- London Gangs: A Tragic Remnant Of British Colonialism
Authored by T.T.Coles via Counterpunch.org,
London is plagued by street gangs. By the year 2016 there were an estimated 3,600 gangsters. According to government figures, these form some 225 gangs. Of these, 58 gangs are regularly active and are thought by police to be responsible for two-thirds of gang-related offences, including assault, theft, murder and, most of all, drugs. Ethnically, gangsters are mainly white, Asian, black and Eastern European. In the absence of official data, on-the-ground reports suggest that the majority of gangsters dealing in drugs, where the most violent crimes occur, are young black males, particularly Jamaican.
This is not only a symptom of how successive British governments have failed young ethnic minorities, it reflects the tragic legacy of colonialism.
The British Empire left Jamaica and its other regional colonies poor and devastated .One book on the topic notes that emancipation from slavery “removed the gross features of the slave system without basically upsetting the underlying class-colour differentiations.” Likewise, a London School of Economics report notes that although Jamaica’s Constitution of 1944 introduced so-called democracy, it was “overlaid onto a set of administrative structures and doctrines which had developed since the imposition of Crown Colony rule in 1866.”
Jamaica’s pre-Independence gangs, like The Yardies, emerged from the poverty of the 1950s. Caribbeans experienced similar hardships when they and their parents moved to the UK after the Second World War. According to the British National Archives, between 1948 and 1970, almost half a million people from the West Indies (including the Caribbean) came to Britain, many of them on government initiatives, “to run the transport system, postal service and hospitals. Other West Indians were returning soldiers who had fought for Britain during the Second World War.” Most of the immigrants settled in London. One academic paper notes that “Britain’s experience of West Indian immigration” was “traumatic … Both first and second generations in the U.K. have experienced open hostility” from media, politicians and the public. Inner city violence, including white gangs vs. black gangs, affected Liverpool in the north, Handsworth in the Midlands and, in London, Brixton, Notting Hill and Tottenham.
Within a generation, poverty and discrimination in London had given rise to the gangland culture, with children growing up poor and oppressed and turning to crime for prestige and money. In 1992, the British police launched Operation Lucy to crush the gangs. Not having learned their lessons, successive governments, including the Tories under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, as well as New Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, failed to address the grievances of young ethnic minority Britons–the children and grandchildren of the migrant generations–and help them integrate into society. As in previous decades, some youngsters of this neglected generation have turned to gangs for profit and protection.
Britain has been condemned by the United Nations for its structural racism. Just 14% percent of British people are from ethnic minorities. Yet 26% of British prisoners are non-whites, with black offenders 53% more likely to be sent to prison than whites. By 2011, black people were, in some areas of the UK, 28 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police. The children of black Caribbeans are three times more likely than white children to be permanently expelled from school.
According to government figures, by 2016 the rate of employment for white Britons was 74.7%. For black Britons, however, it was 59.3%. While the rate of overall poverty for white Britons (according to the government’s questionable measure of poverty) was 17.2%, for black Britons it was 39.9%. The percentage of white people likely to get a good degree at college is 76.3% compared to 60.3% for ethnic minorities in general. Although just 7.3% of the British population supposedly experiences “persistent poverty” (again, by the government’s dubious measure), for black and Asian households, the percentage rises to 20. Poverty, unemployment, imprisonment and general discrimination put massive strains on ethnic minority families, hence many absent fathers. Twenty-two percent of white parents are single, but 51% of black parents are single. There are few means for ethnic minority women to make a decent living. By 2011, unemployment for ethnic women was 14% compared to 6.8% for white women.
These factors have merged to create a psychologically damaged demographic of socially alienated, angry youths, who believe that their only hope for respect and belonging is to join a gang. According to the Metropolitan Police’s database, by the year 2014 the average ageof a London gangster was 21. The Mayor of London Office for Policing and Crime’s report on gangs notes that youths are “pulled” into joining gangs by a number of factors. Many of these factors are the same as those noted above: poverty, lack of education and employment skills, and family problems. The allure of gang membership, says the report, includes the perceived sense of “safety, protection, excitement, financial opportunities and a sense of belonging” that gangs appear to offer. Crucially, the report notes that “These young people are often the most excluded in our society, facing multiple levels of deprivations and often growing up exposed to traumatic and abusive environments.”
