’s best book – that’s Fooled by Randomness – but it’s his most accessible. I highly recommend it.

    Laurence B. Siegel is the Gary P. Brinson Director of Research at the CFA Institute Research Foundation and an independent consultant. He may be reached at lbsiegel@uchicago.edu.

  • YouTube Shooter Identified As Nasim Aghdam

    As it turns out, Tuesday’s shooting at YouTube headquarters (which has so far resulted in zero deaths other than that of the shooter, who committed suicide) had nothing to do with domestic violence and everything to do with blowback to YouTube’s demonetization efforts – as many initially feared.

    The shooter was identified as Nasim Aghdam who slammed YouTube for purportedly censoring her after she claimed that they demonetized her channels, including an exercise one devoted to exercise videos and another devoted to veganism. Aghdam channeled her anger toward YouTube into a paranoid manifesto published online. She wrote in her purported manifesto: “Be aware! Dictatorship exists in all countries but with different tactics! They only care for personal and short-term profits and do anything to reach their goals even by fooling simple-minded people, hiding the truth, manipulating science and everything, putting public mental and physical health at risk, abusing non-human animals, polluting the environment, destroying family values, promoting materialism and sexual degeneration in the name of freedom and turning people into programmed robots!”

     

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    She identified herself as an Iranian activist as well as an animal rights activist. Shortly after she was identified, photos of her holding signs with anti-YouTube messages were found online and shared.

     

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    Along with her now-deleted Instagram…

     

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    …One now-deleted YouTube page bore anti-YouTube messages.

     

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    She recently published a video ranting about her treatment by YouTube, complaining that they’d deprived her of views. She said the practice was tantamount to censorship. She also maintained a website that remained live late Tuesday evening. It lists five channels for Aghdam.

    And driving that point home, she published a video debating whether the US or Iran did more to protect freedom of speech.

     

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    A Facebook artist page she created had more than 1,600 followers according to a cached version from archive.org. The Facebook page contains a trove of videos. They range in subject matter from lighthearted and comical to recipes for helping people eat vegan, as well as her exercise videos.

    Contrary to initial reports, ABC said Aghdam wasn’t in a relationship with anyone at the facility (so much for those initial suspicions).

    She did not have an ID badge, and was carrying a purse. Aghdam was apparently a prolific maker of YouTube videos, maintaining several accounts for videos of different subjects.

  • Netflix, Spotify, And Uber Are Making You Fat, New Survey Finds

    The corporate architects of America’s modern economy, otherwise known as “the gig economy,” have unleashed the sharing economy popularized by Uber and Airbnb, and the subscription economy pioneered by Netflix and Spotify. These oligarchic capitalists intend to transform participants in this system into temporary workers trapped in low wage/skill, part-time service-sector employment with no career prospects, insurmountable debt loads and no financial security.

    And lots of fat.

    It has now been nine years since America’s modern economy clawed out of the Great Recession through an unprecedented monetary injection from global Central Banks, leaving the current economic expansion or whatever you want to call it, poised to become the second longest on record this quarter.

    However, SocGen recently spoiled the party warning of late-cycle volatility bursts “in credit, dispersion and cross-asset volatility as the equity/bond correlation itself becomes more volatile.” We must also note that, residing on the upper end of the s-curve in terms of a late stage in the business cycle, there are some troubling developments in the labor market.

    According to a new national survey, the hectic lifestyle associated with the “gig economy” is making Americans overweight.

    “The Truth about Weight Loss” is a survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Zaluvida, a full-circle life science group, which surveyed 1,000 healthcare professionals and more than 1,000 adults living in the United States.

    The results from the Zaluvida Weight Loss Survey reveals “today’s modern lifestyle has made losing weight more difficult than ever before, and that U.S. adults who are trying to do so need a new approach that’s compatible with how we live today.”

    The Fast Company, an American business magazine, chimes in and suggests that “Uber and Netflix are making you fat.” The report shows 88% of Americans moved less in this economic cycle due to increased “screen time” and “on-demand services” on smartphones, such as meal delivery, ride-sharing services, or mobile shopping apps.

    Caught in a cycle of weight-loss failures and frustrations, many U.S. adults [millennials] stay out of the picture — especially women.

    According to the Zaluvida, this has depressing effects: 30 percent of adults in the U.S. said, “their weight keeps them from wanting to be photographed.” Another 40 percent of adults are trying to lose weight, but only 30 percent are confident they will be able to drop the excess fat.

    The Fast Company adds,

    “Healthcare professionals say options like Seamless and UberEats don’t necessarily offer the same nutritional value as healthy, home-cooked meals. In their defense, 29% of those surveyed say they use on-demand services to accommodate time-strapped schedules. Primary care physicians sympathize, with 77% agreeing it’s harder today than it was for previous generations to stay fit due to busy lifestyles.”

    Zaluvida claims that Americans who are participating in today’s modern economy need “a new approach to weight loss.”

    What the experts say:

    “These findings highlight that while the way we live has changed dramatically over the past 10 to 20 years, our approach to weight loss has not evolved sufficiently to address those changes,” said Dr. Frank Greenway, medical director and professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in a press statement. “The results underscore that we need to take a step back and evaluate what weight-loss strategies can best set people up for success given the demands of their daily lives.”

    Key findings of the report:

    • Approximately eight in 10 healthcare professionals and 62% of U.S. adults believe losing weight is harder today than it was for previous generations because of the busy, modern lifestyle of Americans.
    • In fact, approximately seven in 10 healthcare professionals say it’s harder for Americans to lose weight now compared to just 10 years ago.
    • The vast majority believe Americans need to take a new approach to weight loss that fits with today’s modern lifestyle.

    And so, America’s obesity problem, which recently grew to never before seen proportions – please pardon the pun – continues to get worse as the sharing/subscription economy steamrolls all legacy commerce which in turn has an adverse impact on American biology, while further deteriorating already depressed American productivity. At what point does the modern economy – and the spiraling obesity it leads do- become a national security threat, and how can/will it be resolved?

  • YouTube Shooting Witness: "I Didn't Have a Gun on Me, But Wish I Did"

    A man who witnessed the shooting at YouTube’s San Bruno headquarters on Tuesday said he wished he had been carrying a gun when the shooting occurred.

    “I didn’t have a gun on me, but wish I did,” said the man, who was ordering food across from the company’s headquarters when the shooting began.  

    “I knew I had to be smart. You’ve got to be fast. You’ve got to think fast.”

    Police confirmed that the female shooter, who has not been named, was not a YouTube employee and didn’t know anyone at the company.  Witnesses say the shooting broke out at an employee party, which is thought to be how the woman may have gained access to the building.

    It didn’t take long before the YouTube shooting turned political. After journalist Jack Posobiec tweeted an official report from a local Bay Area news outlet listing the shooter as a “white, adult female wearing a dark top and head scarf,” blue-checked Twitter users performed quick mental gymnastics to arrive at the conclusion that conservatives are “spreading vile conspiracies that ANTIFA is behind the YouTube HQ shooting.” 

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    Apparently ABC7 was in on it too…

    Others made tasteless jokes:

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    Gamergate figure Briana Wu decided to use the shooting to promote her congressional campaign. 

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    And some simply wished that Trump voters were all dead, ideally murdered by drowning in molten gun metal.

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    Naturally, it didn’t take long before the NRA got the blame – including from “blue checked” Democrats such as New York State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz.

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    The formerly famous Alyssa Milano got in on the action;

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    And as we previously reported, prominent California politicians wasted no time turning this into a gun control issue before the shooter’s body was even cold.

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    And somehow it’s Russia’s propaganda that is the source of daily outrage.

  • Facebook: Trump Campaign Was Better At Facebook Than Clinton Team

    Despite a record $1.2 billion Hillary Clinton’s campaign spent before losing the 2016 election, the former Secretary of State – who has horrible twitter game – was also out-Facebooked by the Trump campaign according to an internal Facebook whitepaper, published days after the election. And that’s excluding the alleged “help” of Russia.

    “Both campaigns spent heavily on Facebook between June and November of 2016,” the whitepaper’s author wrote, citing internal revenue figures of $44 million spent by the Trump campaign vs $28 million for Clinton during the same period. “But Trump’s FB campaigns were more complex than Clinton’s and better leveraged Facebook’s ability to optimize for outcomes.

    The paper, first obtained by Bloomberg and “describes in granular detail the difference between Trump’s campaign, which was focused on finding new donors, and Clinton’s campaign, which concentrated on ensuring Clinton had broad appeal.

    The data scientist says 84 percent of Trump’s budget asked people on Facebook to take an action, like donating, compared with 56 percent of Clinton’s.

    In other words, Clinton’s team felt they needed to convince voters to start liking Hillary

    According to Bloombergthe Trump campaign ran 5.9 million different versions of ads during the campaign – immediately testing audience response in order to push the ones with the highest levels of engagement, according to the paper. 

    Clinton ran just 66,000 ads during the same period. 

    A former Facebook employee referred to the internal white paper in a memo to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who said that Schiff and other congressional investigators could use the document in order to “ask the right questions” about whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia. 

    For example, according to the paper, more than a quarter of Trump’s ad spending was tied to third-party data files on voters, and leveraged a Facebook tool that helped the campaign show ads to people who looked similar to the names on file. Clinton’s ads aimed for broader audiences, with only 4 percent of her Facebook spend on the lookalike tool. –Bloomberg

    “Did Russian operatives give the Trump campaign a list of names to include or exclude from advertising that was running on Facebook?” the former employee asked in the memo.

    The House Intel Committee closed down their investigation into Russia days later, which Rep. Schiff – who sat on it – says left “questions unanswered, leads unexplored, countless witnesses uncalled, subpoenas unissued.” 

    Meanwhile, Congress is looking into the use of third-party information on Facebook in the wake of the company’s data harvesting scandal uncovered in an exposé of GOP-linked political data firm Cambridge Analytica, which revealed that over 50 million users were compromised. 

    That said – Facebook knew early on – days after the election in fact, that Trump’s team simply “out-Facebooked” Clinton, and that her team was focused on trying to get America to just like her. And, as a result of that failure, and in order for Clinton’s team to deflect blame, the nation has been gripped by the most ridiculous wave of anti-Russian hysteria since the days of Joe McCarthy.

  • And The Country With The 'Most Expensive' Plate Of Food Is…

    When people in poor countries go hungry, it’s often because food is unaffordable.

    A report from the World Food Programme (WFP) analyzed the glaring gap in food costs around the world, finding that in many cases, people living in poor countries have to spend the bulk of their wages on basic nourishment. As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, the research measured the proportion of daily income that people spent on ingredients for a basic bean stew in different countries last year before retro-projecting the ratio on to a resident of New York State.

    Infographic: The Cost Of A Plate Of Food Around The World  | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    An average person living in New York State would spend about 0.6 percent of his or her daily income on ingredients for a 600 kilocalorie bean stew, approximately $1.20.

    In India, most people would find those ingredients readily affordable, with real costs coming to $9.25 or 4.25 percent of daily income. The situation is far more serious in other parts of the world, particularly in Africa.

    Someone living in South Sudan would have to work for a day and a half to afford a basic meal with the cost of the ingredients 155 percent of daily income.

    The real price of a plate of bean stew in South Sudan would be $321.70 and unsurprisingly, many of the country’s inhabitants are struggling to feed themselves.

  • Mueller Tells Trump's Lawyers President Not A Criminal Target But Remains Under Investigation

    After a busy news day in which Trump tripled-down on his feud with Amazon, met with the leaders of the Baltic states and threatened to scrap NAFTA and foreign aid to Central America if Mexico doesn’t stop a caravan of migrants from reaching the US border, the Washington Post has published the most notable update about the Mueller probe in recent history.

    Citing three people familiar with the investigation, the paper reports that Mueller told Trump’s legal team last month that the president isn’t a criminal target in the Russia probe at this point.

    Mueller

    However, Mueller also informed Trump’s lawyers that he is preparing a report about the president’s conduct while in office, and that report will include details about Trump’s purported obstruction of justice. Of course, the prosecutor didn’t hesitate to use this report as leverage to try and convince the Trump legal team to assent to an unrestricted interview between Trump and Mueller.

    Mueller has described Trump as a “subject” of the investigation – a term that has also been used to described his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s involvement.

    Some of Trump’s legal advisors have taken this as a positive sign, but others have warned that Trump’s status could easily be moved from “subject” to a criminal indictment.

    Mueller’s description of the president’s status has sparked friction within Trump’s inner circle as his advisers have debated his legal standing. The president and some of his allies seized on the special counsel’s words as an assurance that Trump’s risk of criminal jeopardy is low. Other advisers, however, noted that subjects of investigations can easily become indicted targets — and expressed concern that the special prosecutor was baiting Trump into an interview that could put the president in greater legal peril.

    Typically special counsel probes end with a private report to the attorney general or deputy attorney general (in this case, the latter). That report can then be made public at their discretion – but, according to WaPo, it appears as if Rod Rosenstein has already made up his mind that some record of the investigation must be released to the public.

    Mueller’s team has also told Trump’s legal team – which has endured an unprecedented shakeup in recent weeks – that the DOJ intends to issue the report in stages, with the first stage dealing with obstruction, and the next detailing what Trump knew about his campaign advisors contacts with Russian officials.

    Mueller’s investigators have indicated to the president’s legal team that they are considering writing reports on their findings in stages — with the first report focused on the obstruction issue, according to two people briefed on the discussions.

    Under special counsel regulations, Mueller is required to report his conclusions confidentially to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who has the authority to decide whether to release the information publicly.

    “They’ve said they want to write a report on this — to answer the public’s questions — and they need the president’s interview as the last step,” one person familiar with the discussions said of Mueller’s team.

    Trump’s attorneys expect the president would also face questions about what he knew about any contacts by his associates with Russians officials and emissaries in 2016, several White House advisers said. The president’s allies believe a second report detailing the special counsel’s findings on Russia’s interference would be issued later.

    The president has privately expressed relief at the description of his legal status, which has increased his determination to agree to a special counsel interview, the people said. He has repeatedly told allies that he is not a target of the probe and believes an interview will help him put the matter behind him, friends said.

    However, legal experts said Mueller’s description of Trump as a subject of a grand jury probe does not mean he is in the clear.

    Under Justice Department guidelines, a subject of an investigation is a person whose conduct falls within the scope of a grand jury’s investigation. A target is a person for which there is substantial evidence linking him or her to a crime.

    A subject could become a target with his or her own testimony, legal experts warn.

    “If I were the president, I would be very reluctant to think I’m off the hook,” said Keith Whittington, a professor of politics at Princeton University and impeachment expert.

    Trump has repeatedly said he’d be happy to sit down with Mueller, but his legal team has been working to limit the scope of his testimony to written answers or agreeing to exclude certain topics.

    It’s also widely believed that Trump’s legal team has been split on whether Trump should testify, with Dowd reportedly leaving because the president ignored his advice. Even if Trump refuses to meet with Mueller, it’s unlikely he’d decide to subpoena the president or pursue him further. Such an act would instigate a legal battle that could escalate to the Supreme Court, where Mueller risks an embarrassing defeat.

    So, why risk it? It’d be easier to put the president’s mind at ease while exerting some pressure on his legal team, hoping the mixture convinces them all that Trump – the “walking perjury trap,” according to one source – assents to the interview.

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Today’s News 3rd April 2018

  • Israel Announces Deal To Resettle African Migrants In Western Countries; Hours Later Netanyahu Walks Back

    Hours after Israel announced the planned resettlement of 16,250 African migrants to Canada, Italy and Germany – which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was a “good agreement” which “protects the interests of the state of Israel,” – Netanyahu reversed course – “pausing” the deal struck with the U.N.

    The U.N. deal would have seen Israel absorb the other half of the country’s roughly 35,000 African migrants.

    In a Monday tweet, Netanyahu said he will review the agreement when he meets with the Minister of the Interior on Tuesday morning.

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    Most of the refugees came from Eritrea and Sudan – beginning their migration in 2005 after neighboring Egypt violently put down a refugee demonstration and “word spread of safety and job opportunities in Israel,” reports AP.

    While Israel’s border wall, completed in 2012, stopped the influx, the country has been divided on what to do about refugees who made it before its erection – with some Israelis arguing that Israel has a special responsibility to take in those in need. “Groups of Israeli doctors, academics, poets, Holocaust survivors, rabbis and pilots had also objected to the planned expulsion,” notes AP, while others, such as Netanyahu, believe the migrants threaten Israel’s “interests.”

    Tens of thousands crossed the porous desert border before Israel completed a barrier in 2012 that stopped the influx. But Israel has struggled with what to do with those already in the country, alternating between plans to deport them and offering them menial jobs in hotels and local municipalities.

    Thousands of the migrants concentrated in poor neighborhoods in south Tel Aviv, an area that has become known as “Little Africa.” Their presence has sparked tensions with working-class Jewish residents, who have complained of rising crime and pressed the government to take action. –AP

    Prior to Monday’s announced UN resettlement deal (which is now “paused,”), Israel threatened migrants with prison – placing them in a new-shuttered desert detention camp and offering them money and a one-way ticket back to Africa. When that failed, Israel announced plans to send them all to an unnamed African country believed to either be Uganda or Rwanda, on April 1.

    The plan was scrapped, according to Netanyahu, when the planned “third country” which he did not identify, could not handle the influx.

    “From the moment in the past few weeks that it became clear that the third country as an option doesn’t exist, we basically entered a trap where all of them would remain,” he said – describing Monday’s compromise with Canada, Italy and Germany as the best available option.

    The U.N. refugee agency said it signed a framework of common understanding “to promote solutions for thousands of Eritreans and Sudanese living in Israel.” The UNHCR said it will work to relocate about 16,000 Sudanese and Eritrean nationals and that others will receive “suitable legal status in Israel.” –AP

    A debate raged on Twitter following both the announced resettlement and Netanyahu’s rescinding of the deal he signed just hours before.  

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    It will be interesting to see what Netanyahu and the Interior Minister decide on in the coming days – perhaps only to un-decide hours later.

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  • France Risks War With Fellow NATO Member Turkey In Effort To Prop Up Syrian Rebels

    Authored by Darius Shahtahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org,

    U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent surprise announcement that he plans to withdraw the United States military from Syria “very soon” and that he will let “the other people take care of it now” may be more telling of what’s to come than the mainstream media would have us believe.

    The indication that Trump may let the “other people take care of it now” might appear, on the face of it, to refer to regional players and prominent backers like Russia and Iran, which have helped guide the course of the Syrian conflict to an almost certain victory for the Syrian government.

    But what if Trump is actually opening the door for another Western imperial power to try its hand at taking on Syria for itself?

    According to Reuters, France is looking to increase its military presence in Syria to help the U.S.-backed coalition in its so-called fight against ISIS. France has warned that a planned Turkish assault on these U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Manbij would be “unacceptable,” according to a presidential source.

    On Thursday of last week (incidentally, the same day as Donald Trump’s surprise announcement), French President Emmanuel Macron met with a Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) delegation that included the YPG militia, which Turkey has expressly designated a terrorist entity. According to Reuters, a senior Kurdish official said Macron had promised to send more troops to the area as part of the U.S.-backed coalition’s efforts and, in essence, to present a buffer between the Kurds and Turkey.

    “France doesn’t foresee any new military operation on the ground in northern Syria outside of the international coalition,” Reuters’ source said.

    “(But) if the president felt that, in order to achieve our goals against Islamic State, we needed a moment to bolster our military intervention, then we should do it, but it would be within the existing framework,” the source said, without elaborating further, according to Reuters.

    Some local reports are alleging that France was even contemplating sending French special forces to the Syrian city of Manbij, where Turkey is currently gearing up for an invasion of its own.

    France has reportedly denied that it is planning a military build-up in Syria but has still offered to mediate between the Kurds and Turkey, an offer Ankara instantly rejected.

    Interestingly enough, no media reports on these issues ask the much-needed questions regarding France’s legal basis for sending troops into Syrian territory in the first place. Never mind that Turkey has warned sternly against the move, threatening that France could become a target for the Turkish military; it bears reminding that the territory doesn’t belong to France or Turkey, anyway. Any additional military presence should at the very least be initiated in accordance with international legal norms and principles.

    While much of the discourse in Syria has focused on what the Assad government is allegedly doing, no one has really bothered to question the extent of France’s involvement in Syria already to date. Last week, Turkish press agency Anadolu published a map purportedly showing French military positions in Syria, including five military bases in northeastern Syria where close to 70 French soldiers may be operating.

    Anadolu also reported in mid-March that France’s top military official had already warned that France had the means to intervene in Syria independently of the U.S. and its allies, specifically in relation to the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

    While it still remains to be seen, it seems more than possible that if the Trump administration decides to take a backseat in this next phase of the Syrian conflict, the driver’s seat may be passed on to France, instead, which is reportedly looking to take the reins and involve itself even further in the country despite having any legal basis to do so.

  • The American Revolution In Two Acts

    Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

    The American colonies were made up of people who could not accept the downward progression in Europe and said, “I’m leaving.” That took great courage, as they were leaving their few known comforts for unknown difficulties.

    However, once they had made the move and overcome the difficulties of settlement, they understood that their courage had been rewarded. Such people never look back and say, “Maybe we shouldn’t have left.”

    There can be little doubt that they taught their children and grandchildren the values of courage, determination, hard work, and self-reliance. And more and more immigrants were added to their numbers, each of whom was also courageous enough to abandon Europe for freedom and opportunity. They raised generations of people with a “pioneer spirit.”

    Not surprisingly, then, that when the American colonists were squeezed by King George for increases in tax, it wasn’t difficult for them to refuse. They chose to go it alone, rather than allow the British king to steal the fruits of their labours.

    Although the tax level at that time was a mere 2%, it was the principle that taxation is theft that angered them. Further, they had already proven to themselves that they had all the character qualities necessary to determine their own future.

    And so, in a sense, the American Revolution was Act II of the quest for freedom and, of the two challenges, it may have been the easier one to face.

    However, the America of the late eighteenth century is not the America of today – and the outcome will not be the same for Americans in the present era.

    It’s important to remember that only a very small percentage of people actually left Europe to find freedom. The great majority remained behind, complaining about the ever-increasing loss of freedoms, but doing nothing about it. Although their governments took more and more from them, the great majority simply tolerated it, saying, “What can you do?” They became the eventual victims of that oppression, as has happened throughout history.

    Those in America today are, in essence, a subjugated people, just as Europeans were prior to the American Revolution. They’re accustomed to the concept of the “nanny state”—one which taxes its people heavily and throws back a portion of what they’ve stolen in the form of “bread and circuses,” as in ancient Rome.

    Americans today complain continually, either that too much is being taken from them or that the state isn’t providing them with sufficient largesse. Some even complain of both at the same time.

    And yet, a very large percentage of Americans holds out “hope” that somehow, the process will reverse itself—that a new political candidate will appear—a “Freedom Fairy,” who will somehow stand in front of the runaway train, stop it, and reverse it.

    Historically, this never happens. What happens is that a small number decide to set sail and escape. Whether it’s the Roman commercial class, who walked away from their shops and travelled north to live amongst the barbarians, rather than accept Rome’s increasing domination, or the German Jews who locked up their shops and homes and boarded ships to the West, just prior to the lockdown of 1939, every burgeoning new “free” society has been created by the few who took courage and made an exit from a dying society.

    In every case, those who exited did so with fear in their hearts that they would fail. They left their larger possessions behind and travelled light, sewing coins and jewellery into their clothing, not knowing whether they would succeed.

    However, when they arrived at the new frontier, they met other like-minded people, each of whom had also shown courage and determination. They then created a new society that was, predictably, based upon the principles described above.

    Today, a similar exodus is occurring. It’s made of those who place their liberty and hope for a promising future above the comforts and freedoms that, one by one, are being taken from them by their governments.

    Of course, the details are not the same. They no longer travel by ship, but by jet. No one sews valuables into their clothes, as they’d never get through the metal detectors. Instead, they convert their assets to cash and purchase precious metals, to be stored in a country where there is diminished risk of confiscation by governments.

    As has happened throughout history, the exodus is being undertaken quietly. Those who emigrate do not wish to call attention to themselves, but then, neither do the governments of the countries they’re leaving. It’s never seen on the news, and the official numbers who leave are far below the number that actually departed.

    But the details of the exit are unimportant. What is important is that, when people meet the challenge to exit to find freedom and self-determination, they then build an extremely strong and free society. And there are many locations in the world where this is presently taking place.

    But what of those left behind? Surely, the present-day US is at a breaking point and may very well explode into civil disobedience—even revolution.

    Yes, this is quite so. And again, history shows us what happens in countries where the majority feel that they’re entitled to be looked after; that the rich must “pay a little more” to provide them with largesse. Good examples of this are the Russian Revolution and the French Revolution.

    Both of these are marked by a predominance of belief that “someone has to pay so that I can benefit.” In both revolutions, the aristocracy were violently removed and the rebels scrambled to grab as much of the spoils as possible. Disorder became prolonged and the new leaders that rose up were, if anything, more oppressive than those they replaced.

    Today, in visiting the US and talking with Americans, it’s palpable that most Americans now have a gut feeling that this will most certainly not end well. Most hope that there might be a peaceful transition of some sort. Some vainly hope that a “Freedom Fairy” will emerge.

    But, Americans, more than most people in the world, incorrectly believe that freedom only exists in their country and that, when it dies there, it will die everywhere. This is far from true, but it does mean that those who were born in the former “land of the free” are more fearful and discouraged than those elsewhere. The great majority doubt that it’s possible for them, individually, to choose freedom, rather than to go down with the ship. They, in effect, are exactly the same as the great majority in Europe in the eighteenth century.

    The American colonies were built upon the courage of a few who chose to leave the dominance and stagnation in Europe. The same is true today. The USA may be a sinking ship, but the concept of “America” is not. It’s a movable concept and it can exist anywhere that people have chosen future freedom over tentative comforts.

    *  *  *

    A “pioneer spirit” isn’t the only thing you need if you want to leave the sinking ship and pursue freedom. You’ll find details on what else you’ll need in Doug Casey’s special report, Getting Out of Dodge. Click here to download your free PDF copy.

  • Flying Above The Law: Chinese Gangs Used Drones To Smuggle $80 Million In iPhones Into China

    On March 29, the General Administration of Customs People’s Republic of China arrested 26 criminals who were part of a high stakes iPhone smuggling operation. The criminal ring used consumer drones to smuggle 500 million yuan ($79.8 million) worth of smartphones between Hong Kong and the mainland city of Shenzhen, the state-owned Legal Daily reported.

    Customs officials describe the smuggling operation as the “flying line,” where 26 criminals used drones to transport two 200-meter (660-feet) cables between Hong Kong and the mainland China to carry tens of millions of dollars in refurbished iPhones.

    A drone that was confiscated after authorities arrested suspects who used drones to smuggle smartphones from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, is pictured in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China March 29, 2018. Liu Youzhi/Southern Metropolis Daily via REUTERS

    According to Reuters, the Legal Daily describes the latest bust as part of a much broader acceleration of illegal imports into mainland China, but, “it’s the first case found in China that drones were being used in cross-border smuggling crimes,” customs officials said.

    State-owned media reports are unclear about which drone model was used, but speculations from images point to a highly modified DJI Phantom 4 Pro. Interesting enough, DJI is headquartered in Shenzhen, generally considered China’s Silicon Valley.

    Under cover of darkness, Reuters reveals how the smuggling operation started around midnight and would continue into the early morning. Once the drones connected the cables between both buildings, the organized crime units were able to transport 15,000 smartphones across the international border per night.

    “The smugglers usually operated after midnight and only needed seconds to transport small bags holding more than 10 iPhones using the drones, the report quoted customs as saying. The gang could smuggle as many as 15,000 phones across the border in one night, it said.”

    A customs officer speaks at the crime scene after authorities arrested suspects who used drones to smuggle smartphones from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China March 29, 2018. Liu Youzhi/Southern Metropolis Daily via REUTERS

    CCTV News Shenzhen Special Zone News published an exclusive surveillance video of the criminal gangs in action.

    Here is social media’s response to the 200-meter “flying line” transporting 15,000 iPhones on a given night across international borders…

    One Twitter user said, “And trump thinks a wall will keep drugs out? “Gangs used drones and pulleys to smuggle $80 million in smartphones from Hong Kong, officials say” Washington Post April 2.”

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    “Eventually, all technology will be used to support crime. Criminals are now using drones to smuggle smartphones into China,” said another Twitter user.

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    Although using drones to smuggle high-value products like consumer electronics across the Hong Kong/China border appears to be a new technique, the deployment of ziplines has been around for ages.

    According to the South China Morning Post, government officials recently busted a criminal gang network, who used fishing line — shot over the international border with a crossbow to transport electronics into Shenzhen.

  • High School Counselor Arrested After Threatening To "Execute" White People

    Via TheCollegeFix.com,

    The in-school suspension coordinator/counselor at a Bridgeport, Connecticut high school has been arrested after threatening to “execute every white man he gets his hands on.”

    Warren Harding High School’s Carl Lemon was taken into custody Wednesday on charges of second-degree threat and breach of the peace.

    According to NBC-4 in New York, the police report states a teacher heard Lemon say “he couldn’t wait for the Panthers to give the OK and a revolution begins,” so he could carry out his threat. The teacher said Lemon had made “similar statements in the past.”

    During Lemon’s arrest, the school was put on lockdown for approximately ten minutes. Police noted the counselor was “pacing around his desk and repeatedly” and opening and closing a desk drawer which contained a kitchen knife.

    The Connecticut Post reports Lemon also had stomped on an American flag in a classroom exclaiming “This is what I think about it!” In addition, Harding’s principal discovered an anonymous student note in her school mailbox which said Lemon “talks about shooting whites a lot! He watches radical stuff during class. I am scared he will do something… he is crazy.”

    The official police report indicates the note also said Lemon “disrespects” students and that he doesn’t like the school’s principals and “will take them out.”

    More from the arrest report:

    I [Officer Angelo Collazo] could see Mr. Lemons [sic] looking into the draw [sic] and closing the draw over and over. Mr. Lemons appeared to be very frustrated, then began moving papers across his desk attempting to hid [sic] things on his desk.

    After a few minutes Mr. Lemons agreed to walk out of the building and be arrested. Mr. Lemon was allowed to walk out of the building without handcuffs on. Once outside, Mr. Lemons was handcuffed and transported to booking.

    I then returned to Mr. Lemon’s classroom and looked in the draw he opening and closing [sic]. I located a white plastic bag in the same draw. Inside the bag was a large kitchen knife in the bag. I removed the kitchen knife (black handle) from the bag and secured it.

    Officer Collazo adds that he collected “several random papers and journals” from Lemon’s desk and advised an assistant principal that she should remove Lemon’s computer so its hard drive could be reviewed.

  • White House: China's Overcapacity Is Causing Global Steel Crisis

    The White House has responded to China’s decision to impose tariffs on 128 different categories of US imports – primarily foodstuffs and industrial items. The tariffs, which went into effect Sunday but were previewed more than a week ago, are meant to be a response to the Trump administration’s Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum (not to be confused with the $60 billion in section 301 tariffs unveiled later).

    Steel

    In a statement posted on China’s Ministry of Finance website, China’s Customs Tariffs Commission confirmed reports from March 23, stating that additional duties on 128 kinds of products of US origin would be introduced from Monday “in order to safeguard China’s interests and balance the losses caused by the United States additional tariffs.”

    In response, a White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said the US tariffs were justified because China is creating a global steel glut with its oversupply.

    “China’s subsidization and continued overcapacity is the root cause of the steel crises. Instead of targeting fairly traded U.S. exports, China needs to stop its unfair trading practices which are harming U.S national security and distorting global markets,” Walters said in an emailed statement.

    Meanwhile, the Chinese are calling for another round of trade talks with the US after the US didn’t respond to China’s March 26 request for a dialogue on the steel and aluminum tariffs, per Bloomberg.

    Earlier Monday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president is “doing exactly what he said he was going to do” to help reduce the US trade deficit with China.

    As a reminder, here’s the list of US imports upon which China has imposed tariffs of between 15% and 25%.

    Imports

     

  • Welcome To Xi Jinping's Orwellian Dystopia

    Authored Vicky Xiuzhong Xu and Bang Xia oby via ABC.net.au,

    Chinese authorities claim they have banned more than 7 million people deemed “untrustworthy” from boarding flights, and nearly 3 million others from riding on high-speed trains, according to a report by the country’s National Development and Reform Commission.

    The announcements offer a glimpse into Beijing’s ambitious attempt to create a Social Credit System (SCS) by 2020 — that is, a proposed national system designed to value and engineer better individual behaviour by establishing the scores of 1.4 billion citizens and “awarding the trustworthy” and “punishing the disobedient”.

    Liu Hu, a 43-year-old journalist who lives in China’s Chongqing municipality, told the ABC he was “dumbstruck” to find himself caught up in the system and banned by airlines when he tried to book a flight last year.

    PHOTO: Chinese journalist Liu Hu was “dumbstruck” to find himself caught up on the bad side of the country’s social credit system. (Supplied: Liu Hu)

    Mr Liu is on a “dishonest personnel” list — a pilot scheme of the SCS — because he lost a defamation lawsuit in 2015 and was asked by the court to pay a fine that is still outstanding according to the court record.

    “No one ever notified me,” Mr Liu, who claims he paid the fine, said.

    “It’s baffling how they just put me on the blacklist and kept me in the dark.”

    Like the other 7 million citizens deemed to be “dishonest” and mired in the blacklist, Mr Liu has also been banned from staying in a star-rated hotel, buying a house, taking a holiday, and even sending his nine-year-old daughter to a private school.

    And just last Monday, Chinese authorities announced they would also seek to freeze the assets of those deemed “dishonest people”.

    Bonus points for donating blood and volunteer work

    PHOTO: Surveillance software identifying customers’ patterns at a department store in Beijing. (Reuters: Thomas Peter)

    As the national system is still being fully realised, dozens of pilot social credit systems have already been tested by local governments at provincial and city levels.

    For example, Suzhou, a city in eastern China, uses a point system where every resident is rated on a scale between 0 and 200 points — every resident starts from the baseline of 100 points.

    One can earn bonus points for benevolent acts and lose points for disobeying laws, regulations, and social norms.

    According to a 2016 report by local police, the top-rated Suzhou citizen had 134 points for donating more than one litre of blood and doing more than 500 hours of volunteer work.

    In Xiamen, where the development of a local social credit system started as early as 2004, authorities reportedly automatically apply messages to the mobile phone lines of blacklisted citizens.

    “The person you’re calling is dishonest,” whoever calls a lowly-rated person will be told before the call is put through.

    Could China combine these projects to engineer society?

    If the Chinese Government manages to amalgamate the regional pilot projects and the immense amounts of data by 2020, it will be able to exert absolute social and political control and “pre-emptively shape how people behave,” Samantha Hoffman, an independent consultant on Chinese state security, said.

    “If you are aware that your behaviour will negatively or positively impact your score, and thus your life and the lives of those you associate with, then you will likely adjust your decision-making accordingly,” Ms Hoffman said.

    But the question remains if the Chinese authorities could really “pull it off”, Ms Wang said.

    “The Ministry of Public Security runs a number of databases, and then regional authorities also run their databases,” Ms Wang said.

    “It is difficult to know how these databases are related together and how they’re structured and how they are updated.

    “At the moment, I would say that they [are] updated to some extent but they’re not very well integrated, and the integration is going to be difficult.”

    PHOTO: Some CCTV cameras have facial recognition or infrared capabilities. (Supplied: Dahua Technologies)

    Hu Naihong, a finance professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, who is helping to build the national social credit system, seems to agree.

    “The top-level design, the institutional framework, and the key documents are all in place, but there are still many problems to be solved,” the professor said in a 2017 meeting in Zhejiang.

    “The most serious problem being that all kinds of platforms are rigorously collecting [data], while having vague legal and conceptual basis and boundaries.”

    Many observers fear human rights could be increasingly violated via the social credit system, and — combined with a growing surveillance system and technologies such as facial recognition being rolled out across the country — the Chinese Government could have the ability to turn the system on its citizens.

    “China is characterised by a system of ‘rule by law’, rather than true rule of law,” Elsa B Kania, an expert in Chinese defence innovation and emerging technologies at the Centre for a New American Security, said.

    “That law [and extra-legal measures] can be used as a weapon to legitimise the targeting of those whom the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] perceives as a threat.

    “In such an environment, such a system could be abused to those same ends.”

    The question that remains to be answered in coming years, experts say, is where the line between “bettering society” and “controlling society” will be drawn.

    PHOTO: There are fears China could turn its mass surveillance technologies on its people. (Supplied: Guiyang Public Security Bureau)

    Read more here…

  • Employees Working With Corporations To Stop Corruption And Overreach Of Unions

    It should be of no surprise that companies are now starting to “weaponize” their own employees to try and keep the corruption and price gouging of unions out of their respective places of business.

    Unionization has not only resulted in the lack of free market price discovery for labor, but it is also been recently found to be extraordinarily corrupt. As we pointed out in a January 2018 article:

    …a new report from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), obtained by the Detroit Free Press, proves that the corruption inside of union offices around the country is far more rampant than you ever imagined.  As the Free Press notes, in the past two years alone, more than 300 union locations have discovered embezzlement of union funds totaling millions of dollars…and that’s just counting the people who got caught.

    Even though the UAW is the poster child of union corruption, cases reported by the DOL involved unions representing nurses, aerospace engineers, firefighters, teachers, film and TV artists, air traffic controllers, musicians, bus inspectors, bakery workers, roofers, postal workers, machinists, ironworkers, steelworkers, dairy workers, plasterers, train operators, plumbers, stagehands, engineers, electricians, heat insulators, missile range workers and bricklayers.  Meanwhile, the various cases involve embezzlement and fraud ranging from $1,051 up to nearly $6.5 million.

    So it was no surprise when today, on Bloomberg it was reported that U-Haul workers were lobbying for the Trump administration to tackle rules that would make it tougher for unions to organize:

    The men, along with dozens of other people working for U-Haul, the self-storage company, seem to have taken an outsized role in the debate over whether the Trump administration should revisit the rule. They’ve been doing this by flooding the National Labor Relations Board with very similar comments. While at least one employee said workers got together on their own, labor experts contend that the campaign has all the hallmarks of a company-influenced effort. U-Haul agreed, saying that while it didn’t compel workers to take part, it did provide the language for them to use.

    Over the past few months, the NLRB received at least 100 similarly worded submissions urging it to throw out the policy that shortens the time between when some employees decide to unionize and when a vote is held. More than 60—roughly one out of every 25 comments submitted so far—used names matching people who work at the self-storage and rental giant, according to a review of LinkedIn pages and recent company announcements. More than a dozen additional comments appear to come from people who worked for the company in the past. 

    U-Haul was profiled as a company that is encouraging its employees to stand up for the same free market price discovery that allows their business to function, and ultimately pay them. Imagine the shock!

    The article continues, noting that the practice has “seen a renaissance” in recent years:

    The volume and similarity of comments raise questions as to whether there was a coordinated effort, said Paul Secunda, who directs the labor and employment law program at Marquette University. “These U-Haul employee comments to the NLRB smack of employee mobilization by the company itself,” he said, though encouraging employees to comment on proposed rulemaking is perfectly legal. That companies urge employees to take part in campaigns for or against government regulations isn’t novel, but the tactic has enjoyed a renaissance of late. Employers and the business lobby have recently urged workers to fight various corporate
    taxes and support the recent tax legislation. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a political scientist at Columbia University who just wrote a book on the topic, recounted how a lobbyist bragged of helping a financial company get 100,000 letters opposing the fiduciary rule—the now-endangered conflict-of-interest regulation for financial advisers. Hertel-Fernandez said a telecommunications company interested in shaping a different debate established an internet portal for workers, providing letter templates they could tweak before sending.

    Unionizing, and the forced labor rules and regulations that accompany it by the government does little to help free market price discovery. Instead, it is yet one additional method for government to stick their nose not only into the economy, but also into the world of both private and public businesses. Free market price discovery in the labor market means that individuals should be compensated by their skill set, productivity and what they bring to the table as employees, not by what the government has pre-arranged in as a deal for them or by what unions can embezzle.

    It should come as no surprise that once these labor unions are granted power via regulation through the government that they can become extremely large, corrupt and powerful and often times associated with additional corruption and foul play outside of the workplace as we wrote about in January.

    Of course, the biggest and most highly publicized union embezzlement scheme of 2017 involves multiple Fiat Chrysler and UAW employees who stole millions of dollars intended for worker training…

    Jerome Durden, a former financial analyst in corporate accounting at Fiat Chrysler and former Controller of the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center, pleaded guilty in August 2017 after preparing and filing tax returns that concealed millions of dollars in prohibited payments directed to others in 2009-15. His sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 23.

    Alphons Iacobelli, former vice president at FCA, was charged in July 2017 with conspiracy and delivering more than $1.2 million in prohibited payments and things of value to the late General Holiefield, former vice president of the UAW, Holiefield’s wife and other UAW officials. His trial is scheduled for March 19.

    Monica Morgan, wife of Holiefield, was charged in July 2017 with tax evasion and conspiracy stemming from her family’s receipt of more than $1.2 million from the former vice president of FCA between 2009 and 2014. Her trial is scheduled for March 19.

    Virdell King, a former assistant director of the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center, pleaded guilty in August 2017 to receiving more than $40,000 in prohibited payments and things of value from the former vice president of FCA and “others acting in the interest of FCA.” Payments received between 2012 and 2015 included purchases of clothing, jewelry, luggage, golf equipment, concert tickets and theme park tickets. She is scheduled to be sentenced May 1.

    If not anything else, the employees of U-Haul are getting taught a lesson to not  “bite the hand that feeds them” and hopefully more companies moving forward will actively employ the same strategies to help keep free market price discovery in the labor market as ever present as they can, outside the confines of an already overly regulated economy and job market.

  • "I Can't Pay My Bills" – McDonald's Employees Furious As Company Renegs On Wage Hikes

    When the initiative was first announced, McDonald’s decision to raise its employees’ wages to $1 above minimum wage (albeit only at corporate-owned stores, a minority of the company’s total count) was hailed as a radical example of corporate accountability – a direct repudiation of the far-left notion that “quarterly capitalism” and employers accepting responsibility for their employees were mutually exclusive.

    As any steely eyed realist might’ve expected, McDonald’s widely lauded “wage hike” was little more than a publicity stunt. In the three years since McDonald’s announced the wage hike in 2015, the firm has essentially frozen employee wages, often leaving them just a few cents above minimum wage, as Bloomberg has discovered.

