- Info Overload? All Of The Data Created In 2018 Is Equal To…
As revealed in the newly released Statista Digital Economy Compass, the world created an enormous 33 zettabytes of data in 2018.
If that number means nothing to you, you’re surely not alone. While the size guide at the bottom of this infographic might be of help, a more effective way to provide some context to the number is to compare it to something more tangible.
You will find more infographics at Statista
If you were to burn all of the information created last year onto Blu-ray discs, you would need to invest in an astounding 660 billion – each with a standard capacity of 50 gigabytes.
Moving into the biological realm, 33 terrabytes is equivalent to the estimated storage space of 33 million human brains.
Delving even deeper, and as an equally impressive testament to the power of DNA, you would need 73 grams of our genetic material to create a backup of 2018’s global data.
You can download the Statista Digital Economy Compass 2019 for free, here.
- US/NATO Using Europe For Strategy Of Controlled Chaos
Authored by Manlio Dinucci via GlobalResearch,
Everyone against everyone else – this is the media image of chaos which is spreading across the Southern shores of the Mediterranean, from Libya to Syria. It is a situation before which even Washington seems powerless. But in reality, Washington is not the sorcerer’s apprentice unable to control the forces now in motion. It is the central motor of a strategy – the strategy of chaos – which, by demolishing entire States, is provoking a chain reaction of conflicts which can be used in the manner of the ancient method of “divide and rule”.
Emerging victorious from the Cold War in 1991, the USA self-appointed themselves as “the only State with power, reach, and influence in all dimensions – political, economic and military – which are truly global”, and proposed to “prevent any hostile power from dominating any region – Western Europe, Eastern Asia, the territories of the ex-Soviet Union, and South-Western Asia (the Middle East) – whose resources could be enough to generate a world power”.
Since then, the United States, with NATO under their command, have fragmented or destroyed by war, one by one, the states they considered to represent an obstacle to their plan for world domination – Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and others – while still others are in their sights (among which are Iran and Venezuela).
In the same strategy came the coup d’État in Ukraine under the direction of the USA and NATO, in order to provoke a new Cold War in Europe intended to isolate Russia and reinforce the influence of the United States in Europe.
While we concentrate politico-media attention on the fighting in Libya, we leave in the shadows the increasingly threatening scenario of NATO’s escalation against Russia. The meeting of the 29 Ministers for Foreign Affairs, convened in Washington on 4 April to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Alliance, reaffirmed, without any proof, that “Russia violated the FNI Treaty by deploying new missiles with a nuclear capacity in Europe”.
One week later, on 11 April, NATO announced that the “update” of the US Aegis “anti-missile defence system”, based at Deveselu in Romania, would be implemented this summer, assuring that it would “not add any offensive capacity to the system”.
On the contrary, this system, installed in Romania and Poland, as well as on board ships, is able to launch not only interceptor missiles, but also nuclear missiles. Moscow issued a warning – if the USA were to deploy nuclear missiles in Europe, Russia would deploy – on its own territory – similar missiles pointed at European bases.
Consequently, NATO’s spending for « defence » has skyrocketed – the military budgets of European allies and those of Canada will rise to 100 billion dollars in 2020.
The Ministers for Foreign Affairs, united in Washington on 4 April, agreed in particular to “face up to Russia’s aggressive actions in the Black Sea”, by establishing “new measures of support for our close partners, Georgia and Ukraine”.
The following day, dozens of warships and fighter-bombers from the United States, Canada, Greece, Holland, Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria began a NATO aero-naval war exercise in the Black Sea at the limit of Russian territorial waters, using the ports of Odessa (Ukraine) and Poti (Georgia).
Simultaneously, more than 50 fighter-bombers from the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Holland, taking off from a Dutch airbase and refuelling in flight, practised “offensive aerial missions of attack against earth-based or sea-based objectives”. Italian Eurofighter fighter-bombers were once again sent by NATO to patrol the Baltic region to counter the “threat” of Russian warplanes.
The situation is increasingly tense and can explode (or be exploded) at any moment, dragging us down into a chaos much worse that of Libya.
* * *
This article was originally published on Il Manifesto. Translated by Pete Kimberley.