British governments used Caribbeans and their African ancestors as slaves and then as cheap labour to rebuild post-war Britain. Having been exploited, they and their offspring have been left to face poverty and discrimination.
Another indication of how badly the system has failed these young, mainly ethnic minority males is the extent to which many believe in casting magic spells (Obeah) for self-protection. Here, the link between modern gangland violence and colonialism is apparent. According to a four-part investigation into London gangs by the International Business Times (IBT), Obeah originated in the west African Ashanti. Centuries ago, the practitioners believed that their spells could protect them. The magicians were respected and feared. The Spanish and later English slave traders brought them and their tradition to the Caribbean and thus to modern London.
The IBT investigation concludes that many of today’s black London gangsters believe that Obeah will protect them from the police and bullets of rival gangs. It is significant that in the past the practitioners of Obeah “played a key role in slave rebellions and would create powders that supposedly possessed magical properties that would protect users from the white man’s weapons.” Today, the white man’s weapons are job discrimination, racism in policing, an economic system that favours wealthy and middle-class people, and the refusal of successive governments to get to the root of what drives young males to join gangs. Like so many things, London’s gang crisis is in no small part one of the tragic legacies of colonialism.
- US Airstrikes Hit Decade High In Afghanistan
While Trump professes antipathy for US conflicts abroad, the US military in Afghanistan last year was busy dropping the most bombs in at least a decade, reported Military.com.
American fighter jets, strategic and stealth bombers, attack aircraft and helicopters, and drones dropped an unprecedented 7,362 bombs in 2018, according to the latest US Air Force Central Command airpower statistics report published last week.
For more clarity on just how many bombs were dropped in 2018, the second-highest year on record was 2011, when the US dropped 5,411 bombs during the height of the Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan (2001–14), according to available government figures dating back to 2009.
“Throughout the last year, the air component has supported multiple ongoing campaigns, deterred aggression, maintained security, and defended our networks,” said Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, Combined Forces Air Component Commander, in a news release.
“We’ve orchestrated coalition airpower to destroy the [Islamic State] caliphate, support Iraq, and enabled significant progress in Afghanistan,” Guastella said.
The “Combined Forces Air Component Command 2015-2018 Airpower Statistics” spreadsheet, found within the report, shows a tremendous increase in the “number of weapons released,” starting in the September 2018 through the end of the year.
The unclassified data also shows aircraft operating under the Combined Forces Air Component Command flew 8,196 sorties in 2018, more than double the amount of amount of sorties in 2017.
During the record year of Afghanistan bombardments, President Trump in December instructed the Pentagon to remove troops from Syria and dramatically reduce their numbers in Afghanistan.
The increased bombing runs could be explained by the Trump administration trying to finish the job, which one of his campaign promises was to end the wars in the Middle East.
President Trump received broad bipartisan criticism over his troop reduction plans in Afghanistan, where they have been stationed since 2001.
Even as airstrikes hit a decade-long high, the Trump administration has signaled renewed interest in peace negotiations with the Taliban, a move that could potentially end the 17-year-long war.
“In Afghanistan, my administration is holding constructive talks with a number of Afghan groups, including the Taliban,” Trump said last week during his annual State of the Union address.
“As we make progress in these negotiations, we will be able to reduce our troop presence and focus on counter-terrorism. We do not know whether we will achieve an agreement — but we do know that after two decades of war, the hour has come to at least try for peace.”
President Trump has taken an anti-war stance on the conflicts in the Middle East, but government data now shows his plan on ending the Afghanistan conflict is to bomb the country into oblivion so the Taliban want to negotiate.
- Whitehead: Is It Too Late For Non-Violent Means To Restore American Liberty?
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“There’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that [America is] the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies…
“[America] sure used to be [the greatest country in the world ]… We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reason. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world’s greatest artists AND the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.” ― Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom (Episode 1)
Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence.
We have managed to survive crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.
We’ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners.
We’ve had our freedoms turned inside out, our democratic structure flipped upside down, and our house of cards left in a shambles.