    McDonalds

    But the company doesn’t expect to experience any blowback from this decision: After all, McDonald’s never said it was pegging employees’ wages to $1 above minimum wage. The company, it appears, deliberately equivocated during its initial announced – and what’s worse, nobody in the media has called the company out.

    Until now, that is.

    In Milpitas, California, north of San Jose, where the local minimum wage rose to $12 an hour on Jan. 1, several workers’ February paychecks show they received $12.35 or $12.45. In Los Angeles, where the minimum wage for large employers has been $12 since July, some checks show hourly pay of $12.69 or less.

    Employees and members of the “Fight for $15” coalition – which had successfully pressured McDonald’s to assent to the wage hike (or so we had thought) – are understandably angry at the company, possibly having planned to receive higher wages in the near future, and based some major financial decisions on that.

    “They need to give us the dollar that they promised us,” said one of those employees, Fanny Velazquez, who’s worked for the corporation for a decade. “I can’t pay my rent or my bills.”

    The Service Employees International Union – most likely the initial anonymous source who brought the story to Bloomberg – blasted the company in an on-the-record statement. It’s also organizing workers to organize and exert whatever pressure they can.

    The Fight For $15, a 6-year-old effort by the Service Employees International Union to organize fast food workers and secure more stringent wage laws, seized on the paychecks as evidence that the McDonald’s 2015 announcement was a “publicity stunt.”

    “If McDonald’s wants to play semantics with its workers and continue to drive a race to the bottom instead of giving us real raises, it is going to continue losing workers to the growing number of employers who are leading the way to a better economy for all,” said Betty Douglas, a McDonald’s worker in St. Louis, in a statement on behalf of the Fight for $15.

    Fight For $15 criticized McDonald’s pay announcement from the start, because it didn’t apply to the majority of the chain’s stores, which are owned by franchisees, and didn’t meet the group’s signature demand of $15 hourly pay.

    The group plans to launch a hotline Monday that workers can call to report their wages, and will hold rallies in three cities on Tuesday to press its case that workers need a union in order to hold the company accountable.

    What’s worse than McDonald’s not following through with the wage hike, employees say, is that recent changes to McDonald’s menu – primarily the “Experience the Future” suite of customizable menu options – have made the job harder.

    Burger chains like McDonald’s are facing record-high turnover as workers depart for better jobs options in a tightening labor market. Last year, McDonald’s lagged behind peers like Wendy’s and Burger King in average drive-through times. Some employees complain that the chain’s “Experience of the Future,” a suite of changes to menus, technology and food delivery, has meant performing more tasks without commensurate staffing expansions or pay increases.

    “It’s going to get increasingly challenging to attract the talent you want into your business,” Easterbrook said earlier this year, “and then you’ve got to work really hard through training and development to retain them.”

    Of course, that McDonald’s did this shouldn’t come as a surprise to any long-time Zero Hedge readers. The company has been rapidly adopting kiosks in its dining rooms that allow customers to order without interacting with a cashier. Analysts believe these machines will eventually lead to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of fast-food service jobs.

    As we’ve said before, McDonald’s employees, while you’re agitating for a $15 minimum wage, don’t forget to thank your corporate overlords when they fire you and your comrades and replace you with this guy…

    John5

     

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Today’s News 2nd April 2018

  • London Murder Rate Overtakes New York Amid Spike In Stabbings, Shootings

    London has surpassed New York City’s murder rate for the second month in a row, due mostly to a spike in knife crime and shootings which left 15 Londoners dead in February – nine of whom were age 30 or younger, and 22 dead in March vs. New York City’s 21, according to the Sunday Times.

    While both cities have around 8.5 million people, NYC’s murder rate has dropped by around 87% since the 1990’s, while London’s has grown approximately 40% in just three years – not including deaths from terrorist attacks. Experts have credited the NYPD’s zero-tolerance policing model driving down the homicide rate in NYC from around 2,000 deaths in 1990 to 230 last year. 

    London, however, is experiencing a spike in violent crime. 

    On Saturday a murder probe was launched after a 36-year-old woman was killed in what is believed to be the 30th incident of fatal knife crime in the capital this year

    The death came just hours after a man 23-year-old man died after being stabbed in the neck in Plumstead, south-east London on Thursday evening.

    Jacob Whittingham, charity head of programmes for Fight for Peace, told the paper: “What’s scary about London is the randomness of the crime. –standard.co.uk

    “With young people in London, you have no idea if and when you may be the victim of a violent crime — that’s why they feel the need to carry weapons.” 

    The latest victim was stabbed to death after leaving an Earlsfield bar in south West London early Saturday morning. Police responded to a call around 1:10 a.m. that a man had been found injured on Ellerton Road, only to find a 20-year-old man suffering from a stab wound. Despite efforts to save his life, the man was declared dead at the scene just before 2 a.m. 

    A 21-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of his murder, and is currently in custody at a west London police station.

    Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell said: “Sadly, another family has been left devastated with the tragic death of a young man from an act of violence. We are appealing to anyone who was in the area to come forward.”

    That said, London remains substantially safer overall in comparison to New York City – with fewer than half of the homicides NYC experienced in 2017. That said, according to the Telegraph, a person is nearly six times more likely to be burgled in London than in New York City, and 1.5 times as likely to fall victim to a robbery. 

    London also has nearly three times the number of reported rapes, however the Telegraph notes that differences in reporting methodology may account for the vastly higher number in London.

    London Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, says that social media is partly to blame for the rise in knife violence, and battling gangs have sparked up longstanding “postcode wars,” so – you know, not migrants. 

    “London remains one of the safest cities in the world,” a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told The Independent. ”The Met is concerned at the increase in murders in London, and specialist detectives from the Met’s Homicide and Major Crime Command are investigating.

    “One murder is one to many, and we are working hard with our partners to understand the increase and what we can all do to prevent these tragedies from happening in the first place.”

    To combat the rising violence, Dick has announced a new task force of around 100 officers to help tackle violent crime in London. 

    Hopefully they’re more effective than these super troopers:

  • Socialism, Privacy, & Charity For The Powerful. Capitalism, Surveillance, & Rugged Individualism For The Powerless.

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Steemit.com,

    The crowning achievement in hypocrisy must go to those staunch Republicans and Democrats of the Midwest and West who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe. They were given education through the land grant colleges. They were provided with agricultural agents to keep them abreast of forming trends. They were granted low interest loans to aid in the mechanization of their farms, and now that they have succeeded in becoming successful, they are paid not to farm. And these are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat, that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. What they truly advocate is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.”

    ~ Martin Luther King, Jr

    “I gotta get rid of this stuff. Man, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it. The more money you make, the more free shit they give you. It makes no sense.”

    ~ Adam Sandler, Funny People (2009)

    A GoFundMe for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired two weeks ago by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has raised over $400,000 in less than a day.

    Another way to say that would be that a former officer from the US intelligence community, who is married to a successful physician and will surely receive a book deal worth millions of dollars, just had a charity drive which in less than a day raised an amount of money it would take the average American years to earn.

    Meanwhile, an impoverished American recently died because his GoFundMe failed to raise enough money for his insulin and an FBI whistleblower was just arrested for trying to bring transparency to the Bureau’s secret domestic surveillance practices while banks receive massive bailouts, global fossil fuel subsidies total trillions of dollars, and Amazon paid zero federal taxes last year despite earning billions.

    Even leaving aside the reasons for McCabe’s firing and the shady dealings he was accused of, this is a very solid illustration of everything that is sick about the United States of America.

    In America you have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.

    You have government secrecy for the powerful and surveillance for the powerless.

    You have charity for wealthy establishment lackeys and rugged individualism for ordinary human beings.

    Those at the top are uplifted even further, while those on the bottom are stomped through the floor.

    Julian Assange is currently under siege in the Ecuadorian embassy, deprived of mobility, sunlight and healthcare, and now internet, phone calls and visitors, all because he dared to bring some transparency to the powerful. Meanwhile the intelligence and defense agencies who serve as the armed goon squad of the wealthy and the powerful are able to kill, destroy and pillage from behind the opaque walls of near-total government secrecy in the name of “national security”. And instead of defending the single defenseless man who speaks truth to power, mainstream media reporters around the world are spitting on him in near-unanimity because he hurts power’s feelings.

    This is how we end up with John Bolton, people. This is the “kiss-up, kick-down” pathway to success that elevates bloodthirsty psychopaths like John Bolton, the worst of the worst, the ones willing to do the most killing on behalf of the powerful and the most stomping on the powerless to get to the top. This has become the unquestioned pathway in every sphere of public life. We have a situation now where the highest echelons of power are not the wisest among us, but the wiliest.

    The fourth estate is full of everyday people who at one point presumably believed they were there to bring truth to power, stomping on the silvery head of one who does, while sucking up to the very power that he regularly embarrasses with his leak drops.

    Speaking as an Australian, it sickens me to see my fellow Australians slip down this slope. Like many Australians, I was brought up to champion the underdog, cheer on the little Aussie battler, go into bat for the vulnerable and chop down tall poppies. My Australia wasn’t one that delighted in leaving one of our own to wither and die under siege in a “small camp” while making a parade of brown-nosing the establishment. It wasn’t a place where you used your gifts to help the powerful and hurt the vulnerable. It was the kind of place that created a man like Julian Assange, one that believed in constantly choosing the highest interest over self-interest. It wasn’t one where you used your gifts with the pen to turn a hero into someone everyone could feel okay about abandoning.

    To all who work in the media:

    …your selfish obsession with choosing your career over telling the truth when it counts, with choosing not to know rather than to dig and find out something you’d rather not know, with choosing getting along with your mates rather than standing up for what you know is right, that tiny little seemingly innocuous preference you have is what is driving our whole species towards extinction. That’s your copy of the mind virus that is killing us all. You are in a position of power and you are using it to kill us.

    When you choose to masturbate some old mens’ desire for a final war with Russia rather than present the case for peace, you are killing us all. When you choose to roundly condemn a man for bringing truth to power rather than helping him do so, you are killing us all. When you choose to help Andrew bloody McCabe instead of the poor and the powerless, you are killing us all. Every time you suck up to power to get ahead a little, you are killing us all.

    Do better, humans. Do the opposite of John Bolton, who kisses up to power and kicks down at the powerless.

    Punch up at the most powerful, and to the powerless, extend a helping hand. Lift up the Julian Assanges and pull down the John Boltons. Give privacy to the people, not to power. Give bailouts to human beings, not banks. Give subsidies to the poor, not to the plutocrats. Give money to people who need it, not to Andrew McCabe.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading, clear-eyed rebel. My daily articles are entirely reader-funded, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, bookmarking and getting on the mailing list for my website, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

  • Keep Going. This Too Shall Pass.

    Authored by Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheTollOnline.com,

    Like the weather when a storm approaches, or as the seasons turn, or waves pounding on a shoreline, any deviations are measured and compared by speed and intensity.  The same can be said for headlines:  Omnibus, discouraged Deplorables, rumors of war, prospects of peace, economic bubbles, fluctuating markets, and political intrigue.  Round and round it goes; when it ends, nobody knows. It’s a time of transition; and when traveling over mountaintops, through valleys, and on rough seas, no one has all of the answers.

    Even when looking at maps.

    The books, Generations (1992) and The Fourth Turning (1997), were written by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe. These recent explorers identified recorded cycles of history and categorized them across multiple cultures and eras.  In both books, historical timelines were analyzed and populations were correlated to specific life-cycles labeled as generational typesStrauss and Howe additionally addressed the concept of time in the context of both circular and linear perspectives and defined what is called a “saeculum” as a “long human life” measuring roughly 80 to 90 years.  Every saeculum is comprised of four turnings, each lasting around 20 years.

    Just as there are four seasons consisting of springsummerfall and winter, there are also four phases of a human life represented in childhoodyoung adulthoodmiddle age and elderhoodAs each phase of human life represents approximately 20 years, so is each generational archetype identified within the historical cycles, or turnings, as follows.

    The generations experience each turning according their life stage; and the Seasons (i.e. order of Turnings # 1 -4) are identified by each generation as they reach middle-age.  Amazingly, history shows a consistent pattern in how the generations both cause and affect historical events.  The patterns develop based upon how each generation interacts with the other and documented consistencies are delineated by the authors.

    In America, since the end of the late sixteenth-century, there have been four full “cycles” (i.e. saeculums) as follows:

    1.) Colonial Cycle

    2.) Revolutionary Cycle

    3.) Civil War Cycle

    4.) World War Cycle

    In every Fourth-Turning, or Crisis period, within all of the above saeculums, American society experienced great upheavals and war.   Moreover, like progressively burgeoning tsunamis rising and crashing upon the sands of time, each consecutive American Fourth-Turning Crisis was more devastating than the last.

    America’s last crisis occurred during the years of 1929 through 1945; a turbulent transition period whereby the nation experienced a financial crash, a great depression and a world war.

    Now it’s our turn.  Time’s up.  According to Neil Howe, this current Fourth Turning began in September 2008 and is projected to last until around 2030.

    All we can do ride it out the best we can. Trying to individually affect a Fourth Turning would be like lassoing the wind or reversing an ocean’s tide.  It can’t be done.  With this in mind, it is best for us prepare and adapt by battening down our hatches and adjusting our sails.

    Whether we are climbing mountains, descending into valleys, or being tossed about on stormy seas, know that the Presidency of Donald J. Trump is a storm.  By accident or design, he has shaken the foundations of geopolitics in ways few could have forecasted less than two years ago.

    Although I am first and foremost a Better-than-Hillaryite, I was always cautiously optimistic about Trump. This does not make me a Trumpster, per se. I’ve called him the Oompah Loompah Man, a Reality TV Star, the Orange One, etc., and I’ve previously written about him as the manifestation of one of the following three possibilities:

    1.) The Real Thing

    2.) Serving the agenda of the global financial elite unwittingly

    3.) Controlled opposition as a Judas Goat or Trojan Horse

    Time reveals everything; and people are known by their actions, not by their words.  The same can be said for events.

    Much has transpired in American politics over the past year and a lot of it has been good for Trump voters. Yet, in his recent Omnibus signing speech, Trump acted like a man in a hurry, with more important things on his mind. Obviously, his signature on that steaming pile of shit pissed off a lot of former Deplorables, including one of his most avid advocates, Ann Coulter.

    What was Trump thinking?  He signed his name while sounding like Br’er’ Rabbit pleading not to be thrown into the brier-patch.  Trump wanted the military funded.  And now it appears he desires to build The Wall, as a priority of national security, using the defense budget.

    Did Br’er Rabbit Trump, outsmart the Establishment’s Tar-Baby?  Or do the globalists have photos of Stormy Daniels spanking him in his underwear?  Could it be the swamp is too muckedand the mountains too high for a lone, art-of-the-deal making6-level-chess playingbillionaire wizard and his staff?

    What’s going on?

    Transitions.

    Appearances are not always what they seem and Occam’s Razor, at times, loses its edge.  But, if past history is any guide, it may not be wise to underestimate Trump; even if paying for the $1.3 trillion Omnibus Bill will be like America’s children climbing Mt. Everest in bare feet.

    Multiple forces have been aligned against Trump from the moment he first rode down his escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president.  And now, every day, he’s still here driving all of my sworn enemies batshit crazy, one Tweet at a time.

    The famous underworld attorney extraordinaire, Roy Cohn, in a 1984 interview claimed Trump was the closest thing to a genius he had ever met in his life.  Thirty-two years after that statement by Cohn, Trump became President of the United States while being outspent two to one, against a rabidly hostile media, in opposition to colluding officials in the United States’ FBI, DoJ, and State Department; plus, with zero support from all Democrats and a significant percentage of Republicans.

    Transitions, indeed. Tightrope walking is more like it.

    Today, Trump stands high up on the mountain in the middle of a political blizzard.  He is surrounded by the gale force winds of a phony Russian election hacking narrative, a sinister special council investigation, and allegations ranging from obstruction of justice to being spanked by porn star with a Forbes magazine.

    I couldn’t make that shit up if I tried.

    Now, according to a report in Politico (hardly a conservative publication), a majority of Americans believe the Deep State manipulates U.S. policies:

    The majority of the country believes a group of unelected government and military officials secretly manipulate national policy, according to a Monmouth Poll released Monday.

    Of the 803 adults polled, 27 percent said they believe the unelected group known as the deep state definitely exists. An additional 47 percent said it probably exists. Sixteen percent said it probably does not exist and 5 percent said they believe it definitely does not exist.

    Although most people may consider the Deep State as the “administrative state”, or the “establishment”, one wonders how many of the sheeple would have been half-awakened if not for Trump. I say “half-awakened” because most know nothing of the round table groups as referred to by the historian, Carroll Quigley, or the secret societies as referenced by former president John F. Kennedy.  This means the majority of Americans remain naïve, controlled, and at the whim of True Power.

    But what about Trump?

    Our president is either who he professes to be, or he is not. You either trust him, or you don’t. It could be he is playing the power game the best he can and prioritizing actualities that we can’t see for purposes we don’t know; or he’s puppet, or imbecilic sell-out leading us down to a dead-end on the primrose path.

    Call me quixotic, but I remain cautiously hopeful.  I remain so in spite of the warhawk John Bolton, Trump’s new war cabinet, and his latest hardliner stance with Russia.  Why?  Well, similar to the way I rejected solipsism in college for fear of being too lonely, I now refuse to despair over Trump’s personality swings because I enjoy the view.

    Is he controlled opposition? Or controlled demolition?

    Either way, I have nothing to lose and nowhere else I’d rather be at this time.  There’s not one damn thing I can do to prevent Russian bombs so I will , instead, wait patiently for the imminent Inspector General’s report; which is said to contain some pure TNT.

    What a panoramic scene that will be.

    Will the revelations of Michael Horwitz’s report turn the tide for Trump and make America great again? Hope springs eternal.  Or, it could be the global elite will trick Trump into cannonading the Cossacks in order to conclude any conversations on corruption in our country.  Who knows? The elite bankers could also crash the economy, like Kondratieff and Elliot Grand Supercycle waves, on history’s rocky shore; leaving Trump in a rumpled heap right next to the bleached white bones of Herbert Hoover.

    The winter of this Fourth Turning’s discontent will undoubtedly deliver war and economic turmoil; and not necessarily in that order.  But what will ensue?  Constitutional Law or tyranny?

    Time reveals all things; and, what happens after the release of the Inspector General’s report will be very telling.  Why? Because transitions are roads to revelations.

    So keep going, watch, and see.

    On the way, however, look for any false flags and know this:  Tyranny wants you controlled or dead; it is, in fact, right behind you, and up just ahead.  It also reallyreallyreally wants your guns.  If you don’t believe me, just look behind to see how fast we’ve traveled from Parkland, Florida to a full repeal of the Second Amendment.

    Winter is here.  A chill is in the air.

  • Alibaba And Ford Open China's First Car Vending Machine

    China’s Alibaba wasn’t the first company to create a car vending machine – that honor belongs to a Singaporean entrepreneur who transformed Singapore’s Autobahn building into what appears to be a giant PEZ dispenser stocked with luxury cars.

    But after months of planning, Alibaba’s T-Mall (in partnership with Ford) has opened the country’s first car vending machine in the city of Guangzhou. Plans are already in motion for a second vending machine to be opened in Beijing, and the company is already planning its third machine in Hangzhou.

    Vending Machine

    Customers can test drive the vending machine’s inventory – and if they have the cash on hand to put down a deposit, they can drive away in their new car (assuming they can convince their local Communist Party officials to issue them a license plate).

    Booking test drives and other tasks can be handled via the Tmall (also known as Taobao) mobile app. According to the company, customers can pick up their cars in 10 minutes, according to the Irish Times.

    The vending machine is “an important part of Alibaba’s new retail strategy:

    Gu Wanguo, general manager of vehicles at Tmall Auto, said the auto vending machine is an important step in Alibaba’s New Retail strategy. “By leveraging Alibaba’s data intelligence and technologies, the auto vending machine and super drive test services can enable auto brand owners and distributors better serve their customers.” Gu added.

    “Consumers can use the internet to access more accurate, convenient services and get a deeper understanding into particular vehicles. In the meantime, we are opening our car vending machine’s infrastructure to the entire industry to leverage and enable their distributors, in hopes of helping upgrade the automotive sector as a whole.”

    Sign up is done via mobile, and once they have chosen a vehicle, the buyer then takes a selfie to ensure they are the only person who can take the car from the machine, put down a deposit electronically and schedule a pick-up time, all from within the app. They then use that selfie to identify themselves and the car they have chosen is delivered to the ground floor of the car vending machine for their test drive to begin.

    If they don’t like the car they initially chose they can try another, up to a limit of two. If they decide to make the purchase after the test drive, they can visit any of Ford’s 4S showrooms to pay the remaining balance after paying the deposit on Tmall.

    Discounts and other incentives will also be provided to potential buyers based on consumer insights derived from user activity and history with the Alibaba group ecosystem.

    Alibaba published a video demonstrating how customers interact with the vending machine:

  • Florida Students Stage Walkout In Support Of Second Amendment

    Authored by Rick Moran via PJMedia,

    So maybe there could be some hope for the next generation after all.

    About 75 students at Rockledge High School in central Florida walked out of class in support of the Second Amendment on Friday. The students say they felt “silenced” last week when students walked out in support of gun control.

    Fox News:

    “I’m pro-Second Amendment,” Rockledge junior and protest organizer Anna Delaney told the station. “I wouldn’t mind deeper background checks, of course, but the Second Amendment will not be infringed upon.”

    Many Rockledge students walked out of class March 14 as part of the National School Walkout that was held in support of the Parkland school shooting victims and to protest gun violence and call for new gun control measures. They stood on the football field and formed a huge heart.

    About 75 students participated in Friday’s walkout at Rockledge, Florida Today reported. The protest lasted 20 minutes.

    They walked onto the schools track carrying the American flag and signs that said “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and “I support the right to bear arms,” the paper reported. Some wore Trump “Make America Great Again” hats and camouflage clothing.

    “We were built on certain rights and that was one of the original rights, that we should have the right to bear arms,” sophomore Chloe Deaton told the group. She helped Delaney organize the walkout.

    Zachary Schneider, a junior, was quoted by the paper as saying, “It’s all over the news right now that all students hate guns. I wanted to show that not all students feel that way.”

    Rockledge principal Vickie Hickey said the school treated the Second Amendment walkout exactly like it treated the walkout that took place two weeks ago, the paper reported.

    She said both events were completely student-driven.

    Forgive me if I smell fear from school authorities who knew if they objected to the second protest, the wrath of God would descend upon them.

    Regardless, what I found interesting is that, apparently, the pro-Second Amendment kids didn’t know what the consequences would be and walked out anyway. Unlike the kids who walked out for gun control knowing that nothing would happen to them, the pro-gun crowd must have felt some trepidation given the attitude of their teachers and classmates.

    Bravo to them for standing up for a (currently) unpopular position.

  • "The Longer It Goes, The Worse It Gets" – Nearly 2 Weeks Later, Atlanta Still Reeling From Crippling Ransomware Attack

    It has been nearly two weeks since the City of Atlanta’s municipal government was hit with a crippling ransomware attack that wiped millions of government files and left the city’s police and first responders relying on paper record-keeping.

    So far, the city has made almost no progress in recovering its files. Police still don’t have access to vital databases and investigative files. The town’s auditor says the city’s books have been destroyed, aside from whatever’s left in the paper record. And top city officials are scrambling through a holiday weekend to piece together bits of city projects from personal computers and email addresses that weren’t affected by the hack. Almost every government department was affected by the hack – though fortunately 10 of the 18 machines in the city auditor’s office somehow avoided the hack.

    “Our data management teams are working diligently to restore normal operations and functionalities to these systems and hope to be back online in the very near future,” said Carlos Campos, a spokesman for the Atlanta PD. Campos said that some officers have returned to filing digital reports.

    City officials (with an assist from the FBI) are trying to work through the hack. But if they don’t find a way to recover at least some of the corrupted files soon, officials might be forced to pay the $51,000 ransom that the hackers are demanding (the FBI typically discourages the victims of these attacks from paying the fine).

    Atlanta

    The version of the ransomware virus affecting Atlanta (it’s a virus called SamSam) inserted cheeky messages into the corrupted files, with the corrupted documents displaying filenames like “imsorry” and “weapologize”.

    The city’s courts and its water department have been hobbled by the hack, Reuters said.

    In recent years, ransomware attacks have become exponentially more sophisticated. Whereas once they would target individual computers, hackers have in recent years staged global attacks like “WannaCry” and “Petya” a year ago. They’ve rendered hospitals incapable of accepting patients and forced first responders to operate without access to computers.

    And in another worrisome sign, city officials haven’t disclosed the extent to which the hackers affected the city’s backed-up files. Perhaps this is why city officials have refused to comment on whether they’re considering paying the ransom – though, according to Reuters, they haven’t paid it yet. 

    Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who took office in January, has declined to say if the city paid the ransom ahead of a March 28 deadline mentioned in an extortion note whose image was released by a local television station.

    Municipal governments are particularly vulnerable to ransomware attacks because their computer networks typically comprise a patchwork of different systems with varying levels of security.

    Ironically, the city completed a cybersecurity audit in January, and was in the process of implementing its recommendations when the attackers struck.

    Mark Weatherford, a former senior DHS cyber official, told Reuters that hackers typically walk away when the ransom isn’t paid.

    He added that the situation could’ve been resolved quickly if the city just paid the ransom.

    “The longer it goes, the worse it gets,” he said.

    “This could turn out to be really bad if they never get their data back.”

    Atlanta has nearly half a million residents – but 6 million people live in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

     

  • Interventionistas Outraged Over Trump's Syria Withdrawal: "We Took The Oil. We’ve Got To Keep The Oil"

    Regime change advocates, neocon beltway hawks, and all the usual armchair warrior zero-skin-in-the-game think tank interventionistas are in continued meltdown mode after Trump confirmed plans to withdraw American forces – some 2000+ troops and personnel – from Syria. On Friday the president told senior White House aides that US forces will be exiting Syria after public comments made earlier.

    In statements carried by ReutersTrump said“Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon, very soon, we’re coming out. We’re going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.” As we noted last week, the timing of Trump’s dramatic Syria turn corresponded with news of an American soldier killed in Manbij in northern Syria (killed likely by an IED alongside a British coalition soldier overnight last Thursday).

    Perhaps to be expected, the weekend editorials and cable news pundit shows reacted in disbelief and horror – with charges of “chaos” at the Trump White House over Syria policy, and claims that “ISIS will come back” if America leaves. Nevermind the fact that Trump himself while on the campaign trail in 2016 stated in public speeches and in a tweet (and linking to a declassified intelligence memo) that US support to jihadists in Syria under President Obama is precisely what fueled the rise of ISIS in the first place

    Image source: AM Greatness.

    CNN, for example, painted a picture of mass revolt among the ranks of military officers and career State Department officials, asserting that, “Any decision by Trump to pull out of Syria would also go against the current military assessment, a fact that left some national security officials concerned about the impact of a withdrawal, another senior administration official told CNN.”

    No, there’s no “chaos” when it comes to Syria policy at the White House – Trump is doing exactly what he pledged to do while previously on the campaign trail, and he’s further continuing what he started when he nixed the CIA’s regime change program last summer.

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    But it’s funny and very telling how brazenly honest interventionistas and deep state bureaucrats suddenly become in their motives whenever Trump speaks truth on Syria. Consider prominent Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, who the day after Trump’s announcement of leaving Syria lamented while quoting a pro-regime change activist“We took the oil. We’ve got to keep the oil.”

    That’s right, the mask of pseudo-humanitarian high-minded noble ideals comes off (the Josh Rogins of the world care nothing about actual Syrians), and we learn that it’s actually all about…

    Oil! Oil! Oil! Iran! Iran! Iran!

    https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/979856522753789953

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    Map source: WINEP

    No more pretense and the slick language of R2P military intervention for the sake saving civilians in Syria… Rogin’s op-ed is aptly titled, In Syria, we ‘took the oil.’ Now Trump wants to give it to Iran. 

    Rogin, like other interventionistas, has no more cards to play, thus we find these straightforward admissions in his column:

    Perhaps he would back off his urge to cut and run if he knew that the United States and its partners control almost all of the oil. And if the United States leaves, that oil will likely fall into the hands of Iran…

    Control over oil is the only influence we have in Syria today…

    “We have this 30 percent slice of Syria, which is probably where 90 percent of the pre-war oil production took place,” said David Adesnik, director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This is leverage.”

    Astoundingly, these words are still being published 15 years after the myriad lies of the Iraq invasion …no shame, no regrets. And a host of other mainstream journalists in New York and DC greeted Rogin’s column as “refreshing” and respectable “essential reading” (as if it’s not the same pro-regime-change script which has dominated talking points for years).

    Meanwhile, a well-known Syrian-American Middle East analyst and actual expert on Syria effortlessly shreds Rogin’s supposed “realist” points with ease (Rogin likes to think of himself as a foreign policy ‘realist‘ …he’s no such thing):

    Whenever one thinks Syria analysis has hit bottom, nonsense like comes along to remind us otherwise. Josh Rogin’s piece makes a set of outrageous observations that has become a mainstay of Syria’s war coverage over the years. Let’s establish the facts first.

    Iran’s expansion that Josh Rogin wants to “counter” did not start with Syrian war but started in the aftermath of the ill-advised Iraq invasion that opened the pandora box which we are still dealing with today (Birth of ISIS is another). Interventionists have a short memory.

    Syria’s alliance with Iran did not start with the Syrian war. It was cemented after Damascus decided to side with Iran during its war with Saddam’s Iraq in early 80’s. At start of Syrian war, Tehran decided to pay back the favor and came to Assad’s aid when no one did.

    What Josh Rogin still can’t comprehend is that countering Iran is positively correlated with ending the Syrian war and not by adding more fuel to it. Iran’s influence grows when Damascus is threatened and not the other way around.

    Syria is not Saudi Arabia. Even before the war, it’s oil production was mere 150K barrels a day. This is a drop in the ocean when it comes the regional oil producers. Asking Trump to grab the oil shows total lack of understanding of scale or strategic importance.

    Indeed, by grabbing what little oil Syria has all you are doing is giving Iran and other allies of Syria more leverage. The more Syria can stand on its feet the less it needs those allies like Iran that you want to counter.

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    So it’s not only his conclusions, but every assumption of Rogin and his ilk concerning the Middle East is simply dead wrong. But at the very least these moments serve to remind us of what morally corrupt failures the Washington class of inverventionistas have been, and that it’s certainly not their own skin in the game when they argue for “taking action” whether in Syria or other parts of the world (the establishment political and pundit class is all too willing to send the sons of others to die in foreign quagmires with dubious aims).

    Finally, it should be noted that Josh Rogin published his piece the same day Master Sgt. Jonathan J. Dunbar died in Syria (identified by the Department of Defense on Saturday). Rogin is ultimately arguing that more Americans must stay in harm’s way for “control over oil… the only influence we have in Syria today.”

    * * *

    With that, we’ll leave off with the following excerpted wisdom from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Skin in the Game:

    “What you had historically is warmongers were warriors. And he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword… Now suddenly–and that’s only recent–we developed all these weapons and technologies and stuff like that, so you can have people cause wars and not be exposed. And not only that, but as was Bill Kristol… he’s a prime example.

    The people who caused the war in Iraq… absolutely no cost to them. Or a cost that’s very small, very tiny reputational cost… And then after they cause a war in Iraq–and of course we have a disaster–they will intervene again… in Libya and of course in Syria.

    What happens with these people is that given that there is no skin in the game, there’s no learning… In the real world, these people should be dead, because basically, if you cause a disaster… so many of them would be… pruned out that way instead of letting others die.”

  • Chinese Space Station Crashes Down To Watery Grave In South Pacific

    China’s nine-ton school bus-sized space station, Tiangong-1, has plummeted to a watery grave in the South Pacific ocean – and Michigan residents can come out of their bunkers. 

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    The two-module spacecraft – which means “Heavenly Palace,” lost contact with China’s space agency on March 21, 2016 after the completion of its extended mission – which included a six year service life that saw two manned missions to perform experiments for the larger multiple-module Tiangong station.

    as

    a

    Based on Two-Line Element set data from the Joint Operations Space Center (JSpOC), the last orbital adjustment made by the Tiangong-1 was in December, 2015.

    as

    Amateur satellite trackers claim the station has been orbiting uncontrolled since at least June, 2016 (aerospace.org), with the only confident predictions as to where it might hit falling between the 43rd parallels.

    a

    as

    The Tiangong-1 was the first space station built and launched by China – equipped with two sleep stations and a habitable volume of 15 cubic meters (529 sq ft.).

    as

    ***

    As we reported earlier, With China’s Tiangong-1 space station (translated as “Heavenly Palace”) full of highly toxic chemicals such as hydrazine, set to crash into the earth at a still unknown location some time today, Michigan isn’t taking any chances – activating emergency operations center to monitor its trajectory. 

    As a reminder, several weeks ago Aerospace.org predicted that while the list of possible crash sites includes locations in Northern China, South America, Southern Africa, Northern Spain and the United States, lower Michigan in particular is among the regions with the highest probability of a direct hit.

  • Julian Brigden Warns The Dollar Will Be "The Final Napalm Run" Into The Crash

    In recent weeks, the flattening yield curve have prompted investment strategists to declare that what looked to be the beginning of a secular bear market in bonds was, in reality, another false alarm. Indeed, all it took was a brief correction in equity markets for Bank of America’s Ritesh Samadhiya to puke all over the bank’s bullish economic consensus and declare that the greatest risk to asset markets is that nominal global growth slows a lot more than consensus believes.

    But during his latest interview with MacroVoices, Julian Brigden of Macro Intelligence Two Partners reminded readers why the bear case for both bonds and equities – a nightmare scenario that would hammer popular risk-parity funds that are, ironically, intended to weather periods of market turbulence based on the notion that stocks and bonds can’t sell off at the same time. 

    Brigden, who advised clients to close out of a short Treasury trade just before the 10-year bounced off 3%, said he believes the long term case for a bear market in bonds remains intact as the US government tries to inflate away its enormous debt pile.

    According to Brigden’s modeling, a break above the 3.25% level on the 10-year yield would slice through its 100-month moving average – something that hasn’t occurred since the mid-1980s.

    Treasury

    Brigden believes that a break above this level in nominal yields (while real yields remain anchored thanks to a runup in inflation) will lead to chaos in both bond and equity markets. Disinflation has kept yields tamped down for years. But as it returns and forces the Fed to hike interest rates more quickly – just as the ECB and other central banks are withdrawing their own stimulus – these inflated asset prices will plunge back to Earth.

    The Fed thought QE was the reason Treasury yields sank, Brigden said, but they were wrong…

    Treasury

    …The real reason, he said, was the combination of disinflation and foreign central banks pushing yield-seeking investors into US markets.

    What actually lowered Treasury yields through almost all the period of QE was falling inflation. It was disinflation. And I use that term because I’m not a big believer in deflation. Deflation is falling aggregate demand and falling prices. What we had was falling inflation. So it’s disinflation. And that’s really what lowered yields. What’s been interesting, though, is, since the end of 2015, inflation has actually been rising, relatively significantly in the US. It’s gone up a whole 2%. But yields (real yields) have fallen. Why? Because other central banks have come in. And they have – because of the nuances of their policies (particularly NIRP, and particularly regulatory requirements that require European investors to be fully invested and match assets with liabilities) – you’ve had this tsunami of cash that’s come out of Japan and Europe and suppressed our Treasury yields.

    And if you look on this slide here, you’ll see. Back then we had this incredible period of low inflation. Incredibly stable. Six years where inflation basically oscillated around 1.3. You had a Fed that thought they could run it a little hot because they believed in the Phillips curve (unlike this lot that don’t believe in the Phillips Curve) and you did. You heated the economy quickly with a bunch of spending. Well, you’ve overcooked the goose.

    And I’m not even showing in this slide the ‘70s. I’m not interested. But, in those five years, where inflation goes from 1.6 to the upper 3s, then back down again as they aggressively try to heat again, and it then breaks out again and goes up to almost 6.

    Treasury investors lost 36% of their money in real price terms. 36%. A third. And you never got it back. Never got it back. So I do think the analogy is relatively similar.

    Moving on to equities, Brigden says that faced with the threat of an overheating economy, the Fed is going to keep hiking until the market breaks – sending stocks spiraling lower. Brigden says we could be on the verge of a 20% correction.

    And while over  the next ten years, fine, I’m okay. When it comes to equities, I think, certainly, if we’re in an inflationary environment they’ll outperform fixed income. They’re in for a bit of a shock, I fear.

    I fear we’re on the cusp of a 20-percenter. It could be potentially worse. And I do feel, personally, that we’ve put the highs in. I’ve said either the market has to collapse under its own weight, for whatever reason (higher vol, trade talks, whatever), and then the Fed backs off.

    Or, faced with the inflation picture, the Fed is just going to keep hiking until they eventually crack the market. It won’t be intentional. It’s never intentional. But it’s what always happens. So I fear that the highs are in.

    And just as markets are breaking from the strain of Fed-induced tighter financial conditions, the Trump administration’s policies will result in dollars piling back into the US from foreign markets – a scenario that could undermine the currency’s long-term value and, ultimately, its status as a reserve currency.

    Before it begins the next leg of its secular downtrend, the greenback will be squeezed higher, triggering a punishing selloff across risk assets.

    But, when it happens – and we know this Erik – when the dollar rallies at the same time as you get risk-off, it turns things really vicious, really quickly. And, given this massive hole created by a low current account deficit, with the whole world depending on the hot money flows, in a world where you can click and bring that money home, it could be really vicious.

    I think – let’s be honest. Up until now we’ve had loose fiscal, relatively loose monetary. Right? It’s only changed in the last couple of months. And arguably even since Powell has come in. We’ve had central banks that have – and I think, big picture, they still want to – the expression we like to use is “run it hot.” They want to boil bond investors slowly. They want to run nominal GDP hot.

    This is how we eviscerate the value of the debt in what are aging and very indebted societies. So, yeah, loose fiscal, loose monetary is disastrous for a currency. Things are changing a little. As I said, I think the Fed will be forced, relatively, to become more hawkish. But, bigger picture, what I’m talking about is an episodic, final, nasty, destructive dollar rally. I think it’s a dollar rally that ends up resetting the system. I think after the dollar has rallied and destroyed a lot of things, more people will abandon it. You’ll see more use of the renminbi. We are in a cyclical, I think, decline of the dollar.

    You get bond pressure and rate pressure and equity problems, and then the dollar. And the dollar comes in and is just the final napalm run into the risk-off move, and then we’ll kick off again.

    Listen to the entire interview below:

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Today’s News 1st April 2018

  • Lockheed Martin Patents Nuclear Fusion-Powered Fighter Jet

    Lockheed Martin has secretly been developing a game-changing compact nuclear fusion reactor that could potentially fit into a fighter jet. The Maryland-based defense contractor recently obtained a patent associated with its design for a fully compact fusion reactor, after filing for the patent in 2014.

    If the latest patent from the defense company serves as a benchmark, nuclear fusion technology could revolutionize the aeronautic industry and eventually begin the quantum leap from fossil fuels to compact fusion reactors for the industry.

    According to CBS Washington, the prototype system would be the size of a normal shipping container but capable of producing enough energy to power 80,000 residential homes or a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, sometime in the next year or so.

    The patent, tilted “Encapsulating Magnetic Fields for Plasma Confinement,” is dated Feb. 15, 2018. CBS indicates that Skunk Works, also known as Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs or its advanced R&D group, has reportedly been developing the compact fusion reactor since about 2014, with latest reports suggesting the technology could be ready for production by 2019.

    Nuclear fusion is the same process of what happens to hydrogen gas in the core of the Sun. Hydrogen gas gets squeezed into four hydrogen nuclei combine to form one helium atom; thus, nuclear fusion is created.

    Lockheed said, “Our concept will mimic that process within a compact magnetic container and release energy in a controlled fashion to produce power we can use.” Here is how Lockheed describes nuclear fusion power:

    Lockheed indicates that the compact size of the reactor has induced a technology revolution, which instead of taking “five years to design and build a concept, it takes only a few months.”

    “The compact size is the reason that we believe we will be able to create fusion technology quickly. The smaller the size of the device, the easier it is to build up momentum and develop it faster. Instead of taking five years to design and build a concept, it takes only a few months. If we undergo a few of these testing and refinement cycles, we will be able to develop a prototype within the same five year timespan.”

    As the technology advances, the size of the fusion reactor shrinks. Lockheed has dropped the bombshell and indicated the reactor could be ready to mount on “a truck, aircraft, ship, train, spacecraft, or submarine.” Across the board, Lockheed could revolutionize the transportation industry in the very near term.

    “Some embodiments may provide a fusion reactor that is compact enough to be mounted on or in a vehicle such as a truck, aircraft, ship, train, spacecraft, or submarine. Some embodiments may provide a fusion reactor that may be utilized in desalination plants or electrical power plants.”

    Patent FIG. 1 illustrates example applications for fusion reactors, according to certain embodiments.

    “As one example, one or more embodiments of fusion reactor 110 are utilized by aircraft 101 to supply heat to one or more engines (e.g., turbines) of aircraft 101. A specific example of utilizing one or more fusion reactors 110 in an aircraft is discussed in more detail below in reference to FIG. 2. In another example, one or more embodiments of fusion reactor 110 are utilized by ship 102 to supply electricity and propulsion power. While an aircraft carrier is illustrated for ship 102 in FIG. 1, any type of ship (e.g., a cargo ship, a cruise ship, etc.) may utilize one or more embodiments of fusion reactor 110. As another example, one or more embodiments of fusion reactor 110 may be mounted to a flat-bed truck 103 in order to provide decentralized power or for supplying power to remote areas in need of electricity. As another example, one or more embodiments of fusion reactor 110 may be utilized by an electrical power plant 104 in order to provide electricity to a power grid. While specific applications for fusion reactor 110 are illustrated in FIG. 1, the disclosure is not limited to the illustrated applications. For example, fusion reactor 110 may be utilized in other applications such as trains, desalination plants, spacecraft, submarines, and the like.”

    Patent FIG. 2 illustrates an example aircraft system utilizing fusion reactors, according to certain embodiments.

