• The EU Is Coming To Close Down Your Free Speech

  Submitted by Douglas Murray via The Gatestone Institute,

  • The German Chancellor was not interested in the reinforcement of Europe's external borders, the re-erection of its internal borders, the institution of a workable asylum vetting system and the repatriation of people who had lied to gain entry into Europe. Instead, Chancellor Merkel wanted to know how Facebook's founder could help her restrict the free speech of Europeans, on Facebook and on other social media.

  • Then, on May 31, the European Union announced a new online speech code to be enforced by four major tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube.

  • It was clear from the outset that Facebook has a definitional problem as well as a political bias in deciding on these targets. What is Facebook's definition of 'racism'? What is its definition of 'xenophobia'? What, come to that, is its definition of 'hate speech'?

  • Of course the EU is a government — and an unelected government at that — so its desire not just to avoid replying to its critics — but to criminalise their views and ban their contrary expressions — is as bad as the government of any country banning or criminalising the expression of opinion which is not adulatory of the government.

  • People must speak up — must speak up now, and must speak up fast — in support of freedom of speech before it is taken away from them. It is, sadly, not an overstatement to say that our entire future depends on it.

  It is nine months since Angela Merkel and Mark Zuckerberg tried to solve Europe's migrant crisis. Of course having caused the migrant crisis by announcing the doors of Europe as open to the entire third-world, Angela Merkel particularly would have been in a good position actually to try to solve this crisis.

  But the German Chancellor was not interested in the reinforcement of Europe's external borders, the re-erection of its internal borders, the institution of a workable asylum vetting system and the repatriation of people who had lied to gain entry into Europe. Instead, Chancellor Merkel was interested in Facebook.

  When seated with Mark Zuckerberg, Frau Merkel wanted to know how the Facebook founder could help her restrict the free speech of Europeans, on Facebook and on other social media. Speaking to Zuckerberg at a UN summit last September (and not aware that the microphones were picking her up) she asked what could be done to restrict people writing things on Facebook which were critical of her migration policy. 'Are you working on this?' she asked him. 'Yeah', Zuckerberg replied.

  In the months that followed, we learned that this was not idle chatter over lunch. In January of this year, Facebook launched its 'Initiative for civil courage online', committing a million Euros to fund non-governmental organisations in its work to counter 'racist' and 'xenophobic' posts online. It also promised to remove 'hate speech' and expressions of 'xenophobia' from the Facebook website.

  It was clear from the outset that Facebook has a definitional problem as well as a political bias in deciding on these targets. What is Facebook's definition of 'racism'? What is its definition of 'xenophobia'? What, come to that, is its definition of 'hate speech'? As for the political bias, why had Facebook not previously considered how, for instance, to stifle expressions of open-borders sentiments on Facebook? There are many people in Europe who have argued that the world should have no borders and that Europe in particular should be able to be lived in by anyone who so wishes. Why have people expressing such views on Facebook (and there are many) not found their views censored and their posts removed? Are such views not 'extreme'?

  

  One problem with this whole area — and a problem which has clearly not occurred to Facebook — is that these are questions which do not even have the same answer from country to country. Any informed thinker on politics knows that there are laws that apply in some countries that do not — and often should not — apply in others. Contrary to the views of many transnational 'progressives', the world does not have one set of universal laws and certainly does not have universal customs. Hate-speech laws are to a very great extent an enforcement of the realm of customs.

  As such it is unwise to enforce policies on one country from another country without at least a very deep understanding of that country's traditions and laws. Societies have their own histories and their own attitudes towards their most sensitive matters. For instance in Germany, France, the Netherlands and some other European countries there are laws on the statute books relating to the publication of Nazi materials and the propagation of material praising (or even representing) Adolf Hitler or denying the Holocaust. The German laws forbidding large-scale photographic representations of Hitler may look ridiculous from London, but may look less ridiculous from Berlin. Certainly it would take an enormously self-confident Londoner unilaterally to prescribe a policy to change this German law.

  To understand things which are forbidden, or able to be forbidden, in a society, you would have to have an enormous confidence in your understanding of that country's taboos and history, as well as its speech codes and speech laws. A ban on the veneration of communist idols, for instance, may seem sensible, tasteful or even desirable in one of the many countries which suffered under communism, wish to minimise the suffering of the victims and prevent the resurrection of such an ideology. Yet a universal ban on images or texts which extolled the communist murderers of tens of millions of people would also make criminals of the thousands of Westerners — notably Americans — who enjoy wearing Che Guevara T-shirts or continue their adolescent fantasy that Fidel Castro is an icon of freedom. Free societies generally have to permit the widest possible array of opinion. But they will have different ideas of where legitimate expression ends and where incitement begins.

  So for Facebook and others to draw up their own attempt at a unilateral policy of what constitutes hate-speech would be presumptuous even if it were not — as it is — clearly politically biased from the outset. So it is especially lamentable that this movement to an enforced hate-speech code gained additional force on May 31, when the European Union announced a new online speech code to be enforced by four major tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube. Of course, the EU is a government — and an unelected government at that — so its desire not just to avoid replying to its critics — but to criminalise their views and ban their contrary expressions — is as bad as the government of any country banning or criminalising the expression of opinion which is not adulatory of the government.

  That these are not abstract issues but ones exceedingly close to home has been proven – as though it needed proving – by the decision of Facebook to suspend the account of Gatestone's Swedish expert, Ingrid Carlqvist. In the last year Sweden took in between 1 and 2% additional people to its population. Similar numbers are expected this year. As anyone who has studied the situation will know, this is a society heading towards a breakdown of its own creation, caused (at the most benign interpretation) by its own 'open-hearted' liberalism.

  Countries with welfare models such as Sweden's cannot take in such numbers of people without major financial challenges. And societies with a poor integration history cannot possibly integrate such vast numbers of people when they come at such speed. As anyone who has travelled around there can tell, Sweden is a country under enormous and growing strain.

  There is a phase in waking up to such change which constitutes denial. The EU, the Swedish government and a vast majority of the Swedish press have no desire to hear critiques of a policy which they have created or applauded; the consequences will one day be laid at their door and they wish to postpone that day, even indefinitely. So instead of tackling the fire they started, they have decided to attack those who are pointing to the fact that they have set the building they are standing in on fire. In such a situation it becomes not just a right but a duty of free people to point out facts even if other people might not want to hear them. Only a country sliding towards autocracy and chaos, with a governing class intent on avoiding blame, could possibly allow the silencing of the few people pointing out what they can clearly see in front of them.

  People must speak up — and speak up now, and speak up fast — in support of freedom of speech before it is taken away from them, and in support of journalists such as Carlqvist, and against the authorities who would silence all of us. It is, sadly, not an overstatement to say that our entire future depends on it.

  

  

• Immigration Economics: Illegal Aliens Are Our Bread and Butter

   This article by David Haggith was first published on The Great Recession Blog.

   

  

  Have you ever wondered why politicians make some immigration illegal and then turn a blind eye to illegal immigration wherever it is happening … for decades? What about why they talk so much about building walls to keep out the vast hoards, rather than simply arresting the much smaller number of people who hire illegal immigrants. Surely drying up the jobs that are available to illegal immigrants would be much more economical than building a thousand-mile wall. This article will tell you why we make some immigration illegal and then turn a blind eye to it.