We’ve had our children burned by flashbang grenades, our dogs shot, and our old folks hospitalized after “accidental” encounters with marauding SWAT teams. We’ve been told that as citizens we have no rights within 100 miles of our own border, now considered “Constitution-free zones.” We’ve had our faces filed in government databases, our biometrics crosschecked against criminal databanks, and our consumerist tendencies catalogued for future marketing overtures.
We’ve seen the police transformed from community peacekeepers to point guards for the militarized corporate state. From Boston to Ferguson and every point in between, police have pushed around, prodded, poked, probed, scanned, shot and intimidated the very individuals—we the taxpayers—whose rights they were hired to safeguard. Networked together through fusion centers, police have surreptitiously spied on our activities and snooped on our communications, using hi-tech devices provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
We’ve been deemed suspicious for engaging in such dubious activities as talking too long on a cell phone and stretching too long before jogging, dubbed extremists and terrorists for criticizing the government and suggesting it is tyrannical or oppressive, and subjected to forced colonoscopies and anal probes for allegedly rolling through a stop sign.
We’ve been arrested for all manner of “crimes” that never used to be considered criminal, let alone uncommon or unlawful, behavior: letting our kids walk to the playground alone, giving loose change to a homeless man, feeding the hungry, and living off the grid.
We’ve been sodomized, victimized, jeopardized, demoralized, traumatized, stigmatized, vandalized, demonized, polarized and terrorized, often without having done anything to justify such treatment. Blame it on a government mindset that renders us guilty before we’ve even been charged, let alone convicted, of any wrongdoing. In this way, law-abiding individuals have had their homes mistakenly raided by SWAT teamsthat got the address wrong. One accountant found himself at the center of a misguided police standoff after surveillance devices confused his license plate with that of a drug felon.
We’ve been railroaded into believing that our votes count, that we live in a democracy, that elections make a difference, that it matters whether we vote Republican or Democrat, and that our elected officials are looking out for our best interests. Truth be told, we live in an oligarchy, politicians represent only the profit motives of the corporate state, whose leaders know all too well that there is no discernible difference between red and blue politics, because there is only one color that matters in politics—green.
We’ve gone from having privacy in our inner sanctums to having nowhere to hide, with smart pills that monitor the conditions of our bodies, homes that spy on us (with smart meters that monitor our electric usage and thermostats and light switches that can be controlled remotely) and cars that listen to our conversations and track our whereabouts. Even our cities have become wall-to-wall electronic concentration camps, with police now able to record hi-def video of everything that takes place within city limits.
We’ve had our schools locked down, our students handcuffed, shackled and arrested for engaging in childish behavior such as food fights, our children’s biometrics stored, their school IDs chipped, their movements tracked, and their data bought, sold and bartered for profit by government contractors, all the while they are treated like criminals and taught to march in lockstep with the police state.
We’ve been rendered enemy combatants in our own country, denied basic due process rights, held against our will without access to an attorney or being charged with a crime, and left to molder in jail until such a time as the government is willing to let us go or allow us to defend ourselves.
We’ve had the very military weapons we funded with our hard-earned tax dollars used against us, from unpiloted, weaponized drones tracking our movements on the nation’s highways and byways and armored vehicles, assault rifles, sound cannons and grenade launchers in towns with little to no crime to an arsenal of military-grade weapons and equipment given free of charge to schools and universities.
We’ve been silenced, censored and forced to conform, shut up in free speech zones, gagged by hate crime laws, stifled by political correctness, muzzled by misguided anti-bullying statutes, and pepper sprayed for taking part in peaceful protests.
We’ve been shot by police for reaching for a license during a traffic stop, reaching for a baby during a drug bust, carrying a toy sword down a public street, and wearing headphones that hamper our ability to hear.
We’ve had our tax dollars spent on $30,000 worth of Starbucks for Department of Homeland Security employees, $630,000 in advertising to increase Facebook “likes” for the State Department, and close to $25 billion to fund projects ranging from the silly to the unnecessary, such as laughing classes for college students and programs teaching monkeys to play video games and gamble.
