- Globalists Openly Admit To Population Control Agenda – And That's A Bad Sign…
Globalists Openly Admit To Population Control Agenda – And That’s A Bad Sign…
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
Eugenics and population control are long time hobbies of the financial elites. In the early 1900’s, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute were deeply involved in promoting Eugenics laws in the US. These laws led to the forced sterilization of over 60,000 American citizens in states like California and thousands of rejected marriage licenses. The Eugenics programs in the US were only a beta test though, as the Rockefellers then transferred their programs over to Germany under Hitler and the Third Reich in the 1930’s, were a true widespread eugenics-based population control program was introduced.
The targets of population reduction were based on ethnic background, but also “mental intelligence” and economic status. The Carnegie Institute even established a “Eugenics Records Office” called Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory in 1904, which collected genetic data on millions of Americans and their families with the intent of controlling their numbers and erasing certain traits from the US population. The Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory still exists today and presents itself as a kind of philanthropic endeavor to help humanity.
Public knowledge of the globalists and their population control agenda was carefully swept under the rug in the US after the exposure of Nazi programs post-WWII. The word “eugenics” became a very ugly one and all the effort the elites put into promoting it as a legitimate science was ruined. However, they were not going to give up on their precious ideology.
In the late 1960’s into the 1970’s there was a resurgence of population control rhetoric coming out of globalist circles. Under the supervision of the UN and some related scientific groups, the Club Of Rome was formed. A prominent part of the Club of Rome’s agenda was population reduction. In 1972 the group of “scientists” under the UN’s direction published a paper called ‘The Limits Of Growth’, which called for greatly reduced human population in the name of “saving the environment”. This effort was directly linked to another agenda – the institution of a global government that could handle and enforce population controls on a wide scale.
The elites had found a new scientific front for their eugenics obsession: Climate science. In the early 1990’s the Club Of Rome published a book called ‘The First Global Revolution’. In it they state:
“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes. and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.”
The statement comes from Chapter 5 – The Vacuum, which covers their position on the need for global government. The quote is relatively clear; a common enemy must be conjured in order to trick humanity into uniting under a single banner, and the elites see environmental catastrophe, caused by mankind itself, as the best possible motivator. It also outlines the perfect rationale for population control – Mankind is the enemy, therefore, mankind as a species must be kept under strict supervision and his proliferation must be restricted.
The Club of Rome and the UN agenda have always been intimately connected. In the 1990’s at the same time ‘The First Global Revolution’ was being published, UN assistant secretary general Robert Muller was publishing his manifesto which is now collected on a website called ‘Good Morning World’. Muller argues that global governance must be achieved using the idea of “protecting the Earth” and environmentalism as the key components. Through fear of environmental Apocalypse, the public could be convinced to accept global government as a necessary nanny state to keep society from destroying itself.
In a paper titled ‘Proper Earth Government: A Framework And Ways To Create It’ Robert Muller outlines how climate change could be used to convince the masses of the need for global government. Integral to his plan were the introduction of a new “global religion”, and population controls.
It should come as no surprise that the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) and that this panel and it’s offshoots are now at the forefront of the argument for population reduction. As we close in on the end date for the UN’s Agenda 2030, which calls for a radical shift of human production from oil and other large scale energy sources into small scale “renewable energies”, there is only 10 years left for the globalists to achieve their goals if they hope to meet their announced deadline. This would require a violent change in human society and most of all industrialized nations.
The human population would have to be reduced dramatically in order to survive on the meager energy output of renewables alone. A disaster of epic proportions would have to take place soon so that the globalists could then spend the next decade using the resulting fear to convince the surviving population that global governance is needed. Without aggressive crisis and change most people would never go along with the UN’s agenda, out of simple desire for self preservation. Even many leftists, once exposed to the true nature of carbon controls and population reduction, might have second thoughts when they realize they could be affected.
The key to understanding people who cheer for population control or population reduction is that these people always assume that THEY will be the survivors and inheritors of the Earth after the culling. They never assume that they will be the one’s put on the chopping block.
In 2019, the population agenda is being ramped into high gear and the public is being carefully conditioned over time to accept the idea that man-made climate change is real and population is the source of the problem. Recently, a groups of scientists partially funded by something called the “Worthy Garden Club” claimed 11,000 signatures on a statement for the need for population reduction in the name of saving the Earth from global warming.
The statement cites all the same long debunked IPCC and UN climate change propaganda as the reasons why the Earth is on the verge of annihilation. The fact of the matter is, climate scientists have been consistently caught red handed manipulating their own data to show the intended outcome of global warming. They have even been caught trying to adjust their own data from 20 years ago in order to match it more closely to the rigged data they publish today.
The Worthy Garden Club is a strangely sterile group and there doesn’t seem to be any list of their patrons and who funds them. However, the mainstream media was quick to pick up on the statement from the “11,000 scientists” and tie it to statements made by the UN’s IPCC.
Population control has also been brought up consistently as an issue in the 2020 Presidential Election race. Bernie Sanders argued for birth control measures in poor countries. Elizabeth Warren promoted abortion by saying it was as safe as “getting your tonsils removed”. She has consistently promoted the carbon control agenda of the UN and was, interestingly, a member of the University Of Texas Population research Center in the 1980s. And, Green New Deal politicians are throwing their support behind the statements from the Worthy Garden Club on population reduction.
This is the first time I have seen the argument for population reduction used so blatantly and widespread in the mainstream media, and it suggests to me that a trend is forming. For years I have warned my readers that they will know when the globalists are about to pull the plug on the current system when they start talking about their criminality openly. When they admit to their agenda in a free way, this means they are close to a global reset and do not care anymore who knows about it. The openness of the plan to cut world population is becoming apparent.
Strangely, there has been little mention of the fact that the world population, in the west most of all, is actually in decline. Far from exploding beyond the Earth’s capacity, people are barely having enough children to keep the current population stable. It would appear that the globalist agenda is already in motion. Through engineered economic disintegration, the population is being slowly reduced. However, this slow decline may not be enough to satisfy the globalists.
How many people would the globalists like to kill off to achieve their utopian aspirations? Well, globalist Ted Turner in a moment of honesty said when confronted by We Are Change that the population should be reduced to 2 billion down from 7 billion.
The primary issue here beyond the moral horror show of eugenics is, who gets cut? And furthermore, who gets to decide who gets cut? Who gets to decide if you can have children or not? Who gets to decide if you are allowed to access resources to produce and make a living or not? Who gets to decide if the global economy will sustain the population or not? Who pulls the trigger on the culling of the population?
As history has shown us, it is always the elites that end up in the position of deciding the fates of millions or billions. From the Rockefeller Foundation sterilization programs in the US in the early 1900’s to the UN today, the globalists, a veritable death cult, are desperate to conjure a rationalization as to why they should be the ones to allow or deny human life based on lies like man-made climate change. They don’t believe in the climate change threat, THEY were the people that fabricated it. So, what is the core reason behind all of this?
A reduced population completely dependent on limited energy sources might be easier to dominate. But I have another theory – they are psychopaths looking for a socially justifiable way to kill as many people as possible. Why? because they enjoy it.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 23:45 - "It's Cozy" – LA Imports Are Paying $800/Month To 'Live In A Coffin'
“It’s Cozy” – LA Imports Are Paying $800/Month To ‘Live In A Coffin’
First it was the unaffordability of ‘real’ homes (combined with massive student loan debt) that spoiled the living-the-Dream narrative for America’s young people.
Remember this 350-square foot studio in NYC that cost $645,000?
Then it was a shift to “tiny homes” – which became popular with millennials since their standard of living has collapsed.
But while they could virtue signal with solar panels and wind power systems, an eco-friendly bathroom, and a kitchen with everything needed to make avocado and toast, living in with post-industrial feel using an old shipping container for $37,000 was too much for many…
So ‘podlife’ sprung up on the coasts – as the housing affordability crisis deepened on the West Coast, a new style of living, one that reminds millennials of their college dormitory days, sprang up in cities across California.
But, residents were upset by having to adhere to house rules, one being that lights go out at 10 pm each night, and no guests are allowed inside.
And so, as AFP reports, young Americans flocking to LA and NYC are now resorting to “Capsule Living” as the only affordable option…
Inspired by the famous hotels in Japan, each room contains up to six capsules, described by residents as “cozy,” containing a single bed, a bar for hanging clothes, a few compartments for storing shoes and other items and an air vent.
By most standards, the coffin-like accommodation is still not cheap – $750 per month plus taxes. That works out at around $800 and there are still rules… women and men sleep apart, and having sex is not an option.
For Dana Cuff, an architect and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), this type of community presents only a short-term solution.
“We basically need to be developing a huge range of options for the kinds of housing that are available,” she said.
“To me, co-living pods… are symptoms of this deep need for a much greater range of housing alternatives.”
Alejandro Chupina, 27, left home as a teenager because his parents did not support his career as an actor and musician.
“We have so many different amenities… for what we’re paying, I feel like we’re getting way more, in different ways,” said the young man with a handlebar moustache, who can recite the musical “Hamilton” by heart.
We give the final word to Kay Wilson, who packed up her life in a hurry and moved to Los Angeles… only to find that what she paid in Pennsylvania for a nice studio apartment would only get her a 2.9-square-meter box in California.
“I sold all my belongings and I moved here to be in this pod… I’m finding comfort in being uncomfortable,”
The American Dream indeed…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 23:25 - The "Officer-Friendly" Police Fantasy
The “Officer-Friendly” Police Fantasy
Authored by James Bovard via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
Police in Tempe, Arizona, announced plans in July for a “positive-ticketing” campaign to pull over drivers who had violated no traffic laws. A Phoenix TV station reported that the police would give the people they targeted free soft-drink coupons for Circle K as a reward for their “good driving behavior.” Police in other areas have run similar programs in recent years but the TV news report on Tempe’s plan spurred a torrent of testy Tweets:
“Keep your hands on the wheel and don’t make any sudden moves while you are being rewarded, it could cost you your life.”
“We gunned him down…. well, he refused to stop for his coupon. Self defense. Case dismissed.”
“Um, WHAT?!? They better not stop me for driving legally cause that’s illegal! #harassment”
“What if you don’t stop?”
“Cops to profile for illegal immigrants under the guise of campaign to promote good driving.”
“There goes probable cause right out the window. Police state 101.”
“I would get a panic attack. My reward for driving well is not dying. That’s all I want.”