  Have you also wondered why politician make it illegal for millions of people to enter the country and then eventually support naturalizing those people who broke the laws these very politicians made? This article will answer that, too.

  First, I’ll state that immigration is largely about economics; and by that I do not simply mean that people are coming to the U.S. to gain economic opportunity, though, of course, they are. Nor do I simply mean immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans, though, of course, they are.

  There is an elephant in the room that no one is talking about, and it’s not just a GOP elephant. Immigration economics has a dark underbelly that neither party ever talks about. Since immigration reform is one of the major planks of the Republican’s top candidate for the presidency, there is no time like the present to talk about the elephant.

   

  Neither party wants to end illegal immigration nor make all immigration legal

   

  The fact is both parties have created an immigration dance that they love. First, they both turn a blind eye toward illegal immigration. That, in turn, causes the number of illegal aliens to grow quickly as word travels that “they won’t really do anything about it. Eventually, a large subculture of illegal immigrants becomes a serious social problem that demands political resolution because citizens of the country start getting worked up over the social conflicts they are feeling and the jobs they see going to illegal immigrants.

  The next step of the dance is the tricky one. We saw it happen in Reagan’s day. Both parties compromise in order to fix the problem without fixing it. They fix it by creating amnesty, which they always say is not amnesty because the citizens don’t like amnesty. They don’t fix it in in that they promise all the citizens who are angry about illegal immigration they will only let these illegal aliens in the door because turning them away would create a humanitarian crisis because the number has grown so large.Then they will batten the gates much tighter and never let it happen again. Only … they never do batten the gates at all, and so it happens all over again. Never mind that the number of illegal immigrants only grew to the point of becoming a humanitarian crisis because those same politicians turned a blind eye to illegal immigration for years.

  This article will also answer why that continues on a rinse-and-repeat basis. By the end of the article you may think, “Wow, he is really jaded about politicians,” or you might thing, “Wow, that makes total sense from an economic standpoint, and it really, really stinks.” You’d be right either way.

  Illegal aliens are our bread and butter, and we eat them for lunch. More particularly, politicians know what side their bread is buttered on. They get paid to provide cheap labor for rich people. Let’s break it down to some obvious facts.

   

  The economics of Illegal immigration

   

  The answer to all these questions is really pretty simple:  Illegal immigrants provide the closest thing the U.S. has to a peasant class. It is important that politicians make them illegal so that they will be true peasants (people with nor native rights nor any say in the laws that govern them). It’s important that politicians turn a blind eye to them so that we  will have peasants here … where we want them. It doesn’t accomplish anything toward creating a class of surfs to do work for the rich if we keep them out of the country. But, if they have rights as citizens, they will not remain surfs. We’ll have a peasant revolt.

  The wealthy business owners have wanted a peasant class ever since they could no longer have a slave class. A peasant class is the next best thing. Often, they have lusted for such laborers overseas, and they have gotten politicians into office who made it possible for them exploit an offshore peasant class with sweat shops.

  However, there are many jobs that cannot go overseas. They have to be done by more expensive American workers. If only we had a resident peasant class to do the work that American workers don’t want to do because it doesn’t pay enough.

  The Bush dynasty opened the doors to outsourcing as many jobs to lower-wage workers outside the country as possible in order to help wealthy stock holders amass more wealth, but there wasn’t anything either Bush could do about those jobs that have to be done inside the country … such as cleaning hotels and bussing dishes at restaurants or picking tomatoes grown domestically…. or was there?

  For those jobs, they needed to insource the outsourcing. In other words, they need to find ways to get peasant labor into the country. You know, the kind of labor that doesn’t expect health insurance and doesn’t cry about working conditions and most of all, works cheap.

  Strong immigration laws make that possible. When someone is illegal they are willing to work without benefits and with fewer rights and for less money because they have to stay under the radar. They are afraid of standing up for their rights. Heck, they hardly have rights to stand up for; but if they did stand up, they’d be deported instantly. (Those are the ones who particularly get to be sent home and made a show of so the p0liticians can convince the citizens that they are trying to uphold the laws.)

  Making some people’s presence in the country illegal while turning a blind eye to their being here assures a peasant class of workers. It’s as simple as that: Illegal immigrants are willing to work at subsistence levels because that is what they come from. They don’t need a wage that makes an American living. They have no say in what the government does to them or with them because, like peasants, they have no vote;  but also because they have to keep their heads low. The fact that they have almost no status in society at all assures they will remain cheap.

  As always, if you want to know why things happen, follow the money.

  If you think I’m being cynical and that the government is not intentionally letting illegal aliens in to take jobs at low wages, then ask yourself this simple question: What would happen if, instead of trying to arrest and return home millions of illegal aliens, the government just started arresting and jailing the thousands people who have hired them … starting with just the top one-hundred? The jobs would dry up before you even made it through the top one hundred.

  That’s what would happen, and you know it. People will hire illegal aliens if there is only a financial penalty if you get caught and if they’re pretty sure the government will keep turning a blind eye to the situation; but start putting those employers in jail, and all employers will quickly be checking the ID and green cards of their migrant workers to make sure they have a legal right to work here.

  As soon as the jobs dried up, illegal immigrants who could get no work would find their plight worse here than in their home country, and they would return home of their own free will … unless, of course, you put them on welfare because you’re softhearted, but also softheaded about the costs … and you feel it is the United State’s obligation to save the entire world from poverty and to make your kids and grandkids pay for your benevolence by financing the welfare with national debt.

  You see, you really don’t have to round up millions of people hiding in bushes. You have to round up only hundreds of big employers whose whereabouts are easily known by their big houses. Notice that does not happen. Not ever. You really don’t have to build a wall either. Notice the wall has been talked about for thirty years and still isn’t finished.

  Big business wants cheap labor, and politicians protect their benefactors. The cheapest labor is that which is illegal but knowingly allowed to happen anyway. The justification for turning a blind eye is always, “Americans don’t want these jobs.” If your head is dumber than a turnip and stuck equally deep in the dirt, then you have long accepted that as truth. Actually, it’s just that it sounded reasonable, so you didn’t think it through. If you were dumber than a turnip you wouldn’t be reading this economics blog.

  To think it through, ask yourself why Americans don’t want those jobs. Is it because they’re dirty jobs? That’s the party line. And that may be a small part if it, but cleaning hotels isn’t that bad. Washing and bussing dishes isn’t that bad. Picking tomatoes isn’t that bad.

  Before you say, “Hold on; it’s bad enough,” let me agree that none of it is desirable work to be sure. I mean, I don’t want to go do it. However, American citizens line up to do a lot worse jobs … such as cleaning out and repairing sewer lines. So, why will an American worker clean out a sewer line but not pick a pretty tomato?

  The answer, again, is pretty straight forward when you think it through: the guy who cleans out your sewer line is a plumber, and he makes a whole lot more money per hour to do that work than he could doing those other jobs. If he could make the same amount doing dishes, don’t you think he’d rather be inside cleaning dishes than outside in the mud cleaning sewer pipes? Bending over the tomato plants will also work just as well for sporting that plump plumber derrière.

  Americans don’t want certain jobs because wages for those particular jobs have been suppressed for decades by the availability of cheap, illegal immigrant labor. If there had been a ready pool of people willing to take those jobs at bottom wages, then the wages would have had no choice but to rise over the decades to a level that would attract workers. The dishes have to be washed for the grand hotels to stay in business, and there is a wage at which Americans will line up for the job.