- Rumors Of War: Washington Is Looking For A Fight
Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
It is depressing to observe how the United States of America has become the evil empire. Having served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War and in the Central Intelligence Agency for the second half of the Cold War, I had an insider’s viewpoint of how an essentially pragmatic national security policy was being transformed bit by bit into a bipartisan doctrine that featured as a sine qua non global dominance for Washington. Unfortunately, when the Soviet Union collapsed the opportunity to end once and for all the bipolar nuclear confrontation that threatened global annihilation was squandered as President Bill Clinton chose instead to humiliate and use NATO to contain an already demoralized and effectively leaderless Russia.
American Exceptionalism became the battle cry for an increasingly clueless federal government as well as for a media-deluded public. When 9/11 arrived, the country was ready to lash out at the rest of the world. President George W. Bush growled that “There’s a new sheriff in town and you are either with us or against us.” Afghanistan followed, then Iraq, and, in a spirit of bipartisanship, the Democrats came up with Libya and the first serious engagement in Syria. In its current manifestation, one finds a United States that threatens Iran on a nearly weekly basis and tears up arms control agreements with Russia while also maintaining deployments of US forces in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and places like Mali. Scattered across the globe are 800 American military bases while Washington’s principal enemies du jour Russia and China have, respectively, only one and none.
Never before in my lifetime has the United States been so belligerent, and that in spite of the fact that there is no single enemy or combination of enemies that actually threaten either the geographical United States or a vital interest. Venezuela is being threatened with invasion primarily because it is in the western hemisphere and therefore subject to Washington’s claimed proconsular authority. Last Wednesday Vice President Mike Pence told the United Nations Security Council that the White House will remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, preferably using diplomacy and sanctions, but “all options are on the table.” Pence warned that Russia and other friends of Maduro need to leave now or face the consequences.
The development of the United States as a hostile and somewhat unpredictable force has not gone unnoticed. Russia has accepted that war is coming no matter what it does in dealing with Trump and is upgrading its forces. By some estimates, its army is better equipped and more combat ready than is that of the United States, which spends nearly ten times as much on “defense.”
Iran is also upgrading its defensive capabilities, which are formidable. Now that Washington has withdrawn from the nuclear agreement with Iran, has placed a series of increasingly punitive sanctions on the country, and, most recently, has declared a part of the Iranian military to be a “foreign terrorist organization” and therefore subject to attack by US forces at any time, it is clear that war will be the next step. In three weeks, the United States will seek to enforce a global ban on any purchases of Iranian oil. A number of countries, including US nominal ally Turkey, have said they will ignore the ban and it will be interesting to see what the US Navy intends to do to enforce it. Or what Iran will do to break the blockade.
But even given all of the horrific decisions being made in the White House, there is one organization that is far crazier and possibly even more dangerous. That is the United States Congress, which is, not surprisingly, a legislative body that is viewed positively by only 18 per cent of the American people.
A current bill originally entitled the “Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act (DASKA) of 2019,” is numbered S-1189. It has been introduced in the Senate which will “…require the Secretary of State to determine whether the Russian Federation should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism and whether Russian-sponsored armed entities in Ukraine should be designated as foreign terrorist organizations.” The bill is sponsored by Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and is co-sponsored by Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey.
The current version of the bill was introduced on April 11th and it is by no means clear what kind of support it might actually have, but the fact that it actually has surfaced at all should be disturbing to anyone who believes it is in the world’s best interest to avoid direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia.
In a a press release by Gardner, who has long been pushing to have Russia listed as a state sponsor of terrorism, a February version of the bill is described as “…comprehensive legislation [that] seeks to increase economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation in response to Russia’s interference in democratic processes abroad, malign influence in Syria, and aggression against Ukraine, including in the Kerch Strait. The legislation establishes a comprehensive policy response to better position the US government to address Kremlin aggression by creating new policy offices on cyber defenses and sanctions coordination. The bill stands up for NATO and prevents the President from pulling the US out of the Alliance without a Senate vote. It also increases sanctions pressure on Moscow for its interference in democratic processes abroad and continued aggression against Ukraine.”
The February version of the bill included Menendez, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as co-sponsors, suggesting that provoking war is truly bipartisan in today’s Washington.
Each Senator co-sponsor contributed a personal comment to the press release. Gardner observed that “Putin’s Russia is an outlaw regime that is hell-bent on undermining international law and destroying the US-led liberal global order.” Menendez noted that “President Trump’s willful paralysis in the face of Kremlin aggression has reached a boiling point in Congress” while Graham added that “Our goal is to change the status quo and impose meaningful sanctions and measures against Putin’s Russia. He should cease and desist meddling in the US electoral process, halt cyberattacks on American infrastructure, remove Russia from Ukraine, and stop efforts to create chaos in Syria.” Cardin contributed “Congress continues to take the lead in defending US national security against continuing Russian aggression against democratic institutions at home and abroad” and Shaheen observed that “This legislation builds on previous efforts in Congress to hold Russia accountable for its bellicose behavior against the United States and its determination to destabilize our global world order.”