“Unless it’s a ruse to illegally search your vehicles. And if they notice anything out of line during the mock pullover you’ll be arrested.”
“What’s next? Are they going to start walking into people’s houses to congratulate them for not breaking the law?”
One commenter suggested he could be fined for “resisting a coupon” for free drinks.
A few months before its “positive ticketing campaign” announcement, Tempe police were harshly criticized after one of their officers shot a 14-year-old boy in the back, killing him as he was running away while holding a replica airsoft pistol. An Arizona ACLU employee summarized the situation on Twitter:
“Tempe cops: the community doesn’t trust us after we shot and killed an unarmed teen (sic) what do we do
Community: stop killing us
Tempe cops: FREE THIRSTBUSTERS AND UNREASONABLE STOPS”
The Tempe Police Department responded to the uproar by issuing a statement stating that they never intended to pull over motorists without good cause. Instead, the free-coupon program would be targeted to pedestrians, bicyclists, and skateboarders. But the furious reaction of people across the nation signaled the profound distrust of police.
This is presidential campaign season, and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg claims that he will be able to end the pervasive distrust of the police. In one of the first candidate debates, he said he is “determined to bring about a day when” any driver, white or black, has “a feeling not of fear but of safety” when he sees a police officer approaching.
And how would Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, achieve this profound change? He has not yet detailed his panacea. Perhaps he believes that sensitivity training or racial consciousness-raising classes could do the trick. But Buttigieg has ignored the real source of the problem: politicians have given police so much power that citizens naturally fear them.
Arresting anyone
In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that police can justifiably arrest anyone believed to have “committed even a very minor criminal offense.” That case involved Gail Atwater, a Texas mother who was driving slowly near her home but, because her children were not wearing seatbelts, she was taken away by an abusive cop whose shouting left her children “terrified and hysterical.” A majority of Supreme Court justices recognized that “Atwater’s claim to live free of pointless indignity and confinement clearly outweighs anything the City can raise against it specific to her case” — but upheld the arrest anyhow.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that “such unbounded discretion carries with it grave potential for abuse.” Unfortunately, there are endless pretexts for people to be arrested nowadays because federal, state, and local politicians and officials have criminalized daily life with hundreds of thousands of edicts. Capt. Steve Powell of the Colorado State Patrol commented, “Ninety percent of the cars out there are doing something that you can pull them over for. There are a jillion reasons people can be stopped — taillights, windshields cracked, any number of things.” Gerard Arenberg, executive director of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me in the 1990s, “We have so damn many laws, you can’t drive the streets without breaking the law. I could write you a hundred tickets depending on what you said to me when I stopped you.”
Justice O’Connor noted in her dissent that the Fourth Amendment “guarantees the right to be free from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures.’” But when politicians have enacted endless laws that make almost everyone a criminal, then the Fourth Amendment is practically null and void.
Asset-forfeiture laws give police sweeping arbitrary power over Americans’ wallets, cars, and homes. Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher told the Supreme Court in 2018 that the government is entitled to confiscate cars that exceed speed limits by 5 miles per hour — a standard that would justify seizing most vehicles. Between 2001 and 2014, lawmen seized more than $2.5 billion in cash from 60,000 travelers on the nation’s highways — with no criminal charges in the vast majority of cases, the Washington Post reported.
Police have been trained to confiscate private property of drivers by absurdly claiming that “trash on the floor of a vehicle, abundant energy drinks, or air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors” are signs of criminal activity. Blacks and Hispanics have been victimized far more often by such laws. Tenaha, Texas, police ran an operation that stopped and plundered almost anyone passing through their East Texas locale. The names of the court filings capture Tenaha’s voraciousness, such as State of Texas v. One Gold Crucifix. “The police had confiscated a simple gold cross that a woman wore around her neck after pulling her over for a minor traffic violation. No contraband was reported, no criminal charges were filed, and no traffic ticket was issued,” the New Yorker noted. If drivers “refused to part with their money, officers threatened to arrest them on false money laundering charges and other serious felonies,” an ACLU lawsuit charged. Tenaha police stopped a 27-year-old black man who worked as a chicken slicer in a Tysons plant in Arkansas and fleeced him of $3,900 after detecting him “driving too close to the white line.”
Subverting the Fourth Amendment
Police have gutted the Fourth Amendment with dogs that will give them a positive alert almost any time they seek a pretext to forcibly search someone’s vehicle. The fact that canines are sometimes trained to give false alerts is irrelevant as long as the government always wins. Canine alerts to currency are routinely used to justify seizures even though most U.S. currency has trace amounts of drug contamination. For 30 years, the courts have condemned the abuses based on currency seizures due to dog alerts. But the official robberies continue.
There is a long history of federal, state, and local officials partnering to fabricate pretexts to stop drivers. From 1992 through 2013, the Drug Enforcement Administration illegally commandeered the phone records of all Americans who called most of the foreign nations in the world, as USA Today revealed in 2015. To keep its phone-record seizures secret, the DEA partnered with local police to concoct phony reasons for traffic stops that sometimes included staging fake auto accidents and even car thefts. Why should citizens trust law-enforcement agencies that engaged in decades of systemic fraud? If bureaucrats and cops gave themselves an unlimited right to lie regarding the source of their evidence, what other lies have they permitted themselves in the war against any American who possesses substances of which politicians disapprove?
Uncle Sam has brought the surveillance state to the nearest police car dashboard. Federal grants have enabled many states and localities to equip police cars with license-plate scanners that provide plenty of bogus pretexts to harass hapless drivers.
License-plate readers often misread plates. Brian Hofer was pulled off Interstate 80 in California and handcuffed and held at gunpoint after his rental vehicle was misreported as stolen. Hofer commented in 2019, “I’m sitting ice-cold and saying nothing because I do not want any itchy trigger fingers.” With an error rate approaching 10 percent, license-plate readers effectively generate potentially thousands of false accusations each day.
Subverting the Second Amendment
Local officials exploit surveillance data to subvert the Second Amendment. John Filippidis was driving with his family through Maryland when he was pulled over by a Maryland transportation policeman outside a Baltimore tunnel. The policeman ordered Filippidis out of his car and angrily demanded to know where his gun was. Filippidis has a Right to Carry (RTC) permit from Florida — where he had left his firearm. Police spent hours questioning him and searching his minivan before permitting him to move on, leaving his wife and daughters utterly distraught. Maryland police have targeted and rigorously searched other out-of-state drivers with RTC permits (which Maryland does not recognize). Federal grants enabled Maryland to equip hundreds of police cars with license-plate scanners that create almost 100 million records per year detailing exactly where and when each vehicle travels.
The war on drugs and its endless crackdowns and intrusions spurred far more distrust of police but politicians learned nothing from its debacles. Sixteen states have raised the smoking age to 21, and there is a push (supported by Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) to dictate a federal smoking age of 21. Why not simply issue a federal mandate for an annual additional 10 million unnecessary confrontations between police and youth? Criminalizing private vices is the surest way to make law enforcement a public menace.
Citizens are wary of police cars in their rear-view mirrors because politicians and judges made average Americans legally inferior to anyone with a badge and a gun. Police almost always receive legal immunity when they unjustifiably shoot people — it is practically a perk of their job. The existence of video footage from dashboard cams and police cameras is helping to ravage the final remnants of police credibility in many areas. The pervasive cover-ups and lies that follow dubious killings by police do more to spur wariness than a million “Officer Friendly” public-service announcements can counteract.
The best way to encourage citizens to have “a feeling not of fear but of safety” when they see a cop is to repeal legions of laws empowering police to unjustifiably accost and wrongfully subjugate peaceful citizens. But that is unlikely to happen as long as most politicians are more interested in power than in domestic tranquility.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 23:05 - "More And More Robots Are Coming" – South Korea Embraces Job-Killing 'Friends'
“More And More Robots Are Coming” – South Korea Embraces Job-Killing ‘Friends’
The collision of demographics and automation will potentially reshape South Korea’s economy by 2030.
A new analysis via Bloomberg shows the collision of these forces could trigger economic disruptions that might lead to a decade of financial volatility.
South Korea has one of the fastest aging populations in the world, and to counter these upcoming demographic challenges, corporations and the government are investing billions of dollars into building “smart factories” where automation and artificial intelligence will replace human workers.
Already South Korea has embraced robots in its manufacturing sector. About 3 million people, or about two-thirds of the workers in manufacturing, are at serious risk of losing their jobs to robots in the next decade.
A new wave of investments in automation, artificial intelligence, and fifth-generation wireless networks could expedite the transition of robots replacing workers in smart factories.
The collision of automation in the workplace isn’t just going to reshape factories in South Korea — it will also lead to massive job losses in the service sector.
Services account for 70% of the South Korea economy, and this means job losses could be double or triple of what is expected in the manufacturing sector by 2030.
The most impacted service jobs are likely to be retailing, food services, and transportation.
The impact on the workforce is going to be so high that the government has already started creating “learning factories,” where about 50,000 people by 2022 will be reskilled to work on robots.
South Korea has 631 #robot workers for every 10,000 human employees@wef via @Ronald_vanLoon #Robotics #IoT #Automation #DigitalTransformation #Innovation #SmartCity #Manufacturing #AI #Videos
cc @evankirstel @AkwyZ @jblefevre60 @kkruse @chboursin
— Harold Sinnott 🇺🇸 (@HaroldSinnott) November 4, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Jeong Jong-pil, a professor teaching factory automation at South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University, told Bloomberg that the country’s demographic challenges are some of the drivers behind the rush to automate factories. “There’s no way to meet productivity targets without automation…That’s why more and more robots are coming.”
The impact of automation in manufacturing and service sectors will increase income inequality from already high levels to crisis levels.
Middle- and low-income families in the country will be wiped out, depressing consumer spending and economic growth.
South Korea is about to usher in a period of radical change, which will be one of the most important trends across the world that will reshape developed and emerging market economies by 2030.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 22:45 - DARPA Seeks "Militarized Microbes" So They Can Spread Genetically-Modified Bacteria
DARPA Seeks “Militarized Microbes” So They Can Spread Genetically-Modified Bacteria
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
The Pentagon’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) wants to be able to spread genetically modified bacteria as “explosives sensors.” The United States government could very well be looking into ways to militarize microbes.
The Pentagon has teamed up with Raytheon for this project, which seems like it should come straight out of a dystopian science fiction story. The government wants to develop a system capable of delivering genetically modified bacteria underground, according to a report by RT.