  That’s just market dynamics, but that wages sink to whatever the lowest common denominator will accept is also just market dynamics.

  Now we come to the point where immigration economics really kicks in. The dirty secret is that it is not just the politicians who want the cheap labor and not just big business owners. American citizens want a peasant class, too. That’s why the politicians get away with it.

  Americans want cheap tomatoes and cheaper dinners out. (Well, many of them; not all.) We all know that, if the pickers and the dish washers made more money, we’d have to pay more for the food we eat in and more for the food we eat out. We’d have less to spend on video games and larger televisions. That’s also just a market dynamic. You’re going to pay more for a lot of things if illegal aliens don’t do the jobs for less.

  So, from the bottom to the top, illegal immigration is all about the economic benefits of having a peasant class to do the dirty work in order to afford all the citizens a little better lifestyle.

  But if establishing some people as an illegal class that many citizens turn a blind eye to is something many Americans want, why do politicians eventually always come around to talking about making more immigration legal?

   

  The economics and politics of immigration reform

   

  The rub in all of this is that the peasant class eventually gets large enough to stage a peasant revolt. That’s when the federal government starts to talk once again about amnesty — the politically correct term for which is “immigration reform.”

  Naturally, the politicians do all they can to avoid the term “amnesty” because all previous amnesties left a bad taste in Joe and Jolene Citizen’s mouths because the government promised not to let illegals in again and then did so anyway. (And Americans are ambivalent about having a peasant class; they want the cheap tomatoes but they don’t want their own jobs taken, or they feel bad about seeing people work so cheaply, and guilt kicks in.)

  In the guilt cycle, we atone for our sins and then go back to repeating them. So, the politicians atone for guilt by granting citizenship and then keep letting lots more illegals in to maintain the peasant worker class. (And Joe and Jolene really don’t think too much about this because they like those cheap tomatoes. If you think about it too much, the guilt kicks in, and its hard to enjoy the cheap tomato.)

  Bear in mind, they have to be illegal to remain a peasant class because that’s what forces them to keep their heads down. Just letting in more legalized labor would not do as much to hold the price down.

  Sooner or later, however, you have to give that growing peasant class citizenship. What you forgot about when building up the peasant labor pool is that those people also suffer from this thing we call the “human condition.” So, they start to expect citizenship because they are tired of seeing everyone else around them have more rights and more money than they do. At first, they were glad to come here just for the economic benefit, but now they reach for a higher brass ring. We all rise to a plateau and then feel we could be happy with just thirty percent more.

  If you don’t grant a path to citizenship eventually for all your indentured servants, you face a peasant revolt. Their shear numbers give them power. So, the gates finally open under pressure to allow citizenship for the vast bulk of those who are here illegally. And then they shut again, and all eyes turn blind again in order to develop a new peasant class. We are currently at the peasant revolt point where we have to deal with this.

  Of course, President Obama has been intimating openly for seven years now that he will open those gates to citizenship. Naturally that has attracted hoards of people to migrate to the U.S. illegally in hopes that they will make it through the gates of the city before they close again. This has made the problem grow fast enough that the time for resolving a peasant revolt is happening during Obama’s own shift as president. That’s advantageous because, if he can be the one who gets the hoards in the door, they will probably all become good Democrats to bestow their blessed new votes upon him and his.

  Most good citizen Democrats will support open-door policies toward mass immigration because it is the soft-hearted thing to do. So, he won’t find much resistance from his own party.

  At the same time, many Republicans in Congress will support it because the revolt is happening. There is no getting around it. Republicans know that even legalimmigrants are willing to work for less than native citizens because of the situations they came out of; so it’s good for big business. Still helps keep down the cost of labor, even if not as much as illegal immigration does.

  There is no will on either side of the aisle to do anything real to stop illegal immigration for good. That’s why the Republicans capitulated overnight in granting money for immigration reform without a word … once the last elections were over. The last thing they would want to do is talk about this elephant in the room and expose the real underpinnings of illegal immigration.

  At the same time, they created funding for more border security for political cover. That’s all smoke and mirrors to appease the concerns of rank and file Republicans who are tired of being unemployed. You know now that it was smoke and mirrors because you can see that, after a couple of years, it has done nothing to stem the problem.

  The real solution — if everybody wanted one — is obvious, and I already completely covered it in just one sentence. Jail the employers, and the problem goes away on its own. It’s not about bolting the gates at the border. Illegal immigrants are not coming here because they love the culture; they are coming here for economic opportunity because the peasant class here is a lot better off than the peasant class at home. You can’t blame them. I don’t. Bad as the wages and benefits may be, they’re much better than what they had.

  So, that’s how the game is played and why Republican politicians are ready to allow amnesty without calling it that and while making a lot of noise about spending money to bar the gates. That’s why they’ll continue to turn a blind eye toward the employers who hire illegal aliens.

  It would be a simple thing to create a law that awards jail time based on the number of illegal aliens hired and to start auditing companies now. It’s not that hard for auditors to see if all employees have the right proof of citizenship, and it’s not hard as the person doing the hiring to make sure that all employees have the right documentation and to prove it with facsimiles. You do need good quality documentation that’s hard to counterfeit, but that’s doable, and no system has to be perfect in order to be much better than what we have.

  You won’t hear that talked about by any politician — not even Donald Trump, who is still stuck on the wall.

   

  What is the cost of immigration economics?

   

  The New York Times just published an article about some of the costs of immigration that I find to be far worse than paying more for my tomatoes. Frankly, I’ve been coming across these kinds of articles a lot lately. This one talks about the Islamization of England through attempted control of its public schools by Islamic immigrants. It is stunning how far they have gone in turning some schools into a Muslim cultural institution.

  I read a lot of major European newspapers, and I’ve been seeing this all over Europe for a couple of years. It’s a high social cost.

  Articles in The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Jerusalem Post, and numerous other major news sites show me a pattern happening in countries that have been too liberal in their immigration policies. Britain, Germany, France, Norway and Sweden, to name a few are all starting to see internal revolt from their native citizens against immigration because certain immigrants truly do not like the culture they are moving into. They seek to turn the country into what they are used to.

  I think the resulting homogenization of cultures that happens when immigrants try to turn their new land into their old land is also a great loss of diversity and interest.

  Here’s an article on Germany that describes the problem there. Germany has the second-most liberal immigration policy in the world. Guess which nation has the most liberal immigration policy in the world? The U.S.

   

  My own experience of immigration in my neck of the woods

   

  I feel strongly that mmigration in the U.S. needs to be slowed way down. Liberals are creating huge culture clashes by not giving people time to get used to each other’s ways, and they’re creating overpopulation and environmental harm.

  I see this happening all around me. The county I live in is experiencing gridlock for the first time in its existence. Almost all population growth has been from immigration. The county has nearly doubled in size in two decades. While it is about as far from Latin American as you can get, billboards and signs are now starting to use Spanish with no English.

  Prior to to the last two decades, population growth and immigration in this county were gradual. Rapid population growth is resulting in tighter and tighter building regulations to avoid the problems of overdevelopment; so how is such immigration good for the people who live here? Why are we better off with more gridlock? (Simple. It sells more real estate, so again it’s all about money.)