The Senatorial commentary is, of course, greatly exaggerated and sometimes completely false regarding what is going on in the world, but it is revealing of how ignorant American legislators can be and often are. The Senators also ignore the fact that the designation of presumed Kremlin surrogate forces as “foreign terrorist organizations” is equivalent to a declaration of war against them by the US military, while hypocritically calling Russia a state sponsor of terrorism is bad enough, as it is demonstrably untrue. But the real damage comes from the existence of the bill itself. It will solidify support for hardliners on both sides, guaranteeing that there will be no rapprochement between Washington and Moscow for the foreseeable future, a development that is bad for everyone involved. Whether it can be characterized as an unintended consequence of unwise decision making or perhaps something more sinister involving a deeply corrupted congress and administration remains to be determined.
- Mapping The World's Busiest Air Routes
Modern air travel gives us almost unlimited possibilities for getting around.
Whether you are acting on your wanderlust to explore new and exotic destinations, hopping to a familiar island for a well-deserved vacation, or jetsetting to London in the comfort of business class, the modern airline industry can get you almost anywhere you need to go.
But, as Visual Capitalists’ Jeff Desjardins notes, while flying allows us to have unique experiences, it’s often the case that we are all coming and going from many of the same popular destinations. As a result, the world’s busiest air routes have hundreds of flights per day connecting important city pairs together.
Ranking City Pairs
Today’s chart pulls data from OAG, which has compiled a detailed report ranking the busiest domestic and international air routes from around the globe.
It’s worth noting that the data is over the period of March 2018 to February 2019, and it excludes carriers that operate fewer than 500 routes per year.
Let’s dive in to see which city pairs have the most air travel between them.
Domestic Routes
Domestic routes are far more popular than international routes globally. According to the report, there are 15 domestic routes that have more operating flights per year than any international route anywhere.
Here’s a look at the top 10 domestic routes:
The busiest domestic route might be a surprise, unless you are familiar with Asian geography.
With almost 80,000 annual flights, the 300-mile hop between Seoul and Jeju Island in South Korea is the busiest air route in the world by a large margin. Overall, there are seven carriers competing on it each day, with over 200 daily flights available between them.
What makes Jeju so popular?
Known as the “Hawaii of South Korea”, this volcanic island is an extremely popular vacation destination within the country, and it hosts roughly 15 million guests per year.
International Routes
On an international basis, the busiest route has almost 50,000 fewer flights per year than the Jeju-Seoul city pair listed above. Not surprisingly, this route – and many other top international routes – are also located in the Asia Pacific region.
The short hop between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur takes only one hour, and it connects two major Southeast Asian commercial hubs. The route has 41 flights per day between eight airlines, making it one of the most competitive routes globally.
The busiest international route outside of the Asia Pacific is between Toronto and New York (LaGuardia) with 17,038 annual flights. Interestingly, it only has three competing carriers – the lowest of any of the top 10 routes.
- The Elites Laugh As Americans Revel In Their Enslavement While Fearing Each Other
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
Americans are increasingly living in fear of the opposing political party. While the elites laugh and continue to enslave the populace even further because of this fear, Americans increasingly embrace their chains while asking them to be shortened, and all while dehumanizing those on a different plantation.
The fact is, none of us are free. We are all slaves to the same master – the political elites. The only way to be free is to accept it and attempt to free others in the process. So far, the government has not had to put literal chains on anyone because most Americans are mental slaves. If you own the mind, you won’t need to enslave the body. This is causing problems in problems in our society, however, as many fear those who think differently than they do while giving a pass to the ones actually at fault for their dissatisfaction.
Extreme partisanship has infected both democrats and republicans to the point of no return. According to Oregon Live, more than 40 percent of Americans say they are surrounded by “downright evil” and they’re referring to their fellow Americans who happen to belong to a different political party. This division and fear keep the elite wealthy, powerful, and increasingly authoritarian. While we fight each other, we can’t be bothered to actually take on the behemoth monster that is responsible for all this fear and division in the first place.