Initiated by DARPA, the same agency that led programs to create telekinetic super soldiers and weaponized robotic insects, the project seeks to “program two bacterial strains to monitor ground surfaces for explosive materials,” defense contractor Raytheon said in a joint press release with the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
DARPA Can Exterminate Humanity: ‘You Could Feasibly WIPE OUT The Human Race’
DARPA Wants “Thought Controlled Weapons” By Finding Ways To “Read Soldiers’ Minds”
So the genetically modified bacteria are for your own good!
The first of the two strains, known as a “bio-sensor,” will “detect the presence or absence of explosives buried underground,” while the second will produce a “glowing light” in the event such materials are found. Remotely operated cameras or drones would then be sent to survey the area to find the glowing germs, and ultimately the buried explosives. –RT
“We already know that some bacteria can be programmed to be very good at detecting explosives, but it’s harder underground,” said Raytheon researcher Allison Taggart. “We’re investigating how to transport the reporting bacteria to the required depth underground.”
Though the Pentagon claims it only plans to use the system for “defensive” purposes only, some may find the idea of militarized microbes off-putting while conjuring apocalyptic scenarios of a runaway genetically engineered superbug.
Insider Reveals How DARPA Will Control Our Minds: “If Even 20% Of This Is True…”
DARPA has undertaken some projects that should raise the alarm in many. However, it almost seems as though we’ve reached a point where the masses don’t care what’s being done to them, in their name, and with the money stolen from them. And these are just a few of the things we know DARPA is working on.
“No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.” ― William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 22:25 - Denver Business Owner Fined For Not Cleaning Up Vagrant Poo And Used Needles
Denver Business Owner Fined For Not Cleaning Up Vagrant Poo And Used Needles
The city of Denver fined a local business owner after he and his staff refused to continue cleaning up after homeless people behind his building, according to CBS Denver.
Screenshot (YouTube) “There’s food, trash, drug deals,” said Jawaid Bayzar, who added “In the alley we get, ya know, the defacation, drug needles, prostitution” behind his internet company, Forethought.net. One night an employee was sitting in his car when someone smashed the window and tried to stab him, according to Bayzar.
And when Bayzar and his crew stopped cleaning up the constant hazardous mess left by the vagrants, telling CBS he’s not equipped to deal with it, Denver fined him.
“If the city’s not going to enforce laws against trespassing, or camping, or public defecation and just make me bare the cost of these problems that’s just not right,” he told CBS4.
Denver officials disagree, saying that if it’s happening on his property, it’s his problem – adding that he’s subject to daily citations until the debris is cleaned up.
Bayzar is heading to court on Dec. 18 to fight the citation.
“I’m going to go to court and do my best to argue that the City’s treatment of this unfair. This is a public crime issue and a public health issue and the city is the organization that’s responsible for that.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 22:05 - "The Democrats Have The Country On A Slippery Slope", Paul Craig Roberts
“The Democrats Have The Country On A Slippery Slope”, Paul Craig Roberts
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
The fake “whistleblower’s name – Eric Ciamerella – has been known for a long time, but not officially. Now it is official. Senator Rand Paul has officially released his name. Funny, isn’t it, that only the Republicans want Ciamerella to testify. The Democrats won’t hear of it.
If the American people are paying attention, the Democrats are in trouble. When Russiagate fizzled out on them, Adam Schiff (D,CA) orchestrated a fake “whistleblower” who the Democrats cannot risk putting on the stand to testify. The Democrats’ focus shifted to sleazy State Department types who could offer nothing but second or third hand hearsay followed by a hearsay second telephone call that cannot be confirmed.
Why are the Democrats out on a limb like this? They can rely on the presstitutes to cover up for them in every respect and to continue to repeat endlessly without any verification their charges against Trump, but after going through the hoax of Russiagate are the American people stupid enough to fall for the replacement hoax?
Some analysts believe that the House Democrats are using the so-called impeachment not to produce any evidence, as they have none, but to gin up hatred of Trump especially among the youth who are known to want to be included in whatever is cool. The Democrats’ project is to make hating Trump cool and to convince young people to base their vote on being cool and hating Trump.
I recently asked where are Attorney General Barr’s indictments of Obama regime officials for the attempted Russiagate coup against Trump. Some Republicans explained that Barr is waiting until closer to the election in order to get maximum impact on the voting public. If so, this is a mistake. The longer Barr waits, the longer the presstitutes and Democrats have to discredit the indictments in advance as Trump’s effort to produce a countervailing news story. The longer Barr waits, the more of Trump’s presidency is given up to the impeachment circus. The longer Barr waits, the longer Republicans have to become demoralized by the complete absence of integrity among the American media and House Democrats. It is really very disgusting for anyone not caught up in the emotion of hating Trump at all costs. Honest people with integrity don’t want to be associated with such dirty business.
There actually are a lot of Americans who have been conditioned to hate Trump so completely that they would accept his removal by a coup. They are so emotional that they are unable to think about the consequences for democracy of a coup. This is the slippery slope the Romans went down. Once an emperor was removed by a coup, every emperor could be, and often was, removed by a coup. The subsequent internal disorder contributed greatly to the fall of Rome.
There are many issues on which Democrats could legitimately challenge Trump in the forthcoming presidential election that would resonate with many honest Americans. Democrats could challenge Trump for the coup against Bolivian President Morales. They could challenge Trump for dismantling environmental protections and for permitting mining and energy companies to loot national monuments and wildlife refuges. They could challenge Trump for persecuting Julian Assange for practicing traditional journalism. They could challenge Trump for serving Israeli instead of American foreign policy interests. These and other issues would make a real campaign, one worthy of a democracy. Instead, we get hoax scandals.
What this tells us is that there is not enough integrity in the Democratic Party and American media for democracy to survive. When the political process consists of nothing but lies and hatred, democracy is not possible.
Why are the House Democrats and the American media destroying democracy?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 21:45 - Report Finds China Still Harvesting Organs From Political Dissidents, Minorities
Report Finds China Still Harvesting Organs From Political Dissidents, Minorities
Fewer than five years after China said it had finally ended the controversial practice of involuntary organ “donations”, research published this week found a disturbing pattern in the data on organ transplants that China submits to international regulators, according to the Guardian.
The research found that the Chinese government may have been “systematically falsifying” its organ donation numbers, raising renewed concerns over whether Beijing is still using executed prisoners and other forced donors for transplants for wealthy Chinese.
In 2015, China publicly promised it would no longer source organs from executed prisoners, who previously provided most of the transplanted organs in China.
But a study led by Australian National University PhD student Matthew Robertson that was published in the BMC Medical Ethics journal on Friday claims Chinese-government supplied datasets on organ donations show “highly compelling evidence they are being falsified.”
Using statistical forensics on the datasets, researchers found the numbers of organs reportedly transplanted almost perfectly matched the quadratic formula.
“When you take a close look at the numbers of organs apparently collected they almost match this artificial equation point for point, year in, year out. They’re too neat to be true,” Robertson said.
“These figures don’t appear to be real data from real donations. They’re numbers generated using an equation. It is difficult to imagine how this model could have been arrived at by mere chance, raising the distinct possibility that it was intended to deceive.”
The paper continued by arguing that China’s organ transplant industry was too opaque, and that the sources of organs has always been difficult to trace, which doesn’t exactly instill confidence. Though the system has been reformed to a degree, it’s still masking the source of some organs.
“Rather than the solely prisoner-based organ transplant system of years past, or the untarnished voluntary system promised by officials, the available evidence indicates in our view that China has a complex hybrid transplant program: voluntary donations, incentivized by large cash payments, are apparently used alongside nonvoluntary donors who are marked down as citizen donors.”
The study examined voluntary hospital-based donated organs between 2010 and 2018 using data provided by two Chinese sources, the China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS), which forms the basis of China’s current voluntary organ donation system, and the Red Cross Society.
Every organ transplant is supposed to be reported through this system, along with details about where the organs came from. The Red Cross Society of China is required to verify every organ donation. So, comparing the two databases and looking at inconsistencies could off some insight.
None of this data is typically publicly available, but once in a while it leaks out. COTRS data were published in 2014 and in 2017. Data from the Red Cross Society of China was previously available on four websites, three of which have recently been taken offline.
For decades, Beijing was accused of harvesting organs from minority groups, including religious minorities. A tribunal held back in June found Beijing found that Falun Gong practitioners were the main source of organs for decades. But it also said that Uighurs were undergoing medical testing on a scale that could allow them to become an “organ bank.”
And as Beijing continues to build out its massive prison camps in Xinjiang, this type of research will be critical for holding Beijing accountable so it doesn’t continue to build networks of human organ banks with impunity.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 21:25 - Watch Chile Protesters Kill A Police Drone Using Hundreds Of Laser Pointers
Watch Chile Protesters Kill A Police Drone Using Hundreds Of Laser Pointers
Authored by Elias Marat via The Mind Unleashed,
As the people of Chile enter the second month of massive protests against the neoliberal government of President Sebastian Piñera, clashes have continued unabated between demonstrators and the militarized security forces of the South American state.
The protests, which began October 14 as a response to rising public transit costs, have quickly become radicalized as social movements, students, workers’ unions, and a vast cross-section of Chilean society have focused their anger on high levels of inequality in the country, rising living costs, and a constitution inherited from the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
As the protests have raged, the repression unleashed on demonstrators has become increasingly brutal and high-tech. Chile’s protesters, however, have responded with a combination of ingenuity, persistence, and equally high-tech tricks to fend off police attacks.
Such was the case earlier this week in footage that quickly went viral on social media Wednesday that appeared to show a police unmanned aerial system (UAS) being disabled as protesters aimed run-of-the-mill green laser pointers—the type available in any Office Depot or Staples—at the law enforcement-grade drone.
The video, which NextGov reports first made its appearance Tuesday night on Reddit, shows the drone hovering above a sea of demonstrators as the lasers are trained on it. Soon, multiple other lasers are trained on it and when the drone attempts to escape, the lasers have an almost tractor beam-like effect, forcing the UAS to falter before it helplessly descends to the ground.
Laser lights at demonstrations didn’t first appear in Chile. The pointers have had a ubiquitous presence at the raucous demonstrations in Hong Kong, where protesters have also used the lasers to disable surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition technology.
And as Defense Maven reports, U.S. Army Stryker vehicles are also being equipped with laser weapons that would be used to disable and knock out incoming flying drones.