  To me it is not about where the people come from, it’s about the shear number of people. Why do I want them? I wouldn’t want this level of immigration even if they all came from merry old England where my ancestors came from. We have enough people, thanks, and far too few good paying jobs.

  Nevertheless, the group of Latino immigrants is different than all others — much different. Have you noticed television programming is becoming increasingly dominated by Spanish all over the nation. That’s never happened with any other language in this county, and yet this country was made from immigrants from all over the world. All other people accepted the language and culture they moved into and made it their own and became a part of it.

  This pressure to Latinize our own culture in order to accommodate is not because the people are different than other immigrants. They’re just as nice as any other group of people. What’s different is the volume. Latin American immigrants provided such a major portion of the carefully engineered peasant population that they have become such a large group they don’t have to make those changes. They are large enough to demand others change to accommodate them. This is the cost of creating a large peasant population.

  Lest anyone mistake me in an oversensitive manner to thinking I’m calling them peasants because they are Latin, I want to place a reminder here that race has nothing to do with it. They are peasants because they are part of an illegal population made up of all races that exists intentionally to provide cheap labor for the United States. They exist because politicians intentionally turn a blind eye to them but keep them illegal so they have to hold their heads down.

  Big businesses love cheap labor. Big real estate developers love population growth. The locals aren’t having babies fast enough, so immigration means a lot more construction of everything and cheap labor to do the construction so the developers make more money all around.

  I have seen vast acres of beautiful, fertile agricultural land and entire forested mountainsides turn into housing developments entirely bought up by immigrants. In this case, Russian and Indian. In my area, its has turned a beautiful rural county into a sprawling suburb. It’s certainly not an environmental positive, but Democrats love it, too.

   

  The cultural cost of mass migration

   

  The current European immigration crisis has become a political inferno because Islamic immigrants try to change the cultures they move into. Just so this discussion is not about Islam, let’s imagine that it was Jewish mass migration into the United States. In my opinion, if Jews moved to this nation and wanted to speak Hebrew at home and to practise all the rules of Judaism, no one should have a problem with that; but if many Jews moved here and because they had the power of numbers, insisted that government documents be written in Hebrew, we should all have a major problem with that. If they insisted Torah be fought in public schools we should have a problem with that. If they went further an insisted that Torah law become the law of the land, we should have a very big problem with that.

  That, however, has not happened with Jewish immigration, but in some European countries Muslim immigrants are demanding public school classes teach their religion and that government institutes Sharia law. Read the New York Times article above. It will open your eyes about a pattern that is recurring in a number of Western nations.

  I certainly would not move to France and expect the French to speak English to me or to write government documents in English for me. Yet, people are moving to France from Islamic nations and demanding that courts start recognizing Sharia or that the country create special courts for Muslims.

  Culture clashes like this are unavoidable when immigrants are brought in from one culture in huge numbers. If we do not slow immigration to a level where migrants can assimilate with the culture the culture of the country they are moving into, then we will certainly create more and more internal conflicts that will begin to boil over.

  What may seem like a liberal dose of love toward immigrants will prove to be naiveté about human interactions. You have to allow time for people to adjust to each other. When you force people together as Obama has done (doubling the immigration rate) or as Merkel has done in Germany, you continually spawns greater conflict. People do not adjust to each other just because they are forced to.

  We are going to see a lot more racial and nationalistic conflict in Western countries because of the huge increase in legal immigration and the blind eye turned toward illegal immigration along with the amnesty that is coming.

   

  One of my problems is that I love different cultures so much

   

  I like to see lots of difference in culture. Viva la difference. I don’t like homogeneity. And that’s why people need to assimilate when they move into a country, rather than try to transform it into something more like their own culture and country.

  Each country’s culture has its own beauty, and we are losing that all over the world rapidly due to globalization. People in those cultures are feeling that loss. And it’s not inevitable. It’s something politicians are forcing.

  Before you throw the race card at me, you need to know this is written by a guy who thinks interracial children are the most beautiful children on earth, who loves the different looks of different races for all the exotic variety of beauty race gives to this world, who loves accents and who loves to travel and who hopes that nations will have distinctive cultures when he travels to them. Since I was a child I was brought up to love all people of all races and to believe that each race is a different kind of flower in God’s flower garden. The world teams with creative diversity, and that’s beautiful.

  But I’d like Norway to be Norwegian in culture and England, English and Germany, German and Morocco, Moroccan. I don’t want an homogenized world. I want a world with different nations and cultures that respect each other and get along, and that is not what we are getting with mass migration. We are getting a lot more racial conflict from people who seem to have an agenda of forcing others together.

  I don’t  think crashing people together like neutrons in a particle accelerator is going to create any chemistry other than a great big bang. People who want to migrate to another country should not go with any intention of changing that nation’s culture, which particularly includes language. Go to appreciate and mix with the culture that is there and become a part of it. If you don’t like that culture as it is, just don’t go!

  I also don’t think that overpopulation is a good thing. Bringing in hundreds of thousands of immigrants into a state like Florida or California that is, in my opinion, already overpopulated makes now sense. Flooding them into rural areas also makes no sense, as it completely destroys the rural nature of those areas.

  I don’t see that we need more people or that we have a duty to take them. But I DO see that it serves the interest of real estate developers and of businesses that want cheap labor and of politicians that think they can bolster the vote for their party if they give thousands of migrant workers citizenship so they can vote.

  What you see in all the fury around Donald Trump’s rallies is the anger that comes from forcing people together in mass finally starting to express itself. And you’re going to see a lot more of it! The cost in civil unrest is going to become quite high as a result of people who think they know how to do good by forcing others together.

  The most liberal nations of the world are destroying their own cultures and creating racial and nationalistic strife because many of their citizens value their culture and many of the immigrants do not. In Europe you can see that immigrants treat the culture they are moving into with contempt. Violent crime has surged. While some politicians may be advocating rapid immigration out of a sense that they are doing good (acting benevolent toward underprivileged or persecuted people) and others are doing it just to add voters or bring in cheap labor for their Wall Street benefactors, the cost is going to be great.

  Just know that what you are seeing on both sides of Trump rallies is just the tip of the flame unless politicians start backing down from forcing immigration in their already overpopulated nations.

  

• False flag, blow-back, or incompetence? A FOREX look at Orlando Pedassacre

  This tragic event in Orlando is an opportunity to connect the dots in an ever simple global world; as explained in Splitting Pennies – key to understanding Forex markets and how our global financial system includes understanding international politics, and specifically US foreign policy, and how it is connected to the US Dollar as a world reserve currency.  Forex is information brokerage, both as a facilitator and as primary emission of that information.  It is by itself, information – as well, those who play ‘the great game’ use it to execute their strategem.  

  This event, is a domestic event with no implications on the markets (although maybe a short term boom for Smith & Wesson (SWHC) ).  It’s not going to affect Forex, directly.  But it will affect foreign policy – not by itself, but as one woven yarn in a policy sweater.  There will be in the days and months ahead, political aggressiveness to ‘fight terrorism.’  This event alone, would not be sufficient to go to war with Syria for example, but in the area of domestic support of foreign actions, such events are key to seizing the hearts and minds of the average American, and in this case also the LGBT community – embroiled in domestic disputes of their own.