    “In general, fusion reactor 110 is a device that generates power by confining and controlling plasma that is used in a nuclear fusion process. Fusion reactor 110 generates a large amount of heat from the nuclear fusion process that may be converted into various forms of power. For example, the heat generated by fusion reactor 110 may be utilized to produce steam for driving a turbine and an electrical generator, thereby producing electricity. As another example, as discussed further below in reference to FIG. 2, the heat generated by fusion reactor 110 may be utilized directly by a turbine of a turbofan or fanjet engine of an aircraft instead of a combustor.”

    Patent FIGS. 3A illustrates an example fusion reactor, according to certain embodiments.

    Patent FIGS. 3B illustrates an example fusion reactor, according to certain embodiments.

     

     Lockheed’s potential applications of compact fusion:

    The Silicon Republic believes Skunk Works’ Compact Fusion Project could usher in an era of nuclear drones patrolling the skies:

    “Patents for the reactor were filed in 2014 by the company’s advanced research division, Skunk Works, with the aim of having its compact fusion reactor (CFR) ready by 2019. While it has obviously missed that deadline, the delay does not mean the technology is to be left behind. As Dr. Thomas McGuire, head of Skunk Works’ Compact Fusion Project, detailed in a 2014 report, the smaller reactor is more feasible than a large-scale one. If the system functions as expected, the CFR could take 11kg of fuel in the form of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, and run the reactor for an entire year without needing to stop.

    Throughout that time, it would be consistently pumping out 100MW of power, enough to power up to 80,000 homes. When discussing how it could impact aircraft design, Lockheed Martin said that this amount of power would allow it to fly indefinitely and would only be hampered by the crew’s need for food and water on the ground. The likelier option is that this would translate extremely well into drone aircraft used to patrol the skies for years at a time, which, admittedly, sounds a little terrifying.”

    While a nuclear fusion powered fighter jet would certainly change the board game of geopolitics, factor in the hypersonics technologies and high energy weapons, and the high-tech weapons for the next global conflict have already been identified.

    To be sure, the global superpowers realize that the first to possess these technologies will not just revolutionize their civilian and military programs, but will also dictate the future path for civilizations on planet earth, as such the new arms race is on, just not in the same weapons that defined the first cold war.

  • The History Of US Trade Policy In One Annotated Chart

    As narrative-ending as it may be to nattering naybobs, President Trump is not the first, and will not be the last, to enforce major trade policies. As Goldman Sachs points out in this fully annotated chart, the US has a long history of trade interventionism, and – as the WSJ recently pointed out  – what Trump has done is merely respond to China’s own protectionist policies.

    Source: Goldman Sachs

    Incidentally, while it is far less discussed, we showed at the start of March  that there have been extensive tariffs levied against China under both Obama’s administration, and those prior, they just didn’t get nearly as much air time. As BofAML details in the table below, Presidents Obama, Bush, and Reagan have all imposed sizable tariffs on steel in the past:

    In this context, some have accused Trump of being all bark and no bite, and of being a flip-flopper on this – and other – issues. For those who remain unsure of where President Trump stands on trade, here are thirty years of his quotes on the topic:

    Source: Goldman Sachs

    On the heels of Wilbur Ross’ comments imploring investors to “act rationally, not hysterically,” Goldman notes that, all told, their strategists expect asset implications to be modest and largely contained to specific sectors/companies with exposure to targeted products.

    But as GS global economists Jari Stehn and Nicholas Fawcett explain, “the global macro costs become significant only when a trade war really heats up, with retaliation from all sides.”

    With that in mind, the key questions are:

    What is the risk that the situation escalates further, and what might retaliation look like? So far, numerous temporary exemptions from US metals tariffs have substantially diminished the prospect of retaliation and escalation from some of the US’ largest trading partners. And China’s response has been measured, with Washington and Beijing reportedly in the midst of talks to defuse the situation.

    For now, the questions remain: the US has yet to publish its official product list for Section 301-related tariffs on Chinese goods, and is still likely to announce restrictions on Chinese investment in the US—both of which the Chinese have yet to address, and detail just how they will retaliate.

  • What If All The Cheap Stuff Goes Away?

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    Nothing stays the same in dynamic systems, and it’s inevitable that the current glut of low costs / cheap stuff will give way to scarcities that cannot be filled at current low prices.

    One of the books I just finished reading is The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire. The thesis of the book is fascinating to those of us interested in the rise and fall of empires: Rome expanded for many reasons, but one that is overlooked was the good fortune of an era of moderate weather from around 200 BC to 150 AD: rain was relatively plentiful/ regular and temperatures were relatively warm.

    Then one of Earth’s numerous periods of cooling–a mini ice age–replaced the moderate weather, pressuring agricultural production.

    Roman technology and security greatly expanded trade, opening routes to China, India and Africa that supplied much of Roman Europe with luxury goods. The Mediterranean acted as a cost-effective inland sea for transporting enormous quantities of grain, wine, etc. around the empire.

    These trade routes acted as vectors for diseases from afar that swept through the Roman world, decimating the empire’s hundreds of densely populated cities whose residents had little resistance to the unfamiliar microbes.

    Rome collapsed not just from civil strife and mismanagement, but from environmental and infectious disease pressures that did not exist in its heyday.

    Colder, drier weather stresses the populace by reducing their food intake, which leaves them more vulnerable to infectious diseases. This dynamic was also present in the 15th century during another mini ice age, when the bubonic plague (Black Death) killed approximately 40% of Europe’s population.

    Which brings us to the present: global weather has been conducive to record harvests of grains and other foodstuffs, and I wonder what will happen when this run of good fortune ends, something history tells us is inevitable. Despite the slow erosion of inflation, food is remarkably cheap in the developed world.

    What happens should immoderate weather strike major grain-growing regions of the world?

    Then there’s infectious diseases.  Global air travel and trade has expanded the spectrum of disease vectors to levels that give experts pause.  The potential for an infectious disease that can’t be mitigated to spread globally is another seriously under-appreciated threat to trade, tourism and cheap stuff in general.

    There are other factors that could spell the end of cheap stuff, not just food but manufactured goods:

    1. Fossil fuels could become much more costly. While I consider it highly likely that the price of oil in US dollars will fall to $40/barrel or lower in a global recession due to a sharp drop in demand (what I’ve long termed the head-fake), longer term, it’s inevitable that the cheap-to-access fossil fuels (other than coal) will become depleted and the cost of accessing, processing and transporting what’s left will rise.

    Since fossil fuels remain the backbone of industrial societies everywhere (yes, including Germany), a steady increase in fuel costs will push the cost of everything that uses energy (i.e. everything) higher.

    2. Trade restrictions/conflicts. Globalization and populism both target “unfair trade practices” in which “unfair” is in the eye of the beholder: imports hurt the domestic economy everywhere, and exports help the domestic economy everywhere.

    If trade is restricted for whatever reason, the costs of commoditized goods will likely increase, possibly by a lot.

    3. Global wages are rising. You’ve probably seen signs at Home Depot and fast-food chain outlets announcing “we’re hiring”: even though 100 million working-age people are “not in the work force” in the U.S., many of these individuals lack the skills and/or willingness to take jobs in the modern economy, which demand a lot of workers even in so-called low-skill fields such as fast food. To work in fast food, individuals must be able to handle high pressure and a fast pace; it’s not an easy job by any means.

    Many employers are reporting that they can’t find enough qualified candidates who pass drug tests, yet another fallout of the opioid epidemic. Many people are saddled with felony convictions for nonviolent drug offenses, rendering them ineligible for most corporate or government employment.

    Immigration restrictions and minimum wage laws will add to the rising cost of labor.

    Globally, the baby Boom generation is retiring, leaving worker shortages on the horizon even in China. (Note that workers tend to retire much earlier in Asia and Europe than in the U.S.: 60 or 62 is typically the mandatory retirement age in much of the global economy.)

    As Immanuel Wallerstein has observed (I’ve written about his work many times), there are systemic, secular pressures to raise wages and benefits everywhere: costs are rising, and people expect more government services such as education and income security, and as taxes increase, wages must rise to maintain the net earnings (purchasing power) of the workers.

    We in North America have become accustomed to cheap stuff; we consider it our birthright: cheap fuels, cheap manufactured goods, cheap food and cheap labor. Without even being aware of it, we feel entitled to “low prices always.” We may feel fuel, food and consumer goods are expensive now, but we are comparing prices to an extended period of extraordinarily low costs.

    Prices for energy could easily rise 50%, impacting the cost of everything; should harvests be crippled by bad weather, the cost of grains could easily double or triple from their current historic lows. Should trade be restricted and wages rise virtually everywhere, manufactured consumer goods could go up in price even as robots replace human labor: energy and raw materials will still be costly inputs even if all human labor is eliminated.

    Add in some stiff tariffs for unfair trade practices, and all the robots in the world won’t keep prices down.

    Nothing stays the same in dynamic systems, and it’s inevitable that the current glut of low costs / cheap stuff will give way to scarcities that cannot be filled at current low prices. Cheap stuff will go away, and everything will cost more. It seems highly likely that the next decade will not be like the last 10 years of abundance and cheap stuff.

    Courtesy of Incrementum AG, here is a chart of the commodity/S&P 500 ratio. Commodities are at historic lows in relation to stock market valuations. Stocks can decline, or commodities can rise, or both can occur in tandem. If history is any guide, this ratio will reverse and reach a peak within the next decade.

    *  *  *

    My new book Money and Work Unchained is $9.95 for the Kindle ebook and $20 for the print edition. Read the first section for free in PDF format. If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

  • "Unprecedented" $8 Billion Verdict Against JPMorgan Cut Drastically

    JP Morgan just won an important victory in its quest to have an unprecedented $8 billion jury verdict thrown out without its hordes of lawyers having to do one single thing.

    Back in September, Jamie Dimon’s bank was hit with an $8 billion jury verdict for, a judgment large enough to negatively impact the bank’s EPS and dent its Tier 1 ratio.  On the surface, that judgment might seem excessive. But the bank’s treatment of the Hopper family was so absurdly outrageous, getting stuck with the largest jury award of 2017 appeared justifiable to many in retrospect.

    JPM

    However, in what appears to be an attempt to stave off a laborious appeals process and exit quickly with their cash, the family of a former airline executive asked the judge to lower the punitive damages portion of the fine – what amounts to $6 billion of the $8 billion – to roughly $100 million.

    Lawyers for Stephen Hopper and Laura Wassmer asked a Dallas probate court to limit punitive damages to them and their father’s estate to about $70 million, down from a total of $6 billion awarded by the jury. Hopper and Wassmer also asked for $3.9 million for losses and attorneys’ fees.

    The widow, Jo Hopper, asked the court to lower her award to $14.4 million, according to a filing from her lawyers disclosed Friday.

    The final award could go even lower. JPMorgan is seeking to reverse the entire judgment.

    The legal saga started when Max Hopper, a former American Airlines executive, died suddenly in 2010. Hopper had no will when he passed, so his family hired JP Morgan to administer the estate.

    And so began an unbelievably infuriating process for Hopper’s family, as the bank repeatedly refused to release Hopper’s assets, taking years to perform basic due diligence that should’ve been completed in weeks. Because of the bank’s negligence, stock options belonging to the Hopper’s were allowed to expire worthless.

    JPMorgan was hired to administer the estate and the bank should have divided the assets and released them to Jo Hopper and her stepchildren, according to the lawsuit. Instead, her lawyers said in a statement, “the bank took years to release basic interests in art, home furnishings, jewelry, and notably, Mr. Hopper’s collection of 6,700 golf putters and 900 bottles of wine. Some of the interests in the assets were not released for more than five years.’’

    The plaintiffs alleged that bank representatives failed to meet financial deadlines for assets under their control, stock options were allowed to expire, and Mrs. Hopper’s wishes to sell stock were ignored. Stephen Hopper and Laura Wassmer also claimed that the bank cut them out of decisions and kept them uninformed in order to curry favor with their stepmother.

    Jo Hopper initially sued the bank, alleging breach of fiduciary duty. JPMorgan paid legal fees to defend this out of the estate account, depleting it by more than $3 million, the plaintiffs’ said in court filings.

    Initially, the Texas probate court had awarded punitive damage awards of $2 billion each to Jo Hooper, the Hopper estate, Stephen Hopper and Laura Wassmer.

    JPMorgan has denied any wrongdoing and said it acted in good faith. “Clearly the award far exceeds any possible interpretation of Texas tort reform statutes,’” said Andrew Gray, spokesman for the bank.

  • The Grand Illusion 2.0

    Via Angry Bear blog,

    Introductory note: this is a very long epistle. But I think my point needs to be made fully and at length. Before you go further, in fairness here is the TL:DR version:

    • Advocates of free trade and globalization were taken aback a week ago by the assumption by China’s President Xi Jinping of rule for life.

    • This was because it runs completely contrary to their theory that free trade leads to economic liberalization, which in turn leads to political liberalization.

    • This theory has been repeatedly and thoroughly repudiated throughout history, most catastrophically be World War I.

    • That’s because autocrats will use the gains of economic trade for their own ends, typically the pursuit of further political and military power.

    • Historically middle classes do not revolt against autocracy when they are prospering, but rather only after a period of rising expectations has been dashed by an economic downturn in which the autocratic elite unfairly forces all of the burden onto them.

    • But since these historical facts are nowhere to be found in the economic models, they are ignored as if they do not exist. We can only hope they do not once again lead to catastrophe.

    First, let me pose a thought experiment.  Country A and Country B propose to enter into Agreement X. We have no idea at all what Agreement X is, but we know that the result will be that both Country A and Country B will each be richer by $1 Trillion each and every year thereafter.

    Country A, being an egalitarian paradise, is going to share out the proceeds equally among its population of 250 million, with each person getting $4,000 per year.

    The dictator of Country B is going to do the same with 1/2 of its $1 Trillion gain, making his population very happy, but — because this is his personal aim — he is going to spend the other $500 Billion each and every year in building up its military so that it can challenge and eventually vanquish Country A, and then keep all of the gains of Agreement X to itself.

    Should Country A enter into Agreement X?

    *  *  *

    A week ago The Economist opined that “The West’s Bet on China has Failed,” stating that:

    Last week China stepped from autonomy into dictatorship. That was when Xi Jinping … let it be known that he will change China’s constitution so that he can rule as president for as long as he chooses …. This is not just a big change for China but also strong evidence that the West’s 25 year long bet on China has failed.

    After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West welcomed [China] into the global economic order. Western leaders believed that by giving China a stake in institutions such as the World Trade Organization would bind it into the rules based system … They hoped that economic integration would encourage China to evolve into a market economy and that, as its people grew wealthier, its people would come to yearn for democratic reforms ….

    CNN’s Fareed Zakaria recoiled in horror, writing in the Washington Post that

    [W]hat’s happening in China … is huge and consequential. China is making the most significant change to its political system in 35 years.

    For decades, China seemed to be getting more institutionalized…. But that trend has now been turned on its head. If term limits are abolished, which is now almost certain, Xi Jinping could stay China’s president, general secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission for the rest of his life. And he is just 64.

    … The real danger is that China is eliminating perhaps the central restraint in a system that provides staggering amounts of power to the country’s leaders. What will that do, over time, to the ambitions and appetites of leaders? “Power tends to corrupt,” Lord Acton famously wrote in 1887, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Perhaps China will avoid this tendency, but it has been widespread throughout history.

    If Zakaria felt blindsided, he should not have been. Because ten years ago, after he published “The Post-American World,” arguing that because the US had successfully spread the ideals of liberal democracy across the world, other countries were competing for economic, industrial, and  cultural – but not military – power, I confronted him at the former TPM Cafe.

    For the truth is, the West’s bet on China, so ruefully mourned by The Economist and Zakaria, was always likely to fail. That free trade leads to economic and political liberalism and to peace – championed by neoliberal economists and their political retinue – has been a fantasy for over 100 years, and for 100 years it has been a lie. They would have known if their theories and equations could account for the likes of Kaiser Wilhelm II. But since their equations and theories are blind to the pursuit of power, they dismiss it — at horrible cost to the world.

    In an interview with David Frum, Minxin Pei, who a decade ago dissented, predicting that China would not transition towards true economic and political freedom, said it well:

    [M]any people were too dazzled by the superficial changes, especially economic changes, to realize that the Communist Party’s objective is to stay in power, not to reform itself out of existence. Economic reform or, to be more exact, adopting some capitalist practices and embracing market in some areas, is only a means to a political end…

    W]hen China was forced to keep the door [to liberalization] more open, it was in a weaker position relative to the forces outside—the West in general and the U.S. in particular. But when the conservative forces inside China gain strength while the West appears to be in decline, those forces are far more likely and able to close the door again, as is happening right now. So, while the logic of irresistible liberalization appears to be reasonable on the surface, it overlooks the underlying reality of power.

    I set set forth the fuller historical context a decade ago in my response to Zakaria,which I am taking the liberty of reposting in full immediately below.

    *  *  *

    Over at TPM Cafe, this week Fareed Zakaria’s new book, “The Post American World” is being discussed. In it, Zakaria repeats the theory of globalization’s most toxic and unproven claim: that countries which participate in trade together do not make war upon one another. So if you want to prevent war, just participate in deep and interwoven trade with the other country and everything will be hunky-dory.

    It’s a lie.

    Zakaria claims that We’re Living in Scarily Peaceful Times”:

    The new and most dangerous twist to all this is that our great looming danger is Russia, China, and the rising oil dictatorships…. This is a worldview bereft of any historical perspective. Compared with any previous era, there is more economic integration and even comity among the world’s major powers. The imbalance between the West and the rest is large, not complete but large and in most areas increasing. The newly emerging states want to grow within the existing world order, which John Ikenberry has nicely described as “easy to join and hard to overturn.” The world is going our way, slowly and fitfully, with some detours. No great power has an alternative model of modern life that has any real attraction?

    This is essentially the same argument that Thomas Friedman made in The Lexus and the Olive Tree’ and reiterated even a short time ago in this liveblog:

    You know in Lexus I wrote that no two countries would fight a war so long as they both had McDonald’s. And I was really trying to give an example of how when a country gets a middle class big enough to sustain a McDonald’s network, they generally want to focus on economic development. That is a sort of tipping point, rather than fighting wars.

    This argument, repeated over and over on both necoconservative and neoliberal sites, and all over the corporate media, that free trade leads to middle classes leads to democracy leads to kumbayah, is pretty simple, and it is dangerously wrong. Or as Zakaria reviewer David Rieff summarizes:

    he reads too much into into two indisputable facts of the current moment — that there are fewer major wars taking place than in living memory and that there is a greater level of global economic integration than at any time in history.

    The truth is, the free trade zealots also have spent too much of their careers seduced by neoclassical economics’ favorite mythical beast, Homo economicus, the Rational Man; and not enough time reading history.

    For a start, contrary to the free trade zealots, this is not the first period in world history in which there has been relatively “free” trade, nor is it the first time in which there has been “globalization.” For example, as is pointed out in an article entitled European Social Security and Global Politics By Danny Pieters, European Institute for Social Security Conference

    Globalisation is not a new phenomena. During the second part of the nineteenth century there was a strong move toward the liberalisation of international transactioins, and international trade expanded rapidly until the beginning of World War I

    And just which country in Europe was undergoing the most rapid growth and industrialization during the perioed from 1870-1914? As this essay states, Germany

    embarked upon an extensive education program; it specialised in technical ares and so there was a greater push in that direction. It produced more and better scientists, and so Germany began her industrial advance. Also, the French threat, even if it was superficial, spurred the Germans in authority into action, and made them make Germany stronger and superior.

    German expansion was also helped by the expansion of the railway network, so that goods and mail could get from one place to another, and to more places, faster and more efficiently.

    Needless to say,much like the mercantilist expanding autocracies now fawned over by so many of the free trade zealots, during this time Germany was a monarchy, ruled by the Kaiser.

    Even worse, this isn’t just the first time that economies have experience “globalization”, it also isn’t the first time that this exact same argument has been made. In his 1910 best-seller, “The Great Illusion” Norman Angell wrote that:

    the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others…. It is assumed that a nation’s relative prosperity is broadly determined by its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage in the last resort goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker goes to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.

    The author challenges this whole doctrine. He attempts to show that it belongs to a stage of development out of which we have passed that the commerce and industry of a people no longer depend upon the expansion of its political frontiers; that a nation’s political and economic frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people exercising it; that it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another — to enrich itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that in short, war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which people strive….

    There is quite simply no difference at all between the theses of Angell a century ago, and Friedman and Zakaria now.

    And what happened only 4 years after “The Great Illusion” was published? Well, another book that Zakaria and Friedman ought to read is Vera Brittain’s autobiography, “Testament of Youth”. Vera Brittain was a comfortable affuent middle class girl who was accepted to Oxford University shortly before World War I broke out. By the time it was over, her brother, Edward; her fiance Roland Leighton; and every other young man she had been close to, had been killed. Brittain’s book is a searing documentary about the utter destruction of an entire generation of British young men caused by the war.

    Just how many people were killed by World War I?  One source puts just the number of military deaths at 10 million. Including the wounded, in some European countries over half of the entire generation of young men were casualties.  Another sourcesays:

    the percentage of a country’s population directly afflicted. During the course of World War One, eleven percent (11%) of France’s entire population were killed or wounded! Eight percent (8%) of Great Britain’s population were killed or wounded, and nine percent (9%) of Germany’s pre-war population were killed or wounded! The United States, which did not enter the land war in strength until 1918, suffered one-third of one percent (0.37%) of its population killed or wounded.

    Simply put, World War I is a thorough and devastating refutation of the argument that free trade leads to peace and democracy. Quite the contrary, had Zakaria and Friedman bothered to actually study history, they might have found out that revolutions typically do not occur in eras of increasing plenty. Rather, they occur in times where rising expectations have been dashed:

    the “J-curve” theory says that when conditions improve for a relatively long period of time, — and this is followed by a short economic reversal — an intolerable gap occurs between the changes that the people expect (dashed line) and what they actually get (solid line). Davies predicts that this is when revolution will occur (arrow).

    Support for this theory was found in a 1972 study of 84 nations. Researchers found a clear relationship between indications of political instability and economic frustration. “Frustrated countries” are those that had poor economic conditions — low economic growth, insufficient food, few telephones and physicians — while being acquainted with the higher living standards of industrialized, urbanized countries.

    These studies show that frustration is more likely to develop from relative frustration — the gap between their expectations and the reality that does not live up to these expectations. People in poor countries isolated from the outside world do not realize how poor or frustrated they are. Their frustrations are accepted merely as part of living. In contrast, the people in poorer countries exposed to modern standards feel more “frustrated.” To top this off, deprived people who have experienced some recent progress are more frustrated than those who experienced poverty and oppression.

    In short, just as Germans were hardly big agitators for democracy during the time the German state was expanding, and autocracy was resulting in greater prosperity, so we should not expect that any autocratic states today that are profiting mightily from economic growth are suddenly going to turn democratic. To the contrary, just like the Kaiser’s Germany, it is much easier to direct aggression elsewhere.

    Democratic revolutions occur when previously rising expectations have been dashed, and the populace has no outlet for their anger and frustration. In democracies, governments can be changed (as in 1932); but in autocracies, the ruler’s cronies are protected from the privations, and with no alternative avenue of recourse, and seeing the manifest injustice of the benefits of the system, the populace revolts.

    For example, Taiwan’s democratic reforms were sparked by the violence of the “Kaohsiung Incident” of 1979. Similarly, democracy finally came to South Korea in 1987 when workers finally rebelled against artificially low wages:

    South Korea is hardly a model of a free economy. The hand of government planners in setting priorities and steering companies has been heavy. The low wages that helped fuel growth did not result from market forces. For 25 years, successive governments deliberately held down pay rates. They virtually barred strikes, jailed militant labor leaders, and decreed tough guidelines for wage increases. To block development of independent unions, companies created their own and installed leaders acceptable to the government. Says a Western diplomat in Seoul: ”Union leaders were practically appointed by the national security police.” With democratic winds sweeping South Korea this summer, workers were emboldened to push for higher pay, independent unions, and the right to strike,

    [2018 update: Even the American Revolution had elements of this paradigm, as England reined in the colonist’s rising fortunes following the French and Indian War by taxing them for the costs, expanding the territory of Quebec to include all of what is now the American northern Midwest, and prohibiting expansion beyond the Appalachians.]

    It is a disgrace that we see these same discredited theses, this same Great Illusion, embraced by corporate media pundits so often. That free trade inevitably leads to peace and democracy is a Big and Dangerous Lie, to which World War 1 is the most spectacular and unequivocal counter-evidence.

    There is no guarantee, alas, that we are not now on that same catastrophic path.

    *  *  *

    In 2015, I reiterated this point more succinctly:

    A more fundamental point is about human nature.  In any economic downturn, the powerful elites are going to try to deflect all of the suffering on the powerless masses.  In a representative democracy, eventually the majority will rebel at the ballot box and elect a party which promises to end their suffering.  [Update: It might be a left-wing party, like Syriza in Greece or FDR’s New Deal democrats in the US, or it might be from the right-wing like AfD in Germany or Donald Trump.  ]

    In an authoritarian state, however, no such safety valve exists.  That’s why revolutions don’t happen in an era of rising expectations.  They happen when rising expectations are dashed.  So long as China’s economy continues to expand stoutly, expect no meaningful turbulence.  But someday China will have a recession, and then, dear reader, is when world history will get interesting.

    So here we are a decade later, and the free-trade economists and their acolytes are gobsmacked by something that was not just predictable, but actually predicted,  because there is no place in their theories for actual human behavior as revealed in history. We can only hope that when the inevitable happens, China will not lash out as Kaiser Wilhelm did a century ago.

  • Warren Buffett Is Now America's No. 2 Real-Estate Broker

    Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is swallowing up market share in a business that Buffett said he “hardly noticed” when the company first acquired it in 2000.

    In light of the paucity of deals Berkshire struck last year, Buffett devoted ample space in this year’s annual report to touting the success of Berkshire’s HomeServices of America, which Buffett lauded for its rapid, if long overlooked, expansion over the past decade…

    I have told you several times about HomeServices, our growing real estate brokerage operation. Berkshire backed into this business in 2000 when we acquired a majority interest in MidAmerican Energy (now named BerkshireHathaway Energy). MidAmerican’s activities were then largely in the electric utility field, and I originally paid littleattention to HomeServices.

    But, year-by-year, the company added brokers and, by the end of 2016, HomeServices was the second-largest brokerage operation in the country – still ranking, though, far behind the leader, Realogy. In 2017, however, HomeServices’ growth exploded.

    We acquired the industry’s third-largest operator, Long and Foster; number 12, Houlihan Lawrence; and Gloria Nilson. With those purchases we added 12,300 agents, raising our total to 40,950. HomeServices is now close toleading the country in home sales, having participated (including our three acquisitions pro-forma) in $127 billion of “sides” during 2017.

    To explain that term, there are two “sides” to every transaction; if we represent both buyer and seller, the dollar value of the transaction is counted twice.

    Despite its recent acquisitions, HomeServices is on track to do only about 3% of the country’s home- brokerage business in 2018. That leaves 97% to go. Given sensible prices, we will keep adding brokers in this mostfundamental of businesses.

    Unfortunately for Buffett, limited supply and inflated valuations are beginning to weigh on purchases, with pending sales down more than 4% year-over-year.

    Pending

    And mortgage applications tumbling as rates rise.

    One factor contributing to this trend could be the lackluster growth in wages when compared with home valuations.

    Wage

    The broker buyouts were some of the only deals he touted in his letter to shareholders. The deals increased HomeServices transaction volume by 34%.

    And given the $100 billion cash pile burning a hole in Buffett’s pocket, we wouldn’t be surprised to see HomeServices continue absorbing its competitors – the only reliable growth strategy in a market as fractious as the real-estate brokerage business, according to Bloomberg

    Buffett

    The firm is expected to have only 3% market share in 2018. That leaves ample room for growth.

  • US Power Grid Vulnerable To "Devastating" Attack, NERC Finds

    Just as tensions between the US and North Korea are finally beginning to cool (while animosity between the US and Russia intensifies), a recent industry report argues the US government isn’t doing nearly enough to safeguard the US electric grid from a potentially devastating attack.

    In its report, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) revealed that much of the US electricity grid is vulnerable to attack – and neither the industry or the government are doing anything about it. NERC is the organization responsible for overseeing the US’s massive electric grid, which is subdivided into eight regional entities.

    Though the report didn’t include a “comprehensive” assessment of the myriad physical threats to the US’s energy infrastructure, worries that North Korean could execute a massive electromagnetic pulse (or EMP) attack have been intensifying as the prospect of a nuclear showdown with the restive communist state looms large (Kim Jong Un’s recent actions aside). The research was also inspired by a series of gun attacks on transformers, including a rifle attack on a transformer in Utah that occurred in September 2016, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

    EMP

    Many organizations, including recently the National Academy of Sciences, have warned of the catastrophic consequences should a malicious actor – be it a state or a terrorist organization – manage to take down the US energy grid.

    “There is widespread belief that bulk power critical assets are vulnerable to physical attack, that such an attack potentially could have catastrophic consequences, and that the risks of such attacks are growing,” according to the report. “But the exact nature of such potential attacks and the capability of perpetrators to successfully execute them are uncertain.”

    “Although the electric power sector seems to be moving in the overall direction of greater physical security for critical assets, many measures have yet to be implemented and the process of corporate realignment around physical security is still underway,” according to the report, which omitted a comprehensive overview of all the pressing threats due to national security concerns.

    “The September 2016 rifle attack on a 69 kV transformer substation in Utah—which reportedly left 13,000 rural customers without power for up to eight hours—showed that similar incidents could occur almost anywhere on the grid,” the report warns.

    To be sure, the Edison Electric Institute has highlighted the fact that it would be nearly impossible to completely secure the grid (the costs would be immeasurable). However, the US could be doing a lot more than it’s doing.

    Electric

    A massive attack on the US energy grid could leave large swaths of the country without power without weeks or months. The end result would resemble Puerto Rico following last year’s devastating hurricane season – but on a much larger and deadlier scale.

    In this scenario, hundreds of thousands – if not millions of Americans – could die.

    “While to date there have been only minor attacks on the power system in the United States, large-scale physical destruction of key parts of the power system by terrorists is a real danger,” the academy warned. “Some physical attacks could cause disruption in system operations that last for weeks or months.”

    But unfortunately for the US citizens whose security is predicated on a functioning power grid, the power industry and US government have failed to organize a cohesive response to these threats. Because of the industry’s utter lack of preparation, even crude attacks could have devastating consequences.

    And while this month’s volatility in equity markets was deeply unsettling for millions of Americans, imagine what would happen to markets if the entire Atlantic seaboard lost power in an instant.

  • US Marines Testing Drone-Killing Future Weapons And Combat Exoskeletons

    Nearly 200 US Marines gathered at Southern California’s Camp Pendleton to test out an array of the military’s most advanced new weaponry – including several devices to disable or destroy Unarmed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and combat exoskeleton designed by Lockheed Martin which allows soldiers to carry loads of up to 200 lbs. over long distances.

    US Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Briar Purty, an infantryman with 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division tests Drone Killer Counter-UAS Technology during Urban Advanced Naval Technology Exercise 2018 (ANTX-18) at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif. on March 21, 2018. US Marine Corps Photo

    Other weapons include “bomb-bearing and swarm-capable drones” already deployed against Russian military bases in Syria in January.

    (DoD demonstration video, Oct. 2016)

    “103 Perdix micro-drones launched from three U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets. It demonstrated advanced swarm behaviors such as collective decision-making, adaptive formation flying, and self-healing. “Due to the complex nature of combat, Perdix are not pre-programmed synchronized individuals, they are a collective organism, sharing one distributed brain for decision-making and adapting to each other like swarms in nature,” said Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) Director William Roper. “Because every Perdix communicates and collaborates with every other Perdix, the swarm has no leader and can gracefully adapt to drones entering or exiting the team.” 

    LaWS Laser Weapon System which shoots 30kw photon beam capable of burning holes in UAVs and confusing enemy vessel navigation systems

    Captain Ben Brewster’s rifle company would fight and operate under a “protective bubble” created by layering offensive and defensive UAVs – both “organic to the company” and from the larger Marine air-ground task force which would include systems and equipment designed to kill or neutralize enemy drones – reports U.S. Naval Institute News.

    PHASR (Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response) rifle fires blinding green laser to dazzle the enemy. 
    s
    “Drone swarm” prototypes

    I’ve never had to deal with IEDs that can attack me…from quadcopters,” said Brewster, commander of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines.

    Three drones flitted overhead at the Range 131 Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT) facility here, and an “enemy” drone – a bat-wing-shaped UAS – sliced through the air as Third Platoon moved among buildings around a town square.

    “Anyone of these could have a two-pound IED (improvised explosive device)” or act as a spotter or command-and-control for an enemy force, he said.

    “I need the ability for my Marines to be able to jam these drones,” he added. –USNI

    US Marines with 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division test unmanned vehicle at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif. on March 21, 2018. US Marine Corps Photo

     

    And with the expected crowded urban skies, he noted, Marines will need systems to help sort friend from foe in the air, along with counter-UAS technology with directional jamming capabilities. “Trying to figure out that part is what we’re experimenting” during U5G, he added.

    Several naval warfare centers and military laboratories joined 48 companies for U5G, showcasing 79 technologies that included sensors that see through walls, facial recognition software, “smart” networked radio, micro drones and an enhanced thermal imager with displayed information, as well as vehicles, weapons and munitions.

    The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation are hosting U5G, the latest in a series of Advanced Naval Technology Exercises (ANTX) where military research and development organizations join with industry to demonstrate rapidly-emerging technologies and concepts. It follows on last year’s Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation Advanced Naval Technology Exercise at Camp Pendleton that solicited and examined dozens of concepts like drones, mobile networks and unmanned boats to support Marines operating at sea and landing ashore. –USNI.org

     Read more here

  • "Huge Caravan" Of Central American Refugees Is Headed For The U.S. Border

    Over 1,500 Central Americans are on a crusade across Mexico in the hopes of being granted asylum at the U.S. border – a move which is set to pose an enormous challenge to the Trump administration’s much campaigned about immigration policies, while reminding Trump’s base that they still don’t have the wall they elected him to build 14 months into his presidency. 

    “We want to become one, supporting us shoulder to shoulder and show that together we can break down borders,” say the caravan’s organizers.

    Luc Forsyth for BuzzFeed News

    Setting out six days ago and marching under the slogan “Migrantes en la lucha” (“Migrants in the Fight”) during holy week, the caravan comprised mostly of Hondurans was organized roughly a month ago by the mysterious group Pueblo Sin Fronteras (People Without Borders) – which solicited donations via Facebook and encouraged volunteers to contact them. 

    ”Our mission is to provide shelter and safety to migrants and refugees in transit, accompany them in their journey, and together demand respect for our human rights,” reads the group’s mission statement.

    The Central American migrants, mostly Hondurans and Guatemalans, flee their countries because of insecurity and because they are threatened by gang members, also because of the economic and political situation in the region. –proceso.hn (translated)

    The crime rate is horrible, you can’t live there,” a migrant named “Karen” told BuzzFeed News on the side of a highway near the Southern Mexico town of Huixtla. “After the president [was sworn in] it got worse. There were deaths, mobs, robbed homes, adults and kids were beaten up.”

    “They want to reach the border and ask for asylum, the majority flee from gang violence, extortion and police abuses,” says one of the organizers named Garibo.

    a

    Before setting out on the journey, the migrants were organized into groups of 10 to 15 people, and a leader was designated for each group. Five groups were then banded together in what organizers call a sector. While there are organizers from Pueblos Sin Fronteras leading the way, much of the effort to get to the US border is in the hands of the migrants themselves. –BuzzFeed

    Migrants gathered for the march in the southern Mexico border town of Tapachula in advance of the march – where Pueblo Sin Fronteras conducted introductory workshops to help the Central Americans best navigate the United States once they arrive – including security drills in which male refugees are to form a wall around any threats to the women and children.

    Help along the way

    Despite a majority of the Hondurans being in Mexico illegally – which Mexican authorities have historically been stringent about, the caravan has not been stopped on its journey, and people from Mexican towns along the way have been helping the migrants. 

    The group is also planning to take “the Train of Death” in Arriaga in order to expedite the journey north, and several towns have provided buses to help the migrants along.

    a
    “La Bestia,” Train of Death (Luc Forsyth for BuzzFeed News)

    …children, women, and men, most of them from Honduras — have boldly crossed immigration checkpoints, military bases, and police in a desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States. Despite their being in Mexico without authorization, no one has made any effort to stop them. –BuzzFeed

     

    Here the migrants are seen boarding covered hopper freight railcars.

    A video shows the migrants marching on the tracks and preparing to board the train in Arriaga.

    In the train boarding video, a DJI Mavic Pro drone worth $1,000 to $1,300 USD was spotted. The march is depicted as a grassroots effort, but perhaps, there is some big money behind the movement.

    BuzzFeed reporter Adolfo Flores has been embedded with the caravan, providing updates over Twitter:

    About 80% of them are from Honduras. Many said they are fleeing poverty, but also political unrest and violence that followed the swearing in of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández after a highly contested election last year. The group often breaks into chants of “out with JOH.” They also chant “we aren’t immigrants, we’re international workers” and “the people united will never be defeated.

    Still, there are no guarantees on the route or assurances that once they reach the US border they’ll be able to cross undetected or be allowed to stay under some type of protection like asylum.

    Alex Mensing, another organizer with Pueblos Sin Fronteras, made that point clear to the migrants before the group started out. He also stressed that everyone is responsible for their own food, water, and payment for vans or buses. Still, it’s far cheaper than being assaulted or falling into the hands of unscrupulous smugglers. –BuzzFeed

    Here they come! 

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Today’s News 31st March 2018

  • California Woman Refuses To Sell Home To Trump Supporters

    A Sacramento woman selling a house which has been in her family for half a century will sell to just about anyone – unless they’re a Trump supporter.

    The homeowner, who has declined to give her name, told CBS Sacramento “I told her [the realtor] that I didn’t want her to sell it to a Trump supporter.”

    The woman’s realtor, Elizabeth Weintraub, says that the “no Trump supporter” caveat is a first for her. “We can ask somebody how they voted, but they don’t have to tell us,” said Weintraub.

    But is it actually legal? Attorney Allen Sawyer thinks not: “That’s an unlawful contractual term that infringes the freedom of association and first amendment rights,” said Sawyer.

    According to the Fair Housing Act, political party affiliation doesn’t fall into one of the seven protected classes. They include race, religion, color, disability. National origin, sex and familial status. –CBS Sacramento

    “People have a right to believe what they want to believe and they shouldn’t be restricted from purchasing property based on that,” said Sawyer.

    Either way – the seller is clearly limiting the buying pool according to certified appraiser Ryan Lundquist – who notes that “39 percent of voters voted for Donald Trump in the Sacramento region. That’s an absolute fact.” 

    The homeowner doesn’t care: “When you’re talking about principals, morals, and ethics, it’s very very deep,” she said. 

     

  • The Death Of The Liberal World Order

    Authored Leonid Savin via Oriental Review,

    A few days ago the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, published an article, titled “Liberal World Order, R.I.P.” In it, he states that the current threat to the liberal world order is coming not from rogue states, totalitarian regimes, religious fanatics, or obscurantist governments (special terms used by liberals when referring to other nations and countries that have not pursued the Western capitalist path of development), but from its primary architect — the United States of America.

    Haass writes: Liberalism is in retreat. Democracies are feeling the effects of growing populism. Parties of the political extremes have gained ground in Europe. The vote in the United Kingdom in favor of leaving the EU attested to the loss of elite influence. Even the US is experiencing unprecedented attacks from its own president on the country’s media, courts, and law-enforcement institutions. Authoritarian systems, including China, Russia, and Turkey, have become even more top-heavy. Countries such as Hungary and Poland seem uninterested in the fate of their young democracies…

    “We are seeing the emergence of regional orders. Attempts to build global frameworks are failing.”

    Richard Haas

    Haass has previously made alarmist statements, but this time he is employing his rhetoric to point to the global nature of this phenomenon. Although between the lines one can easily read, first of all, a certain degree of arrogance — the idea that only we liberals and globalists really know how to administer foreign policy — and second, the motifs of conspiracy.

    “Today’s other major powers, including the EU, Russia, China, India, and Japan, could be criticized for what they are doing, not doing, or both.”

    Probably this list could be expanded by adding a number of Latin American countries, plus Egypt, which signs arms deals with North Korea while denying any violation of UN sanctions, and the burgeoning Shiite axis of Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon.

    But Haass is crestfallen over the fact that it is Washington itself that is changing the rules of the game and seems completely uninterested in what its allies, partners, and clients in various corners of the world will do.

    America’s decision to abandon the role it has played for more than seven decades thus marks a turning point. The liberal world order cannot survive on its own, because others lack either the interest or the means to sustain it. The result will be a world that is less free, less prosperous, and less peaceful, for Americans and others alike.”

    Richard Haass’s colleague at the CFR, Stewart Patrick, quite agrees with the claim that it is the US itself that is burying the liberal world order. However, it’s not doing it on its own, but alongside China. If the US had previously been hoping that the process of globalization would gradually transform China (and possibly destroy it, as happened to the Soviet Union earlier), then the Americans must have been quite surprised by how it has actually played out. That country modernized without being Westernized, an idea that had once been endorsed by the leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini.

    Now China is expanding its influence in Eurasia in its own way, and this is for the most part welcomed by its partner countries.

    But this has been a painful process for the US, as it is steadily and irrevocably undermining its hegemony.

    “Its long-term ambition is to dismantle the U.S. alliance system in Asia, replacing it with a more benign (from Beijing’s perspective) regional security order in which it enjoys pride of place, and ideally a sphere of influence commensurate with its power.

    China’s Belt and Road initiative is part and parcel of this effort, offering not only (much-needed) infrastructure investments in neighboring countries but also the promise of greater political influence in Southeast, South, and Central Asia. More aggressively, China continues to advance outrageous jurisdictional claims over almost the entirety of the South China Sea, where it continues its island-building activities, as well as engaging in provocative actions against Japan in the East China Sea,” writes Patrick.

    And as for the US:

    “The United States, for its part, is a weary titan, no longer willing to bear the burdens of global leadership, either economically or geopolitically.

    Trump treats alliances as a protection racket, and the world economy as an arena of zero-sum competition. The result is a fraying liberal international order without a champion willing to invest in the system itself.

    One can agree with both authors’ assessments of the changed behavior of one sector of the US establishment, but this is about more than just Donald Trump (who is so unpredictable that he has staffed his own team with a member of the very swamp he was preparing to drain) and North American populism. One needs to look much deeper.