We’ve been treated like guinea pigs, targeted by the government and social media for psychological experiments on how to manipulate the masses. We’ve been tasered for talking back to police, tackled for taking pictures of police abuses, and threatened with jail time for invoking our rights. We’ve even been arrested by undercover cops stationed in public bathrooms who interpret men’s “shaking off” motions after urinating to be acts of lewdness.
We’ve had our possessions seized and stolen by law enforcement agencies looking to cash in on asset forfeiture schemes, our jails privatized and used as a source of cheap labor for megacorporations, our gardens smashed by police seeking out suspicious-looking marijuana plants, and our buying habits turned into suspicious behavior by a government readily inclined to view its citizens as terrorists.
We’ve had our cities used for military training drills, with Black Hawk helicopters buzzing the skies, Urban Shield exercises overtaking our streets, and active shooter drills wreaking havoc on unsuspecting bystanders in our schools, shopping malls and other “soft target” locations.
We’ve been told that national security is more important than civil liberties, that police dogs’ noses are sufficient cause to carry out warrantless searches, that the best way not to get raped by police is to “follow the law,” that what a police officer says in court will be given preference over what video footage shows, that an upright posture and acne are sufficient reasons for a cop to suspect you of wrongdoing, that police can stop and search a driver based solely on an anonymous tip, and that police officers have every right to shoot first and ask questions later if they feel threatened.
Are you depressed yet? You should be.
More than depressed, however, you should be outraged at what has been done to our country.
I’m outraged at what has been done to our freedoms.
We are no less prisoners than those who are incarcerated behind prison walls.
As Aldous Huxley recognized in his foreword to A Brave New World Revisited:
“It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free – to be under no physical constraint and yet be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state, or of some private interest within the nation wants him to think, feel and act…
To him the walls of his prison are invisible and he believes himself to be free.”
The prison we inhabit may not be as bleak as the soul-destroying gulags described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago, but that’s just a matter of aesthetics.
It’s time to stop waiting patiently for change to happen, stop waiting for someone to rescue you, and stage a breakout.
Get mad, get outraged, get off your duff and get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.
Appearances to the contrary, this country does not belong exclusively to the corporations or the special interest groups or the oligarchs or the war profiteers or any particular religious, racial or economic demographic.
This country belongs to all of us: each and every one of us—“we the people”—but most especially, this country belongs to those of us who love freedom enough to stand and fight for it.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are fast approaching the point at which we will have nothing left to lose.
Don’t wait for things to get that bad before you find your voice and your conscience.
As Solzhenitsyn’s character reflects The Gulag Archipelago:
“How we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if … during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Take your stand now—using every nonviolent means at your disposal—while you still can.
Don’t wait to reflect back on missed opportunities to push back against tyranny.
Don’t wait until you’re the last one standing.
Time is running out.
- US Army Set To Field "iPhone Of Lethality” Assult Rifle By 2022
The Army is on the hunt for a high-tech weapon to replace the standard issue rifle for it’s Next Generation Squad Weapon program (NGSW). The service believes it can spark a “revolution in small arms” on par with what the iPhone did to cell phones.
The Army’s next-generation rifle will be the iPhone of lethality, officials say https://t.co/VGx21nm04e pic.twitter.com/qHJy0rm2SU
— Task & Purpose (@TaskandPurpose) February 8, 2019
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Army officials at the Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center at New Jersey’s Picatinny Arsenal told Task & Purpose last week that the purpose of the NGSW program, in which the military is currently soliciting bids to replace its M16 rifle, M4 carbine, and the M249 light machine gun with a 6.8mm gun, is to create an iOS-like platform for killing.
“Imagine that Steve Jobs and his engineers were trying to convert the iPod Touch to the first 3G iPhone,” said Army Col. Elliott Caggins, project manager for soldier weapons. “There were a thousand technologies they could have put in the first iPhone but they were looking to mature the platform before they could actually go onto the system.”
In the last 12 months, the Army published several notices asking private defense manufactures across the US to submit their futuristic rifles to the NGSW program for testing. The Army is not interested in improvement programs for current guns that have been in service for decades, but rather a new weapon that can shoot further and have the ability for sophisticated add-ons or modifications.