  The fact that the shooter was in contact with the FBI isn’t necessarily suspicious.  The FBI is in contact with millions of people all around the world, connected to cases, and their daily operations.  The fact that shooter worked for this G4S, as reported first here on Zero Hedge – is highly suspicious.  Omar Mateen effectively worked for DHS, although through a subcontracted private company.  This is the “Department of Homeland Security” designed to protect us from such ‘terrorists.’  

  Let’s examine 3 motives:

  False Flag

  If you are one of these TV watchers that believe ‘it doesn’t happen in America’ read the following report from PNAC (Project for a New American Century) in full here – note the DATE and note the SIGNERS of this ‘research’ that says, before 9/11:

  Further, the process of transformation,
  even if it brings revolutionary change, is
  likely to be a long one, absent some
  catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
  new Pearl Harbor. 

  What an interesting coincidence, that a Washington based think tank that worries about a declining budget (because of declining real military threats) and declining power, should within a short year after publishing their report have the justification they need to increase their budgets and power by 10.  Or more recently, look at evidence of Sandy Hook false flag here and here.

  So was this pedassacre a false flag – to escalate our involvement in Syria, Ukraine, or a number of other global hotspots?  Possible, but not probable.  

  Blowback

  Omar’s parents were from Afghanistan.  He’s a first generation US Citizen refugee child.  How they came to America, is not really important – during any war there is a flood of refugees, not only to America, but often they do flee to their captors (and in many cases, providing information to save their lives).  Being born into these circumstances, watching your country burn (even if his current country was America – his family was still connected to Afghanistan) affects your subconscious.  In this case, the programming of American culture works against the establishment.  It’s telling him to be free – live his desires, and kill kill kill – murder murder murder.  Violent video games, movies, and culture encourage such events – they foster a hostile warlike environment.  A culture of violence is necessary for programming a domestic population sufficient to justify foreign entanglements of war, looting foreign resources, and empire.  We bring war into your living room, tonight at 11 – watch how we spend billions of dollars and ‘help people’ in the middle east.  

  “Blowback” is when, the people who America bombs are not happy, and come back for ‘revenge’ – now they are called “Terrorists.”  Blowback rarely makes its way back to the continential United States, because it takes funding, planning, intelligence, and a well oiled machine to slip through the cracks of a security apparatus.  This is where cultural blowback can be devastating, because there are thousands of disgruntled children of immigrants now being born in America, who will grow up to be flag waving homegrown terrorists in 10, 20, and 30 years.  These children will not be on any Terrorist watchlist, and they will have normal childhoods, not knowing that they’ll join a terror group when they become teenagers.

  The foreign policy of the United States of America post 9/11 breeds terrorists, at home and abroad.  Whether there were or were not many Terrorists in the world in the year 2000, now they are growing exponentially.  Until the US Military pulls out of the middle east, and as long as the US blindly supports Israel, there’s going to be “Terrorists” who “Hate our freedoms.”  The only “Freedom” the US enjoys is to bomb these countries into oblivion with virtually no repercussions.  Well, now we are seeing the repercussions.  

  Incompetence

  DHS, FBI, and others – somehow ‘missed’ a potential attack, by not properly connecting the dots.  This is an extremely unlikely scenario – the event happened 15 minutes from a local FBI field office, who has their “Pulse” on the local community.  Just last month, the FBI foiled a terror plot involving a man who wanted to apparently bomb a synagogue.  They monitor all electronic activity, are we to believe they didn’t pick up any ‘chatter’ ?   We can’t disprove a negative, there’s no evidence supporting the incompetence theory – that it was a ‘mistake.’  Many will say it was incompetence, because Omar was in contact with the FBI previously – and the thinking goes, they already ‘knew’ about his connections to Islam, and so – should have stopped him from buying guns at the first checkpoint, and at the second checkpoint – from any preliminary preparations that were made minutes leading into the event (such as communication with his Terrorist friends).  Not incompetence.

  Forex in focus

  So what does such an event have to do with Forex trading?  Well – it’s all part of a plan to support US Dollar hegemony.  How does that work?  As we explain in detail in Splitting Pennies – there’s a policy in washington that goes something like – use US Dollars or we’ll bomb you.  If you do use US Dollars, maybe you’d like to buy our nice US Treasuries, such as TIPS?  One leg supporting the Petro Dollar is no longer a secret – data has been released that show Saudi’s holdings – about $116 Billion as of March.  How does this support the US Dollar?  Well, imagine that the $116 Billion was sitting in Russian Ruble instead.  Also, as they buy US Treasuries, they first need to buy US Dollars.  Converting from Riyal to USD provides natural support for USD – also, by pricing their oil in USD – buyers of oil must first convert to USD.  It’s really a genius method to support the US Dollar, created by Richard Nixon.  It is long term thinking, that isn’t subject to daily market pressures.  Anyway, shortly before the most recent US invasion of Iraq, they wanted to price oil in Euros.  USA said – NO.  Wrong answer.  Must buy USD.  It’s really a simple policy, let’s not be sensational or dramatic about it.  Without this long term support of the USD, America wouldn’t enjoy such import advantages, things in China wouldn’t be ‘cheap’ – and America wouldn’t be able to carry such a hudge debtload as it does, and other advantages.  This also virtually eliminates the need for any domestic Forex programs – because the USD is unchallenged.  There’s a natural tendency for those policies that support US Dollar hegemony, to crush anything that smells like “Forex” – and to further justification of foreign entanglements du jour.  On today’s menu, we have Syria, Ukraine, Russia, and NATO expansion in East Europe.  From Tyler Durden:

  With tensions between Russia and the West at post-cold war highs, a former NATO deputy military chief is now saying that anuclear war with Russia over the Baltic nations in 2017 is “entirely plausible” according to RT.

  This example contrasts brightly what many understand is Forex – the day to day trading of Euros for Dollars that drive the EUR/USD rate up and down.  And practically, it’s easier for many to make a business out of rate speculation in Forex than in many other markets.  But to understand Forex, one must understand its origin, why it exists, by what powers and authority.  

  To conclude, the US Dollar is backed by something, although it’s not Gold.  It’s backed by bombs.  That’s more than can be said for many competing currencies, including the popular Bitcoin.  Unless you have a world class super army behind you – good luck launching a new currency.

  To learn more about Forex, try starting by reading Splitting Pennies – Understanding Forex.  If you want to learn about Forex day-trading, checkout Baby Pips – free Forex education & resources.  When you’re ready to open an account – sign up for our Elite FX Service first – it can make you or save you a bundle.

  

  

• Markets In Turmoil As Brexit Fears Mount And Japan, China Data Tumbles

  FX, equity, and bond markets are in turmoil as Asian markets begin trading with Japan ugly, Sterling getting spanked, China devaluing FX (stocks down hard), and crude ($48 handle) and US equity futures (Dow -70) extending losses (as bond markets are all tumbling to record low yields). The hangover from further brexit concerns is not helped by the weakness in Japanese and Chinese data tonight.