However, the consumer-grade lasers at Chile’s protests are hardly the type that can chew through armor or burn through flesh, like military laser cannons might. Instead, these lasers likely either blinded the camera feed of the human operator or disabled the drone’s altitude sensors, triggering the drone’s emergency autonomous landing capabilities
While the lasers have proved effective in such a grassroots, mass-uprising context, some experts say the lasers are unlikely to pose a major danger to drones.
Christopher Williams, who heads Citadel Defense Company, which hopes to deploy an anti-drone “bubble”-based system for U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the U.S. southern border, told NextGov:
Use of these types of lasers is more hazardous and disruptive to humans than it will be for drones.
There are many other technologies that are less disruptive that provide a superior, more scalable, more reliable and more cost-effective countermeasure.
For now, however, the lasers designed for office presentations rather than for military tactical purposes appear to be working just fine for the combative Chilean people taking to the streets to demand greater social and political rights.
* * *
Brandon Smith, Founder of Alt-Market.com, has some key thoughts…
Whether or not you agree with the reasons behind the protests in Chile, this information is valuable to activists around the world. Real world examples of low tech countermeasures to high tech weapons are rare and need to be observed. My own design for a thermal evasion ghillie suit is another method for evading drones using FLIR-like cameras and heat imaging technology. The laser pointer method for taking down drones or surveillance cameras, while not new, is often dismissed as a myth. This is proof that it works. I would note that this is probably one of the reasons why military grade lasers with extreme range like the PEQ-15 are not supposed to be sold to civilians. Drones are the future of the biometric control grid; they must be countered and removed as a threat.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 21:05 - Falling Rents In Manhattan And Boston Are Weighing On Core Inflation
Falling Rents In Manhattan And Boston Are Weighing On Core Inflation
Cooling rents in formerly hot real estate markets like New York City and Boston might give the Federal Reserve the excuse it needs to keep rates low and allow formerly frothy real-estate markets across the US to recover from a recent dip.
The Greater New York area saw rents for primary residences fall 0.1% MoM in October, while rents paid in Boston fell 0.2%. This weighed on the national rent number, leaving growth almost flat for the first time in eight years – an obvious warning sign about the housing market. According to Bloomberg, national rents account for around 40% of core CPI, meaning rents have an important impact on inflation.
We’ve discussed the unraveling of the housing market in the past. Prices and rents finally peaked in New York a few years ago, which we said was an omen that broader declines were in store.
Squeezed renters and an influx of new high-end housing has caused Manhattan rents to continue to fall. In a real threat to markets, inventory is backing up and for the first time in a long time, Manhattan is almost starting to look like a buyer’s market.
Across the US, housing has become unaffordable for most people, particularly millennials, who are typically too overburdened by debt to buy without a parent’s help to pay the down payment.
Despite growing demand as more young people grow up and try to move out on their own, there is a dearth of affordable housing in the US. Not enough new homes have been built since the financial crisis, and this has contributed to the torrid pace of appreciation in the housing market since the collapse.
Of course, with interest rates off the zero bound, and money ever so slightly more expensive, falling rents might help inspire the FOMC to keep rates low, or maybe even consider another cut. A cut would undeniably help trigger a revival of the market, and an undoing of the rent cuts, unless prices have truly moved into a range where the pool of possible buyers isn’t too small.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 20:45 - It's Trump Vs The Deep State Vs The Rest Of Us
It’s Trump Vs The Deep State Vs The Rest Of Us
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
One of the best side effects of the Trump presidency has been the hostility of the so-called “deep state” or “intelligence community” directed at the president.
This, in turn, has led many Americans to realize that America’s powerful, un-elected secret police agencies serve an agenda all their own. Consequently, polls show one’s views of the CIA and the FBI depend largely on one’s ideological bent. Polls from Fox News and NBC news in recent years show that as various government bureaucracies have ratcheted up their hostility to Trump, more Democrats and Hillary Clinton voters have said they trust the CIA and the FBI.
Why the president and this deep state should be at odds has never been obvious to casual observers. Last month, however, in an article titled “Trump’s War on the ‘Deep State’ Turns Against Him,” The New York Times last explained that there is indeed very real enmity between Trump and agencies such as the CIA and the FBI. The Times contends that Trump “went to war with the professional staff” of the intelligence agencies and the State Department.
The Times notes Trump has condemned “deep state bureaucrats,” and claims Trump’s “hostility toward government was strong from the start. He blamed the leak of the so-called Steele dossier of unverified allegations against him on intelligence agencies and never trusted their conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 election on his behalf.”
Trump was right to be defensive, of course. But that controversy over Russia was never really about what the Russians were up to. The focus was always largely about how much Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election.
Ultimately, the evidence was so non-existent, that after a nearly-three-year investigation, Robert Mueller was unable to establish evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians. As Glenn Greenwald has noted : “not a single American – whether with the Trump campaign or otherwise – was charged or indicted on the core question of whether there was any conspiracy or coordination with Russia over the election.”
But this lack of evidence did not stop John Brennan, for example, from claiming for months that he had special secret knowledge of the matter, and that Trump — or at least many around him — were going to be indicted for colluding with the Russians.
Although Brennan is a “former” CIA director, he nonetheless clearly remains well ensconced within the world of his fellow spooks, and he is, as ABC News correspondent Terry Moran put it, “cloaked with CIA authority.” Brennan even insisted that he ought to retain his security clearance, presumably forever, and even though he is accountable to no one. Such is the mindset of the deep state bureaucrat. They live in a world where they deserve special privileges just for being government employees .
Moreover, Brennan has been joined in his attacks on the president by other former high-ranking members of the deep state, including former FBI chief James Comey and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Current deep state operatives have joined the anti-Trump campaign as well. Much of the current campaign against Trump is being orchestrated by CIA agents, and according to Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday, CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella is supplying much of the prosecution’s information. Alexander Vindman, an Army officer and bureaucrat with the National Security Council, has testified to Congress in order to fuel impeachment efforts against the president as well.
Fêting Deep-State Bureaucrats as Heroes
None of this is to say the Trump administration lacks any taint of corruption. Like all presidents, it is likely the Trump administration expects favors for favors. The only thing different about Trump is he is not skilled at keeping the everyday corruption of the White House a secret.
But what is especially problematic for him is the fact that so many of his critics coming out of the bureaucratic woodwork are from intelligence agencies and from the military.
Unfortunately, in the United States there is a well established bias in favor of employees from national security agencies. Even the very language used by the media speaks to this favoritism. In the Times piece, for example, the authors speak of one of Trump’s critics, one “William B. Taylor Jr., a military officer and diplomat who has served his country for 50 years.” Note the implied selflessness of Taylor’s work. An equally accurate description of Taylor wold be “he was employed by government agencies for fifty years” of “the taxpayers paid his bills for fifty years.” Instead, we’re told he “served his country.” The propaganda value of the media’s pro-military bias is not lost on the officers themselves, and it’s no surprise Vindman, a Lt. Colonel, testified to Congress in his military uniform.
Other examples can be found every time Trump fires a lifelong bureaucrat from the upper echelons of the various “national security” agencies. For example, last summer, when Trump fired director of national intelligence Dan Coats, the Atlantic portrayed Coats as a principled idealist who “spoke truth to power. ” Coats, was fired, the author tells us, because of his devotion to the truth, even if it undermined Trump’s agenda. The best proof of Coats’ honest determination, we’re told, was the fact he “won praise from former intelligence officials.”
In real life, of course, Coats is a lifelong politician and bureaucrat who prior to his dismissal had collected a government paycheck for four decades. As a politician he lobbied for gun control and supported the disastrous 2003 Iraq War. The idea that his post-Congressional career was marked by dogged devotion to the truth ought to strike one as rather fanciful.
A Slipping Facade
But even The New York Times is no longer pretending that the deep state doesn’t exist, and that it doesn’t have its own political agenda. In fact, as noted by Robert Merry at The American Conservative, the Times article even “portray[s] the current impeachment drama as the likely denouement of a struggle between the outsider Trump and the insider administrative forces of government.” This is especially significant since it is also increasingly clear that, “American foreign policy has become the almost exclusive domain of unelected bureaucrats impervious to the views of elected officials — even presidents — who may harbor outlooks different from their own.” Merry concludes the past three years of investigations of the president, conducted by government bureaucrats, is “the story of entrenched government bureaucrats and a president who sought to curb their power. Or, put another way, the story of a president who sought to rein in the deep state and a deep state that sought to destroy his presidency.”
Some of these deep state agents even admit their willingness to subvert the official chain of command to suit their own purposes. Vindman, for example, told the impeachment committee he actively sought to subvert Trump administration relations with the Ukrainian government not out of concerns about criminality, but to serve Vindman’s own vision for American policy. In the mind of this mid-level bureaucrat, American foreign policy is set not by elected officials in Washington DC, but by the bureaucrats themselves.
Why Take the Administration’s Side?
Back in 2017, the battle lines between Trump and the deep state were already being drawn, and at the time I wrote:
This isn’t to say that Trump is the “good guy” here. As with the US military establishment overall, the deep state is by no means monolithic. Like any group of self-serving institutions, there are competing factions. Trump clearly has allies within some areas of the deep state, as can be reflected in Trump’s attempts to massively expand military spending at the expense of the taxpayer.
But the fact he’s considered an outsider in Washington by so many should suggest there are reasons to support him over the entrenched bureaucracy.
Indeed, as Greenwald pointed out in a 2017 interview, it’s not a coincidence that former and current members of the deep state clearly preferred Clinton to Trump during the campaign. The deep state bureaucrats preferred the insider Clinton to the outsider trump who might actually shine some light on the deep state’s lack of accountability and virtually untrammeled autonomy.
It’s not difficult to understand why even a leftist like Greenwald prefers the relative transparency of the current White House.
After all, deep-state agencies face virtually no scrutiny of — and even less real opposition to — their many misdeeds. These, of course, are so numerous as to be impossible to list. But just for starters we might refer to a 2017 article by Sharyl Attkisson in The Hill titled “10 times the intel community violated the trust of US citizens, lawmakers and allies.” It’s a laundry list of illegal, immoral, and blatantly unconstitutional acts which well illustrate the near total impunity with which these agencies operate. Abuse of spying powers is so rampant within the FBI, for example, that even the lopsidedly pro-spying FISA court was forced to conclude the FBI routinely overstepped the bounds of legal surveillance. And, of course, without the heroic whistleblowing of Edward Snowden, the NSA would still be falsely insisting that it doesn’t routinely spy on virtually all Americans, whenever and however it likes.