    In his book, Nation of Devils:  Democratic Leadership and the Problem of Obedience, Stein Ringen, a Norwegian statesman with a history of service in international institutions, notes:

    “Today, American democratic exceptionalism is defined by a system that is dysfunctional in all the conditions that are needed for settlement and loyalty…

    Capitalism has collapsed into crisis in an orgy of deregulation. Money is transgressing into politics and undermining democracy itself.”

    And, quoting his colleague Archon Fung from the Harvard Kennedy School, “American politics is no longer characterized by the rule of the median voter, if it ever was. Instead, in contemporary America the median capitalist rules as both the Democratic and Republican parties adjust their policies to attract monied interests.” And finally Mr. Ringen adds, “American politicians are aware of having sunk into a murky bog of moral corruption but are trapped.”

    Stein Ringen

    Trump merely reflects the dysfunctionality and internal contradictions of American politics. He is the American Gorbachev, who kicked off perestroika at the wrong time. Although it must be conceded that if Hillary Clinton had become president, the US collapse would have been far more painful, particularly for the citizens of that country. We would have seen yet more calamitous reforms, a swelling influx of migrants, a further decline in the nation’s manufacturing base, and the incitement of new conflicts. Trump is trying to keep the body of US national policy somewhat alive through hospice care, but what’s really needed is a major restructuring, including far-reaching political reforms that would allow the country’s citizens to feel that they can actually play a role in its destiny.

    These developments have spread to many countries in Europe, a continent that, due to its transatlantic involvement, was already vulnerable and susceptible to the current geopolitical turbulence. The emergence of which, by the way, was largely a consequence of that very policy of neoliberalism.

    Stein Ringen continues on that score:

    “Global financial services exercise monopolistic power over national policies, unchecked by any semblance of global political power. Trust is haemorrhaging. The European Union, the greatest ever experiment in super-national democracy, is imploding …”

    It is interesting that panic has seized Western Europe and the US — the home of transatlanticism, although different versions of this recipe for liberalism have been employed in other regions — suffice it to recall the experience of Singapore or Brazil. But they don’t seem as panicked there as in the West. Probably this is because the Western model of neoliberalism does not provide any real freedom of commerce, speech, or political activity, but rather imposes a regime of submission within a clearly defined framework. Therefore, the destruction of the current system entails the loss of all those dividends previously enjoyed by the liberal political elites of the West that were obtained by speculating in the stock market, from the mechanisms of international foreign-exchange payments (the dollar system), and through the instruments of supranational organizations (the UN, WTO, and World Bank). And, of course, there are the fundamental differences in the cultural varieties of societies.

    In his book The Hidden God, Lucien Goldmann draws some interesting conclusions, suggesting that the foundations of Western culture have rationalistic and tragic origins, and that a society immersed in these concepts that have “abolish[ed] both God and the community … [soon sees] … the disappearance of any external norm which might guide the individual in his life and actions.” And because by its very nature liberalism must carry on, in its mechanical fashion, “liberating” the individual from any form of structure (social classes, the Church, family, society, and gender, ultimately liberating man from his very self), in the absence of any standards of deterrence, it is quite logical that the Western world was destined to eventually find itself in crisis. And the surge of populist movements, protectionist measures, and conservative policies of which Haass and other liberal globalists speak are nothing more than examples of those nations’ instinct for self-preservation. One need not concoct conspiracy theories about Russia or Putin interfering in the US election (which Donald Trump has also denied, noting only that support was seen for Hillary Clinton, and it is entirely true that a portion of her financial backing did come from Russia). The baseline political decisions being made in the West are in step with the current crisis that is evident on so many levels. It’s just that, like always, the Western elites need their ritual whipping boy(although it would be more accurate to call it a human sacrifice). This geopolitical shake-up began in the West as a result of the implicit nature of the very project of the West itself.

    But since alternative development scenarios exist, the current system is eroding away. And other political projects are starting to fill the resultant ideological void — in both form as well as content.

    Thus it’s fairly likely that the current crisis of liberalism will definitively bury the unipolar Western system of hegemony.

    And the budding movements of populism and regional protectionism can serve as the basis for a new, multipolar world order.

  • Visualizing The Relationship Between Money & Happiness

    Can money buy you happiness?

    It’s a longstanding question that, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, has many different answers, depending on who you ask.

    Today’s chart approaches this fundamental question from a data-driven perspective, and it provides one potential solution: money does buy some happiness, but only to a limited extent.

    MONEY AND HAPPINESS

    First, a thinking exercise.

    Let’s say you have two hypothetical people: one of them is named Beff Jezos and he’s a billionaire, and the other is named Jill Smith and she has a more average net worth. Who do you think would be happiest if their wealth was instantly doubled?

    Beff might be happy that he’s got more in the bank, but materially his life is unlikely to change much – after all, he’s a billionaire. On the flipside, Jill also has more in the bank and is likely able to use those additional resources to provide better opportunities for her family, get out of debt, or improve her work-life balance.

    These resources translate to real changes for Jill, potentially increasing her level of satisfaction with life.

    Just like these hypotheticals, the data tells a similar story when we look at countries.

    THE DATA-DRIVEN APPROACH

    Today’s chart looks at the relationship between GDP per capita (PPP) and the self-reported levels of happiness of each country. Sources for data are the World Bank and the World Happiness Report 2017.

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

    According to the numbers, the relationship between money and happiness is strong early on for countries. Then later, when material elements of Maslow’s hierarchy are met, the relationship gets harder to predict.

    In general, this means that as a country’s wealth increases from $10k to $20k per person, it will likely slide up the happiness scale as well. For a double from $30k to $60k, the relationship still holds – but it tends to have far more variance. This variance is where things get interesting.

    OUTLIER REGIONS

    Some of the most obvious outliers can be found in Latin America and the Middle East:

    In Latin America, people self-report that they are more satisfied than the trend between money and happiness would predict.

    Costa Rica stands out in particular here, with a GDP per capita of $15,400 and a 7.14 rating on the Cantril Ladder (which is a measure of happiness). Whether it’s the country’s rugged coastlines or the local culture that does the trick, Costa Rica has higher happiness ratings than the U.S., Belgium, or Germany – all countries with far higher levels of wealth.

    In the Middle East, the situation is mostly reversed. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey, and the U.A.E. are all on the other side of the trend line.

    OUTLIER COUNTRIES

    Within regions, there is even plenty of variance.

    We just mentioned the Middle East as a place where the wealth-happiness continuum doesn’t seem to hold up as well as it does in other places in the world.

    Interestingly, in Qatar, which is actually the wealthiest country in the world on a per capita basis ($127k), things are even more out of whack. Qatar only scores a 6.37 on the Cantril Ladder, making it a big exception even within the context of the already-outlying Middle East.

    Nearby Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., and Oman are all poorer than Qatar per capita, yet they are happier places. Oman rates a 6.85 on the satisfaction scale, with less than one-third the wealth per capita of Qatar.

    There are other outlier jurisdictions on the list as well: Thailand, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan are all significantly happier than the trend line (or their regional location) would project. Meanwhile, places like Hong Kong, Ireland, Singapore, and Luxembourg are less happy than wealth would predict.

  • What Happens When Your Money Is Worthless? Living With A Devalued Currency

    Authored by J.G.Martinez via Daisy Luther’s Organic Prepper blog,

    This is one of the most important and valued articles to help you prepare. I think it could be useful, based on our experience with the economic collapse and its effects on the currency. Let me tell you what life is really like when your country has a devalued currency that is nearly worthless.

    How do you buy things with devalued currency?

    These last few days I was asked by a fellow prepper overseas how our internal trading, with such a devalued currency, was going on. He asked if we used silver coins and bartering. I answered him that we use mostly US dollars and Euros for large transactions like vehicles, land, and housing, as far as I know. But the reason people are mostly selling is that they are desperate to get out of the country, and the wealth they have accumulated in previous years vanishes, with the bad deals they seem forced to accept.

    On the other hand, for day-to-day payments, bolivars are still used, but the prices go up (always UP by the way) depending on the black market dollar price. This is, though, a perfect evidence that this black market dollar is controlled by the government: look at the evolution price, and you will find it stable just before any important election, political campaigns and such.

    This is no surprise, those who benefit the most from this black market are those “companies” that aligned with the dollar river…and nowadays that stream is getting dry.

    Bad news for oil industry workers

    I received very bad news for those still working in the oil industry. So you can understand what is in store for the employees, I have to explain some background first.

    As part of our monthly payment, we received a savings incentive: the company retained the 12.5% of our salary in their accounts until the end of the month, and provided another 12.5% (it sounds like a lot but it is not). So, by the end of the month, we had in the corporative account an additional 25%.

    This was one of the main benefits for the oil state workers, and that helped to deal with the high performance demanded by the industry. This money, during better times, was kept there until the end of the year, for a new car, or starting a side business,  some fancy vacations, and stuff. However I never used it for traveling overseas, but invested in land, some prepping gear and equipment, assisting my parents and my wife’s family, and short family trips from time to time to the beach, or my folks’ place and such.

    We had something like your 704(k), that could be retrieved from the corporative accounts to our payroll bank account. This supposedly was for the retirement of the employees. The economy tanked so fast that this is worthless now.

    In one of the speeches a few days ago, the new “cryptocurrency” that is not such, the Petro, is going to substitute the national currency in the savings additions for the employees. My friends that still remain working there told that it was going to be an “option” at first.

    But we all know that this is just a way to IMPOSE the Petro on the people and inject it in the national economy despite the US sanctioning. Add to this the fact that most of the workers have NO idea about how to trade with it, nor how to exchange it for food as they use to do with the savings incentive. See my point?. They cut off the employees revenue and give them a worthless “crypto” that is useless.  How is going to buy food with that a 58-year-old secretary, for example, without other computer skills than using the social networks, the email and word processors? Even worse, they are FORCING the employees to accept a currency that is prohibited by the US financial authorities, they will be subject to the sanctioning automatically, completely unwilling to trade with that crypto.

    What concerns me the most, is that the presidential speech announced that everyone who wants to sell their properties will have to do it in cryptocurrency. (I have the audio file to prove it) This is nothing more than the imposition of the convertible Cuban peso. The hard currencies for the elites, the USDs and Euros, and the garbage currencies that they worked so hard to destroy, for the ignorant, starving masses.

    The dangers of alternative trade

    It is unlikely to see someone paying with silver coins, as far as I am aware. Bartering? Sure, but that is mostly in the rural communities. In the cities, bartering is not common. There are some brave initiatives to start paying employees with a dozen eggs a week, additional to the salary, as an incentive. I have seen it in the newspaper ads.

    This said, I have seen real bargains in collectible coins, some silver 1-ounce coins memorabilia of our independence, called “doblones” commonly found here, which means people have used them as wealth storage.

    The problem is that if you need to buy food with devaluated currency, perhaps you won´t get as much as you need. The currency will be valued by your seller. However, I am sure that if this becomes much more common, in the communities far away from the major cities some sort of local economy will soon be in place.

    Some nuts are trying to impose an alternative currency named “Elorza” (you may want to google search it) in a frontier town with the same name in the Apure state. This is, besides being illegal, is delusional. Years ago I bought a couple of doblones that were not cased; the following year I needed cash and wanted to sell them, at the silver spot price with a plus, but the buyers that contacted me did not want to pay the fair price, even though the silver was down about $2 under the original price I paid for. So I went to a jeweler and could sell them there.

    This means that they could be used as currency, but it depends on the culture of the society whether they will accept it or not. The total of those doblones is 20.000, so their value should increase every year. There are some other commemorative coins, but people are negotiating them in dollars because most of the people want to leave the country.

    There has been a place, in a major city, where you barter or exchange your goods for something else that you may need, but criminals made impossible to keep this kind of flea market in public places. I have received alarming reports from friends in the coastal fishing towns. The “colectivos” gang are now forcing the small fishermen to sell them their catch of the day at gunpoint. Ar-15s at the shoulder and all. Then they sell the fish to the people at 3 times the price they pay the fishermen.

    The national guard and police do not get involved. They just receive their fee: milk crates filled up with devalued bills. The source of this information is highly trusted, so I can write about this with confidence. It was a friend of mine, a former co-worker who was there and saw everything from his car. His parents live in this coastal city, called Cumana. He was going to buy but after that, he decided to go to a supermarket. The beach market where people used to buy fresh at lower prices is no longer secure.

    Other types of enterprise

    My father has been working over 25 years as a repairman for electrical farm equipment. Pumps, mill engines, alternators, generators, that kind of stuff. He has been lately charging his customers and receiving staples and supplies: corn flour, pasta, rice, even pork meat, poultry, cheese, eggs and such. When customers don’t have a way to pay, he has also made repairs and received as payment lots of old, worn, used spare parts that he  rebuilds whenever he finds some idle time. Once the parts are fully functional, he trades or sells them.

    He is a smart trader and always get an edge on his deals. What the customers see as junk he knows that someone else will need it once it is repaired, and he has a good network. Almost everyday someone knocks at his door looking for a spare part. He has adapted all kind of equipment, even upgrading with modern, efficient components, or simplifying some complex control systems. He often gets the parts he has removed as part of his payment, and sometimes the clients are so happy and satisfied with their equipment being up and working again that they just give the parts away to him. So he has always has a lot of spares in his small workshop at home, and a captive market for this. My brother has been learning from him, and he is slowly gaining the needed skills to keep the family business running.

    Suggestions for preparing for a time when your currency has no value

    I would suggest that small, close communities who are self-reliance oriented start working on a plan with some guidelines in the macro aspects of the economy.

    • Which coins would be accepted, based on their precious metal content?

    • What about electronic devices like thumbdrives, Sds, solar panels?

    • Think about everything that could have an intrinsic/bartering value.

    • YES, drinkable alcohol is one of the best currencies you could stockpile. Even better if you know how to produce it. I have known that our local beer factory in my former town is producing pumpkin and tapioca beer! Is that great or what?

    Accumulation of some cash is good, even if it is devalued currency. It saved my sorry backside to be able to leave at the best possible time. But without the needed knowledge, skills and intuition about where things were really going, it would have been much more difficult.

  • Easter Egg Costs Soar Near Record High

    With the long weekend upon us, whether you’re Christian or not, it seems the chocolatey-goodness of Easter appeals to almost all Americans (with 84% planning to celebrate this year), although only half of those celebrating are planning a church visit.

    Statista’s Felix Richter points out that the following infographic shows which holiday customs Americans are particularly fond of, what gifts they plan to give and what it is they consider most important about Easter.

    Infographic: Easter in the United States 2018 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    However, the cost of Easter is soaring

    Egg prices in the U.S. have surged close to a record high, just in time for Easter when demand normally rises.

    As Bloomberg reports, the wholesale cost of a dozen eggs in the Midwest has more than doubled in the five weeks through March 23 to $2.71, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show, the highest since a bird-flu outbreak in August 2015.

    A large laying-hen flock bodes well for ample egg supplies ahead, meaning despite higher prices, omelettes can likely stay on the menu.

  • Judge Rules California Starbucks Must Have Cancer Warnings On Their Coffee

    In what is only the latest outrageous ruling by a California judge so far this year, Starbucks and a handful of other coffee chains lost a yearslong legal battle against a consumer advocacy group trying to force coffee companies to attach cancer warnings to their packaging, according to Reuters

    The Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT) sued 90 coffee retailers on the grounds they were in violation of a state law requiring companies to warn consumers about potentially cancerous chemicals in their products. Several defendants settled before the final decision and agreed to post the signage and pay millions in fines.

    Coffee

    A chemical called acrylamide, which is one of the byproducts of roasting coffee beans, is present in brewed coffee and is listed as a potential carcinogen. CERT’s lawsuit was filed back in 2010.

    Per Reuters, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle ruled in a decision dated Wednesday that the defendants in the lawsuit had failed to prove that coffee isn’t a carcinogen.

    Of course, Starbucks’ lawyers aren’t the only ones having difficulty proving this.

    Research shows that coffee can lower the incidence of diabetes and liver disease – and even prolong life. The World Health Organization removed coffee from its “possible carcinogen” list in 2016.

    One professional researcher contacted by CBS said there’s not enough evidence, in his opinion, to warrant such a warning label on coffee. Coffee companies have said removing acrylamide from brewed coffee would make it implausibly expensive and difficult to prepare in stores.

    Others have said that if the potato chip industry was able to remove acrylamide from its product (which it did after being sued by CERT), Big Coffee could also accomplish it.

    But regardless of whether a warning is truly warranted, many California coffee shops already hang warnings advising customers about the dangers of acrylamide.

    But what’s worse for companies like Starbucks is that if the industry loses the inevitable appeal (companies have already said they’re “considering it”), the judge could impose a stiff civil penalty. By law, it could be as high as $2,500 per person exposed and per incident over the span of eight years. That could be an astronomical figure in California, the most populous state in the US, with 40 million residents.

    If the ruling does stand, coffee companies might decide it’s easier and cheaper to print warnings on all of their packaging – rather than producing separate packaging just for California.

    So once again, the impact of a California judge’s ruling will be felt across the entire country.

  • Xi Jinping And Kim Jong-Un: Make Korea United Again!

    Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Kim Jong-un’s visit reveals much about the tactics that will be used in the negotiations between the Korean leader and the American president; it also consolidates a historical relationship between Pyongyang and Beijing.

    The recent meeting in Beijing between the two supreme leaders of DPRK and China has captured global attention. The summit remained secret throughout its duration, revealed by the Chinese leader only when the visit had ended and the Korean leader was on his way back home. Rumours of the encounter continued to be denied by the Chinese foreign minister right up to Tuesday. The denials had a lot to do with the fact that a positive outcome for the meeting, this being the first one, could not be guaranteed. The final statements, the relaxed atmosphere, the many images displaying mutual smiles and acknowledgement reveal that the two leaders of the Chinese and Korean Communist parties are on the same page. Despite wishful thinking from the US, which interpreted the lack of meetings in previous years as a change in Chinese attitudes towards North Korea, the meeting highlighted positive impressions by Xi Jinping about the developments on the peninsula as well as confirmed the strategic thinking of Kim Jong-un.

    Kim Jong-Un’s strategy deserves particular attention. The ability to deter aggression from the United States and South Korea existed well before Pyongyang’s development of a nuclear deterrent, thanks to the enormous number of artillery guns it has directed towards Seoul. A possible conflict would have caused millions of deaths, destroyed the American forces on the peninsula (the American bases would have been the first to be eliminated, really only being there to serve as a tripwire), and upset the alliance with Seoul, which would have borne an unacceptable toll. Kim Jong-un and his father had already secured a powerful enough deterrent to ward off aggression against their country. The strategy behind developing nuclear weapons becomes more clear following the just-concluded meeting with Xi Jinping.

    Kim Jong-un’s willingness to meet Donald Trump in bilateral talks, and the possibility that Pyongyang will give up its nuclear arsenal, stand out. The meeting with Xi Jinping in all likelihood focused on the demands to be made to Trump: the removal of the North American presence in the south of the country is something on which China and DPRK are in strong agreement. The desired outcome for Beijing and Pyongyang (but also for Moscow) would see Washington remove its forces from South Korea in exchange for opening up North Korea’s sites to international inspections. China and Russia would be happy to see the US threat to their nuclear deterrence removed (even if, with the latest hypersonic weapons revealed by Putin, the problem does not seem to arise). This would also bring great advantages to Seoul, which could embark on a rapprochement with the North, starting with a possible reunification of the peninsula; and under the economic and energetic aegis of Russia and China, the peninsula could be included in the One Belt One Road (OBOR), as well as as benefitting from Moscow’s gas.

    Of course this scenario clashes with the recent appointments of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to the top of the American administration, confirmed by the threat of dissolving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached with Iran, undoing a deal reached through the efforts of multiple countries. The consequences would be significant, with the United State coming across as an unreliable state in international relations.

    This aspect for Pyongyang, Beijing, Moscow and even Seoul counts up to a certain point. The extraordinary diplomatic message that Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping have sent to allies and adversaries alike is that to allow for peace and the possibility of reunification for the Korean peninsula, Kim is apparently willing to renounce his nuclear weapons, his most important deterrent. But interestingly, North Korea has always been able to rely on its formidable conventional deterrent to guarantee its security anyway. For the survival of Kim and his circle, thousands upon thousands of artillery pieces aimed at Seoul are enough to keep any potential aggressor at bay. Another obvious consideration is that any use by Kim of his nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies would result in the total annihilation of the DPRK. So the question remains: if North Korea has always guaranteed its survival through its conventional deterrence, why has it developed a nuclear deterrent as well on top of this? The most logical answer is so as to bring the United States to the negotiating table.

    Pyongyang’s stroke of diplomatic and strategic genius lies in getting the United States to abandon the Korean peninsula in exchange for North Korea renouncing its nuclear arsenal. This hypothesis puts Kim Jong-un on the positive side of the negotiations, coming across as a reasonable and serious negotiating partner willing to find a way to guarantee peace on the whole peninsula. If Kim Jong-un is willing to give up what apparently, until yesterday, seemed impossible in the interests of reaching an agreement to ensure the survival of the two Koreas, then Pyongyang is presenting itself as Seoul’s guarantor of peace. The message Moon Jae-in could receive from the negotiations is that an “enemy” like North Korea is willing to give up its most significant weapon, while the Americans march in with the likes of Bolton and Pompeo, ready to slam their fists on the negotiating table by refusing to make any concessions.

    While Kim Jong-un has every intention of placing any blame for a failure of negotiations on the American side, and seems to have all the reasons ready in place to do so, the meeting between Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping seems aimed at laying the groundwork to break the alliance between Seoul and Washington. We can already imagine the scene, with Pyongyang ready to renounce its nuclear weapons, Seoul ready to enter into dialogue about the reunification of the country, China and Russia happy with the denuclearization of the North, and above all, the elimination of the prospects of a terrible war on the peninsula. In this climate, Washington would be left completely isolated in refusing to entertain any prospect of abandoning the peninsula. Thanks to its less-than-perfect relations with its European allies, and its intention to annul the Iranian JCPOA, Washington would leave itself looking like it is neither able to keep its promises nor willing to pursue any credible diplomatic path.

    The reality is that an overall agreement between North Korea and the United States is practically impossible for one fundamental reason: the United States uses the excuse of having to protect South Korea to maintain a permanent presence on the peninsula for the purposes of containing China and Russia, both through missile defense and by maintaining a military presence near their borders. For this reason, while Moscow and Beijing have multiple reasons for seeking an agreement between Pyongyang and Washington, both are aware that the US has no intentions of abandoning its presence in South Korea. The meeting between Kim Jong-un and Trump is a well-designed trap prepared by Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang, maybe over many months or even years. The most realistic objectives are to further isolate Washington in the region, to bring Beijing and Seoul closer together, and to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington. Moscow would use the failure of these negotiations to earn more leverage with its European partners, all eager to see a solution to the Korean crisis. Furthermore, Moscow could increase its opportunity to enter the energy market in South Korea as a result of Seoul diversifying its energy sources. Beijing has every intention of avoiding a war on the peninsula, which would be disastrous in many respects, not only humanitarian but also in the possibility of Washington camping on China’s border as a result of destroying the DPRK.

    South Korea’s Moon Jae-in looks on anxiously, ready to reach an agreement with the North. The mastery of Sino-Korean diplomacy has created a win-win situation for Pyongyang, with Washington’s eventual failure in the negotiations having negative reverberations with her allies in region. This is probably the reason why many in the US administration greeted Trump’s decision to accept talks with Kim negatively.

    Accepting to engage in talks signals a preparedness to negotiate. But as we can anticipate, the unwillingness of the Americans to accede to North Korean demands to abandon the peninsula doom the talks. At the same time, Pyongyang’s offer to give up its nuclear weapons will leave Washington bearing responsibility for the failure of the talks if there is no commensurable response. For this reason, Trump has ingeniously decided to bring in two warmongers like Pompeo and Bolton, intending to scare Kim into a negotiating position more favorable to Washington, a strategy he intends to also pursue in relation to Iran.

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    The truth is that American diplomacy has no room for maneuver with Korea; and since war is unthinkable, it is not even a real threat. This leaves Trump with a lot of bluster and a bunch of snarling hawks in tow, but with Pyongyang and Beijing left holding the aces, as will become clear in the coming weeks when all the cards are laid on the negotiating table.

  • Einhorn Steamrolled: Greenlight Plunges 14% YTD Despite Tech Wreck

    For much of 2017, hedge funds – most of which again underperformed both their benchmark and the broader market – complained that they were not generating alpha for one reason: there was no volatility. Well, they got their wish in spades last month when after months of record low, single-digit VIX, equity vol exploded resulting in a 3.9% slide in the S&P 500 and as 10-year yields backing up.

    And so with volatility spiking, and what every commentator saying it was a “stockpicker’s market” hedge funds surely had a blockbuster month, right?

    Well, no, quite the opposite in fact: according to the Bloomberg Hedge Fund database, in February hedge funds posted an overall drop of 2.19%, wiping out all of January’s gains, and leaving them flat for the year. Yes, somehow the month that all hedge funds were waiting for lead to widescale losses and last month ended up being the worst month for hedge funds since January 2016, when they slumped 2.57%.

    Furthermore, as we noted two weeks ago, when looking at the breakdown of specific names at the top and bottom, one stood out: David Einhorn’s Greenlight was down 11.86% as of Feb. 28, making it the worst performing hedge fund in the entire HSBC Universe.

    We also flagged another problem: back on March 19 we noted that if the recent tech selloff accelerates, it would be a hedge fund bloodbath, because as we showed then, virtually every hedge fund is long tech names, with 4 of the 5 most widely owned names Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

    We also hinted that such a tech wreck may actually be beneficial to Einhorn, who famously has a big tech-heavy “bubble basket” and which has – until recently – crushed his performance.

    Well, we were right about one thing: as of Friday, the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index had dropped to the lowest level in 2018, down 1.2% YTD, and was back to levels last seen in October 2017.

    We were, however, wrong about the ongoing tech rout helping Greenlight, because according to Bloomberg, Einhorn’s main hedge fund fell another 1.9% in March, extending its loss this year to 14%.

    Superficially, this is not that bad – in fact, one can say that Greenlight beat his benchmark as it outperformed the S&P’s 2.5% March drop. That will hardly enthuse Greenlight’s long-suffering LPs who have been patiently waiting for Einhorn to have another home run, and which failed to happen despite last week’s tech bust. In other words, David will be sending another letter to his clients explaining why this all “must be frustrating to you.”

    Some more details from Bloomberg:

    Einhorn’s fund added to its losses despite a selloff in several technology companies at the end of March, including Amazon.com Inc. and Netflix Inc. The money manager has been shorting a group of technology stocks, including those companies, which he’s described as a “bubble basket,” though Friday’s letter didn’t list his current investment positions.

    In late February, Einhorn said on a conference call  for his Greenlight Capital Re, that his hedge fund was experiencing its worst underperformance ever, as it suffered a 12% decline in the first two months of the year.

    Greenlight has posted lackluster returns in recent years as markets, especially for growth stocks, have risen while the hedge fund has stuck to its value-investing strategy.

    Since then, unfortunately it has gone from bad to worse for the poker afficionado who remains dead last in the YTD HSBC rankings and who will soon face strong pressure from LPs to come up with a hail mary if the “bubble basket” was indeed a dud.

  • New Satellite Imagery Shows Shocking Yemen Devastation As Saudi Crown Prince Tours US

    Saudi Arabia and other oil rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) allied states like the UAE have long managed to escape the scrutiny of media and international human rights bodies thanks to their deep pockets and security relationship with the West. Their collective oil, weapons, and infrastructure investment interdependency with Britain and the US have generally translated into Western governments, media, and human rights organizations toeing the party line on the gulf sheikhdoms, content to (with a few sporadic exceptions) uncritically present them as some kind of “reform-minded” terror-fighting benevolent monarchies looking out for democratic interests and championing human rights.

    This is currently being demonstrated more than ever during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) extensive and ongoing tour of the United States after a visit to the UK earlier this month. The kingdom’s heir apparent landed in Washington nearly two weeks ago and met with Trump and other high US officials before embarking on a multi-city tour across the United States.

    Last Tuesday MBS met with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Kissinger, Senator Chuck Schumer, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres during a stop in New York City.  On Friday, he also met with the CEOs of Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan, James Gorman and Jamie Dimon.

    Jamie Dimon and MbS

    He is scheduled to stop in Seattle and then California over the weekend, where he plans to strengthen ties with tech companies while meeting with Northwest business leaders.

    Not unexpectedly, mainstream media and politicians have fawned over the 32-year old prince’s visit. Americans can even find a slick, nearly 100-page, ad-free magazine at their local supermarket newsstand which is entirely devoted to praising MBS and his “New Kingdom” (in the words of the magazine’s title), produced by the owner of the National Enquirer – American Media Inc.

    Image source: The Daily Beast

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    The magazine of course has conveniently left out news of Saudi Arabia’s vicious 3-year long scorched earth bombing campaign over Yemen, which has left millions of Yemeni civilians displaced since 2015, and according to conservative UN estimates from early this year, has killed over 5,000 civilian noncombatants. 

    However, yet more hard empirical proof has emerged demonstrating that MBS and his allies in the West are decimating entire cities and civilian infrastructure in already deeply impoverished Yemen in their fight against Houthi rebels. 

    France 24 recently produced a graphic, based on satellite imagery captured through the opening two years of the war, showing just how devastating the Saudi coalition aerial campaign has been in Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa – which had a population approaching 2 million people before the war, and is the country’s largest city. 

    According to France 24:

    Satellite radar data from the European Space Agency shows the extent of Sanaa’s destruction. The capital of Yemen, part of which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is in the grip of the war that has ravaged the country for three years.

    Satellite image analysis shows the shocking extent of Sanaa destruction. Source: MASAE Analytics via France 24. 

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    The France 24 report continues:

    SAR satellite data from the European Space Agency (ESA), compiled and analyzed by Masae Analytics, a privately held company specializing in data collection and analysis, measures the extent of destruction in the capital between February-March 2015 and May 2017…

    “The extent of the destruction in Sanaa is quite considerable, since the whole city is affected, said Emmanuel de Dinechin, associate director of Masae Analytics, interviewed by France 24. There are visible areas on the map that were targeted from the beginnin, and which were pounded fairly frequently during the period of analysis.”

    The US itself has been an integral part of the coalition (also including Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, Egypt, Sudan, and with the UK as a huge supplier of weapons) fighting Shia Houthi rebels, which overran the Yemen’s north in 2014.

    Saudi airstrikes on the impoverished country have involved the assistance of US intelligence and use of American military hardware. Cholera has also made a comeback amidst the appalling war-time conditions, and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals have been bombed by the Saudis.

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    The war in Yemen has been drastically under-reported in US media, which tends to focus almost exclusively on human rights in places like Russia or Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is consistently portrayed as little more than a homicidal maniac bent on massacring his own civilian population.

    But as we reported last summer, the United Nations is in possession of a secret report which details a litany of horrific war crimes on the part of the coalition, including the bombing of dozens of schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure. 

    The leaked 41-page draft UN document, was summarized at the time by Foreign Policy:

    “The killing and maiming of children remained the most prevalent violation” of children’s rights in Yemen, according to the 41-page draft report obtained by Foreign Policy.

    The chief author of the confidential draft report, Virginia Gamba, the U.N. chief’s special representative for children abused in war time, informed top U.N. officials Monday, that she intends to recommend the Saudi-led coalition be added to a list a countries and entities that kill and maim children, according to a well-placed source.

    Early in the war the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review produced a short study which attempted to explain, according to its title, Why almost no one’s covering the war in Yemen. Other analysts have since criticized the media and political establishment’s tendency to exaggerate Iran’s presence in Yemen and further willingness to ignore or downplay the clear war crimes of US client regimes in the gulf: while Iran-aligned states and militias are framed as the region’s terrorizers, the Saudi-aligned coalition’s motives are constantly cast as praise-worthy and noble.

    Meanwhile, the Pentagon this week reiterated its official (Orwellian) line that the US military’s deep level of assistance to the Saudi bombing campaign is actually geared toward reducing civilian harm. As Al-Monitor reports: “Speaking to reporters at the Defense Department on the heels of a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week, Mattis said a contingent of US advisers deployed to help with intelligence sharing are engaged in a ‘dynamic’ role to help ensure a reduction in civilian harm.”

    But Al Monitor also notes that civilian deaths have continued unabated, while further quoting Mattis as saying, “This is the trigonometry level of warfare.”

    So the official Pentagon line on Yemen seems to be that as it directly assists the Saudis in dropping bombs on civilians, it is actually helping those very civilians. Interesting logic.

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Today’s News 30th March 2018

  • 20 More Questions That Journalists Should Be Asking About The Skripal Case

    Authored by Rob Slane via TheBlogMire.com,

    To my knowledge, none of the questions I wrote in my previous piece – 30 questions That Journalists Should be Asking About the Skripal Case – has been answered satisfactorily, at least not in the public domain.

    Yet despite the fact that these legitimate questions have not yet been answered, and many important facts surrounding the case are still unknown, the case has given rise to a serious international crisis, with the extraordinary expulsion of Russian diplomats across many EU countries and particularly the United States on March 26th.

    This is a moment to stop and pause.

    A man and his daughter were poisoned in the City of Salisbury on 4th March. Yet despite the fact that investigators do not yet appear to know how they were poisoned, when they were poisoned, or where they were poisoned, a number of Western nations have used the incident as a pretext for the co-ordinated expulsion of diplomats on a scale not witnessed even during the height of the Cold War. These are clearly very abnormal and very dangerous times.

    I pointed out in my previous piece that it is not my intention to advance some sort of conspiracy theory on this blog. It remains the case that I simply don’t have any holistic theory — “conspiracy” or otherwise — for who carried this out, and I continue to retain an open mind. But since the Government of my country has rushed to judgement without many of the facts of the case being established, and since this has led to the biggest deterioration in relations between nuclear-armed nations since the Cuban Missile Crisis, it seems to me that it is more important than ever to keep asking questions in the hope that answers will come.

    And so, for what it’s worth, here are 20 more important questions that I think that journalists ought to be asking regarding this case:

    1. Have the police yet identified any suspects in the case?

    2. If so, is there any evidence connecting them to the Russian Government?

    3. If not, how is it possible to determine culpability, as the British Government has done?

    4. In her statement to the House of Commons on 12th March 2018, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May stated the following:

    “It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. This is part of a group of nerve agents known as ‘Novichok’. Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down” [my emphasis added].

    In the judgement at the High Court on 22nd March on whether to allow blood samples to be taken from Sergei and Yulia Skripal for examination by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), evidence submitted by Porton Down to the court (Section 17 i) stated the following:

    “Blood samples from Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were analysed and the findings indicated exposure to a nerve agent or related compound. The samples tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent or closely related agent” [my emphasis added].

    So the Prime Minister said that Porton Down had positively identified the substance as a Novichok nerve agent. The statement from Porton Down says that their tests indicated that it was a Novichok agent or closely related agent. Are these two statements saying exactly the same thing?

    5. Why were the phrases “related compound” and “closely related agent” added to the statement given by Porton Down, and is this an indication that the scientists were not 100% sure that the substance was a “Novichok” nerve agent?

    6. Why were these phrases left out of the Prime Minister’s statement to the House of Commons?

    7. Why did the Prime Minister choose to use the word “Novichok” in her speech, rather than the wordFoliant, which is the actual name of the programme initiated by the Soviet Union when attempting to develop a new class of chemical weapons in the 1970s and 1980s?

    8. When asked in an interview with Deutsche Welle how scientists at Porton Down had found out so quickly that the nerve agent was of the “Novichok” class of chemical weapons, the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, was asked whether Porton Down possesses samples of it. Here is how he replied:

    “They do. And they were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And he said there’s no doubt” [My emphasis].

    If Mr Johnson’s statement is correct, and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down has samples of “Novichok” in its possession, where did they come from?

    9. Were they produced at Porton Down?

    10. How long have they had them?

    11. Why has the DSTL not registered possession of these substances with the OPCW, which it is legally obliged to do under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)?

    12. Does this admission by Mr Johnson not indicate that “Novichoks” can be made in any advanced chemical weapons facility, as indeed they were under the auspices of the OPCW in Iran in 2016?

    13. If so, how can the Government be sure that the substance used to poison Mr Skripal and his daughter was made in or produced by Russia?

    14. In her statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday 14th March, the British Prime Minister stated that there were only two plausible explanations for poisoning of Mr Skripal and his daughter:

    “Either this was a direct act by the Russian State against our country. Or conceivably, the Russian government could have lost control of a military-grade nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.”

    Other than the actual substance used, is there any hard evidence that led the Government to conclude these as being the only two plausible scenarios?

    15. On March 26th, a number of countries expelled Russian diplomats in an apparent response to the incident in Salisbury. Yet at this time, the OPCW had not yet investigated the case, nor analysed blood samples. Why was the clearly co-ordinated decision to expel diplomats taken before the OPCW’s investigation had concluded?

    16. Has this not put huge pressure on the OPCW to come up with “the right” conclusion?

    17. It is reckoned that the OPCW’s investigation into the substance used will take at least three weeks to complete, whereas it took Porton Down less than a week to analyse it. What accounts for this difference?

    18. Will the OPCW be using the samples of “Novichok” that Boris Johnson says are held at Porton Down to compare with the blood samples of Mr Skripal and his daughter?

    19. If not, on what basis will this comparison be made, since the first known synthesis of a “Novichok” was made by Iran in 2016?

    20. If the OPCW discovers that the substance is indeed a “Novichok”, will this be sufficient evidence with which to establish who carried out the attack on the Skripals or — given that other countries clearly have the capability to produce such substances — would more evidence be needed?

  • You Know The US Is Losing, We're Willing To Talk

    Authored by Tom Luongo,

    How do you know when a politician is lying?

    Their lips move and words come out.

    How do you know when the United States is at a disadvantage in a geopolitical quagmire?

    Our diplomats and Presidents want to ‘open up talks.’

    Multiple times in the past four years the U.S. has used negotiating ceasefires in Syria and Ukraine to rearm and regroup those we’re backing or get our opposition (the Syrian Arab Army, the Russians) to let their guard down and then attack within 24 hours.

    We’ve used the U.N. Security Council as a bludgeon to brazenly lie about on the ground facts in Syria to attempt to save our pet jihadists in places like Aleppo and now eastern Ghouta.

    And in each of these instances the Russian counterparts have documented the U.S.’s mendacity, patiently building up an international file of such incidents for future use.  As I’ve pointed out so many times, the Russians rightly feel we are “Not Agreement Capable” either from a short-term or long-term perspective.

    Winning Looks like Losing

    So, why do I think the U.S. is in a losing position right now, despite the pronouncements from President Trump and his most ardent supporters that he’s winning on everything?

    Because on the two most important issues of 2018, Korean denuclearization and strategic arms control, Trump is ready to sit down and talk.  And we have not been willing to do that on either of these issues at the Head of State level for most of this century, if not longer.

    I wrote recently that the Neoconservative cabal in D.C. is in its final push for war with Russia.  The catalyst, for me, was President Putin’s state of the union address on March 1st where he unveiled new weapons that conjured up images from the finale of Dr. Strangelove.

    I said, and still believe …

    The neocons are cornered.  All of their major pushes to destroy Russia and Iran and control central Asia are collapsing.  The EU is fast approaching a political crisis.  The U.K. is still a loyal subject but the White House has a cancer at its center, Donald Trump. The window has nearly closed on regime change in Russia.  In effect, it’s now or never.

    And the clock started the moment Putin unveiled these weapons.  It’s not that the military and intelligence services in the U.S. didn’t know about these systems.  They did.

    The embarrassing part is that for fifteen years (or more) the neocons, through their mouthpieces like John Bolton, have argued that war with Iran and Russia was the right course of action precisely because it was winnable at minimal cost to the U.S.

    They peddled the lie that the Russians couldn’t defend themselves against us while our military commanders, especially one James Mattis, argued otherwise and from a position of knowledge, not ideological fervor.

    In Korea it is the Koreans themselves that are pushing for reunification.  The election of President Moon Jae-in is a testament to that. And the rapidity with which the situation has gone from full throated U.S. push for war and regime change to, “Hey, let’s talk about this,” has been stunning.

    It means that some underlying fact has changed which precludes the U.S. from taking the neocon approach of further encirclement and destabilization of Russia and China.

    Trump is now willing, against the advice of his inner council, to talk with Vladimir Putin about arms control.  Why?  The Russians have weapons that we cannot and will not be able to counter for a decade, if not longer.

    We may have or will soon have weapon systems of parallel aggressive capabilities, but counter systems, like missile defense and electronic warfare, no.  In fact, the Russians are most likely ahead of us in both of those areas as well.

    So, now that the neocon push for war has been outed as the worst kind of malicious fever dream the only thing left to do is push this moment to its crisis point and trap Trump and Putin in a stand-off that most likely ends in tears.

    MOAR Escalation!

    Remember, not two weeks ago U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley failed to advance a total ceasefire in eastern Ghouta to save our ISIS/Al-Qaeda pet Salafist head-choppers there before they were wiped out.  The resolution went nowhere because you can only go to that well so many times before it doesn’t work anymore.

    The hysteria surrounding the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal is being used cynically to force Europe back into the fold of the U.S.’s ambitions to destroy Russia.

    Every time Haley goes to the security council with another worthless ceasefire she is building the case for Russia’s removal from the U.N. Security Council. Or, at least, that’s the thinking.  But, if that happens, then the U.N. is finished.

    Meanwhile, as I pointed out earlier, the Russians keep making the case that it is the U.S. that negotiates in bad faith, treats allies like lepers and abuses its status to push for ends orthogonal to their interests.

    And that brings me to Germany and the Nordstream 2 pipeline, Russia’s next weapon in its war with the U.S.  U.S. lawmakers are apoplectic that this pipeline is getting built.  Just this morning Germany issued the permits to allow its construction over the most strenuous objections from the U.S.

    More sanctions are being threatened, assets frozen.  More pressure will be placed on Denmark to not issue the permit.  But Nordstream can be re-routed around Danish waters if need be for a small cost.  So, with Germany’s permit Nordstream 2 is, for all practical intents, a go.

    Lastly, China’s yuan-denominated oil futures contract (which is convertible to gold, FYI) began trading on Sunday evening and the initial volume was impressive to say the least.  With China becoming the world’s largest importer of oil and the need for an oil futures benchmark in something other than light sweet crude, the challenge posed by this contract to the pricing of oil to the current petrodollar system is real.