Task & Purpose said, NGSW officials expected the rifle to include “a specially-designed fire control system engineered to boost hit probability at extended ranges,” “an onboard processor hardened against cyber attacks,” and a multi-laser rangefinder system to increase the probability of killing the enemy.
“The operator, as he lases the target, instantly gets an aim point and the system adjusts for ballistics instead of the operator trying to figure things out,” Fiorellini told Task & Purpose. “
The Army also wants the rifle to have a suppressor base and “aim augmentation” system in the future. The NGSW project expects to integrate the weapon into a heads-up display system that will be mounted in tactical helmets.
“We have hundreds of capabilities we can put into this weapons system, but we want to do it by holistically creating a system that that takes advantage of everything we’ve done in the past,” Caggins told the website. “This means its capabilities will only grow, just as the iPhone’s did.”
The Army expects to field its “iPhone of lethality” by 2022. The first soldiers to receive the weapon will be the “close combat 100,000,” which include infantry and reconnaissance units.
- Understanding State Propaganda From The USSR To The USA
Authored by Adam Garrie via EurasiaFuture.com,
While the de jure role of state sponsored propaganda is to convince a population to adopt a certain line of thinking on the issues of the day, the de fato function of state sponsored propaganda is rather different. In a society in which even a sizeable minority of the public are capable of critical thinking, few will immediately believe everything they are told, even if they can’t quite put their figure on a specific point of contention.
Because of that, in educated societies as the Soviet Union’s was, state propaganda serves a purpose of alerting people as to what they are forbidden to disagree with in public. In other words, if the official state line as delivered through state sanctioned newspapers, radio and television is that the economy is booming, people are being paid well and on time and that the new housing stock is superior to any other in the world – the authors of such propaganda do not expect those who are under-paid, living in mediocre housing and unable to elevate themselves into a higher living standard, to believe the self-evident nonsense that forms the core of the propaganda.
Instead, as part of the political requirement for society not to fall apart, it is expected that in private, people will complain to their friends and family about the fact that the economy is poor, people are stuck in dead end jobs and that housing is substandard, but that in public one will refrain from voicing these thoughts, because if they did, they would lose their job at a state owned factory, lose their state pension and if they took their message of opposition to greater heights, they could even receive a visit from the police.
Against this background, one could imagine a mild political dissident in early 1980s Moscow who enjoys poking fun at authority, but who nevertheless does not want to lose his day job or see his family harassed. Such an individual might look closely at the daily state propaganda that he does not for a moment take seriously, if for no other reason than to see if the satirical poem he is about to write regarding the Cuban fishing industry might get him into trouble back home in Moscow.
Thus, when the evening’s propaganda (aka “news”) bulletin indicates that one cannot criticise Soviet foreign policy (“because the war in Afghanistan is going great”), cannot criticise Moscow-Warsaw relations (“because both countries will forever be ruled by communist parties”) and cannot criticise timber production methods (“because worker productivity is at its highest in history”), the dissident in question will breathe a sigh of relief because there is no story indicating an official position on the fishing industry in brotherly Cuba.
But while the USSR’s old adversary, the United States is having its own problems with a less and less free market that is overly taxed, overly regulated, back in love with tariffs and all at the mercy of an inflation-happy yet unaccountable Federal Reserve, there is alas a giant free speech problem, one that is all the worse in America’s European allied states who don’t even bother to pretend to have something akin to America’s constitutional first amendment.
First, one must examine the propaganda business model of the US and the EU, as it is somewhat more complicated that the old propaganda model in the USSR. In the USSR, it was the state that owned the factories, your apartment and the media you were subjected to. Thus, the state looked after its own interests by telling people what they could not say in order to keep up the illusion that the state run industry and infrastructure was in far better shape than it was.
But while Soviet propaganda worked on a linear business model, today’s American and European propaganda machine works on a triangular model. At the top of the triangle is big business. At the bottom two points of the triangle are government and media – both of which want the help of big businesses in order to enrich themselves.