One might insist “but presidents lie a lot and break laws too!” That’s true, but the difference between presidents and deep-state bureaucrats is well illustrated by the current impeachment controversy. It’s the president who’s facing indictments, public attacks, and the prospect of removal. On the other hand, the deep-state bureaucrats who oversee many counts of corruption, illegal spying, and leaking, remain safely hidden from public view. Those who routinely lie, deceive, and abuse their power often go on doing so for decades. As the years pass, they become ever more entrenched in the federal bureaucracy, invisible to the public, and — as we are now seeing — often answerable to no one.
Presidents come and go, and they often face fierce opposition from the other party or from the media. The deep state, meanwhile, it said to be full of national heroes who “serve their country” and “speak truth to power.”
It should be easy to see, in the battle between the president and the deep state, which side is the most dangerous.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 20:25 - Global Debt To End 2019 At A Record High Of $255 Trillion, 330% Of World GDP
Global Debt To End 2019 At A Record High Of $255 Trillion, 330% Of World GDP
There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and that global debt will keep rising in perpetuity.
Addressing the third, yesterday the Institute of International Finance reported that global debt has now hit $250 trillion and is expected to hit a record $255 trillion at the end of 2019, up $12 trillion from $243 trillion at the end of 2018, and nearly $32,500 for each of the 7.7 billion people on planet.
“With few signs of slowdown in the pace of debt accumulation, we estimate that global debt will surpass $255 trillion this year,” the IIF said in the report.
The surge was driven by a $7.5 trillion surge in the first half of the year which was used to reverse the global slowdown that sent stocks into a bear market in 2018, and which shows no signs of slowing. Around 60% of that jump came from the United States and China. Government debt alone is set to top $70 trillion this year, as will overall debt (government, corporate and financial sector) of emerging-market countries.
The total debt breakdown as of Dec. 31 is as follows:
- Household debt: $47.9 trillion
- Non-financial corporate: $75.7 trillion
- Government: $70 trillion
- Financial corporate: $61.7 trillion
This amounts to a grand total of just over $255 trillion, roughly equivalent to a record 330% of global GDP.
WATCH: Follow the increase of global #debt over two decades.
Latest IIF Global Debt Monitor finds global debt has now surpassed a record $250T & is projected to reach $255T by the end of 2019. pic.twitter.com/D001VVzZmD
— IIF (@IIF) November 14, 2019
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Separately, Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett on Friday calculated that since the collapse of Lehman, government debt has increased by $30tn, corporates debt by $25tn, household by $9tn, and financial debt by $2tn; And with central banks expected to support government debt, BofA warns that “the biggest recession risk is disorderly rise in credit spreads & corporate deleveraging.”
Overall, global bond markets have increased from $87 trillion in 2009 to over $115 trillion, with government bonds now making up 47% of the market compared with 40% in 2009 according to Reuters.
Crushing Ray Dalio’s delightful, if impossible, dream of a “beautiful deleveraging”, borrowing by the four separate categories – governments, households, financial corporates, non-financial business – is growing faster than the global economy especially among emerging markets, where as noted above, Chinese companies were the biggest source of debt issuance the Washington-based IIF said in its Thursday report, although more than half of “corporate” debt in those countries is likely held by state-owned businesses, which means that effectively this is government-backstopped debt.
With state-owned companies now accounting for over half of non-financial corporate debt in emerging markets, sovereign-related borrowing has been the single most important driver of global debt over the past decade.
Not surprisingly, in developed countries it was governments that account for the bulk of borrowings.
As it does every quarter, the IIF report warned about the limits and risks of debt-fueled economic growth, a warning that has not only been widely ignored by virtually every politician (now that even the Tea Party has thrown in the towel), but a warning which is clearly being ignored by the US where the CBO projects debt to grow exponentially until something finally breaks.
The IIF also said that emerging markets that have increasingly relied on foreign-currency borrowing – including Turkey, Mexico and Chile – could be exposed to risks if growth slows further. Separately, the IIF warned that the three EM economies with the greatest percentage increase in debt year-over-year from Q2 2018 to Q2 2019, were Chile, South Korea, and Argentina. Of these, the first is currently being rocked by unprecedented social upheaval, while the latter effectively defaulted on its debt, sending its bond prices plummeting last quarter, crushing the IMF’s credibility in the process.
Altogether, emerging market debt hit a new all time high of $71.4 trillion in Q2, up nearly $5 trillion in the past year.
#EmergingMarket debt hit a new record high of $71.4T in Q2 2019, up from $66.8T in Q2 2018.
More analysis in the latest Global Debt Monitor: https://t.co/fX01vkFb5X pic.twitter.com/Sd997Gh2yH
— IIF (@IIF) November 15, 2019
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And, in yet another hint that MMT is only a matter of when, not if, the IIF suggested that “high-debt countries that also have high exposure to climate risk” – like Japan, Singapore, Korea and the U.S. – may struggle with the rapid increase in funding that the fight against climate change will require. Of course, there will be no such issue if the Treasury can openly monetize the debt it issues, something MMT claims would lead to global utopia and instead will lead to the end of the current monetary system as we know it.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 20:05 - If You've Given Your Genetic Code To A DNA Database, US Police May Now Have Access To It
If You’ve Given Your Genetic Code To A DNA Database, US Police May Now Have Access To It
Authored by Beth Daley via TheConversation.com,
In the past week, news has spread of a Florida judge’s decision to grant a warrant allowing police to search one of the world’s largest online DNA databases, for leads in a criminal case.
The warrant reportedly approved the search of open source genealogy database GEDMatch. An estimated 1.3 million users have uploaded their DNA data onto it, without knowing it would be accessible by law enforcement.
A decision of this kind raises concern and sets a new precedent for law enforcement’s access to online DNA databases. Should Australian users of online genealogy services be concerned?
Why is this a big deal?
GEDmatch lets users upload their raw genetic data, obtained from companies such as Ancestry or 23andMe, to be matched with relatives who have also uploaded their data.
Law enforcement’s capacity to use GEDmatch to solve crimes became prominent in April last year, when it was used to solve the Golden State Killer case. After this raised significant public concern around privacy issues, GEDmatch updated its terms and conditions in May.
Under the new terms, law enforcement agencies can only access user data in cases where users have consented to use by law enforcement, with only 185,000 people opting in so far.
The terms of the warrant granted in Florida, however, allowed access to the full database – including individuals who had not opted in. This directly overrides explicit user consent.
GEDmatch reportedly complied with the search warrant within 24 hours of it being granted.
Aussies are also at risk
GEDMatch is small fry compared with ancestry database giants Ancestry (more than 15 million individuals) and 23andMe (more than 10 million individuals), both of which have DNA data belonging to Australians.
Australians who wish to have ancestry DNA testing have to use US-based online companies. Thus, many Australians have data in databases such as Ancestry, 23andMe and GEDMatch. The granting of a warrant to search these databases by US courts means those searches could include Australian individuals’ data.
Ancestry and 23andMe both have policies saying they don’t provide access to their databases without valid court-mandated processes.
Each company produces a transparency report (see here and here) which includes all requests for customer data that have been received and complied with. Currently, that number is low. But it remains to be seen how each would respond to a court-ordered search warrant.
Furthermore, while Australia currently doesn’t have it’s own genetic database (and no plans have been announced), the federal government’s commitment of A$500 million to the Genomics Health Futures Mission indicates a growing interest in the power of genomics for health.
If Australia wants to remain internationally competitive, a national genetics project is a natural next step.
We need DNA privacy legislation
In Australia, courts can approve warrants that intrude into private information, and entities can only protect data to the extent that it’s protected by law.
Thus, the privacy policies of companies and organisations that hold genetic data (and other types of private data) usually include a statement saying the data will not be shared without consent “except as required by law”.
The Australian Information Commissioner can also allow breaches of privacy in the public interest.
It has been more than two decades since Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja proposed the Genetic Privacy and Non-Discrimination Bill.
Although Australia has a patchwork of laws that protect citizens’ genetic data to an extent, we still have no specific genetic data protection legislation. A broader legal framework dealing directly with the protection of genetic information is now required.
Australian politicians have previously shown willingness to use genetic information for government purposes. As genetic advances strengthen the promise of personalised medicine, Australian academics continue to call for urgent genetic data protection legislation. This is important to ensure public trust in genetic privacy is maintained.
Ongoing concerns around genetic discrimination, and other ethical concerns, warrant an urgent policy response regarding the protection of genetic data.
What are other countries doing?
Globally, several DNA databases have amassed genetic datasets of more than 1 million individuals, including for research purposes and healthcare improvement.
Few databases outside the US have yet to reach the numbers needed to be useful for identification purposes.
However, many countries, particularly in Europe, have started establishing government-funded national databases of gene donor data, including Sweden and Estonia.
The Estonian Biobank is one of the most advanced national DNA databases. It has more than 200,000 donor samples.
With a population of around 1.3 million people, the biobank represents around 15% of the entire country’s population. And Estonian legislation currently prohibits the use of donor samples for law enforcement.
In contrast, the UK Biobank, doesn’t have specific legislation controlling its operation. It only allows law enforcement agencies access if forced to do so by the courts, leaving open the possibility of access under a court-ordered warrant.
The biobank currently has samples from around 500,000 individuals, but plans to collect at least 1 million more in future.
In Australia, accessing DNA testing is now easier than ever. But those accessing it through US-based companies, or uploading their data to US-based databases, should be aware of the potential uses of their genetic information.
And as we moves into an era of genomic medicine, urgent policy attention is required from the Australian government to ensure public trust in genomics is maintained.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 19:45 - Farmageddon: 12 Charts Show That Despite Trump's Aid, Finances For Farmers Are Getting Worse
Farmageddon: 12 Charts Show That Despite Trump’s Aid, Finances For Farmers Are Getting Worse
A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City shows that farm finances across agricultural states continued to weaken throughout the summer and into the early fall.
