Today’s News 11th November 2018

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

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The next two years will settle the question over whether our present reality is already multipolar, or whether the unipolar order remains, with Washington the indispensable nation for friends and enemies alike.
In Almost Every San Francisco Neighborhood, The Average Home Is Worth More Than $1 Million

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other words, while the price tag might look outrageous, this vacant lot in SF is actually a great deal at a cool $15 million.
Are Trump's Anti-Iranian Sanctions-Waivers Strategic Or Signs Of Weakness?

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You will find more infographics at Statista

Over the past two years the Navy experienced 50 unsafe or unprofessional encounters with Iran. There were 36 in 2016, 14 last year and none so far in 2018. That level of contact was due to Iranian naval forces operating in narrow stretches of water such as the Strait of Hormuz, making close contact occur frequently.
Doug Casey: How To Survive The Deep State
Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

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

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

Here’s what would happen in the totally impossible scenario that this person was elected and tried to act like a Lee Kuan Yew or an Augusto Pinochet against the Deep State:
- First, there would be a “sit-down” with the top dogs of the Praetorian agencies and a bunch of Pentagon officers to explain the way things work.
- Then, should he survive, he would be impeached by the running dogs of Congress.
- Then, should he survive, whipped dog Americans would revolt at the prospect of having their doggy dishes broken.
Remember, your fellow Americans not only elected Obama, but re-elected him. Do you expect they’ll be more rational as the Greater Depression deepens? Maybe you think the police and the military will somehow help. Forget it…they’re part of the problem. They’re here to protect and serve their colleagues first, then their employer (the State), and only then the public. But the whipped dog likes to parrot: “Thank you for your service.” Which is further proof that there’s no hope.

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

What, you may ask, would I do if I were dictator of the U.S. and had absolutely no regard for my personal safety? Here’s a seven-part program, for entertainment purposes only:
1. Allow the collapse of all zombie corporations – banks, brokers, insurers, and government contractors. The real wealth they supposedly own will still exist.
2. Abolish all regulatory agencies. Although Boobus americanus believes they exist to protect him, and that may have been an intention when they were created, they, at best, serve the industries they regulate. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for instance, kills more Americans every year than does the Department of Defense in a typical decade. The SEC, the Swindlers Encouragement Consortium, lulls the average investor into thinking he’s protected. They, and other agencies, extract scores of billions out of the economy to feed useless mouths in return for throwing sand in the gears of the economy.
3. Abolish the Fed…you need a strong currency to encourage saving. Actually, you don’t need a currency at all. Gold is vastly better as money.
4. Cut the size of the military by 90% and abolish the Praetorian agencies. In addition to bankrupting the U.S., the military is now a huge domestic danger, even while it’s mainly an instrument for creating enemies abroad.
5. Sell essentially all U.S. government assets. Although some actually have value, they are all a drain on the economy. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service loses $5 billion a year; Amtrak loses another billion or so per year. The Interstate Highway System, airports and the air-traffic-control system, the 650 million acres of U.S. government land, and many thousands of other assets should all be distributed in shares or sold. This would liberate an immense amount of dead capital. The proceeds could be used to partially satisfy some government obligations.
6. Eliminate the income tax, as a start, which will be possible if the other six things are done. The economy would boom.
7. Default on the national debt and contingent liabilities. That’s somewhere between $21 trillion and $200 trillion. There are at least three reasons for that. First is to avoid turning future generations into serfs. Second is to punish those who have enabled the State by lending it money. Third is to make it impossible for the State to borrow in the future, at least for a while.
I like this program from a practical point of view, because when a structure is about to collapse, it’s much wiser to conduct a controlled demolition than to just let it fall when no one expects it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action

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

From a personal standpoint, you should preserve capital by owning significant assets outside your native country, because as severe as market risks are, your political risks are much greater.
1. I suggest foreign real estate in a country where you’re viewed as an investor to be courted, rather than a milk cow. Or maybe a beef cow.
2. Gold. It’s no longer at giveaway prices, but remains the only financial asset that’s not someone else’s liability.
3. Look for depressed speculations. At the moment, my favorites are resource companies, which are down more than 90% as a group. And look to go long on commodities in general. Soybeans, wheat, corn, sugar, coffee, copper, and silver are historically undervalued.
4. Short bubbles that are about to burst, like bonds in general, and Japanese bonds denominated in yen, in particular. If you have a collectible car from the ‘60s that you hold as a financial asset, hit the bid tomorrow morning. Same if you have expensive property in London, New York, Sydney, Auckland, Hong Kong, or Shanghai, among other places.
The Second Law to the Rescue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer is that they can’t.