A recent academic paper by political scientists Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason, presented at the National Capital Area Political Science Association conference in January, concludes that the extreme partisanship of recent decades has made millions of Americans intellectually insular and emotionally numb. As a result, these hyper-partisans – and, to be clear, all of this goes for members of both major parties – feel little or no sympathy “in response to deaths and injuries of political opponents.” Some even show “explicit support for partisan violence.” –Oregon Live
The key component to all of this fear is ensuring the public stays divided by dehumanizing each other. This makes violence against each other suddenly “acceptable” to those stuck and enslaved by the system. A key reason for this “moral disengagement” is that partisanship in the cable-TV and social-media age has proven exceptionally good at dehumanizing one’s ideological opponents. Kalmoe and Mason’s unpublished paper found that about one in five Americans believe that those on the other side of the partisan divide “lack the traits to be considered fully human — they behave like animals.”
The portion of hyper-partisan Americans is worrisome even for those not on the political spectrum. Morality no longer matters if another human being is not seen as a human being. Kalmoe and Mason’s work indicates that the nature of this uptick in extreme partisanship provides people with the “psychological distancing” that allows them to rationalize physical violence and discrimination against others.
Instead of accepting that it is ALWAYS morally wrong to initiate force or violence against another human being for ANY REASON, Americans have rationalized such violence and theft as taxation or police brutality in order to justify their own political violence. This type of path is leading our society down a very dangerous path.
- Legal Weed In Canada Struggles To Compete With Black Market
Six months after Canada became the first country in the developed world to legalize marijuana, legal sales of dried cannabis flower went up in smoke as consumers shifted to illicit markets.
A marijuana shortage left the industry in shock earlier this year and caused concerns that Canadian cannabis producers were not properly structured to handle the massive demand from the Canadian marketplace.
As a result, a majority of marijuana sales in the country — approximately $5 billion — were transacted on the black market, compared to $2 billion in legal sales, according to new government data from January 2019.
Pot smoking Canadians purchased 6,671 kilograms of legal cannabis in February, down 9% from January, and the lowest amount since October when 6,415 kilograms were sold, according to Health Canada.
While the legal cannabis market has been hit with supply chain bottlenecks and overpricing, the black market continued to flourish into 2Q.
Canadians paid 57% on average more for legal cannabis than they did from their drug dealer, according to the data.
Since October [the month when pot became legal], consumers purchasing legal cannabis paid $7.47 per gram on average, compared with buyers on the black market who paid an average $4.70 per gram.
Industry experts believe the illicit cannabis market will continue to expand by offering affordable weed to all.
“As long as that price differential exists, there will likely be a black market – because people will go to where they can get a deal,” Rosalie Wynoch, a policy analyst at the CD Howe Institute, a conservative think tank, told the Guardian. “The government was aware that it wouldn’t fully displace the black market on day one.”
A recent survey of 500 pot smokers conducted by BMO Capital Markets found that 35% of all respondents indicated they have purchased legal cannabis. BMO’s survey responses also suggest that muted legal sales were due to supply shortages and overpricing.
Ahead of legalization last October, Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, emphasized that legal pot would eliminate the black market. Unfortunately, Trudeau has been terribly mistaken as the illicit market continues to expand.
- RussiaGate Is Dead! Long Live Russiagate!
Authored by Gerald Sussman via Counterpunch.org,
Now that Mueller’s $40 million Humpty Trumpty investigation is over and found wanting of its original purpose (to retire Trump), perhaps the ruling class can return without interruption to the business of destroying the world with ordnance, greenhouse gases, and regime changes. A few more CIA-organized blackouts in Venezuela (it’s a simple trick if one follows the Agency’s “Freedom Fighter’s Manual”), and the US will come to the rescue, Grenada style, and set up yet another neoliberal regime. There is a small solace that with Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton, there is at least a semblance of transparency in their reckless interventions. The assessed value of Guaido and Salman, they forthrightly admit, is in their countries’ oil reserves. And Russians better respect the Monroe Doctrine and manifest destiny if they know what’s good for them. Crude as they may be, Trump’s men tell it like it is. And when Bolton speaks of “the Western Hemisphere’s shared goals of democracy, security, and the rule of law,” he is of course referring to US-backed coups, military juntas, debt bondage, invasions, embargoes, assassinations, and other forms of gunboat diplomacy.