The survey touched on all of the key points in the industry: commodity prices, costs, leverage, production, real estate values and the effects of Trump’s ongoing trade war. The report found:
Despite a slight increase in the price of some agricultural commodities and additional support from government payments, farm income and loan repayment rates declined at a modest pace. According to District bankers, agricultural economic conditions in the quarter were influenced by uncertainty about crop production, agricultural trade and other factors that contributed to commodity price fluctuations. Persistent weaknesses in the sector put further pressure on farm finances and signs of modest increases in credit stress remained. Farmland values, however, remained stable, and provided ongoing support for the sector.
Farm income in the region remained relatively weak and continued to decline, the report found.
The report also showed that farm income decreased from a year ago across all states in the region.
Debt laden farmers were forced to make additional cuts to spending in response to an ongoing environment of subdued revenue.
And the report noted that ongoing reductions in farm income put further downward pressure on liquidity positions of crop producers.
This resulted in deleveraging through selling farm assets…
While caused an uptick in demand for farm loans…
…and steady deterioration of agricultural credit conditions.
Meanwhile, the outlook for repayment rates through year-end was mixed.
The share of problem loans was steady and the increase in overall credit risk associated with farm loans remained modest, the report noted.
Some temporarily relief came in the form of interest rates on farm loans declining slightly in the third quarter…
And the entire industry continues to rest on farm real estate values, which have also held up…
…but the outlook for the future remains pessimistic. “Bankers in the Kansas City Fed region expected agricultural credit conditions and farm income to continue to decline in coming months,” the report read.
It continued: “Although numerous contacts indicated that government payments connected to ongoing trade disputes provided some support, most bankers pointed to an ongoing environment of low agricultural commodity prices and elevated costs as the primary factors contributing to the weakness.”
The report says that the stability of farm real estate will continue to provide support to farm finances, and likely will be a key determinant of credit conditions in the year ahead.
And hey, don’t worry – we all know real estate will never crash, right?
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 19:25 - How The Homeless Crisis Could Soon Become An Epidemic
How The Homeless Crisis Could Soon Become An Epidemic
Via Doug Casey’s International Man,
International Man: There is a growing homeless crisis in liberal West Coast cities, including San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and many others. People living on the street are overrunning these cities.
Residents must deal with human feces, syringes, disease, and filth every day. In some areas, it’s worse than the dirtiest slums of Brazil, Kenya, and India.
How did this happen?
Doug Casey: Well, taking a long-term view, I see it as part of the continuing decline of Western civilization.
The West has always been distinguished relative to the rest of the world by its order, its cleanliness, its respect for property rights. These things are all going by the wayside. We were a middle class society with “bourgeois” values, essentially Boy Scout virtues. But these things are now held in contempt, even while the middle class is being squeezed. “Ground between the millstones of taxation and inflation,” as the phrase attributed to Lenin puts it.
Some members of the lower and middle classes are still moving up, but it’s easier to fall than to rise. Most of the homeless are whites who are headed down. We haven’t seen this since the 1930s.
This epidemic is concentrated in so-called sanctuary cities, which go out of their way to bring in people who are unwilling or unable to support themselves. But most of the newly minted “street people” aren’t migrants. They seem to mostly be failed ex-members of the middle class.
It’s quite novel to see people in camping tents on city sidewalks. It’s different from the occasional bum sleeping under newspapers on a park bench. A tent implies a measure of permanency. It stakes out a property right.
Let me pause over my use of the word “bum.”
I learned a few things when I went on a couple of adventures “riding the rails.” There were three classes of people you’d meet in and around the railyard, on the “wrong side of the tracks”: hobos, tramps, and bums. They were all “homeless people,” but that term wasn’t used. Hobos were people there for the lifestyle; often well-read, dropouts with wanderlust. Tramps were people down on their luck; they rode the rails to get someplace there might be work or where they had a friend. Bums were those with terminally bad habits: lazy, dirty, usually dishonest.
The distinction between hobos, tramps, and bums appears to have been lost. None of the new breed of street people are hobos, I promise you. They’re tramps at best, but mostly bums. But it’s now fashionable to call them “the homeless,” because the PC world likes euphemisms. Not so long ago, these people used to be called “derelicts” or “vagrants.”
Part of the Orwellian PC trend in language is that you can no longer call something what it is. You have to make up a softer and less accurate description of who or what they are. You’re not allowed to offend bums, derelicts, or vagrants. Even though they are, by their very nature, offensive.
Why is this happening? It’s no longer just the occasional lowlife just passing through, but whole communities of people who take over sections of cities and camp out on public sidewalks.
What’s caused that? The media says it’s because of alcohol, drugs, and mental problems. But as usual, the brain-dead and blow-dried media is wrong.
Where were these lowlifes before? And what’s drawn them out of the woodwork where they were apparently hiding? I question whether junkies and crazy people are the cause; I suspect they’re an effect.
In other words, it’s quite possible that the hard times that started in 2008 drove a lot of people, who were already psychologically unstable, into full-fledged psychosis. And caused others to take up alcohol and drugs as a way of hiding from an unpleasant reality.
On the largest scale, I blame it on government action. Which shocks most people, because they see the government as the solution, not the cause. They see a real or imagined problem, and they want the State, because it has a lot of power, to “do something.” In fact, the only way the State can solve a problem is by undoing things that it’s already done, not doing more.
Even though it’s said that we have all-time low unemployment, these are mostly minimum-wage jobs. And the numbers are further disguised by the fact a lot of people who’d like to work as something other than a fast-food clerk or a Walmart greeter are what are called “discouraged workers.” They’re not counted as unemployed if they’ve stopped looking for work. I suspect that very few of the street people are counted as unemployed.
International Man: Cities like San Francisco spend tens of millions of dollars each year trying to keep the streets clean to no avail. Within hours, freshly cleaned streets are again covered in filth. Many people seem to think the city needs to throw more money at the problem.
What do you think? How should they address the problem?
Doug Casey: Cleaning up after these people isn’t a solution. It’s cosmetic, at best.
What we have are thousands on the streets who produce nothing, and only consume. They survive on food stamps, various welfare programs, handouts, petty theft, and the like. In other words, they’re not an asset either to themselves or to society. They’re an active liability, and they’re actually encouraged by being allowed to group together on other people’s property.
Will cleaning up after them solve the problem? No, it aggravates it.
It’s now an epidemic. It started in 2008 when lots of middle-class people lost their houses. And oddly, the trend toward people living on the street has been growing over the last 10 years of artificial boom.
We’re going to have a very real bust very soon. The high levels of debt that we have today have allowed the whole country to live above its means. When the economy adjusts to lower levels of consumption, a new avalanche of people will lose their jobs, and they’ll have no savings to fall back on. However, their debts will remain and keep them from getting back up.
Not so long ago, Americans saved up and bought their cars for cash. Your car was a small asset, but it was an asset. Then came two-year, then three-year, five-year, and now seven-year financing. In fact, most now lease their cars, because they can’t afford to buy them, even with seven-year financing. The things have gone from being a small asset into a major liability. With simple pickup trucks selling for upwards of $50,000, many are going to lose their transportation. Then they can’t get to their job, can’t pay their rent or mortgage, and they’re out on the street. It’s easy to see how an ex-member of the middle class could become mentally unbalanced and start doing drugs.
People could lose houses they bought with mortgages they can’t afford but think they can because of today’s very low floating interest rates. Just like back in 2008 and 2009. Plus, real estate taxes keep going up—partly because local governments are in good measure responsible for supporting lowlifes forced to live on the street, ironically due to high real estate taxes.
Utilities are going to go up because commodities are very, very low now. They’re going higher—good for commodity speculators; not good for Joe and Jane Consumer.
So, you’re going to see more people moving onto the streets. And let me reemphasize this: They’re not—now—necessarily junkies or mentally disabled. But they may be, once they lose everything they thought they had. Their numbers are going to grow as the economy goes downhill.
This is an explosive problem. These are people who will have nothing to lose. They’re going to be overcome by envy of and resentment against the rich. You can count on them to vote Democratic in 2020. There’s no question the state of the economy will be by far the biggest influence in the election.
All the while, because of the financialization of the economy, the rich are getting richer. This isn’t just unfair—it’s dangerous. Incidentally, “unfair” is a word I hate to use, because it often implies a whole set of assumptions. But that’s another topic. Anyway, the situation is setting up the United States for class warfare, the haves against the have-nots. Middle class societies are stable; we’re becoming less middle class.
International Man: The Fed has reflated the housing bubble with years of easy money. It has distorted the housing market and artificially increased real estate prices. How does the Fed relate to the homeless crisis?
Doug Casey: One indirect and delayed consequence of their creating all this money out of nothing—in order to keep the big banks, brokers, and insurers from failing during the crisis that began in 2007—is the creation of bubbles. The biggest bubble is in tech stocks. But the real estate bubble that busted in ’08 and ’09 has been re-inflating, at least until the last year.
International Man: California politicians have implemented rent controls and more regulations in the hope of solving the problem. The situation has only gotten worse, and the calls for the government to “do something!” only grow stronger.
If the inclination is to ask for more government, what do you expect the outcome to be?
Doug Casey: Rent control, like other forms of wage and price controls, seems logical to someone who doesn’t understand economics. It always sounds good to politicians—they like “bold action” to keep prices down, appear to help the little guy, and punish rich landlords all at once. What’s not to like?
In addition to their crime of initiating force, stealing, and destroying the moral tenor of society, they’re looking only at the immediate and direct consequences, not the delayed and indirect ones. Namely that nobody will build new buildings or even maintain old ones if they can’t make money doing so.
Rent controls result in housing shortages, run-down neighborhoods, and an atmosphere of class warfare. Rent controls are usually a consequence of money printing, which is actually the root cause of homelessness. But government is prone to disguise symptoms, not cure the disease itself—which they cause. Nobody learns anything. It’s why historians tend to be pessimistic.
International Man: Elizabeth Warren and other notable Democrats have called affordable housing a “basic human right.” They suggest that the federal government should make housing affordable or even free. It seems this will be a new plank for the party. What do you make of this?
Doug Casey: The only real human right is the right to be left alone.
You don’t have a right to free housing or free medical or free education or free food or a guaranteed income. You don’t have a right to any of these things because the question is: At whose expense? You’ve got zero right to make anybody give you things or do things for you. Warren’s policies will turn the US into a dog-eat-dog nightmare.
What’s going on today will overturn the foundations that made the progress we’ve had in the US possible. Once you start thinking like a Third World or Soviet country, you’re going to get their results.