    And this will play into any and all trade negotiations between Trump and Jinping over the next year.  The goal of this contract is not only to remove unnecessary friction from oil pricing but also to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to un-peg the Riyal from the U.S. dollar and accept Yuan as payment for the significant amount of oil they sell China.

    You will know in the next few months just how much this new weapon is forcing change by how willing the U.S. is willing to cut deals on trade.

    We’re approaching the crescendo of Trump’s ‘Crazy Ivan’ ploy to exert maximum leverage in a number of areas including foreign policy and trade.  I believe the neoconservatives are worried he will not cut acceptable deals in the end, because they know his hand is poor.

    Therefore, the big bluff he’s trying to execute will be called.  This is why they are pushing for war so badly.  And this is why he’s willing to go along with them, they are handing him leverage that he understands.

    Unfortunately, Putin doesn’t bluff.  And for a bully like Trump, losing is not an option.  Lying our way into war is a time-honored U.S. Presidential tradition.  Is this time different?  The world hopes so.

    *  *  *

    Support analysis  like this and more by signing up for my Patreon here.  Gain access to exclusive commentary like the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Investment Newsletter or the private community I maintain on Slack and the Private Blog.  

  • A Majority Of Americans No Longer Trust Facebook

    When it comes to obeying laws protecting personal information, Americans have less faith in Facebook than other tech companies.

    That’s according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, Facebook has been engulfed in a storm of criticism after it emerged that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested and exploited the personal information of 50 million of its users. The firm is trying to restore its badly tarnished image with CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently issuing a public apology. Judging by the findings of the poll, the social network certainly has serious work to do in order to restore confidence in its user base.

    Infographic: Facebook Trailing In Trust  | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The research found that only 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey U.S. privacy laws, far less than other tech companies known to gather user data.

    66 percent of respondents said they trust Amazon, 62 percent trust Google and 60 percent trust Microsoft. Apple and Yahoo! were also ahead of Facebook in the trust stakes. The evaporation of trust among its users wasn’t the only headache for Facebook in recent days.

    The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it is investigating the firm to determine if it had “failed” to protect the privacy of its users. According to former FTC officials, the social network could be penalized severely if it is found to have violated or failed to comply with the consent decree it agreed in 2011. Fines could amount to $40,000 per violation and theoretically, this could all add up to $2 trillion.

  • US Judge Allows 9/11 Lawsuits Against Saudi Arabia To Proceed

    Via Middle East Eye,

    A US judge in New York on Wednesday rejected Saudi Arabia’s request to dismiss lawsuits accusing it of helping in the 9/11 attacks.

    The cases are based on the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (Jasta), a 2016 law that provides an exemption to the legal principle of sovereign immunity, allowing families of the victims to take foreign governments to court.

    The families point to the fact that the majority of the hijackers were Saudi citizens, and claim that Saudi officials and institutions “aided and abetted” the attackers in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks, according to court documents.

    US District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan said the plaintiffs’ allegations “narrowly articulate a reasonable basis” for him to assert jurisdiction under Jasta.

    Still, Daniels dismissed claims against two Saudi banks and a Saudi construction company for allegedly providing material support to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to carry out the attacks, saying he lacked jurisdiction.

    The Saudi government has long denied involvement in the attacks in which hijacked planes crashed into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside Washington, DC and a Pennsylvania field. Almost 3,000 people died. 

    Riyadh and its Gulf allies had strongly opposed Jasta, which was initially vetoed by then-President Barack Obama. The US Senate overturned the veto by overwhelmingly adopting the legislation.

    Critics of the law say it is politically motivated and an infringement on the sovereignty of foreign nations.

    Wednesday’s ruling comes during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the US. President Donald Trump heaped praise on the Saudi royal during a meeting at the White House last week. 

    Jim Kreindler, a lawyer for about 850 victims’ families in the case against the Saudi government, said his clients are watching bin Salman’s visit to Washington carefully.

    He added that they are “aware of the many US-Saudi issues at play,” including the possible listing of Saudi state oil giant Aramco on the New York Stock Exchange, a potential nuclear deal and further arms sales.

    “It remains to be seen whether he is going to take a step in accepting Saudi accountability for 9/11,” Kreindler told MEE earlier this month.

    Kreindler told Reuters on Wednesday he is “delighted” that the judge dismissed Saudi Arabia’s motion.

    “We have been pressing to proceed with the case and conduct discovery from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, so that the full story can come to light, and expose the Saudi role in the 9/11 attacks,” he added.

  • In Nearly 70% Of US Counties, The Average Worker Can't Afford To Buy A Home

    Housing, as we’ve pointed out in the past, is perhaps the most reliable bellwether of widening economic inequality in the US. And in its latest quarterly report on housing affordability in the US, ATTOM discovered that median-priced homes aren’t affordable to average wage earners in an astounding 68% of US housing markets.

    In its report, the company calculated affordability by incorporating the amount of income needed to make monthly home payments – including mortgage payments, property tax payments and insurance – on a median-priced home, assuming a 3% down payment and a 28% maximum “front-end” debt-to-income ratio.

    That required income was then compared with the median home price.

    Attom

    The 304 counties where a median-priced home in the first quarter was not affordable for average wage earners included Los Angeles County, California; Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona; San Diego County, California; Orange County, California; and Miami-Dade County, Florida. Meanwhile, the 142 counties (32 percent of the 446 counties analyzed in the report) where a median-priced home in the first quarter was still affordable for average wage earners included Cook County (Chicago), Illinois; Harris County (Houston), Texas; Dallas County, Texas; Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan; and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.

    Attom

    Already, the “hottest” housing markets are seeing an exodus of working- and middle-class individuals who can no longer afford to pay the high rents – let along afford to set aside enough money for a down payment.

    Eight of the top 10 counties with the highest median home prices in Q1 2018 posted negative net migration in 2017: Kings County (Brooklyn), New York (25,484 net migration decrease); Santa Clara County (San Jose), California (5,559 net migration decrease); New York County (Manhattan), New York (3,762 net migration decrease); Orange County, California (3,750 net migration decrease); and San Mateo, Marin, Napa and Santa Cruz counties in Northern California.

    Furthermore, ATTOM’s data found that this problem is getting worse, not better, with 41% of housing markets less affordable than their historical average during the first quarter. That’s up from 35% the quarter before.

    Meanwhile, a staggering 73% of markets posted worsening affordability compared with a year ago, including Los Angeles, Cook County (home to Chicago), Maricopa County (Phoenix) and Kings County (Brooklyn).

    Three

    The counties where the average wage earner would need to spend the highest share of their income to buy a median-priced home are Baltimore, Bibb County (Macon, Georgia) and Wayne County (Detroit).

    Continuing with the trend of home prices rising more than twice as quickly as wages, home-price appreciation outpaced wage growth in 83% of housing markets.

    When Fed Chairman Jerome Powell warned last month that “valuations are still elevated across a range of asset classes” and that he fears “signs of rising non-financial leverage” it’s possible that he was still understating the problem.

  • Escobar: China Taking The Long Road To Solve The Petro-Yuan Puzzle

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    A number of pieces have to fall into place before the petrodollar moves into second place

    Few geoeconomic game-changers are more spectacular than yuan-denominated future crude oil contracts – especially when set up by the largest importer of crude on the planet.

    And yet Beijing’s media strategy seems to have consisted in substantially play down the official launch of the petro-yuan at the Shanghai International Energy Exchange.

    Still, some euphoria was in order. Brent Crude soared to $71 a barrel for the first time since 2015. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) reached the highest level in three years at $66.55 a barrel; then retreated to $65.53.

    A series of petro-yuan “firsts” include the first time overseas investors are able to access a Chinese commodity market. Significantly, US dollars will be accepted as deposit and for settlement. In the near future, a basket of currencies will also be accepted as deposit.

    Does the launch of the petro-yuan represent the ultimate deathblow to the petrodollar – and the birth of a completely new set of rules? Not so fast. That may take years, and depends on many variables, the most important of which will be China’s capacity to bend, tweak and ultimately rule the global oil market.

    As the yuan progressively reaches full consolidation in trade settlement, the petro-yuan threat to the US dollar, inscribed in a complex, long-term process, will disseminate the Holy Grail: crude oil futures contracts priced in yuan fully convertible into gold.

    That means China’s vast array of trade partners will be able to convert yuan into gold without having to keep funds in Chinese assets or turn them into US dollars. Exporters facing the wrath of Washington, such as Russia, Iran or Venezuela, may then avoid US sanctions by trading oil in yuan convertible to gold. Iran and Venezuela, for instance, would have no problems redirecting tankers to China in order to sell directly in the Chinese market – if that’s what it takes.

    How to bypass the US dollar

    In the short- to medium-term the petro-yuan will surely boost the appeal of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), especially when it comes to the House of Saud.

    It’s still unclear in what capacity Beijing will be part of the Aramco IPO, but that will be a decisive step towards the fateful historic moment when Beijing will tell – or compel – Riyadh to start accepting payment for oil in yuan.

    Only then the petrodollar may be at serious risk – along with the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

    I have stressed before how, at the 2017 BRICS summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin went no holds barred supporting the petro-yuan, specifically challenging the “unfairness” of the US dollar’s unipolar dominance.

    How to bypass the US dollar, as well as the petrodollar, has been discussed at BRICS summits for years now. Russia is now China’s largest crude oil supplier (1.32 million barrels a day last month, up 17.8% from a year earlier.) Moscow and Beijing have been forcefully bypassing the US dollar in bilateral trade. In October last year, China launched a payment system in both currencies – the yuan and the ruble. And that will apply to Russian oil bought by China.

    Still, the whole petrodollar edifice lies on OPEC – and the House of Saud– pricing oil in US dollars; as everyone needs greenbacks to buy oil, everyone needs to buy (spiraling) US debt. Beijing is set to break the system – as long as it takes.

    The petro-yuan as it stands does not provide access to Chinese oil markets. It starts as a great deal especially for Chinese companies who need to buy oil but would rather avoid the oscillations of foreign exchange. Nothing changes for the rest of the US dollar-dominated commodity planet – at least for now.

    The game will really start to change when other nations realize they have found a real credible alternative to the petrodollar, and switching to the yuan en masse will certainly spark a US dollar crisis.

    What the petro-yuan may be able to provoke in the short term is an acceleration of the next crises in treasuries and bond markets, which will inevitably spill out in the form of a crisis in global currency markets.

    That pan-Eurasian resource basket

    The game-changing aspect, for now, mostly has to do with the exquisite timing. Beijing has crafted an ultra-long-term plan and yet chose to launch the petro-yuan smack in the middle of a period of sharp deterioration in trade relations with Washington.

    The answer to the geoeconomic riddle is bound to be The Golden Moment. Eventually gold will rise to a level where Beijing – by then totally in control over physical gold markets – feels ready to set a conversion rate.

    The – Arabian – ‘petro’ side of the petrodollar equation should have been replaced long ago by a priceless, captured pan-Eurasian resource basket. That was what Dick Cheney dreamed of – centering his dreams on the energy wealth of Central Asia and Russia.

    That did not happen. What we have instead is shrieking, manic Russophobia – more like a graphic indication of how precarious is the position of Western banking elites. On top of it, with the petro-yuan, China deploys the key weapon, incorporated into BRI, capable of accelerating the end of the unipolar moment.

    Yet this is just the initial step in an ultra-high-stakes game. One should keep one’s eyes firmly focused on the interpolations between trade connectivity and technological breakthroughs. The petrodollar may be in danger but is far from finished.

  • Facebook Hires "Third-Party" Fact-Checkers To Stamp Out "Fake News"

    As Facebook scrambles to avoid a potentially devastating fine from the Federal Trade Commission, the company announced more measures on Thursday seemingly designed to appease Democratic lawmakers like Senator Mark Warner who are insisting that strenuous regulations are the only way to ensure that Facebook does everything within its power to prevent state actors from “sowing discord” by planting disingenuous advertisements and posts on the company’s platform.

    Facebook

    According to the Verge, Facebook is now partnering with “third-party fact checkers” to investigate photos and videos published on the company’s platform – while also attempting to filter out fraudulent accounts.

    This, of course, is only “one part of [Facebook’s] strategy for holding purveyors of “fake news” to account.

    Here’s how it works:

    • We use signals, including feedback from people on Facebook, to predict potentially false stories for fact-checkers to review.
    • When fact-checkers rate a story as false, we significantly reduce its distribution in News Feed — dropping future views on average by more than 80%.
    • We notify people who’ve shared the story in the past and warn people who try to share it going forward.
    • For those who still come across the story in their News Feed, we show more information from fact-checkers in a Related Articles unit.
    • We use the information from fact-checkers to train our machine learning model, so that we can catch more potentially false news stories and do so faster.

    The company announced its plans on a conference call with journalists organized to keep them apprised of its efforts to combat tampering in the 2018 midterms. The contents of the call were later summarized in a blog post. The group of executives who spoke on the call included Alex Stamos, the company’s outgoing chief information security officer.

    Stamos illustrated how the company is developing new methods for rooting out people making accounts under fake identities. It’s also cracking down on faked metrics used to make content appear more popular than it actually is.

    “It’s important to match the right approach to each of these challenges” Stamos said on the call, according to the Verge, as Stamos explained how Facebook was applying different strategies based on each individual market’s needs.

    Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s product manager for civic engagement who was also on the call, explained that Facebook is now proactively looking for foreign-based pages producing political content that the company believes to be inauthentic. If a user is found in violation, they will be manually removed from the platform. This applies to everything from suspicious advertisements to misleading memes.

    Now our work also includes a new investigative tool that we can deploy in the lead-up to elections. I’d love to tell you a little bit about how it works.

    Rather than wait for reports from our community, we now proactively look for potentially harmful types of election-related activity, such as Pages of foreign origin that are distributing inauthentic civic content. If we find any, we then send these suspicious accounts to be manually reviewed by our security team to see if they violate our Community Standards or our Terms of Service, said Chakrabarti.

    Facebook first piloted this tool in the Alabama special election, but has now deployed it to protect this year’s Italian election – and it will be used to “protect Facebook users” during this year’s midterms.

    The new rules build on the ad-transparency measures introduced by the company late last year, which purported to show Facebook users the name of the organization funding the content, as well as any other pertinent information.

    But those red flags were shown to entrench some people’s belief in false stories, leading Facebook to shift to showing Related Articles with perspectives from other reputable news outlets. As of yesterday, Facebook’s fact checking partners began reviewing suspicious photos and videos which can also spread false information. This could reduce the spread of false news image memes that live on Facebook and require no extra clicks to view, like doctored photos showing the Parkland school shooting survivors ripping up the constitution.

    The news comes on the heels of a revelation earlier today that the company is ending its partnership with “third party” data providers including TransUnion and Experian who supply advertisers with even more specific data gleaned from real-life activities and other parties that aren’t Facebook.

    But as CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before two Congressional committees early next month, the company hasn’t said anything about its partnerships with third-party “affiliate marketers” who help hucksters sell dubious health supplements and other fraudulent products on Facebook’s platform.

  • The Cart In Front Of The Horse: Are Gold Miners Actually Leading The Spot Price?

    The Wall Street Journal published an article this morning that could be putting the cart a bit in front of the horse, suggesting that poor performance in gold miners could drag the spot price of the commodity lower, despite the fact that gold has outperformed the S&P 500 year to date by a factor of 1.4% to -2.6%.

    The Journal suggests that with bond yields on the rise, investors are going to be more likely to allocate capital to treasuries instead of gold, reporting:

    Higher interest rates tend to buoy Treasury yields and make gold less attractive by comparison. The dollar has also been rebounding, which has cooled some optimism for gold bugs, analysts said. A stronger dollar makes commodities denominated in the currency more expensive for overseas buyers.

    Gold miners have underperformed despite a strong fourth-quarter earnings season and upbeat 2018 projections. One reason is that some of the companies still aren’t generating as much cash as miners of other metals such as copper, analysts said.

    What’s the journal doesn’t mention is the major difference between gold miners in the spot price of gold: namely the fact that miners are companies with staff, management, administrative expenses and other variables that have nothing to do with whether or not the spot price of gold is usually bid or not. The assertion that miners are going to lead the price of gold lower versus looking at miners within a potential positive light due to the fact that they could actually be argued to be “underperforming“ the spot price of gold due to this price divergence may leave some of us scratching our heads.

    The article goes on to note that several miners have actually exceeded their targets for this year due to the spot price of gold but that a key metric in free cash flow relative to market value continues to lag:

    In 2017, gold prices had their best year since 2010, allowing many miners to repair their balance sheets. Barrick Gold, the world’s largest producer, said it paid down $1.5 billion in debt, exceeding its target, while Newmont Mining Corp. reported an 8% rise in production from a year earlier.

    But the companies still haven’t caught up in free cash flow relative to market value, a commonly-used metric for evaluating performance, according to Citigroup research.

    It isn’t unreasonable to think that gold may still lead the price of these miners going forward and that this divergence is simply an aberration that may actually signal a buying opportunity versus coming in in a decline in the price of spot gold.

    No macroeconomic data has come more into focus over the last couple of months than the CPI number, as inflation continues to be the key metric watched by “economists“ as the bull market reaches its peak and stock market volatility has been undoubtedly on the rise.

    Given that gold is not only a traditional hedge against volatility and “the system”, but also a hedge against inflation itself, it is more likely that the Wall Street Journal has the cart in front of the horse in this case.

  • Mexican Drug Kingpin Smuggled Enough Fentanyl To "Kill Millions" In NYC

    An alleged Mexican drug kingpin and five of his accomplices have just been indicted for smuggling enough fentanyl from Mexico into New York City “to kill millions,” officials announced Tuesday.

    An undercover investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, NYC Special Narcotics Prosecutor Unit, and local law enforcement agencies discovered that San José del Cabo resident Francisco Quiroz-Zamora, 41, known as “Gordo,” or “Fatso,” was the primary source of large fentanyl shipments to the New York City region.

    In the first half of 2017, an undercover narcotics officer posed as a drug trafficker and successfully negotiated two large shipments of Mexican fentanyl from Quiroz-Zamora.

    Quiroz-Zamora was arrested on November 27 when he arrived via Amtrak to the city’s Pennsylvania Station “to personally collect payment for drug deals he unwittingly negotiated with an undercover officer,” said NBC News.

    “This investigation provides the American public with an inside view of a day in the life of a Sinaloa Cartel drug trafficker; including international travel, money pick-ups, and clandestine meetings,” Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent in Charge James Hunt said in a statement.

    “Quiroz-Zamora oversaw the delivery of multi-kilogram loads of fentanyl to New York, powerful enough to kill millions. The Strike Force and the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor acted quickly and efficiently to seize the toxic kilograms before hitting the streets and arresting all conspirators, including the Kingpin,” Hunt added.

    Quiroz-Zamora’s drug trafficking operations stemmed from San José del Cabo, a resort town plagued with cartel violence on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.

    NBC indicates Quiroz-Zamora was “charged with operating as a major trafficker, first-degree sale or a controlled substance and second-degree conspiracy.”

    Further, Quiroz-Zamora’s accomplices (Carlos Ramirez, Jesus Perez-Cabral, Johnny Beltrez, David Rodriguez and Richard Rodriguez) were charged with “second-degree conspiracy, criminal possession of controlled substances in the first and third degrees, criminal facilitation in the second degree, and criminal possession of a firearm,’ said NBC.

    Authorities told NBC that it was Quiroz-Zamora who “allegedly orchestrated two sales of fentanyl” to uncover agents in the first half of 2017.

    This led to the arrest of Carlos Ramirez and the largest ever fentanyl seizure in New York City when DEA special agents seized 44 pounds of the potent synthetic opioid at the Umbrella Hotel in the Bronx.

    Despite the operational setback of running a high-stakes drug trafficking business, Quiroz-Zamora negotiated another deal with undercover drug traffickers, which resulted in a tense police raid last August on a Manhattan condo — down the street from Trump Tower. The raid resulted in the arrest of Perez-Cabral, Beltrez, and Rodriguez.

    “Agents conducted a search and recovered two large ziplock bags containing powder, 1,100 individual dose glassine envelopes stamped with the brand name ‘UBER,’ a loaded .25-caliber Beretta pistol and $12,000 in cash,” authorities said in a statement.

    The arrests and indictments of the Mexican drug kingpin and five of his high-level colleagues was the result of a “long-term” investigation by a group of governmental agencies, including the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, NYC Special Narcotics Prosecutor Unit, and the New York City Police Department.

    “Fentanyl has been ravaging my county of the Bronx, killing people and shattering communities,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said.

    “Tracing the source to its foreign origins and indicting the kingpin will help stem the flow of this high-profit poison to our city. I am pleased to work with our local, state and federal partners to target these major suppliers,” he added.

    “In New York City and across the nation, fentanyl is causing untold tragedy as it pushes the number of overdose deaths ever higher. This indictment demonstrates our collaborative approach and commitment to tracking those at the top of the lethal supply chain and putting them out of business permanently,” Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan said.

    Citywide, the drug was responsible for 44 percent of all overdose deaths. Across the river, New Jersey noticed a five-fold explosion in fentanyl overdose deaths in the last two years.

    Drug overdoses killed more Americans in 2016 than the Vietnam War.

    While authorities in New York City have thwarted a Fentanyl bomb from detonating across the boroughs, America’s opioid crisis is far from over as the drug overdose mayhem explodes across the homeland. Rome is burning.

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Today’s News 29th March 2018

  • Venezuela Tries To Pay Russian Debt With Cryptocurrency

    Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

    If crisis-hit Venezuela was hoping to pay off its US$3.15-billion debt to Russia with its new cryptocurrency, those hopes have been shattered as the Russian Finance Ministry announces that it won’t be accepting digital coin.

    Venezuela will not be paying any part of its debt to Russia with its cryptocurrency, the head of the Russian Finance Ministry’s state debt department, Konstantin Vyshkovsky, has said.

    In November last year, Russia threw a life-line to Venezuela after the two countries signed a deal to restructure US$3.15 billion worth of Venezuelan debt owed to Moscow. Under the terms of the deal, Venezuela will be repaying the debt over the next ten years, of which the first six years include “minimal payments”.

    The following month, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced that his country would be issuing an oil-backed cryptocurrency, which it did, in February this year.

    Maduro’s propaganda machine is touting the digital coin as a ‘ground-breaking’ first-ever national crypto currency, the El Petro–backed by 5 billion barrels of oil reserves in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt.

    But most observers see this crypto issuance as a desperate attempt to skirt U.S. financial sanctions.

    Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump banned U.S. purchases, transactions, and dealings of any digital coin or token issued for or by the government of Venezuela.

    Last week, Time magazine reported that Russia secretly helped Venezuela in creating the Petro, with the purpose of undermining the power of U.S. sanctions, the magazine reported, citing sources familiar with the effort.

    Russia slammed the Time report as “fake news”, with Deputy Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Artyom Kozhin, saying that Russia and Venezuela had never worked together on the development of the Venezuelan cryptocurrency.

    Russia and China are the last holdouts that still finance Venezuela, which is digging deeper into the downward spiral of economic crisis, hyperinflation, and crumbling oil production. However, China is reportedly thinking of cutting off Venezuela from new loans. This would leave Russia as the only financial supporter of the Maduro regime, and if all it’s got is a crypto coin that no one really believes in to pay off debt, loans are likely to be plentiful.

  • Strange Things Happen to European Countries Resisting George Soros" Assault

    Authored by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Strange things happen in East and Central Europe that get little mention from media outlets.  Two heads of state, the PMs of Slovenia and Slovakia, resigned almost simultaneously.

    Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was a victim of the scandal over the murder of Jan Kuciak, a journalist who was investigating government corruption.  The PM had to step down amid mass street protests.

    Mr. Fico was known for his support of a stronger Visegrad Group. He opposed Brussels on many issues. It’s worth noting that he called for lifting sanctions and improving relations with Moscow. The PM was adamant that Russia was a reliable energy partner.  Is it a coincidence that he was forced to resign amid the anti-Russia campaign triggered by the Skripal case and other obviously concocted stories used as false pretexts for incessant attacks on Moscow? Wasn’t he a threat to the so-called unity of the EU against Russia? He definitely was.   

    The PM did not hide the fact that his decision was made under great pressure. The ouster was engineered by outside forces, including philanthropist billionaire George Soros. For instance, Slovak President Andrej Kiska had a private meeting with the billionaire in September, 2017. It was a one-on-one conversation. No Slovak diplomat was present there.

    According to Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák, “George Soros is a man who has had a major influence on the development in Eastern and Central Europe and beyond. That is a fact that cannot be questioned.” PM Viktor Orbán had this say about the event: “George Soros and his network are making use of every possible opportunity to overthrow governments that are resisting immigration.”

    Slovenian PM Miro Cerar was attacked by Soros for his opposition to the EU policy on immigration. George Soros did not hide the fact that he was an ardent opponent of Miro Cerar’s stance. “It is an obligation for Europe to receive migrants,” the US financier lectured Europeans.  Now the PM has to go, after the results of a referendum on a key economic project were annulled by the top court and the media attacks on his stance regarding asylum seekers intensified. With Cerar no longer at the helm, the opposition movement to Brussels’s dictatorship has been weakened.

    Who’s next?

    Probably Hungary, which has become a target for Soros’s attacks The American billionaire has invested more than $400 million into his native country since 1989.  He has also announced his intention to influence the Hungarian election campaign and has employed 2,000 people for that purpose. The government wants its “Stop Soros” bills to become laws.  No doubt Hungary will come under attack for opposing the financier’s network.

    Brussels will raise a hue and cry, criticizing the “undemocratic regime” ruling the country. The next parliamentary elections in Hungary will be held on April 8, 2018. It’ll be a tough fight to preserve independence while fending off attempts to impose US pressure through Soros-backed NGOs and educational institutions.  

    Soros’s activities are also being resisted in the Czech Republic. Czech President Milos Zeman has accused the groups affiliated with Soros of meddling in his nation’s internal affairs. The financier is urging the EU to lean on Poland and compel it to “preserve the rule of law.”

    Macedoniais also resisting the billionaire-inspired subversive activities that have an eye toward regime change. The “Soros network” has great influence on the European Parliament and other institutions. The scandalous list of Soros’s allies  includes 226 MEPs out of 751.  Every third member — just think about that! If that isn’t corruption then what is? The lawmakers being swayed from abroad dance to Soros’s tune. They do what they are told, which includes whipping up anti-Russia hysteria. 

    Moscow has its own history of dealing with the Soros network. In 2015, George Soros’s Open Society Institute was kicked out of that country as an “undesirable organization” that was established to boost US influence. 

    It would be really naïve to think that Soros acts on his own. It’s an open secret that the US government flagrantly meddles in other countries’ internal affairs using the billionaire as a vehicle. Europe is an American competitor that needs to be weakened. USAID and the Soros network often team up in pursuit of common objectives.  In March 2017, six US senators signed a letter asking the State Department to look into government funding of Soros-backed organizations. But those efforts went nowhere, Foggy Bottom is always on Soros’s side, whatever it is. 

    Many European countries are engaged in a fierce battle to protect their independence. The financier’s “empire” is chomping at the bit to conquer Europe by means of bribes and subversive NGOs.  These countries and Russia are resisting the same threat. Perhaps that’s why the sanctions against Russia are so unpopular among many East European politicians.

  • The Real Reason Why Stock Markets Will Continue To Crumble This Year

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    Public sentiment on the economy is generally influenced by to two false indicators – the national unemployment rate and stock markets. This is not to say the average person tracks either of these numbers very vigorously; they don’t. What they do is hear these numbers on the morning news, the radio news on their way to work (if they are employed) or they hear them on the evening news just before bed. If the jobless rate is low and the Dow is high, then all is right with the world, at least financially.

    When it comes to the economy, most people are lost.

    The average American, in particular, is not as oblivious to the world of political and social discourse as they are on economics. Whether on the left or the right of the political spectrum, most citizens know that lines are being drawn and ideological battles are accelerating into realms of the extreme.  Conservatives and the liberty activists that stand at the front line of the culture war understand quite well the threat of globalism and the “philosopher king” elitism of international financiers. They know that these criminals must eventually be dealt with if freedom and stability are to return to the world.

    There is a rather common disinformation tactic used to manipulate people within conservative circles that has made a resurgence lately in the wake of the Trump election win. It is the idea that Americans within the “working class” aren’t interested in “high-minded” debates over philosophical conflicts, such as the conflicts between individualism versus collectivism and globalism. There is also the notion that “real” Americans could not care less about the elitist culprits behind the political theater of the false left/right paradigm.

    This attitude is presented as a superior one. That is to say, disinformation agents play to people’s egos, suggesting that the working class should be focused on putting food on the table and money in their wallets and that the rest of this “intellectual nonsense” should be ignored as frivolous.

    I have seen this working-class cultism before. When I lived in Pittsburgh for a time, there were many people who adopted the image of the steel mining working man, even though steel mining was almost non-existent in the region. People were extremely proud of the idea that they came from a tradition of industrial production, and technical and intellectual pursuits were predominantly ignored in the hopes of perpetuating the mining town mystic. The problem was, all of these folks were wage slaves now in the midst of Pittsburgh’s garbage economy. There were too many people scrambling for too few low wage jobs and production was a thing of the distant past.

    And they were supposed to be proud of this?

    The working class hero meme is nonsense. It is not a real thing; not anymore. It is something that appeals to many of us conservatives in particular, and it is a subject that politicians use to lure us with a pied piper song of reconstruction and reformation promises that they never intend to keep.

    And, the idea that working Americans struggling to survive “do not care” about the bigger picture is a lie, perpetuated by disinformation peddlers trying to appeal to any misplaced sense of superiority. They want us all not only to remain ignorant, but to be prideful of that ignorance. They want us to look down our noses at anyone offering in-depth insight into why the world is becoming a harder place to live. In fact, they want us to revel in the struggle; to revel in self-flagellation and sing songs of how good we are at suffering and barely scraping by.

    I mention this within an economic article because I do not see this disinformation tactic being successful, at least not yet. What I do see are millions upon millions of Americans who want answers, and many of them are well aware that the root of the problems they face today comes from globalism and globalists. All that is left is for them to understand the causes of the economic disasters they will soon face, so that they can prepare more effectively to counter them and change their own fates for the better.

    The working man is smart enough to care about the bigger picture.  So, with that in mind…

    If you have not been tracking economic activity for the past several years then the frenetic movements of markets recently might have you a bit confused. I’ll summarize the “great stock market recovery” that many people have grown accustomed to in a single quote from former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas:

    “What the Fed did — and I was part of that group — is we front-loaded a tremendous market rally, starting in 2009.

    It’s sort of what I call the ‘reverse Whimpy factor’ — give me two hamburgers today for one tomorrow.”

    Fisher went on to hint at his very reserved view of the impending danger:

    “I was warning my colleagues, Don’t go wobbly if we have a 10 to 20 percent correction at some point… Everybody you talk to… has been warning that these markets are heavily priced.” [In reference to interest rate hikes]

    I want to break down the situation in the clearest terms possible so that there are no misconceptions here. The bottom line is this — the Federal Reserve through monetary stimulus packages and near zero interest rates engineered an artificial economic recovery from thin air.  But, just as they print money from thin air, everything the central banks create has fleeting value and will eventually crumble.

    The Fed not only pumped trillions of fiat dollars into banks and corporations, they also purchased over $4 trillion (officially) in various assets.  These purchases coincided with interest rates so low that loans through the Fed were essentially free for corporate borrowers. But what did corporations do with these loans?

    Well, they poured that cash into their OWN stocks, of course. They did this through something called “stock buybacks” which is basically a legal form of stock market manipulation. Companies purchase their own stocks and reduce the number of stocks circulating on the market, thereby elevating the value of the remaining stocks and pushing the Dow to new highs every year… until this year, that is.

    The Fed’s control of stock market prices is made perfectly clear in this chart, which shows the S&P 500 rising in exact tandem with the Fed’s balance sheet purchases:

    As I continually warned before the Fed pushed forward with balance sheet reductions, if stocks rallied in close relation to the rising balance sheet, then it only follows that stocks will crash as the balance sheet falls.  It appears as though this is exactly what is now happening.

    You see, there is a problem with this model of economic alchemy. It only lasts so long as the central banks perpetually increase the ability of nations and corporations to take on debt. Ultimately, even central banks do not have the power to facilitate debt forever. They have limitations. That said, they never intended to continue with this farce anyway.

    Giving the Federal Reserve the power to dictate the terms of the economic ‘recovery’ also gave them the power to dictate the terms of an economic collapse. And now with Donald Trump in office, an economic collapse can be achieved without the central bankers even getting any blame.

    Donald Trump’s trade war activities set in motion by numerous tariffs have now provided a convenient cover for the banking elites. I do not believe it is a coincidence that Trump announces new trade measures (or fires an economic adviser) every time the Federal Reserve raises interest rates and cuts its balance sheet.

    I also do not believe it is a coincidence that the Dow suffers a 1,200 to 1,500 point loss every time the Fed dumps more assets from its balance sheet. Recognize that the mainstream media barely mentions the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes and balance sheet cuts as being the cause of the renewed instability in stock markets. They blame Trump’s trade war rhetoric as the cause.

    Again, I want to make this clear — Trump’s tariffs have little or nothing to do with the falling stock market. What Trump’s tariff theater does do is act as a smokescreen to hide the Fed’s culpability in the crash to come.

    I warned of this distraction dynamic in January of this year in my article ‘Party While You Can – Central Bank Ready To Pop The ‘Everything’ Bubble‘.

    It is not just the Fed that is pulling the plug on stock market support. Central banks around the globe are tightening policy, raising interest rates and halting purchases of new assets. It is important to remember that the fiscal bull run that the central banks conjured up since the crash of 2008 cannot continue unless the central banks continue to expand debt through purchases and easy credit. They are now doing the reverse.

    And if you think the central bankers are somehow ignorant of what they are triggering here, then I suggest you read the new Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell’s thoughts in 2012 on the matter. He states unequivocally what will happen if the fed raises interest rates and dumps the balance sheet.

    Powell made these comments in 2012, yet in 2018 he is implementing the exact measures he warned about. The Fed is perfectly aware that it engineered a recovery and now it is perfectly aware that it is engineering a calamity, and Powell is as big a part of the banking cabal as Yellen or Bernanke ever were.

    A pattern appears to have developed in the past few months in terms of the ongoing decline in stocks. Every time the Fed cuts the balance sheet or raises interest rates stocks plunge by around 1,200-1,500 points within a few days. Then, there is a smaller rebound about a week later, which then fizzles out going into the next month as stocks return to a slower grinding downward trajectory. Then the cycle starts all over again.

    New monthly highs are being replaced with new monthly lows as stocks are being steam valved down with each fresh balance sheet cut.

    While stocks in the grand scheme of things are generally irrelevant, they still represent a psychological marker for the public. As go stocks, so goes the economic sentiment of the masses. It is an unfortunate thing, but also a true thing.

    I expect that as the balance sheet cuts increase in size, it will become more difficult for stock markets to produce meaningful rebounds. Which means the bankers will need even greater distractions from the Trump administration and other political assets to hide the true source of the economic breakdown. A trade war alone will probably not be enough. Some regional wars are likely in the making. As these events unfold, it is vital that as many people as possible are made aware of the real reason and the real criminals behind them. A time of reckoning is required, and a reckoning requires accountability.

    The banking elites hope to cause so much confusion and catastrophe that the masses will forget who was truly behind it all. We might not be able to stop the greater crash from taking place, but we can prepare accordingly, and we can educate others so that we can stop the culprits from fading back into the fog.

  • Wall Street Bonus Back To Record Highs, Dramatically Outpace Household Income

    Bonuses on Wall Street are up sharply!

    Profits in the securities industry rose in 2017 for the second consecutive year, with Statista’s Dyfed Loesche pointing out that the average bonus paid to industry employees in New York City jumped 17 percent to reach $184,220, according to the comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.

    He comes to the conclusion that tighter regulation of the financial markets since the crisis hasn’t stood in the way of trading, as New York Stock Exchange member firms’ profits totaled $24.5 billion in 2017, the highest level since 2010.

    Compared to the average U.S. household income this is quite some money, keeping in mind these are payments on top of the regular pay.

    Infographic: Wall Street Bonuses Outpace Household Income | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In 2016, the average Wall Street bonus stood at close to $158,000 dollars and thus three times as high as the median household income of a little more than $59,000. (The U.S. Census Bureau has not yet released official household figures for 2017). The average number of people living in an American household stands at 2.5.

  • 3 Recent Events That Could Send The US Hurtling Toward World War III

    Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

    Recently, the news has been all abuzz with teen activists who want to take away our guns but refuse to use clear backpacks, the Facebook privacy scandal, and how someone bit Beyonce in the face. But there are three recent events that aren’t getting much press which tell us it is entirely possible that we could be headed toward World War III at worst and toward an economic collapse at best.

    During the election, it really seemed as though Hillary Clinton as president would be a much more likely path to World War III. She even gloated of the actions she planned to take that would have led directly and immediately to war. Donald Trump as president seemed less likely to get us into a war with Russia, but it appears the tides may have turned back in that direction.

    #1) The Trade Tariffs

    We’re already at financial war with China due to punitive trade tariffs that our governments are instituting on one another. President Trump wants to rebalance global trade in America’s favor, and China isn’t going to go down without a fight. Here’s more information on the list of tariffs the US wants to charge for Chinese merchandise and the retaliatory list from China.

    The last time we were involved in a major trade war, the Great Depression happened, according to an economics expert for CNN.

    America’s last trade war exacerbated the Great Depression in the 1930s, when unemployment rose to 25%. Claiming it was protecting American jobs, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Act in 1930. The original bill was meant to protect farmers. But to build political support, many lawmakers asked for tariffs — or taxes — on all sorts of goods in exchange for their vote.

    Several nations, such as Canada, slapped steep tariffs — or taxes — on US goods shipped and sold abroad. For example, US exports of eggs to Canada fell to 7,900 in 1932 from 919,000 in 1929, according to Doug Irwin, a Dartmouth professor and former trade adviser to President Reagan.

    The result: US imports fell 40% in the two years after Smoot-Hawley. Banks shuttered. Unemployment shot up. Surely, there were a litany of factors at play. But economists widely agree Smoot-Hawley made the Great Depression much worse than otherwise. (source)

    And what happened at the end of the Great Depression? World War II happened, and this ended the unemployment and resulted in a spending frenzy that pumped up the economy. There’s always an increase in the GDP during wartime due to defense spending. But that is one hell of a bad way to fix the economy, don’t you think?

    #2) The PetroYuan

    As of Monday, March 27th, the US has lost petrodollar status. The petrodollar now has competition in the form of the petroyuan. What this means is that previously, the only way anyone in the world could buy oil was to use US dollars to do so. This kept the value of our currency high. But now, Russia and China are buying oil using the yuan. Others may soon follow because the United States has ticked off a majority of the planet in the past century.

    What does this mean for Americans? Inflation. Major inflation. If our dollar is worth less on the global scale, it means that anything we import is going to cost more.  If you want the super-detailed economic explanation, this article and video will provide the in-depth info you want on the history and potential collapse of the petrodollar.

    Many articles have been written about the possibility that the United States will go to war to protect the petrodollar status. This one is a good read. For a quick explanation, watch this video.

    #3) Kicking Out the Russian Diplomats

    We also kicked 60 Russian Diplomats out of the United States because Russia was accused of poisoning their own spy on British soil.

    Trump took the action after the US joined the United Kingdom in accusing Russia of attempting earlier this month to murder a former Russian double agent and his daughter using a nerve agent in the town of Salisbury, England. The action comes just 11 days after the Trump administration leveled the first sanctions against Russia for its interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

    “The United States takes this action in conjunction with our NATO allies and partners around the world in response to Russia’s use of a military-grade chemical weapon on the soil of the United Kingdom, the latest in its ongoing pattern of destabilizing activities around the world,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. (source)

    Russia, the world’s favorite scapegoat recently, denies responsibility for the poisoning.

    “It’s complete drivel, rubbish, nonsense that somebody in Russia would allow themselves to do such a thing ahead of elections and the World Cup,” Putin told supporters after winning a fourth term as president.

    “We have destroyed all chemical weapons,” he added, rejecting Britain’s claim that only Moscow could be behind the nerve agent attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. (source)

    As for the dozens of Russian diplomats expelled from countries around the world, Russia has promised a response.

    RIA Novosti reports an unnamed foreign ministry official protested the decision by EU, NATO nations to expel envoys, and  confirmed that Russia will respond to each country expelling diplomats, warning that the “expulsions won’t go unanswered.”

    “Unfriendly” action won’t be left unanswered.

    U.K.’s allies are “blindly following” principle of Euro-Atlantic unity at the expense of common sense.

    Additionally, Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said that, with regard to the US response, US only understand force.

    “I mentioned in my statement in the State Department that I consider these actions counterproductive,” Antonov said.

    “I said that the United States took a very bad step by cutting what very little still remains in terms of Russian-American relations.” (source)

    Whether Russia was responsible for the poisoning of their former agent or not, this incident and the response could lead to…you guessed it…war.

    President Trump Seems to be Building a War Cabinet

    If Russia and China decide to team up, it’s a safe bet they won’t just be making passive aggressive comments about the US. We can look for a brutal and decisive attack. Whether the United States strikes first or gets hit first would be the only thing in question.

    Whatever the case, it looks like the White House is expecting war.

    There was more upheaval in Washington DC last week when President Trump replaced his National Security Advisor. Many people were shocked when Trump booted H.R. McMaster and replaced him with an avid Warhawk, John Bolton.

    “I am pleased to announce that, effective 4/9/18, @AmbJohnBolton will be my new National Security Advisor. I am very thankful for the service of General H.R. McMaster who has done an outstanding job & will always remain my friend. There will be an official contact handover on 4/19.”

    “The two have been discussing this for some time. The timeline was expedited as they both felt it was important to have the new team in place, instead of constant speculation,” a White House official said. “This was not related to any one moment or incident, rather it was the result of ongoing conversations between the two.” (source)

    John Bolton ranks up there on my List of Really Bad Choices along with Jeff Sessions and Mike Pompeo. Bolton served as a U.N. ambassador under President George W. Bush. He has openly been a supporter of aggressive military actions for decades. With former head of the CIA Mike Pompeo, these two are bound to lead us into a bloody and brutal war with…well, just about everyone.

    It is no coincidence that next in line for Donald Trump’s secretary of state position is Pompeo himself. Together, Bolton and Pompeo will be able to advise Trump on anti-North Korean and anti-Iranian platforms so hawkish there is no telling what’s to come (though we have a fairly decent idea).