That the US is not already formally at war with Russia (even with NATO forces all along its borders) has only to do with the latter’s nuclear arsenal deterrent. Since World War II, a period some describe as a “a period of unprecedented peace,” the US war machine has wiped out some 20 million people, including more than 1 million in Iraq since 2003, engaged in regime change of at least 36 governments, intervened in at least 82 foreign elections, including Russia (1996), planned more than 50 assassinations of foreign leaders, and bombed over 30 countries. This is documented here and here.
Despite unending US and US-supported assaults on Africa and western and central Asia, the authors who see postwar unprecedented peace argue that it’s Russia and China, not the US, that represent the real threats to peace and deserve to be treated as “outcasts.” That NATO has warships plying the Black Sea and making port calls at the ethnically Russian Ukraine city of Odessa and is conducting war games from Latvia to Bulgaria and Ukraine represents unprecedented peace? While NATO, which together has 20 times the military spending of Russia and includes member states along virtually the entire perimeter of Russia, in Western propaganda Russia is the aggressor.
Although the US corporate media may have missed the news, the rest of the world gets the fact that the greatest threat to peace on the planet is Uncle Sam. In 2013, a WIN/Gallup International poll of 66,000 people in 65 countries found that the US was considered by far the most dangerous state on earth (24% of respondents), while Russia didn’t even register statistically on that poll. In 2017, a Pew poll found the same perception of US power and that such a view had increased to 38% and had grown in 21 of 30 countries compared to 2013. Even America’s neighbors, Canada and Mexico, see the US as a major threat to their countries, worse than either China or Russia. The mainstream media (MSM) stenographers’ myopia in failing to cover this story is not an oversight. Carl Bernstein, of Watergate exposé fame, documented in 1977 the fact that from the early 1950s to the late 1970s, the MSM (New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, and the rest) had regularly served as overseas informers for the CIA. It would be hard to believe that those ties are not still intact given the level of collaboration among the CIA, the MSM, and the Democratic Party in the Russiagate conspiracy drama.
Context is everything.
In blaming others for the instability of the Middle East, it is important to bear in mind that for 36 years since Reagan launched air attacks on Beirut and parts of Syria, the US, and its ally Israel, has been using the greater Middle East region as a testing ground for its weapons systems. This has meant repeated bombing and droning of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Kuwait, and Sudan, and increased weapons sales to the region to assure continuous instability and profits. The US has “special forces” operating in two-thirds of the world’s countries and non-special forces stationed in three-quarters of them, altogether over 800 military bases and installations in as many as 130 countries (the Pentagon refuses to give the exact number). By comparison, apart from several bases in some of the former Soviet republics, Russia has a naval resupply facility in Vietnam and small temporary leased naval and airport stations in Syria. China opened a combined naval and army base in Djibouti in 2017 and an “unofficial military presence” in Tajikistan. There is nothing remotely close to equivalence.
We can expect a continuing outcasting of Russia, either under a second Trump presidency or, if the long dark shadow of the Clintons prevails, a Joe Biden White House. Biden claims without the benefit of evidence that currently “the Russian government is brazenly assaulting the foundations of Western democracy around the world,” as if the huge imbalance of military forces and the long history of US interventions against liberal democracies and socialist states were unknown or irrelevant. In his (and the establishment’s) heavy-handed uses of propaganda, Biden has learned well the tactics of Goebbels – repeat the lies often enough to make the imperial state appear as the victim.
With regard to a brazen assault on democracy, Biden might take a cue from Clinton, who knew how to capitalize on her power position by signing off on huge arms sales to the Saudis (e.g., a $29 billion sale of fighter jets to that country to be used against Yemen) and other Gulf States while securing tens of millions of dollars in donations from the sheikhs ($25 million from Saudi Arabia alone) to her private foundation, run by her husband. This is all the more contemptuous given that she acknowledged in 2013: “The Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of weapons… clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region…and pretty indiscriminately – not at all targeted toward the people that we think would be the more moderate, least likely, to cause problems in the future.”
In other words, she knew the Saudis and other Gulf dictators were arming ISIS (ISIL) and other caliphate actors but continued to keep them as allies and patrons. She also took $800 thousand for her 2016 campaign (almost double what Trump received) and some $3 million for her private foundation from oil and gas companiesafter approving lucrative gas pipeline in the Canadian tar sands. Part of the foundation staff’s business was to arrange meetings of top donors meetings with the then secretary of state. Following Clinton and Obama’s lead and without a second thought, Trump has authorized US energy companies to sell the Saudi monarchy nuclear power technology and assistance.