The fact that the US still has a lot of wealth means nothing. That wealth can be destroyed very quickly. Practically overnight, as happened in places like Venezuela and Zimbabwe. I’ve spent time in both, and they used to be quite nice. Now they’re full of people sleeping on the streets, under bridges, and in cardboard shacks. For exactly the same reasons we’re seeing this in the US.
International Man: The homeless crisis is a trend in motion. It’s picking up momentum and spreading to new cities. What do you think happens next?
Doug Casey: One of the best definitions of a depression is a period of time when most people’s standard of living drops significantly.
As the Greater Depression deepens, for the reasons we mentioned earlier, you’re going to see more people living on the street.
What’s going to be done about it?
It can’t be solved by the government pushing them off the streets. Where are they going to go—outside the city limits to empty lots and fields? Actually, that’s just what Austin, Texas, did a few weeks ago. They set aside a five-acre plot near downtown where people can camp. Vagrants and their possessions were forcibly relocated to it.
Of course that temporarily solves the esthetics problem of bums camping on the street. But this is exactly how what are called “favelas” in Brazil and “ranchos” in Venezuela got started. The indigent move to state property, start out by camping, then start building informal houses out of trash and stolen building materials.
It’s an unsolvable problem, unless the country returns to prosperity. Will the government bulldoze the camps and then build high rise ghettos like they did for blacks in all the big US cities? That didn’t work really well… You only make the problem worse by putting these people in what amounts to zoos.
The interesting twist here is that today’s street people are mostly whites who’ve lost their middle class status—not blacks, not Latino migrants. This is a huge straw in the wind. So much for White Privilege…
International Man: What are the bigger implications of the homeless crisis for the future of the US economy and political system?
Doug Casey: It’s going to be very hard for everybody, especially as the government inflates more, taxes more, and regulates more. They’ll do massive amounts of all three. The situation will necessarily get worse for most people. The people who are benefiting from this one way or another—the rich and politically well-connected—will increasingly be in barrio cerrados (gated communities) to protect themselves.
It’s another sign that the state of civilization in the United States is changing radically. So far it’s been a slow slide down. But when the economy falls apart this time, it’s going to look like we’ve fallen off a cliff. We’re going to have to adjust to a whole new reality politically, socially, and economically. I’m not looking forward to it.
* * *
The economic trajectory is troubling. Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible, and even profit from the situation. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his colleagues just released an urgent new PDF report that explains what could come next and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 19:05 - Watch: Epic Brawl At Popeye's Drive-Thru Ends In Arrests And No One Getting Their Chicken Sandwiches
Watch: Epic Brawl At Popeye’s Drive-Thru Ends In Arrests And No One Getting Their Chicken Sandwiches
The buzz about Popeye’s new chicken sandwich has officially gone viral – and its internet popularity is translating into a full on free-for-all at various Popeye’s locations across the U.S. as obese fast food customers have come to fisticuffs at various locations, arguing about who will have access to the coveted sandwiches and in what order, of which there has been a limited supply.
“Popeyes struck when the chicken sandwich iron was hot. But it also used the most visible player in the game to generate its own noise,” QSR Magazine said, referring to the chain’s ongoing Twitter feud with sandwich rivals Chik-Fil-A.
It’s a marketing strategy straight out of the movie Idiocracy – and it’s working.
Case in point: a Temecula, California resident has captured yet another brawl between two couples in the drive-thru lane of a local Popeye’s restaurant. In a video posted to YouTube called “The Best Popeyes Fight With Commentary” (indicating that yes, there are so many of them, that this one is the ‘best’ relative to others), a couple is seen arguing and cursing with another couple in the drive-thru lane.
“I’ve been here for an hour!” an unruly customer screams at the drive-thru attendant, while outside of his car, in between cursing at the customer behind him and his wife. The customer, who is white, uses the N-word several times, causing tensions to rise.
“I’m psycho!” the customer screams, before pushing one woman, while her husband stands behind her watching. The women then start fighting each other before all four members of both couples fall to the ground in a brawl. The brawl is eventually broken up by police.
“…all this for a chicken sandwich…” the woman taping the brawl says.
If it wasn’t the chain’s intention to cause this much disruption, the response to a simple sandwich has undoubtedly been far more disturbing than they have ever could of imagined. But then again, the clever marketing strategy for the chicken sandwich may very well be working exactly as planned.
Popeye’s CEO walking into the office after 48 straight hours of chicken sandwich chaos resulting in billions of dollars in free PR pic.twitter.com/wE8BOJCIxo
— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) November 6, 2019
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While these actions may look like a depressing point in human history, look at the bright side: the brawls will at least be good practice for upcoming Black Friday sales.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 18:45 - 'I Have Freedom Of Speech': Trump Hits Back After Critics Claim Witness Intimidation, 'Thugocracy'
‘I Have Freedom Of Speech’: Trump Hits Back After Critics Claim Witness Intimidation, ‘Thugocracy’
After House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) took time out of today’s impeachment testimony to rebuke President Trump for “witness intimidation,” President Trump hit back.
During testimony from former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, Trump took aim at her over Twitter, saying “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her…”
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019
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Following Trump’s tweet, Schiff dramatically interrupted questioning from his staff counsel to read Trump’s tweet aloud – asking Yovanovitch what effect Trump’s tweet might have on future witnesses, to which she replied that it would be “very intimidating.
Trump’s tweet was so troubling that former Media Matters employee Paul Waldman wrote in the Washington Post that Trump “talks and acts like a Mafioso” in an article entitled “Yovanovitch hearing confirms that Trump is running a thugocracy.”
Following Schiff’s dramatic exchange, Trump was asked whether his words can be intimidating, to which he said “I don’t think so at all.”
“I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech just like other people do,” Trump told White House reporters following remarks on a health care initiative, adding that he’s “allowed to speak up” and defend himself.
Watch:
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 18:25 - Series Of Blasts Target Mass Protest Gathering In Baghdad, Multiple Dead & Wounded
Series Of Blasts Target Mass Protest Gathering In Baghdad, Multiple Dead & Wounded
A series of explosions ripped through central Baghdad on Friday night, and appeared to target protests which have raged since early October, killing at least three people. Some unconfirmed reports have cited four dead and a dozen wounded in a developing situation where the casualty toll is expected to climb.
The final in a string of blasts was identified according to early reports and video as a car bomb in Tahrir Square, which did the worst damage, killing and wounding multiple protesters.
Second explosion in Baghdad. Minutes earlier at least 4 killed and 11 heavily wounded by a car bomb #Iraqpic.twitter.com/dQNNHeSeux
— hocmountain ➐ (@hocmountain) November 15, 2019
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“A large number of people injured by the booby-trapped car bomb were taken by the drivers of the Tek-Tik wheels to hospitals near Tahrir,” a source told Arabic media. Another blast was reported in nearby Tayaran Square as well, which may have also resulted in casualties.
Though anti-corruption and anti-government demonstrations have witnessed violent clashes with police, resulting at this point in over 300 dead and an estimated 15,000 wounded, the bombing escalates things to a new level of violence.
Some among the string of blasts as well as the aftermath caught on video:
الصور الأولى للانفجار الذي هز وسط #بغداد بالقرب من #ساحة_التحرير وأدى إلى سقوط عدد من القتلى والجرحى#شاهد_سكاي pic.twitter.com/NjqcrRRDHA
— سكاي نيوز عربية (@skynewsarabia) November 15, 2019
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In the moments before the explosions Tahrir Square appeared packed with tens of thousands of demonstrators.
Tahrir Square tonight#Baghdad #IraqProtests #IraqiProtests pic.twitter.com/PamCBF62Km
— Rasha Al Aqeedi (@RashaAlAqeedi) November 14, 2019
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Both protest leaders and international media have blamed security forces for the ratcheting violence due to occasions where they’ve used live fire to disperse crowds.
Pro-Iran Iraqi militias have also been blamed for attempting to brutally put down protests.
Another video of car explosion in Tahrir Square in #Baghdad, so far 4 killed and 20 injured on Friday’s night.
Video by @MHabibAHI pic.twitter.com/Pg4j0JFXoW— Ali Al Shouk (@alialshouk) November 15, 2019
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Alternately, pro-Iranian politicians and military leaders in Baghdad have blamed the United States and Israel for fueling unrest in order to curtail Iranian influence.
The bombing will most likely escalate the intensity of protests as Iraq stands of the brink of possible renewed sectarian civil war.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 18:05 - Do The World's Energy Policies Make Sense?
Do The World’s Energy Policies Make Sense?
Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,
The world today has a myriad of energy policies. One of them seems to be to encourage renewables, especially wind and solar. Another seems to be to encourage electric cars. A third seems to be to try to move away from fossil fuels. Countries in Europe and elsewhere have been trying carbon taxes. There are alsoprograms to buy carbon offsets for energy uses such as air travel.
Maybe it is time to step back and take a look. Where are we now? Where are we really headed? Have the policies implemented since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 had any positive impact?
Let’s look at some of the issues involved.
[1] We have had very little success in reducing CO2 emissions.
CO2 emissions for all countries, in total, have been spiraling upward, year after year.
Figure 1. Carbon dioxide emissions for the world, based on BP’s 2019 Statistical Review of World Energy.
If we look at the situation by part of the world, we see an even more concerning pattern.
Figure 2. Carbon dioxide emissions by part of the world through 2018, based on BP’s 2019 Statistical Review of World Energy. Soviet Empire is an approximation including Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, based on the BP report. It would not include Cuba and North Korea.
The group US+EU+Japan has been able to reduce its CO2 emissions by 5% since 2005. Emissions were slowly rising between 1981 and 2005. There was a dip at the time of the Great Recession of 2008-2009, followed by a downward trend. A person might get the impression that CO2 emissions for the EU tend to rise during periods when the economy is doing well and tend to fall when it is doing poorly.
The “star” in emissions reductions is the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. I refer to this group as the Soviet Empire. Emissions fell around the time of the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. This big decrease in emissions seems to be related to huge changes that took place at that time. Instead of one country with a single currency, the individual republics were suddenly on their own.
The high point in CO2 emissions for the Soviet Empire came in 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union central government. By 1999, emissions had fallen to a level 37% below their 1990 level. In fact, even in recent years, emissions for this group of countries has stayed low. Much industry collapsed and has never been replaced.
The group that has more than doubled its emissions is what I call the Remainder Group. The group includes many countries, including China and India, that ramped up their manufacturing and other heavy industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the World Trade Organization added members. The Remainder Group also includes many countries that suddenly found new export markets for their raw materials, such as oil, iron ore, and copper. The Remainder countries became richer; they became more able to pave roads and build more substantial homes for their citizens. With all of this GDP-related activity, CO2 emissions increased rapidly.