    As some of you may know, John Bolton’s hawkishness has already led to some of the most despicable foreign policy agendas of our generation. (source)

    Just to give you an idea of Bolton’s thought processes, check out his 2015 op-ed for the New York Times, titled, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran” which was followed by a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal called, “The Legal Case For Striking North Korea First.” Learn more about the world according to John Bolton in this article, littered with horrifying quotes right from the horse’s mouth.

    So, while it seemed as though we were moving forward when Kim Jong Un agreed to talks with President Trump about giving up his nukes, we’ve just moved 10 steps back with this new “war cabinet.” And that’s exactly what Pat Buchanan, advisor to three presidents and syndicated columnist has called it.

    President Donald Trump seems to be creating a war cabinet.

    Trump himself has pledged to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal — “the worst deal ever” — and reimpose sanctions in May.

    His new national security adviser John Bolton, who wrote an op-ed titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran,” has called for preemptive strikes and “regime change.”

    Secretary of State-designate Mike Pompeo calls Iran “a thuggish police state,” a “despotic theocracy,” and “the vanguard of a pernicious empire that is expanding its power and influence across the Middle East.”

    Trump’s favorite Arab ruler, 32-year-old Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, calls Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei “the Hitler of the Middle East.”

    Bibi Netanyahu is monomaniacal on Iran, calling the nuclear deal a threat to Israel’s survival and Iran “the greatest threat to our world.”

    U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley echoes them all. (source)

    Do you want a war? Because this is how you get a war.

    Are you nervous yet?

    Are we on the cusp of World War III? This has been a question I’ve asked numerous times recently for numerous reasons, but it sure seems like all the game pieces are being moved into place on the chessboard.

    • We have a cabinet staffed with warmongers.
    • We have a trade war with China.
    • We ticked off Russia more than once.
    • We’ve lost petrodollar status.

    In the past, America has “resolved” its economic problems by going to war. Will this time be any different?

  • Susan Rice, Former Obama National Security Advisor Joins Netflix Board Of Directors

    Former National Security Advisor and U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice has been appointed to Netflix’s board of directors – a move which comes as her former boss, President Obama, is reportedly in “advanced negotiations” with the network to create a series of streaming shows. 

    As a reminder, Rice both knowingly lied about the cause Benghazi on national television and “unmasked” senior Trump officials as part of a larger government surveillance program during the 2016 election.

    Netflix made the announcement on Wednesday, with co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings praising Rice’s intelligence work for the Obama administration. 

    “We are delighted to welcome Ambassador Rice to the Netflix board,” said Hastings. “For decades, she has tackled difficult, complex global issues with intelligence, integrity and insight and we look forward to benefiting from her experience and wisdom.”

    Rice responded; “I am thrilled to be joining the board of directors of Netflix, a cutting-edge company whose leadership, high-quality productions, and unique culture I deeply admire.”

    Many are wondering just what Rice and Obama are up to…

    Rice’s former boss may be joining her at Netflix, as the New York Times first reported earlier this month the 56-year-old was in talks for a deal that would pay him and his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, for Netflix-only “exclusive content” that would be available to subscribers of the digital streaming service.

    Netflix has about 118 million subscribers globally. It was not immediately clear how many shows or episodes would be ordered or how much the Obamas would be paid.

    The streaming service recently tried a talk show featuring anti-Trump comedian Chelsea Handler called “Chelsea” that lasted two seasons before getting canceled. –Fox News

    The announcement resulted in a backlash among conservatives. 

    Judicial Watch founder Tom Fitton said on Twitter Wednesday “.@Netflix doubles down in support of Obama corruption — compromised Susan Rice, who lied repeatedly on both Benghazi and the unmasking issue joins its Board of Directors.”

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    Meanwhile, Obama’s former head of the Small Business Association, Maria Contreras-Sweet, closed on a deal in early March with a group of investors to acquire the Weinstein Company assets.

    It’s as if the previous administration and their tentacles are very interested in the media – aside from Hillary Clinton, who’s just trying to get by without slip-sliding down an unassuming flight of stairs

  • The Mind-Benders: How To Harvest Facebook Data, Brainwash Voters, And Swing Elections

    Authored by Roberto Gonzalez via Counterpunch.org,

    In the days and weeks following the 2016 presidential elections, reports surfaced about how a small British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, might have played a pivotal role in Donald Trump’s surprise victory. The company claimed to have formulated algorithms to influence American voters using individually targeted political advertisements. It reportedly generated personality profiles of millions of individual citizens by collecting up to 5000 data points on each person. Then Cambridge Analytica used these “psychographic” tools to send voters carefully crafted online messages about candidates or hot-button political issues.

    Although political consultants have long used “microtargeting” techniques for zeroing in on particular ethnic, religious, age, or income groups, Cambridge Analytica’s approach is unusual: The company relies upon individuals’ personal data that is harvested from social media apps like Facebook. In the US, such activities are entirely legal. Some described Cambridge Analytica’s tools as “mind-reading software” and a “weaponized AI [artificial intelligence] propaganda machine.” However, corporate media outlets such as CNN and the Wall Street Journal often portrayed the company in glowing terms.

    Cambridge Analytica is once again in the headlines–but under somewhat different circumstances. Late last week, whistleblower Christopher Wylie went public, explaining how he played an instrumental role in collecting millions of Facebook profiles for Cambridge Analytica. This revelation is significant because until investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr published her exposé in The Guardian, Cambridge Analytica’s then-CEO Alexander Nix had adamantly denied using Facebook data. And although Facebook officials knew that Cambridge Analytica had previously gathered data on millions of users, they did not prohibit the company from advertising until last Friday, as the scandal erupted. To make matters worse, the UK’s Channel 4 released undercover footage early this week in which Cambridge Analytica executives boast about using dirty tricks–bribes, entrapment, and “beautiful girls” to mention a few.

    The case of Cambridge Analytica brings into focus a brave new world of electoral politics in an algorithmic age–an era in which social media companies like Facebook and Twitter make money by selling ads, but also by selling users’ data outright to third parties. Relatively few countries have laws that prevent such practices–and it turns out that the US does not have a comprehensive federal statute protecting individuals’ data privacy.

    This story is significant not only because it demonstrates what can happen when an unorthodox company takes advantage of a lax regulatory environment, but also because it reveals how Internet companies like Facebook  have played fast and loose with the personal data of literally billions of users.

    From Public Relations to Psychological Warfare

    In order to make sense of Cambridge Analytica it is helpful to understand its parent company, SCL Group, which was originally created as the PR firm Strategic Communications Laboratory. It was founded in the early 1990s by Nigel Oakes, a flamboyant UK businessman. By the late 1990s, the company was engaged almost exclusively in political projects. For example, SCL was hired to help burnish the image of Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid–but Oakes and SCL employees had to shut down their operations center when SCL’s cover was blown by the Wall Street Journal .

    In July 2005, SCL underwent a dramatic transformation. It very publicly rebranded itself as a  psychological warfare company by taking part in the UK’s largest military trade show. SCL’s exhibit included a mock operations center featuring dramatic crisis scenarios–a smallpox outbreak in London, a bloody insurgency in a fictitious South Asian country–which were then resolved with the help of the company’s psyops techniques. Oakes told a reporter: “We used to be in the business of mindbending for political purposes, but now we are in the business of saving lives.” The company’s efforts paid off. Over the next ten years, SCL won contracts with the US Defense Department’s Combatant Commands, NATO, and Sandia National Labs.

    Over the past few years SCL–now known as SCL Group–has transformed itself yet again. It no longer defines itself as a psyops specialist, nor as a political consultancy–now, it calls itself a data analytics company specializing in “behavioral change” programs.

    Along the way it created Cambridge Analytica, a subsidiary firm which differs from SCL Group in that it focuses primarily on political campaigns. Its largest investors include billionaire Robert Mercer, co-CEO of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, who is best known for his advocacy of far-right political causes and his financial support of Breitbart News. Steve Bannon briefly sat on Cambridge Analytica’s board of directors.

    Cambridge Analytica first received significant media attention in November 2015, shortly after the firm was hired by Republican presidential nominee Ted Cruz’s campaign. Although Cruz ultimately failed, Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, Alexander Nix, claimed that Cruz’s popularity grew largely due to the company’s skillful use of aggregated voter data and personality profiling methods. In August 2016, the Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica as part of a desperate effort to challenge Hillary Clinton’s formidable campaign machine. Just a few months later, reports revealed that Cambridge Analytica had also played a role in the UK’s successful pro-Brexit “Leave.EU” campaign.

    Hacking the Citizenry

    Cambridge Analytica relies upon “psychographic” techniques that measure the Big Five personality traits borrowed from social psychology: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

    In the US, Cambridge Analytica developed psychological profiles of millions of Americans by hiring a company called Global Science Research (GSR) to plant free personality quizzes. Users were lured by the prospect of obtaining free personality scores, while Cambridge Analytica collected data–and access to users’ Facebook profiles. Last week, The Guardian reported that Cambridge Analytica collected data from more than 300,000 Facebook users in this way. By agreeing to the terms and conditions of the app, those users also agreed to grant GSR (and by extension, Cambridge Analytica) access to the profiles of their Facebook “friends”–totalling approximately 50 million people.

    Psychographics uses algorithms to scour voters’ Facebook “likes,” retweets and other social media data which are aggregated with commercially available information: land registries, automotive data, shopping preferences, club memberships, magazine subscriptions, and religious affiliation. When combined with public records, electoral rolls, and additional information purchased from data brokers such as Acxiom and Experian, Cambridge Analytica has raw material for shaping personality profiles. Digital footprints can be transformed into real people. This is the essence of psychographics: Using software algorithms to scour individual voters’ Facebook “likes,” retweets and other bits of data gleaned from social media and then combine them with commercially available personal information. Data mining is relatively easy in the US, since it has relatively weak privacy laws compared to South Korea, Singapore, and many EU countries.

    In a 2016 presentation, Nix described how such information might be used to influence voter opinions on gun ownership and gun rights. Individual people can be addressed differently according to their personality profiles: “For a highly neurotic and conscientious audinece, the threat of a burglary–and the insurance policy of a gun. . .Conversely, for a closed and agreeable audience: people who care about tradition, and habits, and family.”

    Despite the ominous sounding nature of psychographics, it is not at all clear that Cambridge Analytica played a decisive role in the 2016 US presidential election. Some charge that the company and its former CEO Alexander Nix, exaggerated Cambridge Analytica’s effect on the election’s outcome. In February 2017, investigative journalist Kendall Taggart wrote an exposé claiming that more than a dozen former employees of Cambridge Analytica, Trump campaign staffers, and executives at Republican consulting firms denied that psychographics was used at all by the Trump campaign. Taggart concluded: “Rather than a sinister breakthrough in political technology, the Cambridge Analytica story appears to be part of the traditional contest among consultants on a winning political campaign to get their share of the credit–and win future clients.” Not a single critic was willing to be identified in the report, apparently fearing retaliation from Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who is also an investor in the firm.

    Not-So-Innocents Abroad

    By no means has Cambridge Analytica limited its work to the US. In fact, it has conducted “influence operations” in several countries around the world.

    For example, Cambridge Analytica played a major role in last year’s presidential elections in Kenya, which pitted incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta of the right-wing Jubilee Party against Raila Odinga of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement. The Jubilee Party hired Cambridge Analytica in May 2017. Although the company claims to have limited its activities to data collection, earlier this week Mark Turnbull, a managing director for Cambridge Analytica, told undercover reporters a different story. He admitted that the firm secretly managed Kenyatta’s entire campaign: “We have rebranded the party twice, written the manifesto, done research, analysis, messaging. I think we wrote all the speeches and we staged the whole thing–so just about every element of this candidate,” said Turnbull.

    Given the most recent revelations about Cambridge Analytica’s planting of fake news stories, it seems likely that the company created persuasive personalized ads based on Kenyans’ social media data. Fake Whatsapp and Twitter posts exploded days before the Kenyan elections. It is worth remembering that SCL Group has employed disinformation campaigns for military clients for 25 years, and it seems that Cambridge Analytica has continued this pattern of deception.

    The August elections were fraught with accusations of vote tampering, the inclusion of dead people as registered voters, and the murder of Chris Msando, the election commission’s technology manager, days before the election. When the dust settled, up to 67 people died in post-election violence–and Kenyatta ultimately emerged victorious. Weeks later, the Kenyan Supreme Court annulled the elections, but when new elections were scheduled for October, Odinga declared that he would boycott.

    Given Kenya’s recent history of electoral fraud, it is unlikely that Cambridge had much impact on the results. Anthropologist Paul Goldsmith, who has lived in Kenya for 40 years, notes that elections still tend to follow the principle of “who counts the votes,” not “who influences the voters.”

    But the significance of Cambridge Analytica’s efforts extends beyond their contribution to electoral outcomes. Kenya is no technological backwater. The world’s first mobile money service was launched there in 2007, allowing users to transfer cash and make payments by phone. Homegrown tech firms are creating a “Silicon Savannah” near Nairobi. Two-thirds of Kenya’s 48 million people have Internet access. Ten million use Whatsapp; six million use Facebook; two million use Twitter. As Kenyans spend more time in the virtual world, their personal data will become even more widely available since Kenya has no data protection laws.

    Goldsmith summarizes the situation nicely:

    Cambridge Analytica doesn’t need to deliver votes so much as to create the perception that they can produce results. . .Kenya provides an ideal entry point into [Africa]. . .Embedding themselves with ruling elites presents a pivot for exploiting emergent commercial opportunities. . .with an eye on the region’s resources and its growing numbers of persuadable youth.

    Recent reports reveal that Cambridge Analytica has ongoing operations in Mexico and Brazil (which have general elections scheduled this July and October, respectively). India (which has general elections in about a year) has also been courted by the company, and it is easy to understand why: the country has 400 million smartphone users with more than 250 million on either Facebook or Whatsapp. India’s elections are also a potential gold mine. More than half a billion people vote in parliamentary elections, and the expenditures are astonishing: Political parties spent $5 billion in 2014, compared to $6.5 billion in last year’s US elections. India also has a massive mandatory ID program based on biometric and demographic data, the largest of its kind in the world.

    Cambridge Analytica’s global strategy appears focused on expanding its market share in promising markets. Although many people might describe Kenya, Mexico, Brazil, and India as developing countries, each in fact has a rapidly growing high-tech infrastructure, relatively high levels of Internet penetration, and large numbers of social media users. They all have weak or nonexistent Internet privacy laws. Though nominally democratic, each country is politically volatile and has experienced episodic outbursts of extreme political, sectarian, or criminal violence. Finally, these countries have relatively young populations, reflecting perhaps a long-term strategy to normalize a form of political communication that will reap long-term benefits in politically sensitive regions.

    The capacity for saturating global voters with charged political messages is growing across much of the world, since the cost of buying Facebook ads, Twitterbots and trolls, bots for Whatsapp and other apps is cheap – and since more people than ever are spending time on social media. Such systems can be managed efficiently by remote control. Unlike the CIA’s psyops efforts in the mid-20th century, which required extensive on-the-ground efforts–dropping leaflets from airplanes, bribing local journalists, broadcasting propaganda on megaphones mounted on cars–the new techniques can be deployed from a distance, with minimal cost. Cambridge Analytica relies upon small ground teams to do business with political parties, and partnerships with local business intelligence firms to scope out the competition or provide marketing advice, but most of the work is done from London and New York.

    Weaponizing Big Data?

    From its beginnings, Cambridge Analytica has declared itself to be a “data-driven” group of analytics experts practicing an improved form of political microtargeting, but there are indications that the firm has broader ambitions.

    In March 2017, reports emerged that top executives from SCL Group met with Pentagon officials, including Hriar Cabayan, head of a branch which conducts DoD research and cultural analysis. A decade ago, Cabayan played an instrumental role in launching the precursor to the Human Terrain System, a US Army counterinsurgency effort which embedded anthropologists and other social scientists with US combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    A few months later, in August 2017, the Associated Press reported that retired US Army General Michael Flynn, who briefly served as National Security Director in the Trump administration, had signed a work agreement with Cambridge Analytica in late 2016, though it is unclear whether he actually did any work for the firm. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian operatives in late 2017, when he was working with Trump’s transition team. Given his spot in the media limelight, it is easy to forget that he once headed US intelligence operations in Afghanistan, advocating for a big data approach to counterinsurgency that would, among other things, include data collected by Human Terrain Teams.

    The connections between Cambridge Analytica/SCL Group and the Pentagon’s champions of data-driven counterinsurgency and cyberwarfare may be entirely coincidental, but they do raise several questions: As Cambridge Analytica embarks on its global ventures, is it undertaking projects that are in fact more sinister than its benign-sounding mission of “behavioral change”? And are the company’s recent projects in Kenya, India, Mexico, and Brazil simply examples of global market expansion, or are these countries serving as laboratories to test new methods of propaganda dissemination and political polarization for eventual deployment here at home?

    Here the lines between military and civilian applications become blurred, not only because ARPANET–the Internet’s immediate precursor–was developed by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, but also because the technology can be used for surveillance on a scale that authoritarian regimes of the 20th century could only have dreamed about. As Yasha Levine convincingly argues in his book Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet, the Internet was originally conceived as a counterinsurgency surveillance program.

    Neutralizing Facebook’s Surveillance Machine 

    It appears that many people are finally taking note of the digital elephant in the room: Facebook’s role in enabling Cambridge Analytica and other propagandists, publicists, and mind-benders to carry out their work–legally and discreetly. As recently noted by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai in the online journal Motherboard, Cambridge Analytica’s data harvesting practices weren’t security breaches, they were “par for the course. . .It was a feature, not a bug. Facebook still collects—and then sells—massive amounts of data on its users.” In other words, every Facebook post or tweet, every g-mail message sent or received, renders citizens vulnerable to forms of digital data collection that can be bought and sold to the highest bidder. The information can be used for all kinds of purposes in an unregulated market: monitoring users’ emotional states, manipulating their attitiudes, or disseminating tailor-made propaganda designed to polarize people.

    It is telling that Facebook stubbornly refuses to call Cambridge Analytica’s actions a “data breach.” As Zeynep Tufekci, author of the book Twitter And Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest puts it, the company’s defensive posture reveals much about the social costs of social media. She recently wrote:

    “If your business is building a massive surveillance machinery, the data will eventually be used and misused. Hacked, breached, leaked, pilfered, conned, targeted, engaged, profiled, sold. There is no informed consent because it’s not possible to reasonably inform or consent.”

    Cambridge Analytica is significant to the extent that it illuminates new technological controlling processes under construction. In a supercharged media environment in which Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) have become the primary means by which literally billions of people consume news, mass producing propaganda has never been easier. With so many people posting so much information about the intimate details of their lives on the Web, coordinated attempts at mass persuasion will almost certainly become more widespread in the future.

    In the meantime, there are concrete measures that we can take to rein in Facebook, Amazon, Google, Twitter, and other technology giants. Some of the most lucid suggestions have been articulated by Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist and early Facebook investor. He recommends a multi-pronged approach: demanding that the social media companies’ CEOs testify before congressional and parliamentary committees in open sessions; imposing strict regulations on how Internet platforms are used and commercialized; requiring social media companies to report who is sponsoring political and issues-based advertisements; mandating transparency about algorithms (“users deserve to know why they see what they see in their news feeds and search results,” says McNamee); requiring social media apps to offer an “opt out” to users; banning digital “bots” that impersonate humans; and creating rules that allow consumers (not corporations) to own their own data.

    In a world of diminishing privacy, our vulnerabilities are easily magnified. Experimental psychologists specializing in what they euphemistically call “behavior design” have largely ignored ethics and morality in order to help Silicon Valley companies create digital devices, apps, and other technologies that are literally irresistible to their users. As the fallout from Cambridge Analytica’s activities descends upon the American political landscape, we should take advantage of the opportunity to impose meaningful controls on Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other firms that have run roughshod over democratic norms–and notions of individual privacy–in the relentless pursuit of profit.

  • China Cracks Down On Jaywalkers With AI, Facial Recognition, & Automated Fines

    As we pointed out earlier this week, China’s lack of data protection laws and its determination to overtake the US as the world-leader in AI technology poses a serious threat to US technological hegemony. As Russian President Vladimir Putin once said, whoever dominates the AI race could one day rule the world.

    Well, another advantage that China has in its AI push is its reputation for strict surveillance and law enforcement – which provides for plenty of use-cases where China can test its nascent technology. Case in point: Police in Shenzen are using AI and facial recognition software to install “smart” traffic cameras that can identify and fine Chinese citizens who jaywalk – a crime that is the subject of strict enforcement in China, per the South China Morning Post.

    Intellifusion, a Shenzhen-based AI firm that provides the technology is now in talks with local mobile phone carriers and social media platforms such as WeChat and Sina Weibo to develop a system where offenders will receive personal text messages shortly after a violation has occurred, according to Wang Jun, the company’s director of marketing solutions.

    Jaywalk

    “Jaywalking has always been an issue in China and can hardly be resolved just by imposing fines or taking photos of the offenders. But a combination of technology and psychology … can greatly reduce instances of jaywalking and will prevent repeat offences,” Wang said.

    Shenzhen traffic police began displaying photos of jaywalkers on large LED screens at major intersections starting in April 2017. Meanwhile, police stationed at the Zhengzhou East high-speed rail station in Henan province have been equipped with smart glasses with facial recognition software that can identify wanted criminals.

    For the current system installed in Shenzhen, Intellifusion installed cameras with 7 million pixels of resolution to capture photos of pedestrians crossing the road against traffic lights. Facial recognition technology identifies the individual from a database and displays a photo of the jaywalking offence, the family name of the offender and part of their government identification number on large LED screens above the pavement.

    Nearly 14,000 jaywalkers have been cited since Of course, Shenzen isn’t even the most advanced Chinese city in terms of its use of AI for law-enforcement purposes. In Beijing, police are using the world’s first surround-body camera with built in facial recognition technology to hold scofflaws accountable.

    In what appears to be an effort to shame lawbreakers, police launched a webpage in March displaying photos, names and partial ID numbers of jaywalkers.

    Police say these measures have reduced the number of repeat offenders. Informing violators via text message would help the city save on construction of large LED screens, which have been used elsewhere in China for shaming purposes.

    However, there’s one notable caveat. Shenzhen has one of the most transient populations in China. As a result, many people do not have their information registered in the database of the traffic police, even though anyone staying in the city for more than 30 days is required to do so. That means authorities can only currently identify about 10% of the population.

    Ultimately, these surveillance methods will be used to build out China’s system of “social credit” – the Communist Party’s plan to assign a “score” to every Chinese citizen – as authorities aim for “behavior modification on a massive scale.”

    For the average Chinese citizen, this system closely resembles the nightmarish totalitarian dystopia described by George Orwell in his classic novel “1984”.

    When a woman walked to work this month in the bustling Southern Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen, she, like many millions of other Chinese, jaywalked, cutting across a side street to avoid a detour of hundreds of yards to a crosswalk. What happened next, as documented by the woman, a writer calling herself Mao Yan, was an illustration of a brave new world being born in China.

    Two traffic policemen approached the woman and told her that she had violated the traffic regulations of the People’s Republic of China. Eager to get to her job, Mao Yan apologized and pointed out that there was no fencing to block jaywalkers like her. She hoped to get off with a verbal warning. The officers, however, were intent on prosecution. They demanded her identity card, which is issued to all Chinese citizens. When Mao Yan said that she had not brought hers, they asked for her ID number. When she said she had not memorized it, one officer snapped her picture with a camera phone. Seconds later he read out her name, her ID card number and date of birth. Using facial recognition technology, he had identified Mao Yan.

    Yan said she was taken aback by the experience. Later, WaPo noted that these surveillance technologies are being used in Western provinces to crack down on separatist movements.

    “It’s intimidation to make everyone afraid,” she said in a social media post she published after her encounter.

    The post was swiftly taken down by China’s censors.

     

     

     

  • Race, Gender & Income: Who Works in the Jobs with the Most Contamination Exposure?

    Submitted by Priceonomics

    Which occupations expose workers to the most contaminants? How often are American workers exposed to these contaminants, who are these workers, and how much are they paid? We decided to attempt to answer these questions by exploring the data.

    We analyzed this data along with Priceonomics customer, Ode, a company that creates environmentally-conscious cleaning products. Using resources from the Occupational Information Network and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we were able to investigate the relationship between different job categories, demographics, and levels of contamination.

    We found that automotive service technicians have the most contaminant-heavy job in America: they are exposed to pollutants, dust, gases or odors on a daily basis. HVAC and refrigeration technicians, truck drivers and tractor operators experience similar levels of contamination. Workers who are exposed to contaminants more than once a week make nearly one-third less than those who are exposed less than once a month. 

    Of the occupations with the highest level of contaminant exposure—more than once a week—farmworkers make the least, and dental hygienists make the most. Men are disproportionately exposed to high levels of contamination, as are people identifying as Hispanic. Salaries for jobs with very frequent contaminant exposure run the gamut, with the most highly paid workers making more than three times as much as the lowest-paid.

    ***

    The data provided by the Occupational Information Network (O*Net) uses a scale from 0 to 100: employees in occupations with level 0 are never exposed to contaminants, while those in occupations with level 100 are exposed every day. The following chart shows the twenty occupations that expose employees to the highest levels of contamination:

    Original source: Ode. Chart created with Onomics.

    Many of the most contaminant-heavy occupations involve cars or trucks, while others involve heavy machinery. It’s particularly interesting that dental hygienists (the tenth-most-exposed to contamination) also happen to be the highest paid of all occupations very frequently exposed to contaminants, as we’ll see further down.

    How much are these workers paid? And are workers paid differently across different levels of contaminant exposure? The chart below shows average wages across occupations for four different frequencies of contaminant exposure:

    Average salaries decrease substantially as contaminant exposure gets more frequent. The average wage for occupations that are only rarely exposed to contaminants exceeds the average wage for those that are very frequently exposed by about 25%. Each progressively higher contamination bucket works out to a drop of about $10,000 in annual wages.

    Let’s look up close at the data– in particular, let’s look at the “Very Frequent” contamination bucket, in which workers are exposed to contaminants at least once a week. The chart below lists the ten best-paying occupations at the highest contamination level:

    Dental hygienists, who are among the employees most often exposed to contaminants, are also among the most highly paid. Though automotive service technicians and dental hygienists are both exposed to contaminants more often than once a week, hygienists make almost twice as much annually. Now, let’s take a look at the lowest-paying jobs in the category of very frequent contaminant exposure:

    The lowest-paid group of workers in the entire “Very Frequent” contaminant exposure category are Farmworkers and Laborers. These workers are very poorly paid indeed: Maintenance and Repair Workers, the tenth-lowest-paid workers in our dataset, make over 50% more than farmworkers!

    We can dig into these result deeper by exploring the demographics of different occupations and levels of contamination. The chart below breaks down the occupations with very frequent contaminant exposure by demographic. It’s important to note that the categories are not totally exclusive: the “Hispanic” category can include individuals who identify as either white or black.

    About one in every seven Hispanic workers is exposed to contaminants more than once a week; that’s nearly twice the proportion of workers who identify as Asian. Though this could be a function of the overlapping racial categories used in this dataset, it could also be evidence of larger societal dynamics at play. As we saw above, farmworkers hold the lowest-paid high-contamination job. Although only 18% of Americans are Hispanic, 80% of all farmworkers are.

    Now that we’ve seen how contaminant exposure breaks down across racial categories, let’s take a look at the gender distribution. The chart below breaks down contaminant exposure by gender. Are either men or women more likely to be exposed to high levels of contaminants?

    About one in every six men—and one in fourteen women—is employed in an occupation where they are exposed to contaminants more often than once a week. More than half of women are employed in occupations where they are rarely or occasionally exposed to contaminants, though roughly similar proportions of men and women occupy these professions.

    According to public data, occupations with exposure to contaminants such as pollutants, gases, dust or odors achieve progressively lower average wages with more frequent exposure. Both the lowest- and highest-paid high-contamination jobs tend to involve manual labor or heavy machinery. We discovered that Hispanic workers are the group most frequently exposed to contaminants, and that men disproportionately occupy high-contaminant jobs. In general, it looks as though certain groups are frequently exposed to contaminants– and paid less for their trouble.

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Today’s News 28th March 2018

  • Visualizing The 50 Most Important Life-Saving Breakthroughs In History

    For most of civilized history, life expectancy fluctuated in the 30 to 40 year range.

    Child mortality was all too common, and even for those that made it to adulthood, a long and healthy life was anything but guaranteed. Sanitation was poor, disease was rampant, and many medical practices were based primarily on superstition or guesswork.

    But, as Visual Cpitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, by the 20th century, an explosion in new technologies, treatments, and other science-backed practices helped to increase global life expectancy at an unprecedented rate.

    From 1900 to 2015, global life expectancy more than doubled, shooting well past the 70 year mark.

    IMPORTANT BREAKTHROUGHS

    What were the major innovations that made the last century so very fruitful in saving lives?

    Today’s infographic from AperionCare highlights the top 50 breakthroughs, ranging from pasteurization to the bifurcated needle, that have helped propel global life expectancy upwards.

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

    Interestingly, while many of these innovations have some linkage to the medical realm, there are also breakthroughs in sectors like energy, sanitation, and agriculture that have helped us lead longer and healthier lives.

    To see innovations on an individual basis, AperionCare breaks them down further as follows:

    The breakthroughs that are credited with saving the most lives?

    Toilets, synthetic fertilizers, blood transfusions, the green revolution (also known as the “Third Agricultural Revolution”), and vaccines are each credited with saving 1 billion lives. Meanwhile, pasteurization, water chlorination, antibiotics, antimalarial drugs, and the bifurcated needle have saved hundreds of millions of lives each.

    There are also some unusual entries to the list.

    It turns out that satellites have actually saved 250,000 lives, thanks to the ability to better forecast natural disasters. Nuclear power also gets a shout out – and it may surprise some people that nuclear energy is the least deadly form of energy per kilowatt generated.

    PROGRESS IN LIFE EXPECTANCY

    For a graphical look at how this all has impacted life expectancy, the following chart from Our World in Datamakes a very clear case:

    The impact from these new technologies was first experienced in Europe at the end of the 1800s – and other continents quickly saw the benefits thereafter.

    Impressively, Africa has now passed the 60 year mark in life expectancy, with numbers still rising.

  • CENTCOM Commander Admits Failure In Syria Strategy"

    Authored by Geoffrey Aronson via The American Conservative blog,

    But Washington will continue to blunder into confrontations in the Middle East without a comprehensive strategy

    Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee this month, CENTCOM commander General Joseph L. Votel set about talking straight on Syria. Votel, in a colloquy with Senator Lindsey Graham that was refreshing for its brevity and candor, acknowledged that the principal ambition of U.S. policy towards Syria—the removal of President Bashar al Assad at the behest of a motley assortment of Islamist and reformist oppositionists—has failed.

    An hour into Votel’s testimony, Graham got to the point:

    Graham: “Who is winning in Syria?”

    Votel:  “ …It would seem that the regime is ascendant.”

    Graham: “Do you see any likelihood that the [opposition] forces…can topple Assad in the next year?”

    Votel: “That’s not my assessment.”

    Graham: “Is it too strong a statement to say that with Russia’s and Iran’s help Assad has won the civil war?”

    Votel: “I do not think that is too strong of a statement. They have provided him the wherewithal to be ascendant.”

    Graham: “Is it still our policy that Assad must go?”

    Votel: “I don’t know that that’s our particular policy at this particular point.”

    Graham: “Thank you for your clarity and honesty; and it is not your mission in Syria to deal with the Iranian, Assad, Russia problem.”

    Votel: “That’s correct senator.”

    Graham and Votel are to be commended for their no-nonsense effort to inform Americans about Washington’s failure to achieve the strategic objectives underlying the U.S. engagement in Syria these many years. How many remember that the demand for Assad’s departure announced by President Barack Obama in August 2011 sparked a steady, incremental increase in U.S. support for and involvement in the civil war that persists to this day?

    But in 2013, ISIS, which threatened to topple the regime in Baghdad, replaced Assad as the enemy du jour. With critical support from newfound Kurdish allies, Washington’s war against ISIS in both Syria and Iraq, has, at least for the moment, been all but won.

    Kurdish-led forces control almost a quarter of Syria, while Washington can justly celebrate its military victory. But this achievement, which itself is now threatening to unravel, mistakes a tactical for a strategic success. As it now stands, this military triumph is almost beside the original point, which was regime change, lest one forget.

    Indeed, in the next stage of the war over control of the Kurdish zone, our Kurdish allies are abandoning Washington’s fight against ISIS in places like Deir al Zur and are making common cause with Assad to defend Kurdish parts of Syria against Turkey. We have just witnessed their failed campaign in Afrin to repel Turkish forces and agreeable remnants of the inaptly named Free Syrian Army, the former object of Washington’s anti-Assad largesse. Faced with the embarrassing contradiction that the U.S. is enabling a military campaign waged by Kurds, joined at the hip with Turkey’s arch foe the PKK and allies of convenience with Damascus, against its NATO ally Turkey, now in command of the freedom fighters of the FSA, Washington can only stutter.

    Votel asserted that Russia’s role in Syria is not his problem. Yet even as Washington pivots away from post-ISIS Syria, the first hot military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia since World War II—for control of oil installations near Deir al-Zour—will be the latest attempt to hit the moving target that is U.S. policy in Syria.

    On February 8, Kurdish defenders, with the regime’s support, left Deir al-Zour for the battlefront against Turkey. Damascus may well have made a deal with the Kurds to provide safe passage in return for enabling the regime to take possession of the area’s oil installations.

    In any case Washington was having none of it. Close to 200 Russian contractors—aka mercenaries—were killed in airstrikes that included B-52 bombers based in Qatar, a tally that suggests a lopsided blow-out that aimed to send a clear “HANDS OFF” signal to any party attempting to undermine the U.S. effort east of the Euphrates.

    The loss of the currently inoperative “Conoco” oil installation to Assad would undermine the latest chapter in Washington’s policy merry-go-round, which is to prevent the regime’s restoration of sovereign control of territory and resources in a battle that Votel acknowledged the regime and its allies have all but won.

    Votel in his prepared testimony explained that “the intervention of the Coalition and regional powers in the Syrian conflict has blocked Assad’s ability to recapture major portions of northern Syria, and entrenched opposition fighters and VEOs [Very Extreme Organizations] across Syria continue to challenge regime control.”

    The Trump administration is now basing its post-Assad policy on creating an economically viable enclave in Syria’s east – now suitably democratic of course. Votel however, as he admitted on the Hill, had yet to receive the memo outlining the new military mission to confront a resurgent regime and its Iranian and Russian paymasters.

    The lack of a clear strategy to achieve well-defined objectives has never been a constraint on Washington’s response to opportunities or challenges produced by the war. Washington, in an unintended show of bipartisan unity, has consistently misapprehended America’s power to achieve regime change, the vitality of the Assad system, the viability of a domestic opposition, and the prospects of Russian intervention.

    Have the myriad assumptions and assessments that informed the original (failed) policy been reconsidered and changed to reflect lessons learned? The answer, sad to say, is no.

    Like the lobster in the pot of steadily heating water, the U.S. is being cooked in Syria – moving along a ladder of escalation against a changing array of forces and objectives – almost without realizing it.

    And now, this lobster is all but cooked.

  • Think It Can't Happen Here? Austin Bomber's Capture Exposes Depth Of US Surveillance State

    Authored by Jeremiah Johnson via SHTFplan.com,

    Many have argued that there is neither a surveillance state, nor a concerted effort to disarm the public door-to-door, house by house, etc. Some of these are far-leftists, masquerading as conservatives….. trying to appear “skeptically cynical.”

    We’ll “game” the thought, to bring everyone back from opacity to transparency.

    1. The Communists, Marxists, Leftists, Progressives, Liberals, Democrats, and their ilk deliberately try to disguise the true objectives as outlined in the Planks of the Communist Party…passing themselves off as “middle-ground” in their stances.

    2. By denigrating the concept of an imminent surveillance state and ridiculing it, they draw conservatives who are still undecided (“fringe elements”) out of being proponents of the idea…further weakening and obfuscating people’s awareness.

    3. The movement of the groups mentioned never ceases: It hasn’t ceased with the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent reunification of Germany in 1990, nor the fall of the Soviet Union…more a “restructuring” than a fall…in 1992. The Communists are alive and well, operating within the United States at the lowest levels of society, and at the highest levels of government. We’ll stay with “Communists” as the label, as they are the end-state and will purge all the others who aren’t in complete lock step with them. They are Communists.

    That being mentioned, as they craft their narratives and lie openly upon the television, radio, and within the newspapers, there is a subtle, devious operation going on right before your eyes:

    The emplacement of a complete surveillance state of cameras and listening devices, all a part of the “wondrous internet of things.”

    For that last paraphrase, thank David Petraeus… former head of the CIA (in name only) yet without the technical alacrity to avoid the very thing he lauded… and hence, his downfall via Paula Bridewell. Thanks, Dave, for your erstwhile contribution to crafting the surveillance state. Dave serves as the prime example: no matter how much of a “big hitter” toward the NWO (New World Order) a globalist or establishmentarian one is, they are always expendable.

    The surveillance state has just been proven with the recent string of bombings in Austin, Texas where the protagonist blew himself up when he was tailed and cornered. This article was released by AP, written by Paul J. Weber on 3/22/18, and it seems to have escaped much notice. I am providing an excerpt that is almost the full article. When you read it, you will see why it is so important. Here it is:

    How Police Finally Found the Austin Bomber

    AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The suspected Austin bomber is dead after terrorizing Texas’ capital city for three weeks. And in the end the manhunt wasn’t cracked by hundreds of phoned-in tips, the big pot of reward money or police pleading to the bomber through TV.

    One of the largest bombing investigations in the U.S. since the Boston Marathon attacks in 2013 came to an intense close early Wednesday when authorities say they moved in on Mark Anthony Conditt at an interstate hotel. Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said Conditt blew himself up after running his sport utility vehicle into a ditch.

    Here is what’s known about how authorities finally zeroed in on the suspected bomber after 19 days, two dead victims and more than 1,000 calls of suspicious packages around the city:

    ___

    GETTING THE BOMBER ON CAMERA

    Conditt had been careful to avoid cameras before entering a FedEx store in southwest Austin this week disguised in a blond wig and gloves, said U.S. House Homeland Security chairman Michael McCaul. The Austin congressman had been briefed by police, the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

    McCaul said going into the store was Conditt’s “fatal mistake.” He said authorities previously had leads on a red truck and that the surveillance video from the FedEx store — where Conditt is believed to have dropped off an explosive package destined for an Austin address — allowed investigators to identify him and the truck.

    Said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, “I’m not sure how much they narrowed him down to an exact person of who he was before he went into that FedEx store.”

    ___

    TRACKING THE CELLPHONE

    At the FedEx store, McCaul said investigators got from surveillance the truck license plate that linked the vehicle to Conditt, which in turn gave authorities a cellphone number they could track. McCaul said Conditt had powered down his phone for “quite some time” but that police closed in when he switched it back on.

    “He turned it on, it pinged, and then the chased ensued,” McCaul said.

    Abbott said police were able to closely monitor Conditt and his movements for about 24 hours before his death. The governor said the phone number was used to tie Conditt to bombing sites around Austin.

    “The suspect’s cellphone number showed up at each of the bombing sites as well as some key locations that helped them connect him to the crime,” Abbott said.

    ___

    BUYING BOMB-MAKING MATERIALS

    Authorities say they also tracked down Conditt, a 23-year-old unemployed college dropout, through witness accounts and other purchases, including at a Home Depot where McCaul said the suspect bought nails and other bomb-making materials.

    Abbott said Conditt’s purchases at the Home Depot also included five “CHILDREN AT PLAY” signs, one of which was used to rig a tripwire that was set off by two men Sunday in a southwest Austin neighborhood. One of them was walking and the other was riding a bike.

    William Grote told The Associated Press that his grandson was one of the victims and had nails embedded in his legs from Sunday’s explosion.

    The batteries to power the bomb were purchased through the internet, McCaul said.

    ___

    STILL PUTTING TOGETHER A PROFILE

    The initial bomber profile sketched out by FBI behavioral scientists was that he was most likely a white male, McCaul said. And while that part was right, the congressman said, a full psychological profile won’t come together until investigators have time to comb through Conditt’s writings and social media posts.

    Conditt’s motive is not clear. But on Wednesday, police discovered a 25-minute video recording on a cellphone found with Conditt, which Manley said he considers a “confession” to the bombings. Manley said it described the differences among the bombs in great detail.”

    Obviously, someone made a big mistake in revealing this information to the stultified, oblivious public… that self-same public of “We the People” that has the right to know, and yet doesn’t understand what is happening. 

    Worse: The public doesn’t care what’s happening.

    Let’s summarize what these main points mean, for those of you who docare:

    1. The cellular telephone is nothing more than a tracking device…as mentioned, it “pings” its position and gives away the location of the owner…along with all of his vital information in the file… every four seconds.

    2. The cell phone’s location is tied into the location of every camera, public and private that has a tie-in to the CCTV system monitored by law enforcement in the fusion centers…from the Happy Burger parking lot cameras to the cameras mounted at the intersections in cities, towns, and suburbs. As the happy cell phone passes these locations, the movement is tracked in real time, and recorded.

    3. Granted, they had a suspect, but they can review all of the cameras at any business at any given time…to show what Joe the Plumber-turned-bomber may be purchasing at the friendly store…and they can tie that film in with real-time with the cell phone.

    4. The vehicle is also the “buddy” of the police and the surveillance establishment. They take pictures and film of the license plate, the car, and glimpses of Joe the Plumber driving it…corroborated by the happy, ever-pinging cellular telephone (the tracking device).

    5. All this data for everyone’s movements is recorded, catalogued, and stored…stored away for an indefinite period of time (forever) until the information is needed as evidence or in an investigation. Investigation!  Doesn’t that sound exciting?  Guess what?  Everyone is being investigated, and all of the data on everyone is kept.

    6. Purchases! Everybody has to buy things, stuff, etc.  Every time you pull up to the gas pump, the car is photographed.  The POS (point of sale) at the register tabulates and inventories everything, tying it in to the gas pump, with a picture of Joe and whatever form of fiat he used to pay for the gas and bag of chips.  Purchases track in real time, access whatever form of payment you use, tying you in with others…if you use your spouse’s credit card, for example.

    7. Cops have license plate/tag readers that can read hundreds of different plates, categorizing all of them in accordance with sensitive data that may have nothing to do with driving upon the roads or their record with the vehicle.