In foreign policy, indeed, it’s hard to see any meaningful difference between Republican and Democratic administrations. Obama and John Kerry sent Undersecretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Victoria Nulandto Kiev’s Maidan to cheer on the 2014 coup, hand out sandwiches to protesters, and give marching orders to her ambassador there to arrange for Yatsenyuk to be prime minister and to “fuck the EU.” Poroshenko, a regular informer at the US embassy, as WikiLeaks revealed, was already in the bag for president. Biden was brought in to “midwife” and “help glue this thing” by pressuring the still-ruling Yanukovych to step down in favor of the US-designated coup leaders. Along the same lines, Trump’s then ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, joined Venezuelan protesters outside UN headquarters in New York, using a megaphone to publicly call for a coup against Maduro. “I will tell you,” she told the group, “the U.S. voice is going to be loud.”
Both the Ukraine and Venezuela interventions are in part a grand strategy to isolate Russia. However, the orchestration of a new Cold War against Russia and to implicate Trump as a Kremlin puppet has failed, and the problem for Russiagate propagandists is how to keep the conspiracy theory alive now that Mueller’s unsuccessful hunt for 5thcolumnists is in the dustbin. The leading Russia scholar, Stephen Cohen, who has been professionally marginalized because of his skepticism toward the CIA narrative, sees the impact of a larger scandal – the corruption of the Democratic Party and its minions in the media that formed an alliance with the spooks. He asks: “what about the legions of high-ranking intelligence officials, politicians, editorial writers, television producers, and other opinion-makers, and their eager media outlets that perpetuated, inflated, and prolonged this unprecedented political scandal in American history…?”
Another question is, how would the mainstream media financially survive an ending of Russiagate, if indeed the media moguls allow it to end? This spectacular failure of the “fourth estate” in covering the Clinton and Democrats’ defeat in 2016 greatly weakened their trust status, which has been in quite steady decline since the 1970s, especially among Republicans. Democrats tend to look more favorably on the largely partisan liberal MSM for obvious reasons. However, as of December 2018, according to an IPSOS/Reuters poll, only 44% of Americans has much (16%) or some (28%) confidence in the MSM, compared to hardly any (48%). On whether MSM news organizations are more interested in making money than telling the truth, 59% agreed with the former assessment. No known organization has published findings on MSM trust since the completion of the Mueller debacle.
What is to be made politically of the Russia obsession? Russiagate, which Matt Taibbi calls “this generation’s WMD,” can be seen as serving three broad major purposes.
It has given the Democratic Party leadership and its partners in the CIA and MSM a cause célèbre inorder to salvage the status and image of the party and distract from its disastrous electoral defeats from 2008 to 2016. It thereby serves as an alternative reality to the widespread recognition that the ruling forces in the party have no genuine popular agenda and represent corporate, banking, neoliberal, and neoconservative militarist projects designed under Bill Clinton’s New Democrat agenda.
On foreign policy, Russiagate puts the Democrats to the right of the Republicans, similar to the way that John Kennedy in the 1960 campaign accused the Eisenhower (and VP Nixon) administration of weakening America’s defenses, which presently enables the energy and defense industries and their lobbyists to unduly influence the perception of international threats and flashpoints. Democrats in the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly for the 2019 $716 billion defense budget, over and above what even Trump requested. In 2018, five military contractors – Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon – provided key political leaders in both parties with $14.4 million in addition to $94 million spent on lobbying efforts that year. Oil & gas spent $89 million on the election campaign and $125 million on lobbying.
And, third, it serves to stifle the political left in and outside the party and the demands for progressive legislative changes activated by Bernie Sanders in 2016 and by newer members like Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Tulsi Gabbard.
Where is the center of public political confidence these days? Certainly not with the mainstream media, which is even lower than that for Trump. Even in terms of its vaunted claims of press freedom, the US fares quite badly. Reporters Without Borders ranked the US number 45th worldwide (of 180 countries cited) in press freedom in its 2018 report. Tory-led Britain slid from 33rd in 2014 to 40th– only Italy and Greece were behind the UK among western European countries. And although Trump hasn’t helped with his attacks on the media (and more than reciprocated by the media’s extraordinarily hostile coverage of the president), the situation wasn’t much better under Obama, who threatened whistle blowers in the press with enforcing the 1917 Espionage Act. This is law that may be pressed against the journalist Julian Assange. There still exists no “shield law” guaranteeing journalists the right to protect their sources’ identities. Journalism students should be concerned for another reason as well:Newspaper employment between 2001 and 2016 has been cut by more than half, from 412,000 to 174,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
William Arkin, who quit NBC News as a political commentator last January, accused the station of peddling “ho-hum reporting” that “essentially condones” an endless US war presence in the Middle East and Africa. He also took the network to task for not reporting “the failures of the generals and national security leaders,” and essentially becoming “a defender of the government against Trump” and a “cheerleader for open and subtle threat mongering.”