[2] Population growth has followed a pattern that is in some ways similar to CO2 growth.
Figure 3. Population from 1965 to 2018, based on UN 2019 population estimates.
In Figure 3, we see that population has been virtually flat in the former Soviet Empire (2% growth between 1997 and 2018). With the economy not doing well, young people emigrate to countries that seem to provide better prospects.
Population in the US+EU+Japan Group grew by 11% between 1997 and 2018.
The group that is simply outstanding for population growth is the Remainder Group, with 35% growth between 1997 and 2018. A big part of this population growth comes from improved sanitation and basic medical care, such as antibiotics. With these changes, a larger percentage of the babies that are born have been able to live to maturity.
It is hard to see any bend in the trend lines, showing that recent actions have really changed the course of activity from the way it was headed previously. Of course, the trend is only “linear,” implying that the percentage growth is gradually slowing over time.
This rapidly growing population feeds into the CO2 problem as well. The many young people would all like food, homes and transportation. While it is possible to obtain some version of these desired products without fossil fuels, the version with fossil fuels tends to be vastly improved. Most people prefer homes with indoor plumbing and electricity, if given an opportunity, for example.
[3] Deforestation keeps growing as a world problem.
Figure 4. Chart showing World Bank estimates of share of world forested by economic grouping.
High Income Countries keep pushing the deforestation problem to the poorer parts of the world. Heavily Indebted Poor Countries are especially affected. Worldwide, deforestation continues to grow.
[4] With respect to fossil fuels, there is a great deal of confusion with respect to, “What do we need to be saved from?”
Do we have a problem with too much or too little fossil fuel? We hear two different stories.
Figure 5. Author’s image of two trains speeding toward the world economy.
Climate modelers keep telling us about what could happen, if indeed we use too much fossil fuel. In fact, the climate currently is changing, bolstering this point of view.
It seems to me that there is an equally great danger of collapse, accompanied by low energy prices. For example, we know that energy production of the European Union has been declining for many years, without the countries being able to do anything about it.
We also know historically that many civilizations have collapsed. The Soviet Empire collapsed in 1991, illustrating one type of collapse. The Soviet Union was an oil exporter. Its collapse came after oil prices were too low to allow adequate investment in new oil fields for an extended period of time. The Great Recession of 2008-2009 offers a much smaller, temporary version of what collapse might look like.
Another example of low prices accompanying collapse comes from Revelation 18: 11-13, warning of possible collapse like that of ancient Babylon. The problem was inadequate demand and low prices; even the energy product of the day (human beings sold as slaves) had little value.
11 “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.
What we have been seeing recently is falling prices and prices that are too low for producers. Such a result can lead to collapse if too many energy producers go bankrupt and quit.
Figure 6. Inflation adjusted weekly average Brent Oil price, based on EIA oil spot prices and US CPI-urban inflation.
If we are in danger of collapse from low prices, renewables would not seem to be of much assistance unless they (a) are significantly less expensive than fossil fuels and (b) can be scaled up sufficiently rapidly to more than replace fossil fuels. Neither of these seems to be a possibility.
[5] Early studies overestimated how much help renewables might provide, especially if our problem comes from too little energy supply rather than too much.
Renewables look like they would be great from many points of view, but when it comes down to the real world situation, they don’t live up to the hype.
One issue is that while wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, and other devices for capturing energy are called “renewables,” they are really only available through the use of the fossil fuel system. They are made using fossil fuels. If a part breaks, or if insects eat away the insulation on wires, replacements need to be made using the fossil fuel system and transported by the fossil fuel system. At best, renewables use less fossil fuels than conventional electricity generation. They are dependent on other resources, which may eventually deplete, but which are not a problem at this time.
A second issue is that it is extremely difficult to do a proper cost-benefit analysis on renewables because they can only be used as part of a larger system. They tend to look inexpensive, when viewed in isolation. But when total system costs are viewed, they often are quite expensive.
One difficulty in a proper cost-benefit analysis is the fact that renewables are often at quite a distance from where electricity is to be used, leading to the need for a significant amount of long distance transmission lines. If renewables provide intermittent power, they need to be sized for the maximum output, not their average output. All of these long distance lines need to be properly maintained, or they tend to cause fires. In some instances, burying the lines underground at significant cost is the only solution. Somehow, these higher costs need to be recognized as part of the cost of the system, but this is rarely done.
Another difficulty in a proper cost-benefit analysis is the fact that the intermittency must be overcome, if the electricity is to be of benefit to a modern economy that requires electricity 24/7/365. In theory, a person could greatly overbuild the renewables system and the transmission. This might work, but a person would end up with a large percentage of the system that is not used most of the time, greatly adding to costs.
Batteries can be added, but the cost tends to be high. One commenter on my site recently observed:
EIA reports the average cost for utility scale battery systems to be about $1500 per kWh. At that rate the batteries needed for backing up a solar or wind facility for three days cost around 30 times as much as the RE facility. But wind is often unpowered for more like seven days, during huge stagnant high pressure episodes. Thus the backup battery cost is more like 100 times the wind farm cost. Batteries are not feasible.
The major intermittency problem is season-to-season, especially saving up enough for winter. We do not have a way, today, of storing energy from one season to another, short of making it into a liquid (such as ammonia), and storing the liquid from season to season. This would be another way of driving up costs of the overall system. It has not been included in anyone’s cost calculations.
For the time being, we are forcing nuclear and fossil fuel to provide backup electrical services to intermittent renewables without adequately compensating them for their services. This tends to drive them out of business. This is not an adequate solution either.
A third issue is that renewables really need to be “economic” to work. In other words, they need to generate a profit for their owners, when comparing the unsubsidized costs with the benefits of the system. In fact, their owners need to be able to pay fairly substantial taxes to governments, to cover their share of governmental costs as well. If renewables truly were providing substantial benefit to the system, their use would tend to “take off” on their own, because they would be providing “net energy” to the system. Instead, renewables tend to act like “energy sinks.” They need endless subsidies. They can never substitute for fossil fuels. In fact, they can’t even pay their own way.
A related issue is that, because of the high total costs (as well as their lack of true net energy benefits), it is almost impossible to ramp up the quantity of renewable such as wind and solar very high. The EU has been a big supporter of renewables other than hydroelectric. Figure 7 shows a chart of the EU’s own energy production, together with its energy imports.
Figure 7. EU energy by type and whether imported, based on data of BP’s 2019 Statistical Review of World Energy. Renewables are non-hydroelectric renewables such as wind, solar, and geothermal.
After at least 20 years of subsidies, the EU has been able to increase renewables (other than hydroelectric) to about 10% of its total energy supply. The EU’s oil imports are roughly level, and its natural gas imports have been increasing. Even with rapid growth in non-hydro renewables, the EU has been experiencing a decrease in total energy consumption.
[6] Looking at the actual outcomes, a person might ask, “What in the world were policymakers really thinking about?”
We are told that the reason policymakers made the decisions they did was because they thought that they could reduce CO2 emissions in this way. Really? If a person really wants to reduce CO2 emissions, it is easy to see how to do it. A person simply has to take steps in the direction of reducing global co-operation. One step would be to reduce international trade. Another would be to get rid of umbrella organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the United Nations and the European Union. In fact, within individual countries, the top level of government could be removed, leaving (for example) the provinces of Canada and the states of the United States. In other words, policymakers could push economies in the direction of collapse.
Another way collapse could be encouraged would be by rapidly raising interest rates or cutting off credit. With less purchasing power, the world would be pushed into recession.
At the time of the Kyoto Protocol, policymakers moved in precisely the opposite direction of pushing the economy toward collapse. They moved in the direction of adding international trade and more debt to enable the growth. The countries with greater trade had huge coal resources that had not been used. With the help of this coal, the world economy was able to continue to grow. This approach only made sense if the real problem at the time of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 was too little energy resources, not too much. The economy needed the stimulation that more low-cost energy and more debt could provide.
It is now more than twenty years later. The coal resources of China are starting to deplete. Coal is also causing serious ground-level pollution problems, both in China and India. Without growing coal production, world GDP growth starts slowing. We are again facing low oil prices and other commodity prices–a problem similar to the one present when the government of the Soviet Union collapsed. The world economy seems again to be headed toward having some of its governmental organizations collapse from inadequate energy. Political parties are becoming more extreme; countries are enacting new tariffs. If we go back to Figure 5, the concern should again be collapse, on the left side of the figure.
[7] The IPCC climate models need to be revisited.
A climate model looks to the past and tries to forecast the future. When the IPCC models were put together, the scenarios about which concerns are raised are based on the assumption that fossil fuel use can grow practically indefinitely. Coal production in particular is seen as continuing at a high level for many, many years, even though world coal production has been fairly flat for several years, and prices tend to be lower than producers require if they are to stay in business.
Figure 8. World Energy Consumption by Fuel, based on data of 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
In order for coal production to grow as much as modelers forecast, there needs to be a major turnaround in the situation. World coal prices need to rise substantially. In fact, coal in very difficult locations for extraction, such as under the North Sea, need to become profitable to extract. This situation seems very unlikely.
It seems to me that climate modelers should be considering more reasonable scenarios regarding fossil fuel consumption. One scenario which should be considered is the possible near term collapse of several governmental organizations, such as the European Union, World Trade Organization, and the governments of several oil exporting countries. Such a model would be more realistic than one in which energy consumption continues to grow indefinitely.
[8] The push toward renewables makes little sense without a firmer foundation than currently exists.
Early studies looked only at the cost of renewables themselves, without the cost of extra long-distance grid transportation and battery storage. Such an estimate makes renewables look far more valuable than they really are.
We now have enough experience that we can see what goes wrong. A hydroelectric plant that operates during the wet season in a tropical country may be of little practical use, for example, if there is no fossil fuel energy to provide electricity production during the dry season. The total cost of the overlapping systems is needs to be recognized, including the need to hire staff year around for fossil fuel and hydroelectric facilities. Electricity transmission will likely be needed for both types of generation.
There are many other real-world examples that can be examined, before blanket “use renewables” recommendations should be issued. If renewables are not truly very inexpensive (around 2 cents per kWh or less), without subsidies, they are likely not to be long-lasting.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/15/2019 – 17:45
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