    8. Every Internet search, every purchase, every query, every e-mail is saved and read/tabulated into the overall matrix that assesses the potential for an individual to be “harmful” and stored…to be matched against the subject’s behavior and movements at a later date. Systems are already in place that analyze keystrokes for the comparison and narrowing down of who the typist is.

    9. Every library sign-out…film, music, or book…is saved and kept for future reference.

    10. Biometrics are making the “fingerprint” even more specific…with eye to eye distances, ear shapes, and gaits measured.  Any exposed portion of the skin, and the movement and function of the limbs is analyzed and recorded.

    11. Every piece of mail is scanned to save sender and recipient’s addresses and (of course) purchases are recorded within the company and matched against what is sent out and to whom.

    12. Satellites can target and surveil in real time and tie in to all of the little devices just mentioned.

    13. Laptop computers can be traced in accordance with the purchaser’s information from the POS and onward…and the laptops record, photograph, and film as well as putting forth a “ping” of their own…especially when connected to the Internet. All laptop use is matched and corresponded to other places of business (their cameras, etc.)

    14. Association: when you’re on your laptop, and here come Smiling Sam and Brother Bob, each with pinging cell phones…letting the authorities know that in that moment of time (Whitney Houston’s “One Moment in Time”) Sam and Bob were right in front of you. Later they can haul both of them in to corroborate that you were on your laptop in front of HappyBurger at whatever date or time they have on record.

    This excerpt shows that all of these items are in place. Yes, they are surveilling you…are watching all of us. The surveillance is not ubiquitous yet. Not yet. It will be, and soon. They utilized every feature mentioned above to find the bomber. Great. Society has triumphed, and the mad bomber has met his end.

    But has society really triumphed? That article gives you insight into how the cage is almost completed…the construction is just about finished. What requires further thought is what they will do with this surveillance once it is in place and ubiquitous. Just a few further thoughts for your consideration. You may want to watch what you place into your e-mails and comments. There are techies in the Puzzle Palace and at Ft. Meade whose function is identifying the commenters.

    Don’t place anything on the Internet that can come back and bite you later. The most effective means of exchange are not on the Internet when it comes to information. Blogs, writers, and commenters have already been “marginalized” and their effectiveness diminished because it is an open source. Your true effectiveness in getting things done is at the “grass roots” level…locally, in small groups for discussion. Your “tool of transmission” is a manual typewriter.  Need copies?  Get back to Carbon paper. There won’t be a recording of what you copied at your FriendlyCopy center…the one with your information in real-time, right under the eye of the happy surveillance camera in the corner.

    The one that superficially is to make sure you don’t take more than 1 or 2 paper clips…but manages to send the fusion centers every bit of data they need to match up their culprit (the copier) to the scene of the crime. They’ll also match up his credit card at the register, tally up his total purchases and copies over a period of time, and get plenty of information as it films him walking through the store and out the door.

    Bottom line: we’re all “guilty” according to laws they haven’t even written yet. It is all about building a case against the average citizen. If you’re not the wolves, then you’re one of the cattle, in their eyes.

    It will become worse. Much, much worse. If you doubt it and do not take necessary precautions, you may find out it exists when they come knocking on the door. It may already be too late, and their song is “We’ve Only Just Begun,” by Karen Carpenter…. but not to smile. They’ve been doing that for years, as they have taken our taxes to craft the very cages that are almost completed. The next step? Not hard to figure out, and it has happened before…as history repeats itself. Think “Solzhenitsyn,” and think of tomorrow.

  • California AG, Eric Holder To Sue Trump Administration Over Citizenship Question On 2020 Census

    California’s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra (D) said a new question included on the 2020 census asking for citizenship status is illegal, and he will sue the Trump administration to remove it.

    “We’re prepared to do what we must to protect California from a deficient Census. Including a citizenship question on the 2020 census is not just a bad idea — it is illegal,” said Becerra in a statement.

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    “Including a citizenship question on the 2020 census is not just a bad idea — it is illegal,” Becerra wrote in a Monday San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece along with California Secretary of State Alex Padilla.

    “The size of your child’s kindergarten class. Homeland security funds for your community. Natural disaster preparation. Highway and mass transit resources. Health care and emergency room services. 

    Vital services such as these would be jeopardized and our voice in government diminished if the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 count resulted in an undercount” -Xavier Becerra

    In other words – the U.S. government shouldn’t be allowed to ask if U.S. residents are legal citizens, because it may lead to underreporting and therefore fewer benefits and Congressional representation would go to regions with high concentrations of illegal aliens

    Becerra argues that the Constitution requires the government conduct an “actual enumeration” of the total population – which, the California AG argues, should be conducted regardless of citizenship. 

    The census has a specific constitutional purpose: to provide an accurate count of all residents, which then allows for proper allotment of congressional representatives to the states. The Census Bureau has a long history of working to ensure the most accurate count of the U.S. population in a nonpartisan manner, based on scientific principles.

    Separately, former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he is also filing a lawsuit to stop the citizenship question from being included in the 2020 census. 

    “We will litigate to stop the Administration from moving forward with this irresponsible decision,” Holder said in a Tuesday morning statement. “The addition of a citizenship question to the census questionnaire is a direct attack on our representative democracy. This question will lower the response rate and undermine the accuracy of the count, leading to devastating, decade-long impacts on voting rights and the distribution of billions of dollars in federal funding. By asking this question, states will not have accurate representation and individuals in impacted communities will lose out on state and federal funding for health care, education, and infrastructure.

    Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced the reinstatement of the citizenship question in a post to the department’s website (here). The question last appeared on the 1950 census.

    As The Hill notes, the DOJ under Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed for the inclusion of the question – arguing that it would allow Justice to better enforce the Voting Rights Act. 

    The census question has led lawmakers and pundits alike to opine on the legality, morality and practicality of such a move: 

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    It will be interesting to see how this is somehow spun as a Russian trick by the usual suspects… 

  • 'The Saker' Mourns: "What Happened To The West I Was Born In?"

    Via The Saker,

    Frankly, I am awed, amazed and even embarrassed.  I was born in Switzerland, lived most of my life there, I also visited most of Europe, and I lived in the USA for over 20 years. 

    Yet in my worst nightmares I could not have imagined the West sinking as low as it does now.  I mean, yes, I know about the false flags, the corruption, the colonial wars, the NATO lies, the abject subservience of East Europeans, etc.  I wrote about all that many times.  But imperfect as they were, and that is putting it mildly, I remember Helmut Schmidt, Maggie Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, even Chirac!  And I remember what the Canard Enchaîné used to be, or even the BBC.  During the Cold War the West was hardly a knight in white shining armor, but still – rule of law did matter, as did at least some degree of critical thinking.

    I am now deeply embarrassed for the West.  And very, very afraid.

    All I see today is a submissive herd lead by true, bona fide, psychopaths (in a clinical sense of the word)

    And that is not the worst thing.

    The worst thing is the deafening silence, the way everybody just looks away, pretends like “ain’t my business” or, worse, actually takes all this grotesque spectacle seriously.  What the fuck is wrong with you people?!  Have you all been turned into zombies?!  WAKE UP!!!!!!!

    Let me carefully measure my words here and tell you the blunt truth.

    Since the Neocon coup against Trump the West is now on exactly the same course as Nazi Germany was in, roughly, the mid 1930s.

    Oh sure, the ideology is different, the designated scapegoat also.  But the mindset is *exactly* the same.

    Same causes produce the same effects.  But this time around, there are weapons on both sides which make the Dresden Holocaust looks like a minor spark.

    So now we have this touching display of “western solidarity” not with UK or the British people, but with the City of London.  Now ain’t that touching?!

    Let me ask you this: what has been the central feature of Britain’s policies towards Europe, oh, let’s say since the Middle-Ages?

    That’s right: starting wars in Europe.

    And this time around you think it’s different?

    Does: “the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior” somehow not apply to the UK?!

    Let me also tell you this: when Napoleon and Hitler attacked Russia she was undergoing deep crises and was objectively weak (really! research it for yourself!).  In both cases Russian society was deeply torn by internal contradictions and the time for attack as ideal.

    Not today.

    So I ask this simple question: do you really want to go to war against a fully united nuclear Russia?

    You think that this is hyperbole?

    Think again.

    The truth is that the situation today is infinitely worse than the Cuban missile crisis. First, during the Cuban missile crisis there were rational people on both side.  Today there is NOT ONE SINGLE RATIONAL PERSON LEFT IN A POSITION OF POWER IN THE USA.  Not ONE!  Second, during the Cuban missile crisis all the new was reporting on was the crisis, the entire planet felt like we were standing at the edge of the abyss.

    Today nobody seems to be aware that we are about to go to war, possibly a thermonuclear war, where casualties will be counted in the hundreds of millions.

    All because of what?

    Because the people of the West have accepted, or don’t even know, that they are ruled by an ugly gang of ignorant, arrogant psychopaths.

    At the very least this situation shows this:

    • Representative democracy does not work.

    • The rule of law only applies to the weak and poor.

    • Western values have now been reduced to a sad joke.

    • Capitalism needs war and a world hegemony to survive.

    The AngloZionist Empire is about to collapse, the only open question is how and at what cost.

    Right now they are expelling Russian diplomats en masse and they are feeling very strong and manly. Polish and Ukrainian politicians are undergoing a truly historical surge in courage and self-confidence! (hiding, as they do, behind Anglo firepower)

    The truth is that this is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg.  In reality, crucial expert-level consultations, which are so vitally important between nuclear superpowers, have all but stopped a long time ago.  We are down to top level telephone calls.  That kind of stuff happens when two sides are about to go to war.  For many months now Russia and NATO have made preparations for war in Europe.  And Russia is ready.  NATO sure ain’t!  Oh, they have the numbers and they think they are strong.  The truth is that these NATO midgets have no idea of what is about to hit them, when the Russians go to war these NATO statelets won’t even understand what is happening to them.  Very rapidly the real action will be left to the USA and Russia.  Thus any conflict will go nuclear very fast.  And, for the first time in history, the USA will be hit very, very hard, not only in Europe, the Middle-East or Asia, but also on the continental US.

    I was born in a Russian military family and I studied Russian and Soviet military affairs all my life. I can absolutely promise you this, please don’t doubt it for one second: Russia will not back down and, if cornered, she will wipe out your entire civilization. The Russians really don’t want war, they fear it (as they should!) and they will do everything to avoid it.  But if attacked then expect a response of absolutely devastating violence.  Don’t take it from me, take it from Putin who clearly said so himself and who, at least on that issue, is supported by about 95% of the population.  From the Eastern Crusades to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, enough is enough, and the Russians will not take one more western attack, especially not one backed by nuclear firepower.  Again, please ponder Putin’s words very, very carefully: “what need would we have a world if there is no Russia?

    All that for what?  The USA and Russia have NO objective reasons to do anything but to collaborate (the Russians are absolutely baffled the fact the leaders of the USA seem to be completely oblivious to this simple fact).  Okay, the City of London does have a lot of reasons to want Russia gone and silent. As Gavin Williamson, the little soy-boy in charge of UK “defense”, so elegantly put it, Russia should “go away and shut up”.  Right.  Let me tell you – it ain’t happening!  Britannia will be turned into a heap of radioactive ashes long before Russian goes away or shuts up.  That is simply a fact.

    What baffles me is this: do American leaders really want to lose their country in behalf of a small nasty clique of arrogant British pompous asses who think that they still are an Empire?  Did you even take a look at Boris Johnson, Theresa May and Gavin Williamson?  Are you really ready to die in defense of the interest of these degenerates?!

    I don’t get it and nobody in Russia does.

    Yeah, I know, all they did is expel some diplomats.  And the Russians will do the same.  So what?  But that’s missing the point!

    LOOK NOT WHERE WE ARE BUT WHERE WE ARE HEADING!!

    You can get 200,000 antigun (sigh, rolleyes) protesters in DC but NOBODY AT ALL ABOUT NUCLEAR WAR?!

    What is wrong with you people?!

    What happened to the West where I was born in in 1963?

    My God, is this really the end of it all?

    Am I the only one who sees this slow-motion train-wreck taking us all over the precipice?

    If you can, please give a reason to still hope.

    Right now I don’t see many.

    The Saker

    PS: yes, I know. The rules of the blog prohibit CAPS as this is considered shouting.  Okay, but this time around I AM TRYING TO SHOUT!  So, for this one time only, feel free to use caps if you want.  The world badly needs some shouting right now, even virtual shouting.

     

  • Ex-Supreme Court Justice Calls For Repeal Of Second Amendment

    Retired U.S. Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens, 97, called for the repeal of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – which gives Americans the right to own and bear firearms. 

    Stevens, who sat on the country’s highest court for 35 years prior to his 2010 retirement, contends that repealing the Second Amendment “would eliminate the only legal rule that protects sellers of firearms in the United States – unlike every other market in the world.” 

    It would also give criminals dominance over law-abiding victims who are unable to match force, not to mention the historical precident of governments disarmaming a population before committing atrocities. 

    Stevens’ comments were prompted by the response to the Parkland shooting, in which 17 students and faculty were gunned down at Florida high school on Valentine’s day – sparking a national debate over gun control in which several students from Marjory Stoneman High have risen to instant fame, becoming overnight celebrities in the push to erode the Second Amendment. 

    “Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday,” Stevens wrote in a NYT op-ed. “These demonstrations demand our respect.”

    Not all Parkland students agree, however. Kyle Kashuv, a pro-2nd Amendment survivor of the shooting, has been virtually ignored by the liberal mainstream media due to his divergent opinion on gun control. Kashuv has been asking why people are protesting guns when the Valentine’s Day massacre was entirely preventable had the Broward Sheriffs Department and FBI simply done their jobs amid several reports that suspect Nikolas Cruz was likely to shoot up a school

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    Of note, Parkland gun-control advocate Cameron Kasky backed out of a debate wiith Kashuv.

    Meanwhile, Kashuv has been calling out David Hogg and other Parkland survivors over Twitter, along with CNN’s Brian Stelter who recently admitted that he allowed the Florida wing of the Mickey Mouse gun control club spew false information over his network (shocker!). 

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    Ex-justice Stevens noted in his op-ed how the Supreme Court had already curbed the Second Amendment’s reach during the 20th century, and suggested that the threat of a tyrannical federal government was “a relic of the 18th century.” 

    By repealing the Second amendment, writes Stevens, the United States “would make our schoolchildren safer than they have been since 2008 and honor the memories of the many, indeed far too many, victims of recent gun violence.” 

    A repeal of the Second Amendment can be proposed with a two-thirds vote in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, or by a constitution convention assembled by two-thirds of the states, and ratified by three-fourths of the 50 states. 

    Or, they can just whittle down the Amendment until it’s unrecognizable and effectively neutered. 

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  • Socialist Utopia: Child Gangs Fight For "Quality Garbage" With Machetes In Venezuela

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    While many politicians and civilians in the United States focus on making the country a socialist regime, Venezuela’s children are forming gangs and using machetes to fight each other for “quality garbage” so they have something to eat.

    Socialism is only good for those already at the very top.  It’s a very important lesson for anyone seeking to “remove the wealth” from the 1%.  Never assume that the rich will allow you vote their money away in the first place. The other issue most socialists forget that the 1% is made up the very wealthy politicians from both parties who will profit immensely from the implementation of socialism.  Of course, when that does happen children starve and become violent as a means to survive and have just one more meal.

    The Miami Herald has detailed the lives of children forced to live under the harsh realities of socialism. Liliana, at the age of only 16, has become the mother figure for a gang of Venezuelan children and young adults called the Chacao, named after the neighborhood they’ve claimed as their territory. The 15 members, ranging in age from 10 to 23, work together to survive vicious fights for “quality” garbage in crumbling, shortage-plagued, socialist dystopia of Venezuela. Their weapons are knives and sticks and machetes. And their only prize is garbage that contains food scrapes barely good enough to eat.

    Many of the children in the Chacao gang flock to a life of violence but a family-oriented one because there’s no other option if they want to eat.  There are at least 10 gangs in the capital of Caracas according to social workers and police estimate. “There were always children on the street in Venezuela but now we are seeing a new phenomenon — kids who get more food on the street than at their homes,” says Beatriz Tirado, who leads “Angeles de Calle,” or Street Angels, a non-governmental charity.

    “Our kids are finding ways to survive because neither in their homes nor in their communities is there enough food,” explains social worker Roberto Patino, who has established 29 public diners all over the country to feed the massive numbers of hungry children. But Patino also bemoans that there are not enough resources to help the children get their lives back on track let alone feed them properly. For now, many have turned to trash bags as a source of nutrition.

    But the gang life is dangerous for the children. Often, they venture into the more affluent neighborhoods of the politicians. One of those territories is Las Mercedes. It has high-end restaurants that attract the political elite Venezuelans. Because garbage bags there often contain leftovers and even untouched food, they are sought after by a number of the gangs. The clashes over bags of trash can be deadly.

    The children often take to the consumption of street drugs at an early age as well.  They become criminals, tossing the law out the window to survive.  They steal, assault people, and use drugs like crack, sometimes smoked in makeshift pipes made from the parts of discarded plastic dolls, but for a very disturbing reason. “When you smoke you don’t feel hungry,” explains Patricio.

    The few failures of capitalism are much preferable to the few success of socialism. Although one can argue that there haven’t been any successes with regards to socialism unless you count the lining of the pockets of the politicians who rule over everyone else.

  • "The Days Of Giving Them A Pass Are Over" – Advertisers Demand More Transparency From Facebook, Google

    Even before the New York Times and the Guardian published their bombshell exposes about Cambridge Analytica, data published by market observers showed that the advertising “duopoly” of Facebook and Google had seen its market share slip in 2017 for the first time ever.

    And while some advertisers, including Mozilla and Commerzbank, have already pulled advertising campaigns from Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica scandal highlighted the fact that the company has for years aggressively marketed users’ data with little transparency or agency, other large advertisers are taking advantage of an opportunity to squeeze better rates – or more bespoke service – from both of the ad behemoths, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    Firms like Proctor & Gamble and Subway are cutting back on ad spending on one or both of the two platforms because data has allowed them to more efficiently allocate their ad spending dollars.

    Facebook

    The demands for more accountability and better service started two years ago after Facebook revealed that its metric for the average time users spend watching videos was artificially inflated because the company was only counting views of more than three seconds. Then it continued last year following revelations that some advertisers content posted on YouTube appeared near video content that was deemed to be either racist or otherwise extreme.

    Following this string of run ins and scandals, WSJ says large advertisers are fundamentally reshaping their relationship with the two advertising behemoths – even leveraging their rivalries with smaller firms like Twitter and Snapchat to further pressure the market leaders.

    Madison Avenue’s increasing uneasiness with the platforms and its moves to push back aggressively are fundamentally reshaping the relationship. Advertisers’ broad push for changes has played out in behind-the-scenes dust-ups, veiled and overt threats and advertising boycotts, and has extracted some concessions from the tech giants. Among the leaders is P&G, the world’s largest advertiser.

    Many companies are actively policing their ad purchases to ensure they avoid objectionable or irrelevant content. Some are cutting budgets. And they are demanding far more transparency from Google and Facebook about the performance of their ad campaigns to make sure they aren’t wasting money.

    During a meeting of the Association of National Advertisers, companies staged a mini-revolt after Facebook tried to convince them that its video advertising remained effective even if customers only watched for a few seconds. Advertisers were miffed at what appeared to be Facebook trying to justify offering misleading data about its video ads. So Facebook relented and offered to provide more transparent data.

    Facebook told advertising giant Publicis Groupe that average video viewing time was likely overestimated by 60% to 80%. Other miscues followed. Facebook fixed the problems as they arose and said they didn’t affect billing, but trust with advertisers had frayed.

    “The days of giving digital a pass are over—it’s time to grow up,” Mr. Pritchard said publicly at an industry trade group meeting in January 2017.

    The following month, at a meeting of the Association of National Advertisers, the group wanted to know when Google and Facebook would allow the industry’s measurement watchdog, the Media Rating Council, to audit some of their metrics.

    Instead, Facebook executives including Carolyn Everson, vice president for global marketing solutions, launched into a presentation about how video ads were effective on Facebook, even if users only watched them for a very short time, said people familiar with the meeting, frustrating some attendees.

    “If our boards come to us and ask us, ‘Do you know where these dollars went’ and we cannot confirm it, we have a problem and therefore you do,” said Deborah Wahl, who was then U.S. marketing chief of McDonald’s Corp. , according to one of those people.

    Facebook executives got the message and laid out a plan to give more measurement data to third-party companies and promised to undergo an audit of its measurement processes.

    Offering more precise metrics has allowed advertisers on both Facebook and Google’s platforms to better measure engagement, allowing them to save money in the process.

    P&G this month said it cut more than $200 million in digital ad spending in 2017, including 20% to 50% cuts at “several big digital players,” partly because better data showed it was wasting money. P&G found that the average view time for a mobile ad appearing in the news feed on platforms such as Facebook is only 1.7 seconds.

    Restaurant chain Subway plans to cut back on Facebook spending this year because of concerns about whether its ads are being viewed sufficiently, according to a person familiar with the matter. One global beverage company is planning to cut its spending on Facebook ads by about 30% in the U.S. and the U.K. this year because of a decline in effectiveness, according to a person familiar with the matter.

    But making sure – for example – that advertisements for Tide-branded products don’t appear alongside videos of teenagers attempting “the Tide pod challenge’ – is just the beginning. Both advertising behemoths have gotten the message that they can no longer take their customers for granted.

    The question now is, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several of his peers likely headed for a Congressional hearing later this year, will we see more advertisers jump ship?

    One thing’s for sure: Media companies – which have suffered enormously as Facebook and Google have siphoned off the ad revenue on which they once depended – will be watching closely for even the slightest opening.

  • "Please Remain Cool" Fund Managers Beg As FANG+ Index Drops Most On Record

    Echoing the immortal words of Bob Pisani, “the most important thing is to remain coolaccording to Walter “Bucky” Hellwig, Birmingham, Alabama-based senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management, who helps oversee about $17 billion.

    “Cool” will be an important word for tomorrow, after NYSE’s FANG+ index crashed 5.6% today – its biggest drop ever – putting the widely-owned index of mega-tech, ultra-high P/E names deep in correction territory (down almost 14% from its highs)…

    Volume was extremely high compared to yesterday’s practically-silent melt-up…

    And as Bloomberg notes, in this bull market alone there’s been five other corrections like this one, and it’s taken around seven months on average for equities to climb out of their hole. Based on that path, the current jitters won’t be fully eradicated until August… just in time for MidTerms to spike volatility once again.

    “People’s muscle memories spaz,” said Michael Purves, Weeden & Co.’s chief global strategist. “It’s like going to the gym and lifting weights after you haven’t been to the gym for two years. Part of it is just a very normal psychological, emotional reaction to a very stressful thing.”

    But tomorrow is critical as the index of tech stocks sits at the intersection of two critical support levels – a two-year trendline connected higher lows from early 2016 and The Shanghai Accord and the crucial 100-day moving-average…

    Volatility is back with a vengeance. Bloomberg points out that there have already been 22 days in which the S&P 500 moved more than 1 percent in the first three months of the year, triple the total for all of 2017.

    “You had this incredible low-volatility environment, but markets are supposed to go up and down,” Michael O’Rourke, Jones Trading’s chief market strategist, said by phone. “Relative to how markets should be and how they behaved most of my career, thus far this selloff is not a major event. At this point the selloff relative to history is just a blip.”

    So the rupture is back-to-normal, and normal is usually hard as the FANG+ index lost $180 billion in market cap today alone (and just the four FANG names are now down over $260 billion in the last 10 days).

    “So much of the money was directed toward tech stocks, and there is a much greater emotional identification for investors in these household names,” said Julian Emanuel, chief equity and derivatives strategist at BTIG LLC In New York.

    ‘‘People are incrementally more agitated than they were during February’s leg down because everyone believed the coast was clear. People are optimistic by nature, so when corrections hit, they are largely unexpected and emotionally jarring.

    One other point of note – Nasdaq futures were up over 3% yesterday and down 3% today – that hasn’t happened since 2011 – and, as @Dburgh notes, is not a great signal for the weeks ahead judging by the last 14 occurrences.

    Consider, as @L0gg0l noted, in 13 of the 14 occurrences, the US economy had entered a recession.

    Finally, we circle back to “Bucky” – our hero wealth manager from the beginning of this note. He has some final reassuring words for all of his clients (and potential clients):

    “I keep the checklist of things that went wrong during the financial crisis, and I look at it from time to time to see where we stand. We’re nowhere close…”

    Of course, we don’t want to break it to “Bucky” that valuations are off the charts compared to ‘the last financial crisis’ and correct us if we’re wrong, there wasn’t $20 trillion of assets purchases by central banks creating the greatest potemkin village market the world has ever known.

    Still, probably nothing.

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Today’s News 27th March 2018

  • ECB Finds €10 Billion In European Bank Loan "Miscalculations"

    By now it is, or should be, well-understood that the biggest deflationary virus at the heart of the European financial system is the ~€1 trillion mountain of bad loans  (of which which over €230 billion is found in Germany and France) and which casts a giant shadow both over Europe and the ECB whose president is well aware that without the central bank’s bid, the liquidity and confidence vortex that is this massive monetary black hole, will promptly drag Europe’s economy back into depression.

    Well, as of today one can make it $1 trillion and €10 billion, because in a report published by the European Central Bank today, it announced its inspectors had found “shortcomings and miscalculations” worth more than €10 billion when going through euro zone banks’ loan books last year.

    Not surprisingly – after all the stinking pile of bad debt is arguably the biggest threat facing the European financial system once QE and NIRP is over – the ECB’s annual report showed some banks were found to be deficient in the way they identify problem customers and loans, set aside provisions and choose when to grant credit according to Reuters.

    In other words “some banks” lied about pretty much everything.

    Tasked with avoiding a new financial crisis, the ECB has been putting pressure on banks to clean up their balance sheets from unpaid loans inherited from the last recession, a problem for most countries in the south of Europe, as well as Slovenia and Ireland. Ironically, the ECB’s own monetary policy has removed all urgency to actually clean up balance sheets at a time when European junk bonds yield less than US government paper.

    The bad loans, along with risky derivative instruments, will remain the focus of ECB supervisors this year, President Mario Draghi said in the report.

    “In 2018 banks continue to face some key challenges,” Draghi said adding that “These include cleaning up their balance sheets, reducing legacy exposures largely originating from the financial crisis, such as certain non-marketable financial products, and from the ensuing Great Recession, such as non-performing loans.

    In short, nearly a decade after the crisis, Europe still has about €1 trillion in bad loans should not be there.

    The report shows the ECB’s focus has been mostly on the latter – a cause of griping among Italian banks, which meanwhile have been complaining that risks associated with derivatives held by their competitors in France and Germany have been overlooked.

    Recall that as we first disclosed four years ago, Deutsche Bank has tens of trillions of gross derivative exposure on its books.

    Not surprisingly, the ECB focused on the bad loan aspect instead of derivatives (knowing which usual suspects could be implicated): the ECB launched 156 inspections in 2017, around 60 of which concentrated on bank credit – in most cases including soured loans. By comparison, market risk, which includes derivatives, accounted for fewer than 10 inspections. These revealed that some banks were failing to classify their derivatives correctly according to how difficult they are to value, and therefore potentially risky.

    In other words, while some banks lied about their bad loans, other banks lied about their derivatives. And with that in mind, we look forward to finding out just how the ECB thinks it can gradually or otherwise withdraw its support of the European financial system.

  • Paul Craig Roberts: Integrity Has Vanished From The West

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    Among Western political leaders there is not an ounce of integrity or morality. The Western print and TV media is dishonest and corrupt beyond repair. Yet the Russian government persists in its fantasy of “working with Russia’s Western partners.” The only way Russia can work with crooks is to become a crook. Is that what the Russian government wants?

    Finian Cunningham notes the absurdity in the political and media uproar over Trump (belatedly) telephoning Putin to congratulate him on his reelection with 77 percent of the vote, a show of public approval that no Western political leader could possibly attain. The crazed US senator from Arizona called the person with the largest majority vote of our time “a dictator.” Yet a real blood-soaked dictator from Saudi Arabia is feted at the White House and fawned over by the president of the United States.

    The Western politicians and presstitutes are morally outraged over an alleged poisoning, unsupported by any evidence, of a former spy of no consequence on orders by the president of Russia himself. These kind of insane insults thrown at the leader of the world’s most powerful military nation—and Russia is a nation, unlike the mongrel Western countries—raise the chances of nuclear Armageddon beyond the risks during the 20th century’s Cold War. The insane fools making these unsupported accusations show total disregard for all life on earth. Yet they regard themselves as the salt of the earth and as “exceptional, indispensable” people.

    Think about the alleged poisoning of Skirpal by Russia. What can this be other than an orchestrated effort to demonize the president of Russia? How can the West be so outraged over the death of a former double-agent, that is, a deceptive person, and completely indifferent to the millions of peoples destroyed by the West in the 21st century alone. Where is the outrage among Western peoples over the massive deaths for which the West, acting through its Saudi agent, is responsible in Yemen? Where is the Western outrage among Western peoples over the deaths in Syria? The deaths in Libya, in Somalia, Pakistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan? Where is the outrage in the West over the constant Western interference in the internal affairs of other countries? How many times has Washington overthrown a democratically-elected government in Honduras and reinstalled a Washington puppet?

    The corruption in the West extends beyond politicians, presstitutes, and an insouciant public to experts. When the ridiculous Condi Rice, national security adviser to president George W. Bush, spoke of Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction sending up a nuclear cloud over an American city, experts did not laugh her out of court. The chance of any such event was precisely zero and every expert knew it, but the corrupt experts held their tongues. If they spoke the truth, they knew that they would not get on TV, would not get a government grant, would be out of the running for a government appointment. So they accepted the absurd lie designed to justify an American invasion that destroyed a country.

    This is the West. There is nothing but lies and indifference to the deaths of others. The only outrage is orchestrated and directed against a target: the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Iran, Assad, Russia and Putin, and against reformist leaders in Latin America. The targets for Western outrage are always those who act independently of Washington or who are no longer useful to Washington’s purposes.

    The quality of people in Western governments has collapsed to the very bottom of the barrel. The British actually have a person, Boris Johnson, as Foreign Secretary, who is so low-down that a former British ambassador has no compunction in calling him a categorical liar. The British lab Porton Down, contrary to Johnson’s claim, has not identified the agent associated with the attack on Skirpal as a Russian novichok agent. Note also that if the British lab is able to identify a novichok agent, it also has the capability of producing it, a capability that many countries have as the formulas were published years ago in a book.

    That the novichok poisoning of Skirpal is an orchestration is obvious. The minute the event occurred the story was ready. With no evidence in hand, the British government and presstitute media were screaming “the Russians did it.” Not content with that, Boris Johnson screamed “Putin did it.” In order to institutionalize fear and hatred of Russia into British consciousness, British school children are being taught that Putin is like Hitler. 

    Orchestrations this blatant demonstrate that Western governments have no respect for the intelligence of their peoples. That Western governments get away with these fantastic lies indicates that the governments are immune to accountability. Even if accountability were possible, there is no sign that Western peoples are capable of holding their governments accountable. As Washington drives the world to nuclear war, where are the protests? The only protest is brainwashed school children protesting the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment.

    Western democracy is a hoax. Consider Catalonia. The people voted for independence and were denounced for doing so by European politicians. The Spanish government invaded Catalonia alleging that the popular referendum, in which people expressed their opinion about their own future, was illegal. Catalonian leaders are in prison awaiting trial, except for Carles Puigdemont who escaped to Belgium. Now Germany has captured him on his return to Belgium from Finland where he lectured at the University of Hesinki and is holding him in jail for a Spanish government that bears more resemblance to Francisco Franco than to democracy.  The European Union itself is a conspiracy against democracy.

    The success of Western propaganda in creating non-existent virtues for itself is the greatest public relations success in history.

  • Mapping Where Global Tariffs Are Highest And Lowest

    Last week, China announced that it would retaliate against U.S. tariffs by imposing its own duties on a range of American products including apples, port and steel pipes. Last Thursday, President Trump signed an executive memorandum that could lead to tariffs being imposed on up to $60 billion of Chinese products, a move which is designed to penalize China for alleged intellectual property theft. Beijing responded that it while it does not want a trade war, it is “absolutely not afraid of one”. Late last week, stock markets dropped sharply.

    The Trump Administrations’s move to impose tariffs on Chinese imports as well as steel and aluminum imports in general, is a break with long-standing U.S. trade policy. As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, hHistorically, previous presidents have been in favor of lower tariffs and the removal of barriers to facilitate trade.

    Today, the U.S. applies a weighted average tariff of 1.6 percent on its imports according to the World Bank and this is one of the lowest rates worldwide, equivalent to the EU and similar to Japan.

    Infographic: Where Global Tariffs Are Highest And Lowest | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The World Bank’s tariff rates refer to 2016 and are weighted by product import shares without taking specific trade deals like NAFTA into account.

    Although most developed countries have been pushing for lower trade tariffs, they are still very high in some parts of the world.

    For example, India imposes weighted average tariffs of 6.3 percent while in China, the rate is 3.5 percent.

    African countries have some of the highest rates with Gabon standing out at 16.93 percent.

    The Bahamas is the country with the highest weighted-average tariff worldwide at 18.6 percent.

  • Whitehead: Enough Is Enough – If You Really Want To Save Lives, Take Aim At Government Violence

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    Enough is enough.

    That was the refrain chanted over and over by the thousands of demonstrators who gathered to protest gun violence in America.

    On March 24, 2018, more than 200,000 young people took the time to march on Washington DC and other cities across the country to demand that their concerns about gun violence be heard.

    More power to them.

    I’m all for activism, especially if it motivates people who have been sitting silently on the sidelines for too long to get up and try to reclaim control over a runaway government.

    Curiously, however, although these young activists were vocal in calling for gun control legislation that requires stricter background checks and limits the kinds of weapons being bought and sold by members of the public, they were remarkably silent about the gun violence perpetrated by their own government.

    Why is no one taking aim at the U.S. government as the greatest purveyor of violence in American society and around the world?

    As journalist Celisa Calacal recognizes, “It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.”

    Enough is enough.

    The systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government has done more collective harm to the American people and our liberties than any single act of terror or mass shooting.

    Violence has become our government’s calling card, from the more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans to the military’s endless wars abroad.

    Indeed, the day before thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington DC to protest mass shootings such as the one that took place at Stoneman Douglas High School, President Trump signed into law a colossal $1.3 trillion spending bill that gives the military the biggest boost in spending in more than a decade.

    With more than $700 billion earmarked for the military, including $144.3 billion for new military equipment, you can be sure this financial windfall for America’s military empire will be used to expand the police state here at home.

    This will put more militarized guns and weapons in the hands of local police and government bureaucrats who have been trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

    Enough is enough.

    Remember, it was just a few months ago that President Trump, aided and abetted by his trusty Department of Justice henchman Jeff Sessions, rolled back restrictions on the government’s military recycling program to the delight of the nation’s powerful police unions.

    Under the auspices of this military “recycling” program, which was instituted decades ago, more than $4.2 billion worth of equipment has been transferred from the Defense Department to domestic police agencies.

    There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government civilians armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines.

    In the hands of government agents, whether they are members of the military, law enforcement or some other government agency, these weapons have become routine parts of America’s day-to-day life. As investigative journalists Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz reveal, “Many police, including beat cops, now routinely carry assault rifles. Combined with body armor and other apparel, many officers look more and more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

    Thanks to Trump, this transformation of America into a battlefield is only going to get worse.

    Get ready for more militarized police.

    More police shootings. More SWAT team raids.

    More violence in a culture already drenched with violence.

    Enough is enough.

    You want to talk about gun violence?

    According to the Washington Post,1 in 13 people killed by guns are killed by police.”

    Growing numbers of unarmed people are being shot and killed by police for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

    Enough is enough.

    With alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by twitchy, hyper-sensitive, easily-spooked police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

    Americans are being shot and killed by police…

    For standing in a “shooting stance.”

    For holding a cell phone.

    For carrying a baseball bat.

    For opening the front door.

    For running towards police with a metal spoon.

    For running while holding a tree branch.

    For crawling around naked.

    For wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey.

    For driving while deaf.

    For being homeless.

    For brandishing a shoehorn.

    For having your car break down on the road.

    For holding a garden hose.

    For calling 911.

    For looking for a parking spot.

    This is what passes for policing in America today, folks, and it’s only getting worse.

    That police chose to fatally resolve these encounters by using their guns on fellow citizens speaks volumes about what is wrong with policing in America today, where police officers are being dressed in the trappings of war, drilled in the deadly art of combat, and trained to look upon “every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making.”

    Enough is enough.

    You want to save lives?

    Start by doing something to save the lives of your fellow citizens who are being gunned down every day by police who are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

    You want to cry about the lives lost during mass shootings?

    Cry about the lives lost as a result of the violence being perpetrated by the U.S. government here at home and abroad.

    If gun control activists really want the country to reconsider its relationship with guns and violence, then it needs to start with a serious discussion about the role our government has played and continues to play in contributing to the culture of violence.

    If the American people are being called on to scale back on their weapons, then as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government and its cohorts – the police, the various government agencies that are now armed to the hilt, the military, the defense contractors, etc. – need to do the same.

    It’s time to put an end to the government’s reign of terror.

    Enough is enough.

  • The Occupations Growing The Fastest Since The Recession

    The U.S. had its most recent recession between December 2007 and June 2009. Even 10 years since it began, the country’s job market is still feeling its impact.

    Some states have recovered well from the recession but, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy points out, others are still struggling today and seven of them had fewer jobs in 2017 than 2007, according to CareerBuilder data.

    That’s despite the nation as a whole having around 6.7 million more jobs in 2017 than 2007. The list of states with fewer jobs last year included Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi, New Mexico, Connecticut, Wyoming and Illinois.

    CareerBuilder’s research also revealed the occupations that are thriving since the end of the recession.

    Infographic: The Occupations Growing The Fastest Since The Recession | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The fastest rates of growth were seen among home health aide positions with almost 300,000 jobs added between 2007 and 2017.

    During the same time period, web development jobs grew 38 percent while veterinary technologist and technicians went up 32 percent.

  • Escobar: Will The Putin-Xi Era Supersede The Western Liberal (Dis)Order?

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    Perhaps a Confucian path would be the right direction toward Eurasian integration

    The Chinese constitutional amendment allowing Xi Jinping the possibility of further presidential terms – staying in power long enough to bring “national rejuvenation” combined with the Russian election re-confirming Vladimir Putin in the presidency have assured consistency and continuity for the Russia-China strategic partnership way into the next decade.

    This will facilitate the interaction between the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EEAU); policy coordination inside the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS and the G-20; and the overall drive towards Eurasia integration.

    The strengthening of what should be viewed as the Putin-Xi era could not but render Western liberals – and neoliberals – absolutely livid.

    Capitalist interests have always believed their own propaganda narrative, which directly links capitalist expansion with the inevitable spread of democracy.

    Critical thinking is, at last, debunking it as a grand illusion.

    What in fact happened since the early 1980s was that Western turbo-capitalism avidly profited from a variation of neo-slave labor in China’s Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Compound it with the proverbial hubris of Western elites betting that China — regarded at best as a source of cheap labor as well as an enfeebled Russia during the 1990s would never accumulate enough know-how to challenge the West, geoeconomically and geopolitically.

    The historical record is implacable, showing there’s no connection whatsoever between “free” trade – usually freer for those with extra economic heft and political liberalization. For instance, the Prussian monarchy lowered trade barriers and that led to the creation of the Zollverein in 1834. And the Third Reich between 1933 and 1938 offered a heady mix of hardcore capitalism and totalitarianism.

    China’s system, where a (Marxist) party controls the state for the purposes of national cohesion certainly does not qualify as a liberal democracy. Dissenter Minxin Pei, the author of  China’s Trapped Transition, already knew 12 years ago that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would never go the Western liberal democracy way (Pei did understand Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping’s commands to the letter).

    He got it right that China has “no interest in becoming a member of the [Western] club. They want the economic benefits from the Western liberal order but reject its political values and fear its security alliances. Now they are in a strong enough position attempting to build their own clubhouse.

    What Pei got wrong is that the CCP would smother China’s economic growth (“The prospect of a Japanese-like stagnation is real.”) Xi Jinping and his new dream team need enough time to successfully tweak the Chinese economic model.

    Away from childish 24/7 demonization, the fact is Russia today is a democracy, albeit imperfect. And it’s important to analyze how a young democracy can be manipulated. The third chapter of new book Manifest-Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance details the rape of Russia; how Boris Yeltsin’s “free market reforms” facilitated by the “Harvard boys” allowed a small coterie of billionaire oligarchs — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich among them — to take over an economy suffering from shock therapy.

    Between 1991 and 1997 Russian GDP collapsed by a whopping 83% while investment into the economy fell by 92%.

    The case of Khodorkovsky is emblematic. Through Yukos, he owned key Siberian oil fields and was about to sell them all to Western corporate interests back in 2003 when Putin went after him. There’s no question this was avidly studied by the Beijing leadership. Control of key national resources is the ultimate red line.

    For Putin as well as Xi, the supreme arbiter is the national state, not a bunch of oligarchs like it’s become a norm across the liberal and neoliberal West. On a BRICS level, compare it with the current usurper installed in the Brazilian presidency, who’s doing his best to hand over most of the pre-salt oil reserves as well as aviation giant Embraer to foreign interests.

    When in doubt, ask Confucius

    It has become a ritual for guardians of the Western establishment to weep hard about the “fading liberal world order.” At least some admit it is “neither liberal nor worldwide nor orderly.”

    Lesser guardians may be more realistic, noting how Western politicians have been completely bypassed by popular anger in myriad latitudes, yet still believing it’s possible to “rebuild democracy’s moral foundations.”

    It’s not — not under the predominant neoliberal creed, the post-mod TINA (there is no alternative). The guardians, left and right, cannot possibly understand the rise of populism — because those under the populist influence clearly see how the myths of “rule of law” and “national sovereignty” are fast dissolving in the mud. The guardians at best mourn, nostalgically, “the loss of elite influence.”

    China, Russia, Iran and Turkey  – all implicated in Eurasia integration  – may all rank as authoritarian systems at different levels. And cases can be made that, with the exception of China they still underperform economically compared to their true potential.

    Yet one thing they value most of all is national sovereignty amid a multipolar system. That’s their conceptual counterpoint to the il(liberal) world (dis)order. That’s their answer to TINA.