In his parting comments, he wrote: “I’m alarmed at how quick NBC is to mechanically … be in favor of policies that just spell more conflict and more war.… Even on Russia, though we should be concerned about the brittleness of our democracy that it is so vulnerable to manipulation, do we really yearn for the Cold War?”
It may be whistling in the wind, but there are more important things to worry about than whether “the Russians” exposed the DNC’s perfidious behavior in 2016. It would be more worthwhile for Democrats to demand programs that eliminate child poverty, which is at 20% in the US, compared to an OECD average of 13%. It might also be useful to concentrate a bit more on the white working class and working poor that went to Trump in 2016, whose kids make up 31% of the child poverty bracket (black children are 24%, and Latino children are 36%).
And while they’re at it, they might try to change the fact that the US ranks 25thout of 29 industrialized countries in investments in early childhood education or the fact that the disgraceful American infant mortality rate at 5.8 deaths per 1,000 live births is 50% higher than the OECD average (3.9%). Many of the parents of these less privileged children are serving long sentences in prison for non-violent crimes, the discarded citizens who form the highest incarceration rate in the world. Overall, the Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranked the US 18th out of 21 wealthy countries on measures of labor markets, poverty rates, safety nets, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. On the other hand, the US has more than 25% of the world’s 2,208 billionaires. This is American exceptionalism at its worst.
The corporate-run market system and the calamities it is bringing to the world depends on such distractions. As the New York Times journalist and defender of US global supremacy, Thomas Friedman, has noted, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.” In his view, the system needs protecting, for which his “journalism” and most of the MSM are certainly doing their part.
Unless the rather soft left within the Democratic Party can somehow capture the public imagination, the Democrats’ political agenda, the MSM and their cohorts in the deep state will likely continue to report fake Russian conspiracies around the world.
Russiagate is a propaganda industry that keeps on giving. In the longue durée of American elections, the question is what discourse will dominate the next campaign – social justice and a rational foreign policy or more aggressive polemics about Russia aimed at a steady pathway to nuclear war?
- Nearly Half Of Millennials Wouldn't Invest In Stocks Even If They Had The Money
As the American equity market roars back toward its all-time highs, a majority of the millennial generation is probably learning the true meaning of FOMO, because as study after study has showed, those who came of age immediately before, during and after the financial crisis were so scarred by the experience that they refused to ever buy in to the equity market. Overall, equity ownership among American adults remains 8% below its pre-crisis levels.
Of course, the factors behind the millennial generation’s inability to accumulate wealth are myriad: Stagnant wages, crushing student loan debt and widening inequality are just a few reasons why the savings rate among those under the age of 35 is basically nil. And when they do invest, they appear doomed to repeat the mistakes of the not-too-distant past, favoring get-rich-quick bubble plays like marijuana stocks and bitcoin over blue-chip stalwarts like Apple.
But while most would probably chalk millennials’ aversion to investing up to the fact that they don’t have any savings or income to spare, one recent study suggested that even if they had the money, they wouldn’t put it in stocks.
Lexington Law, a firm that offers services to help people fix their credit, asked 1,000 millennials how they would invest $10,000 if they had it to spare.
Nearly half – 46% – said they wouldn’t put the money in stocks.
Only one in three respondents said they would rely on a financial advisor, reflecting a distrust of financial ‘professionals’ that has lingered since the crash.
And although a slightly higher percentage of men than women said they would rely on their own advice, most expressed a lack of confidence in their investing acumen that was reflective of their lack of acumen.
As the study’s authors argued, this distrust in the financial system isn’t terribly surprising.
Considering the effects of the last market crash, it’s not terribly surprising that 46 percent of adults aged 25 to 34 said they wouldn’t invest in the stock market. Many of the financial institutions that played a role in the last recession continue to operate as investment banks today. Though employment and wages are up, the crisis hasn’t been forgotten.