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

The socialists are rising in the US, and they are hungry to take the product of your labor and use it to augment their stupidity (the unwitting tendency to self-destruction). Now would be a great time to start looking for a bolt hole – a place that you own that is elsewhere. To learn more, read our free PDF on foreign real estate.
Visualizing The World's 10 Largest Economies By GDP (1960-Today)

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

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

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

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

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

— Jaime Albella (@Jalbella) October 31, 2018

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

JAPAN’S ECONOMIC MIRACLE

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

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

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

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

ECONOMIC MIRACLE, PART DEUX

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

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

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

By 2010 – just 17 years later – the country had surpassed titans like the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and even Japan to secure the second spot on the list, which it continues to hold today in nominal terms.
Two Huge Events For The Pot Industry Happened Last Week: Here's What They Mean For Pot Stocks
Two huge bullish events for the marijuana industry happened in just the last several days: 3 out of 4 US states passed marijuana legalization & cannabis opponent Jeff Sessions resigned as AG.

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

Three out of four ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana in some form passed in the US midterms this week. Michigan approved recreational marijuana, while Utah and Missouri voted in favor of medical marijuana; each proposal received +53-66% of voter support. Sixty percent of residents in North Dakota voted against legalizing retail cannabis use, however. Here’s where they all stand:
- Recreational marijuana: Michigan residents voted in favor of legalizing retail cannabis use and sales, making it the first Midwestern state and tenth US state to do so. Now one in five states allow recreational marijuana use, and a quarter of Americans (nearly 80 million people) live in a state where they can smoke or consume the drug if they’re of age.
  - How this will work: Recreational marijuana will be legal in Michigan ten days after the election results are certified, which could take a few weeks. That said, adults aged 21 and older living in Michigan will eventually be able buy, possess and use marijuana for recreational purposes. They will also be allowed to grow up to 12 plants in their home for personal use.
  - Sales won’t likely happen for a year as the state government needs to establish regulations and issue recreational licenses, although it has a head start since medical cannabis is already legal there. Once all that happens, retail sales of marijuana and edibles will be subject to a 10% excise tax that will go towards implementation costs, clinical trials, roads, schools, and general municipal expenses where marijuana businesses are located.
  - Lastly, although North Dakota rejected recreational use of marijuana, it still allows medical cannabis.
- Medical marijuana: 33 states now allow medical cannabis after Utah and Missouri approved their measures to do so yesterday. Utah will let patients with certain conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, cancer and HIV get medical marijuana cards.
  - Out of 3 ballot initiatives that would legalize medical marijuana use in Missouri, voters chose Amendment 2. This measure will impose a 4% tax on sales of medical marijuana, which will pay for the program as well as help fund the state’s veterans commission.
- Other election progress for marijuana: Chairman of the House Rules Committee Pete Sessions (Republican congressman from Texas) was defeated by Democrat Colin Allred. Sessions has blocked many federal amendments to protect legal marijuana at the state level, even those meant to allow VA doctors to recommend medical marijuana to veterans in states where it is legal. Allred, by contrast, criticized Sessions for this stance over the summer.
  - In addition, earlier this year Vermont’s legislature passed recreational use and residents in Oklahoma approved medical use. There are also other states going forward that could pass recreational use through the legislature, such as New Jersey and New York.
  - In New Jersey, the State Senate President and State Assembly Speaker said the legislature will vote on legalizing recreational marijuana by the end of this year. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo put together a workgroup to draft legislation for a regulated adult-use marijuana program in August. Given that the state legislature would need to pass the proposal, it should help that Democrats just won a majority in the New York State Senate. Especially since Governor Cuomo was re-elected and Democrats also have a majority in the state Assembly.
Arguably the biggest news of all on the marijuana front actually came with Attorney General Jeff Sessions submitting his resignation. He is a staunch opponent of marijuana and rescinded important memos put in place under the Obama administration to not interfere with legal states so that marijuana businesses could have banking access if they followed certain rules. This move caused a lot of concern and uncertainty for an already cautious industry. While pot stocks gave up their early gains from the election results, they rallied right after this news into the close on the Sessions news: Canopy Growth (+8.17%), Tilray (+30.64%), Cronos Group (+8.40%), Aurora Cannabis (+9.19%) and Aphria (+3.93%). Who knows who will permanently replace Jeff Sessions, but few are more against the drug than him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Andrew Gillum (@AndrewGillum) November 10, 2018

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The Drug Catastrophe In Afghanistan

Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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