  First Japanese manufacturing data was a disaster…

  

   

  Then Chinese data largely disappointed. A "meet" in Industrial Production – hovering at multi-year lows…

  *CHINA MAY INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT RISES 6.0% FROM YEAR EARLIER

  

   

  Retail Sales missed…*CHINA MAY RETAIL SALES RISE 10.0% FROM YEAR EARLIER (lowest since 2006)

  

   

  And FAI missed… *CHINA JAN.-MAY FIXED-ASSET INVESTMENT EXC. RURAL RISES 9.6% (lowest since 2000)

  

   

  And if the anxiety over global growth and Brexit were not enough, this China data has sparked even more turmoil in markets as Asia gets going…

  First, Japan…

  • *JAPAN'S TOPIX INDEX EXTENDS DROP TO 3%; NIKKEI 225 FALLS 3%

  

  Japanese stocks shorts biggest since 2008…

  

  And Japanese 10Y Yields record lows (along with 20Y and 5Y)…

  

  But it's not just Japan, Germany, and Switzerland…

  • TAIWAN 10-YR GOVT BOND HITS RECORD LOW OF 0.76%

   

  In China, as we could have guessed by Bitcoin's surge, the Yuan is tumbling…

  PBOC devalues the Yuan fix by over 2 handles – back near 5 year lows…

  

   

  As the Yuan basket plunged to lowest since Nov 2014

  

   

  Chinese stocks are down most in 6 weeks:

  • *HANG SENG INDEX FALLS 2%
  • *CHINA'S SHANGHAI COMPOSITE INDEX FALLS 1.3% TO 2,889.91 AT OPEN

   

  And anything Brexit-related…

  Cable at 2mo lows…

  

   

  Sterling shorts biggest in 3 years…

  

   

  and GBPJPY is a bloodbath… Pound plunging to lowest since Aug 2013…

  

   

  And finally, gold is holidng its recent gains…

  

   

  Despite the monkeyhammering it got earlier…

  

   

  Which must be very upsetting for The BIS. Given this much turmoiling, one can only imagine the central bank efforts to make sure Monday opens green on the NYSE.

   

  Charts: Bloomberg

  

  

• Bill & Hillary Clinton: Republicans' Fifth Column In Democratic Politics

  Authored by Ben Tanosborn,

  Forty days left until the Democratic Party’s convention in Philadelphia, and Bernie, just like Jesus did two millennia ago, will be trying to find answers in solitude… and fight temptation from the devil of “accommodating politics.”  Jesus would do it, according to the Gospels, in the wilderness without food; Bernie is likely to do it at home, in pretty Burlington (Vermont), keeping a normal diet and the company of a smart phone.

  The demonstration of affection for progressivism by Democrats and honest-to-heart Independents was dealt a heavy blow by Tuesday’s election results; results likely to be reinforced by President Obama’s imminent endorsement of Hillary Clinton… triggered by a battle cry urgency to stop this 2016-boogeyman, Donald Trump, from branding the nation as his psycho-political casino:  Fantasy-Trump-America.

  It’s beginning to look as if the $200 million spent by Bernie believers to bring about and promote a progressive sociopolitical agenda for America may prove not to have been in vain, as the voice of progressivism that Clinton-Husband silenced in the 1990’s, might not  remain totally muzzled in Clinton-Wife’s prospective centrist-right platform.

  Resurgent progressivism and loyal conservatism both appear to be undergoing painful castration in this 2016 presidential election; one by undemocratic and corrupt insider party politics, the other by the uglier face of bigoted-populism which might represent well over 25 percent of the nation’s population.  No, folks… not 5, 10 or 15 percent, but upwards of a quarter, maybe a third! This populism is responding to a demographic change in America of major transformational proportions; populism with a latent bigotry now finding an opportunity to surface as champion-du-jour, Donald Trump, singularly leads the way in “finally!” making acceptable both the vocalization and the behavior that up to now has been considered taboo, politically incorrect.   

  Once again we are politically marching towards another presidential election with the limited prospect of choices, most based on aesthetics, not substance; a chance to select the proverbial lesser evil or failing to select at all.  Next January, either odious-Donald or odious-Hillary will be taking up White House residency, Johnson (Libertarian) and Stein (Green) having only non-critical influence in the outcome of the election thanks to our electoral system.  And that brings us to why America is in such dire straits.

  It’s been eight decades since the start of the Spanish Civil War and the advent of that cloak-and-dagger term, “fifth column,” coined by a Spanish general, Emilio Mola, and popularized in the works of an American writer, Ernest Hemingway.

  A fifth column referred to a secret group that surreptitiously undermined the efforts of a larger group from within; a term perhaps a bit distant and esoteric for us today, but its meaning, whether we associate it with patriotism or with treason, remains with us no matter what we call it, or how we prefer to explain its aims and behavior.

  Some of us feel that the Clintons, given the major transformation that has taken place in Democratic national politics in the past generation, did become the quintessential fifth column for the G.O.P., instrumental in sowing, cultivating and harvesting such change.  A change that drastically disconnected the Democratic Party from the progressive nerve center of old, its “new and improved” Clintonian party ideology finding a permanent home in the center-right confines of America’s political spectrum.

  Bill Clinton, and his then bride, Hillary, may have entered elective politics in Arkansas back in the mid-1970’s using the Democratic front door, but in chameleonic fashion, as Ronald Reagan consolidated the tenets of his presidency in the 1980’s, Governor Clinton was quick to mimic his own right turn in politics in the hinterlands of Arkansas.  Heck, if President Reagan was then making hay advocating a smaller government and welfare reform, Bill and his Little Rock cadre of young New Democrats certainly was able to see an immediate personal future following suit embracing both issues, a plagiarized version of what The Old Gipper was preaching from the White House.  After all, old soldiers may never die, but young politicians must adopt change – ideology forever damned!  Or they too, like the old soldiers, could slowly (or speedily) fade away.

  And Bill Clinton then, just as Bill Clinton now, was proving to be masterful at remaining politically relevant without the slightest intention of fading away.  And that feverish desire for relevance as qualified and quantified in his mind by both money and power, appeared to consume not just him but his spouse as well throughout their lives.  Such intense desire might have given this duo the cavalier attitude many of us see in them.  It’s as if this couple is intent to prove to any and all Americans that fidelity has little or nothing to do with the rule of morality, and everything to do with faithfulness to a cause, particularly when that cause is close, personal and meritoriously deserved; even if characterized by most as personal selfishness, totally lacking honesty and decorum.

  Bernie will give his all to bring back progressivism to the Democratic Party, but it will be to no avail… for Americans are not yet ready for a revolution; we may still need a few more darker days in both the economy and our unintended quest in world affairs.

  By election time the Clintons political machine will be humming, well-greased, courtesy of Wall Street… and the fifth column will no longer have to operate in the shadows, Hillary and Bill having made fifth column deception a mainstream virtue.
   

  

  

• Big Names Are Bailing

  Submitted by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

  The list of heavy hitters who are saying bad things about this world and its financial markets – while acting aggressively on their pessimism – is growing to alarming proportions. A few examples:

  Stan Druckenmiller: The bull market is exhausted; move to gold

  (MineWeb) – Legendary investor Stan Druckenmiller, founder of Duquesne Capital Management LLC, told the Sohn Investment Conference in New York last week that he is bullish on gold and bearish on the stock market. Gold, he told the conference, “is our largest currency allocation.”

   

  Druckenmiller recommended that investors sell their equity holdings. “The bull market is exhausting itself,” he told the conference. A major factor has been the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy, which has resulted in “reckless” corporate behavior.