We wonder if their attitudes would be different if Congress and the Fed didn’t step in to bail out banks and the wealthy while leaving average working Americans to shoulder the brunt of the consequences?
- Five Companies Represent 35% Of All The S&P 500’s Value Creation Over The Last 5 Years
Submitted by Nicholas Colas of DataTrek
Six companies represent 37% of all the S&P 500’s value creation over the last 5 years: Amazon (10.1%), Apple (6.5%), Facebook (4.7%), Google (6.4%), Microsoft (7.8%), and Netflix (1.8%). And even though NFLX may look small, its increase in market value over the last 5 years is essentially the same as JP Morgan’s. US equity valuations reflect present and future Tech disruption. No other narrative need apply.
* * *
In our Markets section 2 nights ago we mentioned that Amazon is responsible for 6.7% of the S&P 500’s market value gain since November 2005. Amazon was added to the index in the that month, and since then:
- The value of the companies in the S&P 500 has risen by $13,161 billion.
- Amazon’s market cap has increased by $886 billion
- Divide the two figures and you get 6.7%
That got us to thinking: how much have large Tech companies influenced the S&P 500 over just the last 5 years? Here are a few baseline numbers to start the analysis:
- At the end of March 2014, the S&P 500 had a total value of $17,206,453 million.
- At the end of March 2019, it was $24,760,982 million
- The difference: $7,554.5 billion, or 43.9% higher
- One technical note: the S&P 500 is +51.3% over this period with the difference due to stock buybacks.
So how much of that $7.6 trillion comes from Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Netflix? Here are the numbers:
Amazon: 10.1% of the market’s value gain over the last 5 years:
- Market cap Q1 2014: $157.4 billion
- Market cap now: $917.6 billion
- Difference: $760.2 billion
Apple: 6.5% of the market’s gains over the last 5 years:
- Market cap Q1 2014: $472.1 billion
- Market cap now: $963.9 billion
- Difference: $491.8 billion
Facebook: 4.7% of the market’s gains over the past 5 years:
- Market cap Q1 2014: $157.2 billion
- Market cap now: $510.5 billion
- Difference: $353.3 billion
Google: 6.4% of the market’s gains over the last 5 years:
- Market cap Q1 2014: $375.6 billion
- Market cap now: $859.5 billion
- Difference: $483.9 billion
Microsoft: 7.8% of the market’s gains over the last 5 years:
- Market cap Q1 2014: $343.0 billion
- Market cap now: $934.2 billion
- Difference: $591.2 billion
Netflix: 1.8% of the market’s total gains over the last 5 years:
- Market cap Q1 2014: $21.6 billion
- Market cap now: $154.9 billion
- Difference: $133.3 billion
Pulling all this into 3 summary points:
#1: Netflix may not seem all that impressive at “just” $133 billion of added market cap, but that’s essentially what JP Morgan added to the S&P 500 over the same period. JPM’s market cap has increased by $139.1 billion in the last 5 years.
Conclusion: disruption at global scale can add as much market value as a much larger but old-school business even if the latter is very well-run.
#2: In aggregate, these 6 companies are responsible for 37.3% of all the S&P’s incremental value creation over the last 5 years. Take out Netflix, and the remaining 5 are still 35.5%.
Conclusion: over a third of the S&P’s 44% value accretion in the last 5 years comes down to a handful of now-super cap tech disruptors. Without them, the S&P’s total value would only have compounded annually at 5.0% instead of 7.6%.
#3: The right question out of this analysis: what will be the source of the S&P’s value creation over the next 5 years (i.e. where is the next $3-5 trillion of market cap coming from)? Here’s how we handicap the odds:
- 65% chance it will be these same companies. They have the scale and scope to develop the next wave of disruptive technologies and get them to market.
- 30% chance it will be either new businesses (such as the raft of IPOs currently in the pipeline) or already public Tech companies with a break-through technology or platform. This is why investors are looking so hard at Uber, for example.
- 5% chance it will come from a strategic shift in non-Tech companies to incorporate disruptive business models at scale. The challenge here is the Innovator’s Dilemma – established businesses rarely burn their boats and strike off into the wilderness.
Final thought: remember that we only highlighted 6 disruptive Tech companies here and still got to 37% of all the value creation for US stocks over the last half decade. Add another dozen or two and we suspect we could get to well north of 50%. The US stock market, or at least the S&P 500, is inextricably tied to the present and future of disruptive technology. We don’t see that changing.
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