In order to accomplish this, big business will donate vast sums of money to all major political parties so that in spite of who is in putative control, they’ll generally get what they want out of government. To keep the people unaware of this scheme, big business will invest in the shares of media outlets in order for stories favourable to their business interests getting air time. Likewise, because government does not want its own complicity with the desires of big business to be exposed, it too will offer media corporations carrots and sticks so that they never step out of line. Some of the most popular carrots include everything from generous tax breaks, the ignoring of unethical business practices by media regulators, to invitations for so-called “journalists” to attend elite government events. The sticks are merely the opposite of the carrots and more often than not, everyone does what they are told so long as the increasingly worthless paper currency keeps being handed out to the good soldiers of the media-industrial complex.
The result is the same as it was in the USSR.
Every day major western media outlets (the largest of which are American) tell the masses what they cannot say if they want to keep their job, get a credit card, a mortgage, maintain a position of high social standing and stay on the right side of the law. The only difference is that because the western business model is one that pretends to be open, while the Soviet model did not hide that it was all controlled by the state, some in the west are actually still stupid enough to believe that the propaganda they see is either the truth or an attempt to tell the truth, when the reality is that it is merely guidance about what one cannot disagree with in public unless one is willing to take a major risk to one’s economic and social welfare.
Thus, the American and European media constantly send messages that it is impermissible to have an opinion contrary to the standard line on the following issues: invading other people’s nations in the name of “human rights”, climate change being the fault of anyone with a car, the wonders of narcotics and pornography, why strict education is somehow evil and why fiat currencies are just swell.
Thus, just as Soviet propaganda had slogans that insulted the intelligence of the ordinary person like “brotherhood of nations” in order to keep people from questioning why certain investments were going to far off hinterlands while Russia’s heartlands were being economically destroyed, so too do western propagandists use terms like “fact checking” to imply that anyone who disagrees with a corporate (and hence government) sanctioned “fact” is a deceitful liar that should be shunned, shamed and insulted as such. While terms like “fact checking” are mostly used by social elites who author the propaganda, ordinary people tend to use the phrase “politically incorrect” to signal to their fellow man what cannot be said under fear of social and economic punishment.
This is why in the search for real news, one ought to look first at those proclaiming to be little more than entertainers, rather than official purveyors of “fact”. In societies whose official news outlets have vested interests in giving people nothing but guidance on what cannot be said, the best way to amuse the masses is by telling the truth that they are otherwise not only allowed to hear but more importantly, are not allowed say in the open with a straight face.
- Futures, Yuan Spike On China Tariff Delay Headlines
US equity futures and China’s yuan both kneejerked higher on Bloomberg reports that President Trump is considering pushing back the deadline for imposition of higher tariffs on Chinese imports by 60 days.
Having already hinted at it during a pool spray today that he was open to letting the March 1 deadline for more than doubling tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods slide if the two countries are close to a deal, Bloomberg reports that, according to people familiar with the matter, Trump is weighing whether to add 60 days to the current deadline to give negotiations more time to continue.
Yuan spiked…
As did US futures…
However, some human traders (as opposed to headline algos) are wondering why this would be perceived as bullish at all as it simply indicates they are no closer to deal than they were 60 days ago and the 10% tariffs will remain in effect – weighing on global trade (as the Baltic Dry Index collapse suggests)…
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are in Beijing for the latest round of high-level talks with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He on Thursday and Friday. Negotiations this week are focused on how to enforce the trade deal and putting on paper a framework agreement to present to the two presidents.
- China Is The "Greatest Long-Term Strategic Threat" To US, Top Pacific Commander Tells Congress
After yet another US Navy sail-by operation in the South China Sea early this week, which sparked fury in Beijing, and following a series of provocative Taiwan Strait passes by US ships over the past months, the commander of US Indo-Pacific operations has again warned China to back off.
Adm. Philip Davidson told lawmakers on Tuesday that China represents the “greatest long-term strategic threat to a free and open Indo-Pacific and to the United States.” He testified before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that US-China competition represents “two incompatible visions of the future.”
Image via The Daily Star Warning that the geopolitical rivalry and situation is actually worse than most pundits believe, he said, “Those who believe this is reflective of an intensifying competition between an established power in the United States and a rising power in China are not seeing the whole picture,” during an opening statement.