   

  Growing corporate debt is increasingly used for financial engineering, rather than in R&D that could lead to productivity improvements, Druckenmiller said. According to him, from 2012 to 2015, use of debt for U.S. nonfinancial firms for stock buybacks and M&A increased from $1.25 trillion to $2 trillion, while debt for R&D and office equipment grew from $1.55 trillion to only $1.8 trillion.

   

  “The corporate sector today is stuck in a vicious cycle of earnings management, questionable allocation of capital, low productivity, declining margins and growing indebtedness,” Druckenmiller added.

   

  The slowing Chinese economy as another reason to sell equities, according to Druckenmiller. He believes that stimulus measures by China have “aggravated the overcapacity in the economy.” While he had hope two years ago that the Chinese were willing to accept the tradeoff of a slowdown to gain reform, the Chinese “have opted for another investment-focused fiscal stimulus, which may buy them some time but will exacerbate their problem. They do not need more debt and more houses.”

   

  Instead, Druckenmiller has made a move to gold. “It has traded for 5,000 years and for the first time has a positive carry in many parts of the globe as bankers are now experimenting with the absurd notion of negative interest rates,” he said. “Some regard it as a metal, we regard it as a currency, and it remains our largest currency allocation,” he added. Among his investments are holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust.

   

  ————————————-

   

  A Bearish George Soros Is Trading Again

  (Fox Business) – Worried about the outlook for the global economy and concerned that large market shifts may be at hand, the billionaire hedge-fund founder and philanthropist recently directed a series of big, bearish investments, according to people close to the matter.

  Soros Fund Management LLC, which manages $30 billion for Mr. Soros and his family, sold stocks and bought gold and shares of gold miners, anticipating weakness in various markets. Investors view gold as a haven during times of turmoil.

   

  Mr. Soros’s recent hands-on approach reflects a gloomier outlook than many. His worldview darkened over the past six months as economic and political issues in China, Europe and elsewhere have become more intractable. While the U.S. stock market has inched back toward records after troubles early this year and Chinese markets have stabilized, Mr. Soros said he remains skeptical of the Chinese economy, which is slowing.

   

  The fallout from any unwinding of Chinese investments likely will have global implications, Mr. Soros said.

   

  “China continues to suffer from capital flight and has been depleting its foreign currency reserves while other Asian countries have been accumulating foreign currency,” Mr. Soros said in an email. “China is facing internal conflict within its political leadership, and over the coming year this will complicate its ability to deal with financial issues.”

   

  Mr. Soros also argues that there remains a good chance the European Union will collapse under the weight of the migration crisis, continuing challenges in Greece and a potential exit by the United Kingdom from the EU.

   

  “If Britain leaves, it could unleash a general exodus, and the disintegration of the European Union will become practically unavoidable, ” he said. Still, Mr. Soros said recent strength in the British pound is a sign that a vote to exit the EU is less likely.

   

  Mr. Soros’s bearish firm bought over 19 million shares of Barrick Gold Corp. in the first quarter, according to securities filings, making it the firm’s largest stockholding at the end of the quarter. That position has gained more than $90 million since the end of the first quarter. Soros Fund Management also bought a million shares of miner Silver Wheaton Corp. in the first quarter, a position that has increased 28% so far in the second quarter.

   

  The last time Mr. Soros became closely involved in his firm’s trading: 2007, when he became worried about housing and placed bearish wagers over two years that netted more than $1 billion of gains.

  ————————————-

   

  If the Markets Crash Then Carl Icahn Could Win Big

  (Barrons) – If financial markets crash, one of the biggest beneficiaries could be billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

  An investment fund run by the 80-year-old Icahn had a net short position of 149% at the end of the first quarter. Icahn is considerably more bearish than he was at the end of 2015, when the fund’s net short position was 25%. A year ago, the fund had a net long position of 4%. It’s rare to see a fund outside a dedicated short fund with such a large bearish stance.

   

  Asked about the big bearish stance, Icahn Enterprises CEO Keith Cozza said on the conference call that “Carl has been very vocal in recent weeks in the media” about his negative views. “We’re much more concerned about the market going down 20% than we are it going up 20%. And so the significant weighting to the short side reflects that.” Icahn was not on the call.

  ————————————-

   

  The Sam Zell Indicator – Time to Get Out of Real Estate?

  (Value Walk) – Talk about exquisite timing.

  Even today, a decade after the fact, the leveraged buyout of Equity Office Properties Trust remains one of the largest of all time: $36 billion for nearly 600 office buildings in New York, Washington D.C. and dozens of the nation’s largest cities.

   

  But in late 2006, some wondered if the billionaire who sold the REIT was being a little rash. After all, the real estate boom was in full swing, and the S&P 500 was primed to hit new all-time highs. “Is he cashing out too early?” asked a Bloomberg headline when the deal was announced.

  We all know the answer, of course.

   

  Billionaire Sam Zell deftly sidestepped the coming real estate carnage. Then, with prices at generational lows a few years later, Zell bought hundreds of apartment complexes at dirt-cheap prices.

   

  And today? Well, that’s the ominous part…

   

  Once again, Zell is selling his real estate holdings. Last fall, he unloaded a quarter of his portfolio, buildings totaling about 23,000 rental apartments, to Starwood Capital Group for more than $5 billion.

   

  Zell next sold off apartment buildings in South Florida and Denver, with complexes in Phoenix, Boston and other metro areas expected to be sold before the year is out.

   

  “No one has ever accused me of not being a realist,” Zell told CNBC’s talking heads recently.

  Of course for every seller there has to be a buyer, so to the extent that these guys are bearish, an equal amount of optimistic capital disagrees with their assessment. Still, between Soros, Druckenmiller, Icahn and Zell there’s about a thousand years of successful, audacious experience, so at a minimum their sudden bearishness should be a comfort to smaller players who have reached the same conclusion.

  The fact that they see gold as the antidote to crashing financial markets is also reassuring for long-suffering gold bugs.

  If these and the several other big names now saying scary things (see Bill Gross’s supernova comments) are right, the short stocks/long gold trade is finally about to pay off.

  

  

• Workaholic? This Study Finds You May Have Other Issues

  Being a workaholic comes along with being grown up and having responsibilities (well, it comes along with it for some people). Late nights out at the bar turn into firing up the laptop and putting the finishing touches on that presentation that is due first thing in the morning, weekends that used to be filled with keggers turn into all day working sessions just to catch up on all of the emails that got missed during the week – it happens (even if one works at the US Treasury, but only on occasion don't be alarmed).

  However, there is a rather disturbing study that the World Economic Forum reported earlier in the month that may convince some to schedule that vacation that's been put off for the last decade.

  As the WEF reports, a study of 16,426 working adults in Norway found that those with workaholism are significantly more likely to have psychiatric symptoms.

  From the WEF

  Psychology researchers, led by Cecilie Schou Andreassen from the University of Bergen in Norway, found a strong link between workaholism and ADHD, OCD, anxiety, and depression. They found:

   

  -32.7% of workaholics also met ADHD criteria, compared to 12.7% of non-workaholics

   

  -25.6% of workaholics also met OCD criteria, compared to 8.7% of non-workaholics

   

  -33.8% of workaholics also met anxiety criteria, compared to 11.9% of non-workaholics

   

  -8.9% of workaholics also met depression criteria, compared to 2.6% of non-workaholics

   

  The authors speculated that there are several reasons those with ADHD might suffer workaholism, including inattentiveness forcing them to spend excess hours trying to make up work, working extra hard to counter misperceptions of laziness, or working to alleviate restlessness. For those with OCD, workaholism could become a compulsion. Meanwhile, working hard is “praised and honored in modern society,” write the authors, and so could be used as a means to counter anxiety or depression.