    As for “the loss of elite influence,” that’s code for a self-described coterie of the wealthy and powerful claiming a fuzzy democracy moral high ground which only unmasks their deep fear as the Western unipolar moment dissolves sooner rather than later.

    All these contradictions are in sharp relief when we look at the European Union. The EU, since the Maastricht treaty, has been steered into becoming what Angela Merkel herself defined as Bundesrepublik Europa — the Federal Republic of Europe.

    Anyone familiar with Brussels knows how those waves of tax-free Eurocrats milk an ultra-centralized and bureaucratically Kafkaesque regulation system as they remain completely out of touch with normal, real-life Europeans.

    The EU’s notion of promoting “economic integration”  including heavy doses of austerity could not be more anti-democratic.

    Add to it scandals at top state level that do nothing but corrode the belief in the primacy of the Western liberal democracy model. The latest involves the real possibility that Colonel Gaddafi probably financed the 2007 Sarkozy presidential campaign in France; an outstandingly murky affair featuring the politics of energy, the politics of water, and the proverbial major weapons contracts through which Western liberal democracies discard any moral high ground.

    Now compare it with Xi Jinping as hexin lingdao (the nucleus of the leadership) a sort of primus inter pares in a Sinified version of Plato’s Republic. Greek-Roman-Enlightenment political theory is not the only game in town anymore. Yet not a chance the hubristic West will start listening to Confucius.

  • Cerberus Takes A Bath As America's Oldest Gunmaker Files For Bankruptcy

    Cerberus Capital Management has officially eaten its initial investment in Remington as the country’s oldest firearms manufacturer officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy late Sunday after unveiling a plan last month to surrender most of the company’s assets to its creditors. CNNMoney reported that the company agreed to reduce its debt by $700 million through the Chapter 11 process and contribute $145 million to its subsidiaries as part of the deal.

    Cerberus will shed its ownership once the bankruptcy is complete.

    Falling gun sales in recent years combined with high debt levels and a bleak sales outlook (now that President Trump is in office and Republicans are seen as more likely to protect gun rights) are making life difficult for firearms manufacturers.

    Remington

    Remington, which is buried under nearly $1 billion in debt, announced a debt restructuring plan on Feb. 12, two days before the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Since then, some retailers have reacted by dropping sales of firearms – most notably Dick’s Sporting Goods, which announced a ban on the sale of assault rifles and Walmart, which raised the minimum age to buy guns to 21.

    Remington makes the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle that was used in the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut that left 20 first-graders and six educators dead in 2012. The company was cleared of wrongdoing in the shooting, but investors swiftly shunned Cerberus Capital Management, the company’s owner, according to the Associated Press.

    Gun makers have reported precipitous declines in profits over the past year thanks to the drop in sales.

    After 8 years of almost incessant rises in NICS Firearms Checks (a proxy for ‘legal’ arms sales) under President Obama, the number of checks declined last year.

     

    Remington

    Remington announced in February that it would reduce its $950 million debt load in a deal that will transfer control of the company to creditors. It plans to wrap up its bankruptcy as soon as May 3, according to CNN.

    The company’s announcement came just two days before 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14 – a massacre that sparked an intense campaign for gun control by activists.

    Remington plans to keep on making guns. The company said, when it first announced its plan to file for bankruptcy in February, that operations “will not be disrupted by the restructuring process.”

    Founded in 1816, Remington is one of the oldest and best-known gun makers in the world.

    Remington is headquartered in North Carolina. It makes handguns, shotguns and rifles at its 19th-century factory in Ilion, NY, and is a cornerstone of the region’s economy.

    While Cerberus has been wiped out, Remington’s creditors might have reason to be optimistic. With the “March for our Lives” attracting hundreds of thousands of Americans, pressure on lawmakers to crack down on gun sales is growing. And any sign of an impending crackdown will likely send gun sales soaring again.

  • How To Uncover The Apps Tracking You On Facebook (And Block Them)

    Via TheAntiMedia.com,

    Following a lengthy silence in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where it was revealed that a data firm was able to obtain personal information from over 50 million Facebook accounts, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally spoke out last week.

    “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post“I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

    Facebook’s top dog then embarked on a small media tour, addressing several of the major concerns highlighted by the unsavory affair. While speaking with the Wall Street Journal, for instance, Zuckerberg said his company has launched an investigation into third-party developers who are “doing bad things” with users’ personal data on the Facebook platform.

    But he also admitted that “like any security precaution, it’s not that this is a bulletproof solve” and that no mechanism “by itself is ever going to find every single thing.”

    While it’s great that the company is taking a proactive step, the effort is not likely to comfort those users who feel their privacy has already been violated. What’s more, Zuckerberg conceded in the interview that the investigation may take months or more to complete.

    In the meantime, options are available to those who refuse to simply wait around while Facebook gets its collective act together.

    For starters, stop using the “log in with Facebook” option after downloading an app. It may take a bit longer to create a new account, but the app won’t get instant access to private information from your Facebook profile, which the company itself admits is what happens.

    For the apps you’re already using, there’s a fairly simple process for managing the types of data they can access. Or, if you prefer, the same process always you to delete the app entirely.

    Step 1:

    Step 2:

    Step 3:

    Step 4:

    Step 5:

    Step 6:

    Step 7:

    Step 8:

    Step 9:

  • Obama's FBI Knew Russia Aided Iran Nuclear Program Before Uranium One & Iran Deal: Report

    During Obama’s first term, the FBI was presented with evidence that Russia was providing assistance to Iran’s nuclear program, according to former undercover informant William Douglas Campbell. 

    Campbell – who worked for the CIA for decades before his work for the FBI, tells The Hill that he gathered evidence of Russia intercepting nonpublic copies of international inspection reports concerning Tehran’s nuclear program – sending equipment, advice and materials to one of Iran’s several nuclear facilities. 

    Campbell said Russian nuclear executives were extremely concerned that Moscow’s ongoing assistance to Iran might boomerang on them just as they were winning billions of dollars in new nuclear fuel contracts inside the United States. –The Hill

    The people I was working with had been briefed by Moscow to keep a very low profile regarding Moscow’s work with Tehran,” said Campbell. “Moscow was supplying equipment, nuclear equipment, nuclear services to Iran. And Moscow, specifically the leadership in Moscow, were concerned that it would offset the strategy they had here in the United States if the United States understood the close relationship between Moscow and Tehran.” 

    Notes of Campbell’s FBI debriefings show he reported in 2010 that a Russian nuclear executive was using “the same kind of payment network” to move funds between Russia and Iran as was used to launder kickbacks between Moscow and Americans.

    Campbell worked from 2008 to 2014 as an undercover informant inside Rosatom, Russia’s state-controlled nuclear giant, while posing as a consultant. He helped the FBI put several Russian and U.S. executives in prison for a bribery, kickback, money laundering and extortion scheme.  –The Hill

    “Ask your politics”

    When Campbell asked the FBI why all of the illegal schemes he uncovered weren’t being prosecuted, he was explicitly told it was political: 

    “I remember one response I got from an agent when I asked how it was possible CFIUS would approve the Uranium One sale when the FBI could prove Rosatom was engaged in criminal conduct.  His answer: ‘Ask your politics,’ ” Campbell said.  

    In other words – Obama’s “scandal free” administration approved the Uranium One deal and spearheaded the Iran Nuclear Deal after the FBI, headed at the time by Robert Mueller knew, according to Campbell, that: 

    • Russian nuclear executives routed millions in bribe money to a Clinton charity as part of a “uranium dominance strategy.”
    • The Clinton Foundation received $145 million in donations from parties connected to Uranium One – in particular, mining executive and close Clinton pal Frank Giustra.
    • Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm, Transport Logistics International (TLI) in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – which bribed a Russian nuclear official in exchange for a contract transport Russian-mined U.S. uranium, including “yellowcake” uranium secured in the Uranium One deal.
    • A Russian nuclear executive connected to the Uranium One deal engaged in a money laundering and bribery scheme with a United States trucking company, DAHER-TLI. 

    Campbell said he became concerned the Obama administration was granting concessions to the Russian nuclear industry in 2010 and 2011 — paving the way for Moscow to buy large U.S. uranium assets and to secure billions in nuclear fuel contracts — even as he reported evidence of Moscow’s help to Iran.

    “I got no feedback. They took the reports and the reports, I assume, went to specific people assigned to analyze the reports and that was the last I heard of it,” he said.

    In 2012, FBI agents asked Campbell to press a top Russian nuclear executive about the Iran assistance, providing a list of detailed questions. The Russians became suspicious about Campbell’s inquiries and fired him from his consulting job, he said

    It raised a red flag almost immediately and within a matter of weeks thank God I was out of harm’s way,” he said. –The Hill

    ***

    Following Campbell’s undercover work, the FBI rewarded him in 2016 with a check for $51,000 at an awards banquet in Chantilly, VA – however after details of Campbell’s undercover work for the FBI first emerged in an October 2017 report by The Hill – which did not divulge his name, Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News and Joel Schectman of Reuters published articles smearing Campbell, saying he was “so unreliable that prosecutors dropped him as a witness” in a case unrelated to his undercover work – while two “senior officials” within the Justice Department fed Congressional investigators the same thing during a December 15 briefing. 

    Both statements were lies, as the case was related to Campbell’s undercover work, and he was dropped as a witness after the Baltimore U.S. Attorney’s office botched their case, which Campbell’s testimony would have weakened.

    As part of the smear, Campbell’s name was also divulged in a public filing by the DOJ, “making him unemployable in the industry and leaving him to survive on Social Security” after decades of loyal service to both the CIA and the FBI. 

    Campbell testified to Congressional investigators in February after an “iron-clad” gag order was lifted. 

    Campbell’s lawyer Victoria Toensing, a former Reagan Justice Department official and former Chief Counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, fired off a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday demanding an investigation into Campbell’s character assassination – CC’ing DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, along with several Congressional Investigators and others involved in the matter. 

    The letter reads: 

    “We write on behalf of our client, William Douglas Campbell, to request an investigation of disclosures by anonymous “federal officials” to the media and of Congressional briefings by “senior officials” of the Justice Department. The former provided false information about Mr. Campbell to the media. The latter provided false information about Mr. Campbell to Senate and House committees.”

     

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Today’s News 26th March 2018

  • 91% Of Cypriots See 'Fake News' As A Problem (And They're Not Alone In The EU)

    According to a recent Eurobarometer survey, at least seven in ten respondents in all 28 EU member states perceive fake news to be a problem in their country.

    Infographic: Where Fake News Is Seen as a Problem in the EU  | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The share was highest in Cyprus with 91 percent saying “yes, it is definitely a problem” or “yes, it is a problem to some extent”.

     Greece came second, followed by Italy.

    In the UK, 84 percent of people said that fake news is a problem in their country.

  • 30 Questions That Journalists Should Be Asking About The Skripal Case

    Authored by Rob Slane via TheBlogMire.com,

    There are a lot of issues surrounding the case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal which, at the time of writing, are very unclear and rather odd. There may well be good and innocent explanations for some or even all of them. Then again there may not. This is why it is crucial for questions to be asked where, as yet, there are either no answers or deeply unsatisfactory ones.

    Some people will assume that this is conspiracy theory territory. It is not that, for the simple reason that I have no credible theory – conspiracy or otherwise – to explain all the details of the incident in Salisbury from start to finish, and I am not attempting to forward one. I have no idea who was behind this incident, and I continue to keep an open mind to a good many possible explanations.

    However, there are a number of oddities in the official narrative, which do demand answers and clarifications. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist or a defender of the Russian state to see this. You just need a healthy scepticism, “of a type developed by all inquiring minds!”

    Below are 30 of the most important questions regarding the case and the British Government’s response, which are currently either wholly unanswered, or which require clarification.

    1. Why have there been no updates on the condition of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the public domain since the first week of the investigation?

    2. Are they still alive?

    3. If so, what is their current condition and what symptoms are they displaying?

    4. In a recent letter to The Times, Stephen Davies, Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, wrote the following:

    “Sir, Further to your report (“Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment”, Mar 14) may I clarify that no patients have experienced nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning.”

    His claim that “no patients have experienced nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury” is remarkably odd, as it appears to flatly contradict the official narrative. Was this a slip of the pen, or was it his intention to communicate precisely this — that no patients have been poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury?

    5. It has been said that the Skripals and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey were poisoned by “a military grade nerve agent”. According to some claims, the type referred to could be anywhere between five and eight times more toxic than VX nerve agent. Given that just 10mg of VX is reckoned to be the median lethal dose, it seems likely that the particular type mentioned in the Skripal case should have killed them instantly. Is there an explanation as to how or why this did not happen?

    6. Although reports suggested the involvement of some sort of nerve agent fairly soon after the incident, it was almost a week before Public Health England issued advice to those who had visited The Mill pub or the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury on the day that the Skripals fell ill. Why the delay and did this pose a danger to the public?

    7. In their advice, Public Health England stated that people who had visited those places, where traces of a military grade nerve agent had apparently been found, should wash their clothes and:

    “Wipe personal items such as phones, handbags and other electronic items with cleansing or baby wipes and dispose of the wipes in the bin (ordinary domestic waste disposal).”

    Are baby wipes acknowledged to be an effective and safe method of dealing with objects that may potentially have been contaminated with “military grade nerve agent”, especially of a type 5-8 times more deadly than VX?

    8. Initial reports suggested that Detective Sergeant Bailey became ill after coming into contact with the substance after attending the Skripals on the bench they were seated on in The Maltings in Salisbury. Subsequent claims, however, first aired by former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Ian Blair on 9th March, said that he came into contact with the substance at Sergei Skripal’s house in Christie Miller Road. Reports since then have been highly ambiguous about what should be an easily verifiable fact. Which is the correct account?

    9. The government have claimed that the poison used was “a military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia”. The phrase “of a type developed by Russia” says nothing whatsoever about whether the substance used in the Salisbury case was produced or manufactured in Russia. Can the government confirm that its scientists at Porton Down have established that the substance that poisoned the Skripals and DS Bailey was actually produced or manufactured in Russia?

    10. The former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has claimed that sources within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) have told him that scientists at Porton Down would not agree to a statement about the place of origin of the substance, because they were not able to establish this. According to Mr Murray, only under much pressure from the Government did they end up agreeing to the compromise wording, “of a type developed by Russia”, which has subsequently been used in all official statements on the matter. Can the FCO, in plain and unambiguous English, categorically refute Mr Murray’s claims that pressure was put on Porton Down scientists to agree to a form of words and that in the end a much-diluted version was agreed?

    11. On the occasion that the FCO did attempt to refute Mr Murray’s claims, the wording they used included a straightforward repetition of the same phrase – “of a type developed by Russia”. Is the FCO willing and able to go beyond this and confirm that the substance was not only “of a type developed by Russia”, but that it was “produced” or “manufactured” in Russia?

    12. Why did the British Government issue a 36-hour ultimatum to the Russian Government to come up with an explanation, but then refuse their request to share the evidence that allegedly pointed to their culpability (there could have been no danger of their tampering with it, since Porton Down would have retained their own sample)?

    13. How is it possible for a state (or indeed any person or entity) that has been accused of something, to defend themselves against an accusation if they are refused access to evidence that apparently points to their guilt?

    14. Is this not a clear case of the reversal of the presumption of innocence and of due process?

    15. Furthermore, why did the British Government issue an ultimatum to the Russian Government, in contravention of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) rules governing such matters, to which both Britain and Russia are signatories, and which are clearly set out in Article 9, Paragraph ii of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)?

    16. Given that the investigation, which has been described by the man leading it as being “an extremely challenging investigation” and as having “a number of unique and complex issues”, and given that many of the facts of the case are not yet known, such as when, where and how the substance was administered, how is it possible for the British Government to point the finger of blame with such certainty?

    17. Furthermore, by doing so, haven’t they both politicised and prejudiced the investigation?

    18. Why did the British Government feel the need to come forward with an accusation little more than a week into the investigation, rather than waiting for its completion?

    19. On the Andrew Marr Show on 18th March, the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, stated the following:

    “And I might just say in response to Mr Chizhov’s point about Russian stockpiles of chemical weapons. We actually had evidence within the last ten years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but it has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok.”

    Where has this intelligence come from and has it been properly verified?

    20. If this intelligence was known before 27th September 2017 – the date that the OPCW issued a statement declaring the completion of the destruction of all 39,967 metric tons of chemical weapons possessed by the Russian Federation – why did Britain not inform the OPCW of its own intelligence which apparently contradicts this claim, which they would have had a legal obligation to do?

    21. If this intelligence was known after 27th September 2017, why did Britain not inform the OPCW of this “new” information, which it was legally obliged to do, since it allegedly shows that Russia had been lying to the OPCW and had been carrying out a clandestine chemical weapons programme?

    22. Also on the Andrew Marr show, Mr Johnson made the following claim after a question of whether he was “absolutely sure” that the substance used to poison the Skripals was a “Novichok”:

    “Obviously to the best of our knowledge this is a Russian-made nerve agent that falls within the category Novichok made only by Russia, and just to get back to the point about the international reaction which is so fascinating.”

    Is the phrase “to the best of our knowledge” an adequate response to Mr Marr’s request of him being “absolutely sure”?

    23. Is this a good enough legal basis from which to accuse another state and to impose punitive measures on it, or is more certainty needed before such an accusation can be made?

    24. After hedging his words with the phrase, “to the best of our knowledge”, Mr Johnson then went beyond previous Government claims that the substance was “of a type developed in Russia”, saying that it was “Russian-made”. Have the scientists at Porton Down been able to establish that it was indeed “Russian-made”, or was this a case of Mr Johnson straying off-message?

    25. He also went beyond the previous claim that the substance was “of a type developed in Russia” by saying that the substance involved in the Skripal case “falls within the category Novichok made only by Russia”? Firstly, is Mr Johnson able to provide evidence that this category of chemical weapons was ever successfully synthesised in Russia, especially in the light of the OPCW’s Scientific Advisory Board stating as recently as 2013, that it has “insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of ‘Novichoks‘“?

    26. As Craig Murray has again pointed out, since its 2013 statement, the OPCW has worked (legally) with Iranian scientists who have successfully synthesised these chemical weapons. Was Mr Johnson aware that the category of “Novichok” chemical weapons had been synthesised elsewhere when he stated that this category of chemical weapons is “made only by Russia”?

    27. Does the fact that Iranian scientists were able to synthesise this class of chemical weapons suggest that other states have the capabilities to do likewise?

    28. Is the British Government aware that the main plant involved in attempts to synthesise Novichoks in the 1970s and 1980s was based not in Russia, but in Nukus in Uzbekistan?

    29. Does the fact that the US Department of Defence decontaminated and dismantled the Nukus site, under an agreement with the Government of Uzbekistan, make it at least theoretically possible that substances or secrets held within that plant could have been carried out of the country and even back to the United States?

    30. The connection between Sergei Skripal’s MI6 recruiter, Pablo Miller, who also happens to live in Salisbury, and Christopher Steele, the author of the so-called “Trump Dossier”, has been well established, as has the fact that Mr Skripal and Mr Miller regularly met together in the City. Is this connection of any interest to the investigation into the incident in Salisbury?

    *  *  *

    If there are any journalists with integrity and inquisitive minds still living in this country, I would be grateful if they could begin doing their job and research the answers to these sorts of questions by asking the appropriate people and authorities.

  • Facebook Approached Australian Political Parties To Microtarget Voters

    In the wake of a massive data harvesting scandal, it has emerged that Facebook approached at least two major Australian political parties during the final weeks of their 2016 election in order to help them “microtarget” voters using a powerful data matching tool, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

    Facebook offered “advanced matching” as part of their so-called Custom Audience feature to both the conservative (if not confusingly named) Liberal Party, as well as the “democratic socialist” Labor Party. The tool promised to allow the parties to compare data they had collected about voters – such as names, birth dates, phone numbers, postcodes and email addresses – and match that information to Facebook profiles.

    The combination of data sets would then allow political parties to target Australian swing voters with custom tailored ads over Facebook, which advertised a 17% increase in matching rates using a beta version of the service provided to the Liberal Party. 

    Fairfax Media reports that while the conservative Liberal Party turned Facebook down over concerns that sending voter data overseas to Facebook servers would violate the Privacy Act and the Electoral Act, the Labor Party took Facebook up on their offer. 

    Asked specifically whether Labor used the tool, a Labor spokesman said in a statement: “A range of different campaign techniques and tools are used for campaigning, from doorknocking to phone banking to online. Labor works with different groups to get our message out, including social media platforms like Facebook.

    “All of our work is in complete compliance with relevant laws, including the Commonwealth Electoral Act, which makes it a criminal offence to misuse information on the electoral roll.” –Sydney Morning Herald

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

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

    That said, the Herald reports that the Labor Party (ALP) digital team would have “hashed” – or anonymized, any electoral roll data “on a local browser,” sources tell the Herald. This would have prevented personally identifiable information to be uploaded to foreign servers. 

    Both the Labor Party and Facebook sought to downplay the “advanced matching” feature. 

    The Custom Audiences tool is widely used by brands and advertisers to target potential customers.

    “Lots of people use the custom audience tool. Civil society groups use it too with their massive databases. I don’t think it’s anywhere near as sinister as people think,” a Labor source said.

    Facebook said in a statement: “All parties are offered the same training, materials and products – whether existing or new — at the same time. It is a decision for each campaign as to whether and how they choose to use them.”

    The company has this week been unable to say whether data of Australian users is hosted locally or offshore. –smh

    Facebook has been contacted by Australia’s privacy commissioner to with questions over Australians who may have been caught up in a massive data harvesting scandal which has unfolded over the last week – raising the possibility of sanctions against the social media giant. 

    News of Facebook’s attempt to help Australian political parties influence their 2016 election comes days after Mark Zuckerberg told CNN that the possibility of the social media giant influencing the 2016 U.S. election was “a pretty crazy idea.” 

    That’s kind of interesting considering that Facebook was also helping the Obama Campaign target voters using harvested data, similar to what Cambridge Analytica was doing for several GOP candidates in the 2016 election. Obama’s former campaign director admitted over Twitter that Facebook not only knew of the campaign’s data harvesting to “suck out the whole social graph,” but that they “didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.” 

    And WikiLeaked emails released during the 2016 election revealed that Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg really wanted “Hillary to win badly,” after Hillary came over to Sandberg’s house and was “magical with her kids.”

    Then there’s Sandberg telling John Podesta “Look forward to working with you to elect the first woman President of the United States.” 

    Notably, there don’t seem to be any emails from Facebook executives to Trump’s campaign manager with similar sentiments. 

  • A Madman On The National Security Council?

    Authored by Matt Purple via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    John Bolton is that most ludicrous of creatures: the unreconstructed Bush-era foreign policy thinker

    Would that John Bolton were only a clown. The mustachioed alleged diplomat, briefly of the Bush administration – and initially criticized as too controversial even for that team – has now been appointed national security advisor. That position will give him the president’s ear on matters of foreign policy, as well as control over which other administration principals enjoy such access. Donald Trump pledged that if elected he would be a different kind of Republican president, and he’s delivered: under the last GOP administration, Bolton occupied a slightly lower-ranking position than he does now.

    Bolton is indeed no circus act: he’s one of the sharpest and most dangerous national security operatives in Washington. To take just one example, last summer, Trump made it known that he was considering pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, a campaign promise he wanted fulfilled but that had been discouraged by his then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Sensing an opportunity, Bolton wrote an essay for National Review explaining in breezy (i.e. Trump-digestible) terms just how to abrogate the agreement. The piece is chockablock with nonsense: at one point it claims sans any evidence that the Obama administration believed the JCPOA was “disadvantageous to the United States.” It also offers scant evidence to underpin its claim that Iran was in violation of the deal, an assertion that’s been repeatedly repudiated by the authorities at the IAEA. But the truth wasn’t the point: the piece was meant to water a seed in the president’s mind, to lend expert opinion to Trump’s burning preference that the JCPOA be reversed.

    That Bolton did this shouldn’t surprise anyone because this is how Bolton works: shrewdly and always towards the goal of more war. As Gareth Porter detailed in a rigorously reported piece for TAC, during his tenure under Bush, Bolton maneuvered behind the scenes to pump up a pretext for conflict between the United States and Iran. Among his methods was to pretend that satellite images of a military base at Parchin demonstrated Iranian nuclear experimentation. That supposed smoking gun is cited to this day by neocons as proof of Iran’s atomic dreams.

    What makes Bolton unique among hawkish operators is that he doesn’t feel the need to hide any of these machinations.

    The man wants to pulverize Tehran and he’s not afraid to say so. In 2015, Bolton wrote a piece for the New York Times subtly titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” Never mind that the adverbial clause in that sentence had no definitive evidence in its favor; it was off to war because, as Bolton put it, “extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal [Iran’s] ambitions” (imagine if that standard was applied universally). The coming operation, Bolton promised, would be akin to Operation Opera in 1981 when Israel destroyed a single Iraqi nuclear reactor, except that this one would take out multiple installations at Natanz and Fordow and Arak and Isfahan and…

    The details never add up because they’re not supposed to. Bolton’s wheelhouse has never been the tactical nitty-gritty; he’s an ideologue whose credo dogmatizes violence against enemies regardless of consequences or cost. On the Iraq war, he declared in 2015, “I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct.”  On Libya, in 2011 before the Obama administration launched its calamitous intervention, Bolton recommended that the United States assassinate Moammar GaddafiOn North Korea, he innocently suggested there was a “legal case” for a first strike. On Russia, you will not be surprised to learn that he thinks Trump needs to get tougher, including launching a cyber-attack that would be “decidedly disproportionate” to anything the Russians have done. He also thinks it’s time to revisit the “One-China Policy” that prevents us from antagonizing Beijing by recognizing an independent Taiwan.

    There are all manner of vexatious wrinkles amidst those pronouncements. For instance, a foreign policy realist might note that the deposal of Iraq’s regime and the ascendance of Shiite power in Baghdad, which Bolton supported, greatly availed Iran, which Bolton detests. But again, such nuances are dwarfed by the big-picture concepts in which Bolton deals, like American Power and Dictatorships and Strength. Most foreign policy gurus, despite supporting generally hawkish policies, have at least disowned the war in Iraq and made some perfunctory efforts to adjust for its failures. Not Bolton, who is that most ludicrous of creatures: the unreconstructed Bush-era thinker. He belongs behind a glass display in the American History Museum, not enjoying a second wind at the apex of the federal bureaucracy.

    But alas, the president himself has spoken. There are conditions to Bolton’s employment. CNN is reporting that Bolton promised Trump—quote—“he wouldn’t start any wars” if he became national security advisor, and surely that’s a promise he’ll keep. Bolton, after all, has never started (or fought in) a war in his life. What he will do is counsel Trump to take the most belligerent course of action possible in every given situation. Up first will be the Iran deal, which, with Bolton now at NSC and Mike Pompeo at State, seems certain to be the subject of a hardened stance from the White House, which will further isolate America from its allies, as the Europeans, more commercially entangled with Tehran than we are, decline to go along.

    That brings us back to Trump, the insurgent who won the 2016 election pledging to repudiate the George W. Bush legacy and keep the United States out of foreign wars.

    It’s a show of both neocon strength and Trump impressionability that a mere year and a half later the most warmongering personality in Washington has already clambered all the way up to national security advisor.

  • Turkey's Erdogan Announces Iraq Military Incursion, Threatens Americans Over Manbij

    On Sunday President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the beginning of Turkish military operations in Iraq’s Sinjar region a week after Turkey and allied Syrian FSA groups captured Afrin from Kurdish fighters. During that prior victory speech immediately on the heels of the Syrian Kurdish retreat from Afrin, Erdogan had promised further “extensions” of his forces in the region, including into Eastern Syria and Iraq, while making repeat historical references to the Ottoman empire.

    Erdogan warned at the time that Turkish troops would keep pushing east further into Syrian Kurdish YPG territory (Kurdish “People’s Protection Units” which Turkey considers an extension of the terrorist PKK), which would eventually pit his forces against the US armed and trained Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

    During Sunday’s speech he pledged to take Tal Rifaat (northwest of Aleppo) and Manbij: “the U.S. needs to transfer the control of Manbij to its real owners from the terrorist organization as soon as possible,” according to the Turkish daily Hurriyet. US-backed forces are present in both places. 

    Turkey’s president on Sunday: “We said we would go into Sinjar [Iraq]. Now operations have begun there.” 

    Erdogan also in typically brazen fashion put Iraq’s government on notice, saying “We have told the central [Iraqi] government that the PKK is establishing a new headquarters in Sinjar. If you can deal with it, you handle it. But if you cannot we will suddenly enter Sinjar one night and clear this region of terrorists.”

    It appears he is ready to make good on that promise, as the AP reports:

    Turkey’s president has announced the country is conducting operations in northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels it deems “terrorists.”

    Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said “operations” have begun in Sinjar to clear the mountainous area of Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, fighters.

    Erdogan later said that if the PKK does not vacate Sinjar and Qandil, where it has its headquarters, “it would be inevitable for us to do so personally.”

    Erdogan announced the new engagement to a crowd in the Black Sea province of Trabzon, declaring: “We said we would go into Sinjar. Now operations have begun there. The fight is internal and external.” However, it is unclear to what degree he is merely further reiterating his prior threats and to what degree the mustering of Turkish forces for an Iraq incursion has actually begun on the ground. 

    Reuters quickly cast doubt that ground operations had actually been initiated, citing Iraq’s Joint Operations Command which denied that foreign forces had crossed the border

    Iraq’s Joint Operations Command denied that any foreign forces had crossed the border into Iraq.

    “The operations command confirmed that the situation in Nineveh, Sinjar and the border areas was under the control of Iraqi security forces and there is no reason for troops to cross the Iraqi border into those areas,” it said in a statement.

    Sources in Sinjar said there was no unusual military activity in the area on Sunday.

    Meanwhile, regional Arabic media has reported that a large Iraqi Army contingent has arrived in Sinjar on the heels of a withdrawal of PKK fighters from the region – actions which Erdogan’s threats were clearly designed to precipitate. 

    PKK fighters first moved into Sinjar in 2015 and waged an effective campaign against ISIS, but announced their withdrawal last week in the wake of Turkey’s threat of invasion, though it is unclear how many PKK fighters have remained in the area. 

    For now, it appears that Erdogan – fresh off the momentum of the Turkish annexation of Afrin – has gotten Baghdad to move on the PKK without firing a single shot. And it appears he is trying the same tactic regarding the US-backed SDF, which is unlikely to move the Americans toward action or realignment of interests.

    During the same speech announcing operations in Sinjar, Erdogan said, “Hopefully we will take control of Tal Rifaat in a short span of time.” He also threatened Syrian Kurds in Manbij while naming their US sponsors: “the U.S. needs to transfer the control of Manbij to its real owners from the terrorist organization as soon as possible,” according to the Turkish daily Hurriyet.

    In comparison to his rhetoric aimed at the Iraqi government, the Turkish president’s words regarding American forces were softened: “Of course we will not point gun to our allies, but we will not forgive terrorists.”

    It will be interesting to see to what degree the ‘mad Sultan’ actually makes good on his threats and promises, especially as his forces inevitably inch closer to American bases in northern Syria.

  • PetroYuan Futures Open – Over 10 BillIon Notional Trades In First Hour

    After all the preparation, all the expectation, cheerleading and doomsaying, China’s Yuan-denominated crude oil futures contract began trading tonight and appears to be off a good start with well over 10 billion yuan notional traded within the first hour.

    So far it has tracked WTI futures well, trading at around a $2 premium to WTI (when translated from yuan to USD)…

    Additionally, well over 23,000 contracts have traded within the first hour for a notional trading volume of over 10 billion yuan – more than $1.5 billion notional… signaling significant demand.

    Offshore Yuan is moving in sync with ‘Petroyuan’ futures – as WTI tends to track the USD.

    As we most recently noted, after numerous “false starts” over the last decade,  the “petroyuan” is now real and China will set out to challenge the “petrodollar” for dominance. Adam Levinson, managing partner and chief investment officer at hedge fund manager Graticule Asset Management Asia (GAMA), already warned last year that China launching a yuan-denominated oil futures contract will shock those investors who have not been paying attention.

    This could be a death blow for an already weakening U.S. dollar, and the rise of the yuan as the dominant world currency.

    But this isn’t just some slow, news day “fad” that will fizzle in a few days.

    A Warning for Investors Since 2015

    Back in 2015, the first of a number of strikes against the petrodollar was dealt by China. Gazprom Neft, the third-largest oil producer in Russia, decided to move away from the dollar and towards the yuan and other Asian currencies.

    Iran followed suit the same year, using the yuan with a host of other foreign currencies in trade, including Iranian oil.

    During the same year China also developed its Silk Road, while the yuan was beginning to establish more dominance in the European markets.

    But the U.S. petrodollar still had a fighting chance in 2015 because China’s oil imports were all over the place. Back then, Nick Cunningham of OilPrice.com wrote

    Despite accounting for much of the world’s growth in demand in the 21st Century, China’s oil imports have been all over the map in recent months. In April, China imported 7.4 million barrels per day, a record high and enough to make it the world’s largest oil importer. But a month later, imports plummeted to just 5.5 million barrels per day.

    That problem has since gone away, signaling China’s rise to oil dominance…

    The Slippery Slope to the Petroyuan Begins Here

    The petrodollar is backed by Treasuries, so it can help fuel U.S. deficit spending. Take that away, and the U.S. is in trouble.

    It looks like that time has come…

    A death blow that began in 2015 hit again in 2017 when China became the world’s largest consumer of imported crude

    Now that China is the world’s leading consumer of oil, Beijing can exert some real leverage over Saudi Arabia to pay for crude in yuan. It’s suspected that this is what’s motivating Chinese officials to make a full-fledged effort to renegotiate their trade deal.

    So fast-forward to now, and the final blow to the petrodollar could happen starting today. We hinted at this possibility back in September 2017

    With major oil exporters finally having a viable way to circumvent the petrodollar system, the U.S. economy could soon encounter severely troubled waters.

    First of all, the dollar’s value depends massively on its use as an oil trade vehicle. When that goes away, we will likely see a strong and steady decline in the dollar’s value.

    Once the oil markets are upended, the yuan has an opportunity to become the dominant world currency overall. This will further weaken the dollar.

    The Petrodollar’s Downfall Could be a Lift for Gold

    Amongst all the trouble ahead for the dollar, there are some good news too. The U.S. might have ditched the gold standard in the 1970’s, but with gold making a return to world headlines… we could see a resurgence.

    For the first time since our nation abandoned the gold standard decades ago, physical gold is being reintroduced to the global monetary system in a major way. That alone is incredibly good news for gold owners.

    A reintroduction of gold to the global economy could result in a notable rise in gold prices. It’s safe to assume exporters are more likely to choose a gold-backed financial instrument over one created out of thin air any day of the week.

    Soon after, we could see more and more nations jump on the bandwagon, resulting in a substantial rise in gold prices.

  • Is Anarcho-Capitalism Possible?

    Authored by Antony Mueller via Mises Canada,

    Even if one agrees that anarcho-capitalism has become a necessity, the question arises whether such a governance is possible. After all, at first sight, insurmountable problems seem to prevent the flourishing of a stateless society. Libertarianism means a private law society. Private businesses in the marketplace provide the traditional functions of the state. The voluntary contract-order of anarcho-capitalism substitutes the hierarchical commando-coordination of activities of the state. The basic meaning of anarcho-capitalism is an order where horizontal cooperation based on voluntary exchange dominates the coordination of human activities.

    Although a libertarian order amounts to a revolution as to its consequences, the path to its creation must be non-revolutionary. The spontaneous order of an anarcho-capitalist society requires that it comes about as a gradual process of privatizations. Beginning with the sale of semi-public enterprises and public utilities, privatization should extend step by step to education and health and finally encompass security and the judicial system. Supervised by an Assembly whose members are selected by lot from the constituency of the citizens, the function of government would be handed out to a private government management company.

    Under anarcho-capitalism, most of what the state supplies in services could fall to a fraction of the present volume. On a world-wide scale, military spending alone comprises around 1.7 trillion US-dollars annually. The so-called ‘public services’ would not only become better and cheaper, but it would also turn out that under a free market, the demand for education, healthcare, defense, and domestic security would be much different from how it is now. Therefore, to privatize many of the activities, which now are under the authority of state would not only lead to a decrease of the costs per unit of the services but also reduce the volume of supply because a large part of the current supply of so-called ‘public goods’ is a useless waste. Losing none of the genuine benefits of education, healthcare, and defense, the budgets for these provisions could fall to a fraction of their present size.

    If one includes the overblown judicial and public administration apparatus into the reduction of state activity, government spending, which nowadays is close to fifty percent of the gross domestic product in most industrialized countries, could come down to the single digits. Taxes and contributions could fall by ninety percent.

    Different from what is presently the dominant belief, to privatize the police functions, and the judiciary is not such a big problem. It would mean to extend what is already going on. In the United States of today, for example, private policing, such as by security guards, happens already at a grand scale and comprises more than one million persons. In some countries, including the United States, the number of private police and security already exceeds the number of official policemen. The private provision of judicial services is on the rise. Arbitration courts experience a strong and increasing demand including services for cross-border disputes.

    These trends will go on because private protection and arbitration is cheaper and better than the public provision. In Brazil, for example, which entertains one of the most expensive judicial systems of the world, currently about eighty million cases are pending without decision, and legal uncertainty has become monstrous. In the United States, many parts of the judicial system have gone berserk.

  • Eric Peters: "The Chinese Know This. Why Are They Doing It?"

    Some contemplations from the latest “Weekend Notes” by One River Asset Management CIO, Eric Peters, on recent developments in China…

    Contemplation

    He went for a long walk, trees bare. Considered his discussions with historians, experts, strategists, analysts. Articles, analyses, theories. The largest nation on earth, with 18.5% of humanity’s population, the 2nd biggest GDP, had lifted term limits for its leader. No one seemed to care, which itself seemed fascinating, said something.

    But what? He wondered. Nearly everyone accepted the rough narrative that by lifting term limits, Xi Jinping strengthened his control, allowing him to complete the anti-corruption drive, and the Belt and Road Initiative.

    He didn’t buy it. Xi Jinping surely had time to groom a successor with similar beliefs and priorities before his 2nd term ends in 2023. Besides, there’s precedent for former leaders to remain active in the wings, well beyond their formal rule.

    The 2-term limit was introduced in 1982 to save China from the ruin of uninterrupted leadership – Mao’s late legacy prompted the constitutional change. Throughout history, great nations and empires fail when they surrender their institutions to an individual.

    The Chinese know this. Why’d they do it?

    Is Beijing preparing for instability? Chinese banks have $40trln balance sheets (50% of global GDP, 3x Chinese GDP). US banks hold $17tlrn balance sheets (less than 1x US GDP).

    Might China be preparing for internal economic instability? Or perhaps it’s that the West is in deep political disarray, fractured, fighting itself.

    The unipolar American world order is crumbling, the US relinquishing leadership. Such transitions have historically produced periods of profound global risks, opportunities – Beijing knows this.  What’s the trade? He wondered.

    * * *

    … and on the history of (de)regulation in the US, and why it is only a matter of time before the government cracks down on the internet giants of the day:

    Glory Days:

    “May Day 1975 marked the start of Wall Street deregulation,” said the historian. “Banks and brokerages flourished thereafter, expanding their power and political influence.” 1998 marked peak deregulation with Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall. “Pump and dump schemes of all sorts propagated; Wolf of Wall Street excesses. Then came the dot com IPO madness which led to Sarbanes Oxley.”

    The final debauchery was exposed in 2008, and led to sweeping Dodd-Frank financial regulation. “Wall Street’s been in lock-down ever since.”

    “The 1996 Telecom Act protected America’s nascent internet companies,” continued the historian. AOL started in 1985. Netscape launched in 1993, went public in 1995. Amazon launched in 1994. Yahoo 1995. Facebook 2004. YouTube 2005. “The Act protected them from liability for anything republished on their sites.” They were too weak to withstand such liability and needed nurturing to foster innovation.

    “But Facebook has a $460bln market cap. It’s not responsible for what it publishes but the NY Times is. That’s now preposterous.”

    “When Wall Street lacked regulation, any product, no matter how absurd, was welcomed through the front door and pumped out to clients through the back door,” explained the historian.

    “The greater the flow, the higher the profits. Those were the glory days.” Then regulations raised costs, stymied product development, crushed the profit model.

    “Today’s internet companies suck in free customer data through the front door, and sell it out the back door. The greater the flow, the higher the profits. They’re dominant. They’ll soon be regulated.”

  • Hedge Fund CIO: "The Market Generals Are Dead"

    Submitted by Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management, as excerpted from his latest Weekend Notes

    “Every market has its generals,” said the CIO, atop the hill, surveying the battlefield. “Bull markets march onward, upward until their leaders die,” he said, lowering his binoculars, smoke rising from the valley floor.

    Banks led the last great bull market. Fueled by reckless lending and leverage, loose regulation, moral hazard, and the wondrous illusion of boundless riches that accompany all reflexive markets, these generals charged ever upward, looting, pillaging. Leading the troops. Until they didn’t.

    The S&P 500 peaked in October 2007, then fell 58%. When it bottomed seventeen months later in March 2009, Citigroup stock lay in the dust, trampled, mangled, mutilated beyond all recognition.

    Citi’s stock price had collapsed 98.3% from its 2007 highs. It never really recovered. Bank of America plunged 95%. Morgan Stanley fell 91%. Goldman 82%. JP Morgan 72%.

    “I suspected that regulation would be the death of the current market’s technology generals,” he said, turning to his table, unrolling a map. “I was right.”

    From the 2009 lows through the recent highs, the S&P 500 advanced 331%. In that drive, Facebook rallied 413% (from its 2013 IPO), Amazon surged 2102%, Apple 1123%, Netflix 5349%, and Google 586%.

    “The generals are dead.” From recent highs, Facebook has stumbled 18%, Amazon 8%, Apple 10%, Netflix 10%, Google 14%.

    “Trading market tops is difficult,” he explained, “That’s where we are now.” With his finger, he traced the advances and retreats of the S&P 500 since WWII. Nearly every top was a volatile series of skirmishes lasting 6-18mths, before the real decline. The notable exception being 1987.

    “The generals are dead, but the economy remains strong.” Employment, wages, profits too. “The bull case is all backward looking. It describes why it makes sense to stay invested. But it’s intellectually bankrupt,” he said, repositioning his troops on the map. “You get paid for the future, not the past.”

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