“Rather, I believe we are facing something even more serious: a fundamental divergence in values that leads to two incompatible visions of the future,” he said. Adm. Davidson described the communist leadership in Beijing as using “fear and coercion” in an attempt to “expand its form of ideology in order to bend, break and replace the existing rules-based international order.”
“Beijing seeks to create a new order, one with Chinese characteristics led by China, an outcome that displaces the stability and peace of the Indo-Pacific that has endured for over 70 years,” Davidson added.
This follows prior April 2018 testimony wherein Davidson noted of China’s controversial man-made islands in the South China Sea, being used of Beijing to claim expanded territorial waters, that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “populated those islands with anti-ship cruise missiles, with surface-to-air missiles and electronic jammers.”
Adm. Davidson’s testimony is sure to be received in Beijing as a fresh attack connected with Monday’s “freedom of navigation operation” involving two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers — the USS Spruance and the USS Preble — which sailed within 12 nautical miles of Chinese bases in the contested Spratly Islands.
Just in time for visit by USTR Lighthizer: US warships infuriate Beijing with South China Sea sail-by operation https://t.co/gmJPiqRJyU
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) February 11, 2019
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The navy’s own rhetoric has gotten noticeably direct of late, as it described the purpose as “to challenge excessive maritime claims and preserve access to the waterways,” while also underscoring America’s right to “fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows,” Cmdr. Clay Doss, a US Navy 7th Fleet spokesman, told CNN.
More broadly, according to The Hill, Davidson described the implications of Chinese tactics as increasingly hindering “the international free flow of communications, oil, trade, other economic means, cyber connectivity and the movement of people.”
Meanwhile, each incident in both the East and South China seas will surely only get hotter, with the potential for “near miss” incidents growing, potentially sparking direct conflict between two super powers.
- Billionaires Already Gave Their "Fair Share"
Authored by C.Jay Engel via The Mises Institute,
It is becoming increasingly fashionable to agitate against the very existence of billionaires. Recently, for instance, Business Insidersummarized a statement of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as follows: “[she] said a society that “allows billionaires to exist” while some Americans live in abject poverty is “immoral.” Echoing this sentiment, Elizabeth Warrenrepeated a very popular sentiment among the mainstream and far left; namely, that it was time that billionaires pay “their fair share in taxes.”
While both of these narratives are commonly held and frequently expressed, they are completely wrongheaded and misunderstand the role that billionaires actually play in society.
Government-Made Billionaires vs. Market-Made Billionaires
We must be clear in our analysis that the State often has a hand in the creation of billionaires; not because it “allows” billionaires to exist, but because the western world suffers from a framework that actually redistributes resources – via taxation and monetary expansion – from the poor and middle class to the well-connected.
These recipients of State redistribution, often called “crony capitalists” are excluded in our praise of billionaires and to whatever extent a billionaire (or millionaire) is a net recipient of government redistribution, to that extent we are critical of them.
Given the complexities of the owners of big business and their relationship with the state, the consideration of whether a wealthy CEO of a company is to be criticized or praised becomes a difficult exercise. Nevertheless, the libertarian position on this is to eradicate the confusion by unraveling the involvement in industry that characterizes the modern United States Federal Government (and most other western governments). Any positive subsidies that are transferred, via the government, from the taxpayers to the capitalists must be eliminated if we are to benefit from the role of the billionaire capitalist, as discussed below.
Now that we have that out of the way, we can analyze the existence of billionaires who have achieved such a status on the market. Far from being the cause of inequality and poverty, it is actually the billionaire who has contributed, in one way or another, to the well being of society. It is the billionaire, who has bestowed upon his fellow man the goods and services that raise their standard of living.
On the market, the source of the billionaire’s billions is the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people who have decided that whatever the billionaire was offering was more important to them than the money it cost to obtain it. But even before the consumers made this judgement, the billionaire had to anticipate their preferences and he had to risk the prospects of a loss in order to bring forth the goods and services that the people desired.
The Role of the Billionaire in the Marketplace
On the market, there are no guarantees. As Ludwig von Mises once noted, the consumers do not offer assurances as to their commitment to the goods and services that the billionaire produces— they change their minds, they shift their preferences, and they choose goods of alternative quality at their own whim. The billionaire then, before he makes his billions, faces the prospects of a loss; that is, the market has a built in set of financial consequences as a penalty to the capitalists who choose unwisely in their allocation of resources.