   

  The study, which was co-authored by researchers from Yale University and Nottingham Trent University, did not determine whether workaholism caused the psychiatric symptoms or vice versa.

  Marianna Virtanen, an epidemiologist at UCL and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health was not involved in the study but says that many psychiatric disorders begin at a young age, they precede workaholism. "It is also possible that the association is bidirectional; workaholism may exacerbate psychiatric symptoms in the long run. It is paradoxical, however, that people may first try to cope with their symptoms by excessive working." Virtanen added.

  Those in the US and Germany have put in the most time working prior to even heading into the office.

  

  "Taking work to the extreme may be a sign of deeper psychological or emotional issues. Whether this reflects overlapping genetic vulnerabilities, disorders leading to workaholism or, conversely, workaholism causing such disorders, remains uncertain." said Dr. Schou Andreassen

  * * *

  Well then, since everything is still inconclusive – there is more work to be done.

  

  

• Paul Craig Roberts On The "Frustrations Of Telling The Truth"

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  Some examples of the 'abuse' one gets when telling the truth:

  If I criticize the Israeli government for abusing Palestinians and stealing their country, the Israel Lobby accuses me of being an anti-semite who wants to repeat the holocaust. In the same batch of emails, anti-semites denounce me for being too easy on Israel and covering up for the Jewish conspiracy against mankind.

   

  When I write about the One Percent using the government to loot the economy, I receive emails blaming me because I worked for Reagan “who started it all by cutting tax rates for the rich.” These people have no conception of supply-side economics, its purpose, success, and the way it prepared the way for Reagan to negotiate the end of the Cold War. At one point in their lives they read a left-wing screed against Reagan, and that is the extent of their understanding. But they are full of blind hate.

   

  When I write about Washington’s crimes against other countries, I receive emails asking me where I was during Iran-Contra and Grenada. Apparently, they think that a Treasury official can run the State Department and Pentagon. Some of the readers are so confused that they think Reagan overthrew Allende in Chile. Alllende was overthrown in 1973. Reagan was inaugurated in 1981. It is dispiriting that there actually are people this ignorant and so proud of it that they will accuse me of helping Reagan to overthrow Allende.

   

  When I point out the dangers of the reckless folly of Washington’s aggressions against Russia, China, and the independent Muslim world, superpatriots denounce me for being anti-American. There is a stratum of the US population that thinks that it is a criminal act to disbelieve the government or to question its judgment and motives. “You are with us or against us.”

   

  When I document the death of the US Constitution and the rise of the American Police State, “law and order” conservatives admonish me that the police state only appies to terrorists and criminals and does not apply to law abiding citizens. They are convinced that Snowden and Assange are traitors, and no amount of evidence or reason can convince them otherwise. Neither can they be convinced that in the 21st century, law has become a weapon in the hands of government and no longer is a shield of the people. The Rule of Law in America is dead.

  All of my life I have confronted the vast bulk of humanity living in a false reality created by self-serving powerful interest groups and the government that they control. People believe the lies that define their reality, because they lack the education and the emotional and intellectual strength to confront the obvious lies.

  Every truth-teller confronts this barrier every day of his or her life. Every truth-teller wishes he/she could force red pills down the throat of the population.

  In American today there is nothing true that you can say that does not result in a heaving of abuse. The safe course is to repeat all the lies that come out of Washington and the presstitute media.

  To go against the Matrix, you need all of the superpowers of The One.

  

  

• This Is What The Unprecedented Chinese M&A Scramble In America Looks Like

  The raging need for Chinese oligarchs and corporations to park their cash offshore, and as far away as possible from the the mainland and the risk of sudden, sharp (10%-15%) devaluation, has resulted in not only an epic Vancouver housing bubble, or the predicted parabolic surge in bitcoin price (which has soared by 50% in just a few weeks), but an unprecedented M&A spree for US-based assets. We profiled as much in late March in a post titled “Eight Things The Chinese Are Scrambling To Buy In America.”

  And while overall M&A in the US is down substantially YTD, sliding 28% by volume (but only 4% in number of deals) mostly as a result of the volatile market in the early part of the year as well as the chilling effect of Congressional crackdown on tax-inversion deals (such as the pulled Pfizer-Allergan mega-merger), and the lack of any blockbuster mega-cap (>$25 billion) deals, China not only refuses to go away, but the level of Chinese cross-border M&A chasing after US targets is literally off the charts.

  Here are the details from Goldman:

  Cross-border, while down in aggregate, continues to gain share at 34% of total YTD volumes (a 6-year high). While the distribution of acquirers and targets remains relatively well diversified, one trend has been increased Chinese volumes. Notably, China has accounted for 26% of global cross-border activity YTD, which is nearly 3x higher than the next highest year (2013).

   

  

   

  While the vast majority of US targets continue to be bought by US acquirers, there has been a trend towards international purchasers, particularly from China, in recent years (see Exhibit 5). At $28 bn YTD, US-inbound deal flow from Chinese acquirers is already a record level and nearly 2x last year’s volumes ($17 bn). On the flip side, there have been relatively few deals of US acquirers going after Chinese targets, which is a change vs. the last M&A cycle in 2004-2008. See Exhibit 6.

   

  

  So is it time to panic yet? No, first China has to buy Rockefeller Center, because what is taking place now is nothing that didn’t take place almost 30 years ago when Japan was likewise facing a comparable epic liquidity bubble and unleashed a massive wave of US-based acqusitions. Recall from 1989:

  Japanese Buy New York Cachet With Deal for Rockefeller Center

   

  The Rockefeller Group, the owner of Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall and other mid-Manhattan office buildings, said yesterday that it had sold control of the company to the Mitsubishi Estate Company of Tokyo, one of the world’s biggest real estate developers.The deal, which comes almost exactly 50 years after Rockefeller Center opened on Nov. 1, 1939, is only the latest instance of the Japanese buying a vital piece of the American landscape, from Hollywood to Wall Street. In September, the Sony Corporation bought Columbia Pictures for $3.4 billion.

  And of course, “Japanese Buy Pebble Beach Golf Course“

  The property includes four golf courses and the famous lone cypress tree, used as a Pebble Beach logo, which stands on a point of land along the scenic 17-Mile Drive around the peninsula. The deal also includes two resort hotels, the Lodge at Pebble Beach and The Inn at Spanish Bay.  ”It’s right up there in the deal-of-the-year category,” said Jack Barthell, a partner at Kenneth Leventhal, the Los Angeles-based accounting firm that specializes in real estate.

  As most know, the Japanese acquisition spree in 1990 ended with disaster, if only for the acquirors. This time will be absolutely the same, only this time it will be China that is bent over. And, more importantly, once the Japanese M&A wave ended, it has nearly 30 years of relentless contraction, deflation and demographic devastation.

  If China is next – and there is no reason the believe it won’t be now that even Goldman admits China’s total debt is somewhere in the 350% ballpark – watch out as ultra long bond yields plummets right into subzero territory, as the world finally realizes that absent helicopter money and hyperinflation, only a deflationary black hole awaits.

  

  

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