Capitalists either succeed in providing things that people want or they do not. If they do, then not only are they rewarded, but by definition other people’s lives are improved. This improvement is not politically determined and judged, but determined by actual and demonstrated preferences of the consumers. If the capitalist does not succeed in making people better off, he is penalized and suffers the financial and other consequences of his poor decisions.
In this way, those politicians and commentators who push the idea that billionaires need to “give back” or pay their fair share do not understand that there is nothing to “give back” and that the “fair share” has already been contributed to society. There is nothing to “give back” because an exchange took place; value for value, with the capitalist giving a good or service and the consumer reciprocating with a transfer of funds. There was an even exchange such that there is no deficit or surplus in what one party continues to owe the other.
Further, the idea that billionaires must pay their fair share via taxation is similarly interpreted. The fair share, the wealth that the capitalist created on the path toward his billions, has been bestowed upon society in the course of his receiving the reward for his accurate anticipation of the wants and needs of consumers he has likely never even met.
If a capitalist earns billions of dollars in the course of his investment and subsequent selling of the goods and services he produces, he paid out his fair share in the form of the very goods and services he sold! If the capitalist earns a billion dollars, he contributed a billion dollars worth of goods. If he earns a million dollars, he contributed a million dollars worth of goods. If he earns a negative return (a loss), he has contributed nothing and is therefore penalized for this.
Thus, a wealth tax, by its very coercive nature is not only a breach of the private property rights that a capitalist has in his wealth, but it is also definitely not about “fair share.” It is an additional obligation above the fair share and diminishes the future investment capabilities that the capitalist has. And to diminish the capital stock is literally to undermine the potential wealth-creating activities of the capitalist billionaires.
The future of western civilization depends on the socio-economic framework of capitalism and free markets. It depends on people understanding that the wealth we see around us is a result of capitalism – of the “rich” seeking profits by investing their capital into the structure of production to produce goods for people and profit as they do it. In the words of George Reisman, “the protesters and all other haters of capitalists hate the foundations of their own existence.”
Thus, to launch an attack against the capital stock of capitalists of all wealth levels, is to undermine the very tool that mankind has in fighting impoverishment long term. If we want to overcome poverty, nothing is more important than investment into the structure of production; this is how goods are made more affordable to more people that have never before been to attain them. To siphon capital in preference for consumption is to siphon the very goods that bring mankind out of its natural state of impoverishment. In order to address the eternal struggle over scarcity of resources, we need capitalists and billionaires. They are the providers of a better tomorrow.
- China Global Exports Surge In January But Trade With US Tumbles
Amid intensifying trade talks, Chinese exports rebounded dramatically in January as companies trying to ship goods ahead of the Lunar New Year shutdown likely exaggerated the gains.
In USD terms, exports rose 9.1% in January from a year earlier (far above expectations of a 3.3% decline and December’s 4.4% YoY drop). Imports also smashed expectations: falling just 1.5% against expectations for a 10.2% collapse.
In Yuan terms, Exports rose and even more impressive 13.9% YoY and imports rose 2.9% YoY (both far better than expected).
The overall trade surplus fell in both Yuan and USD terms from December.
Impressive numbers, but as Bloomberg details, the Lunar New Year break coming about 10 days earlier than last year probably boosted January’s shipments, as companies rushed to ship more goods ahead of the holiday shutdown of many factories and companies.
Trade with US tumbled with both exports and imports plunging further in January.
China Jan. exports to U.S. was $36.54b and imports from U.S. was $9.24b, according to website of General Administration of Customs.
Also of note, China’s crude oil imports -2.7%MoM to 10.07m b/d last month, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data from General Administration of Customs Thursday.
“We expect that growth of exports in 2019 will decelerate from 2018, even if there is a deal not to raise tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports, due to lackluster global economy,” UBS AG economist Ning Zhang said.
“But if there’s a deal to scrap all the existing tariffs, that will be a different scenario, and the exports will not weaken significantly.”
The initial reaction was a kneejerk higher in yuan but that is fading…
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