- Europe's Impossible Refugee Math: Brexit Was Mathematical Certainty Eventually
Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
In a recent GMO commentary on Immigration and Brexit, founder Jeremy Grantham laid out precise reasons why Brexit was a mathematical certainty eventually.
Curiously, Grantham thinks Brexit was a bad idea.
On the second sentence, I disagree strongly.
The following snips, including bullet points are from Grantham. Subtitles are mine, not his.
Europe’s Impossible Refugee Math
- The truth about immigration to the EU, in my view, is bitter. As covered in earlier quarterlies, I believe Africa and parts of the Near East are beginning to fail as civilized states.
- They are failing under the pressure of populations that have multiplied by 5 to 10 times since I was born; climate for growing food that is deteriorating at an accelerating rate; degraded soils; insufficient unpolluted water; bad governance; and lack of infrastructure. Country after country is tilting into rolling failure.
- This is producing in these failing states increasing numbers of desperate people, mainly young men, willing to risk money and their lives to attempt an entry into the EU.
- For the best example of the non-compute intractability of this problem, consider Nigeria. It had 21 million people when I was born and now has 187 million. In a recent poll, 40% of Nigerians (75 million) said they would like to emigrate, mostly to the UK (population 64 million). Difficult. But the official UN estimate for Nigeria’s population in 2100 is over 800 million! (They still have a fertility rate of six children per woman.) Without discussing the likelihood of ever reaching 800 million, I suspect you will understand the problem at hand. Impossible.
- I wrote two years ago that this immigration pressure would stress Europe and that the first victim would be Western Europe’s liberal traditions. Well, this is happening in real time as they say, far faster than I expected. It will only get worse as hundreds of thousands of refugees become millions.
- The EU and Europe may support a few years of increasing numbers of these failing state refugees, but that is all. They will fairly quickly have to refuse to take even legitimately distressed refugees. The alternative – to take all comers – would likely be not just a failed EU, but a failing Europe.
Brexit Unnecessary?
- Calling for an utterly unnecessary referendum by the Prime Minister for superficial and short-term political gain. He could have muddled through anyway. Referenda are dangerous. They allow for the true will of the people to be voiced, informed or ill-informed, manipulated or not. Dangerous. As Churchill said (now much quoted), “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” He might also have commented about the willful laziness of the one-third who never vote.
- The UK press, the most egregiously editorialized in the developed world. The broad circulation papers goaded and badgered their readers toward Brexit.
- As for the politicians, forget it. Whimsical theories, back-stabbing disloyalties, a glaring lack of planning and foresight. Above all, completely ignoring the precautionary principle, playing with fire like children. Now those Brexiters that haven’t run away can reap what they have sown, as unfortunately will the whole UK. If you will, the pack of dogs can now try to work out what to do with that darned car.
Mish Comments
In absence of prior knowledge, I would suspect few would think the same person wrote both snips.
Given the math laid out in the first snip, and given the total stubbornness of chancellor Merkel, it was both a mathematical necessity and pragmatic result for the UK to leave the EU.
Politicians are Dangerous
Grantham’s statement that “Referenda are dangerous” is no different that saying “elections are dangerous“.
Since when are politicians guaranteed to be saviors?
A few dangerous leaders come to mind. George Bush and his ludicrous war in Iraq is a prime example. Lyndon B. Johnson and his idiotic war in Vietnam is another.
Questions for Grantham
- Given a referendum on the idea of a war in Iraq, and a genuine estimate of its true cost, would US citizens have voted for war in Iraq?
- Would the UK have voted to follow Bush in a “coalition of the willing”?
- Would US citizens have voted to carpet bomb Vietnam?
- Would European voters approved a pact with Erdogan to allow visa-free access to the rest of Europe to 80 million Turks?
Politicians are and their pet goals are far more dangerous than referendums. Chancellor Merkel and her inane, mathematically impossible, open arms welcome of refugees was the #1 Reason UK Voted Leave the EU.
Let’s not blame the voters or the referendum itself.
For more on this subject, please see Dear chancellor Merkel: When does Turkey join the EU? When do 80 million Turks have visa-free travel?
- There Will Be No Second American Revolution: The Futility Of An Armed Revolt
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.” – James Madison
America is a ticking time bomb.
All that remains to be seen is who – or what – will set fire to the fuse.
We are poised at what seems to be the pinnacle of a manufactured breakdown, with police shooting unarmed citizens, snipers shooting police, global and domestic violence rising, and a political showdown between two presidential candidates equally matched in unpopularity.
The preparations for the Republican and Democratic national conventions taking place in Cleveland and Philadelphia—augmented by a $50 million federal security grant for each city—provide a foretaste of how the government plans to deal with any individual or group that steps out of line: they will be censored, silenced, spied on, caged, intimidated, interrogated, investigated, recorded, tracked, labeled, held at gunpoint, detained, restrained, arrested, tried and found guilty.
For instance, anticipating civil unrest and mass demonstrations in connection with the Republican Party convention, Cleveland officials set up makeshift prisons, extra courtrooms to handle protesters, and shut down a local university in order to house 1,700 riot police and their weapons. The city’s courts are preparing to process up to 1,000 people a day. Additionally, the FBI has also been conducting “interviews” with activists in advance of the conventions to discourage them from engaging in protests.
Make no mistake, the government is ready for a civil uprising.
Indeed, the government has been preparing for this moment for years.
A 2008 Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report goes on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”
Subsequent reports by the Department of Homeland Security to identify, monitor and label right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) have manifested into full-fledged pre-crime surveillance programs. Almost a decade later, after locking down the nation and spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS has concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.
Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.
Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that is colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.
All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry.
It’s astounding how convenient we’ve made it for the government to lock down the nation.
We’ve even allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helm military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.
The events of recent years—the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have all conjoined to create an environment in which “we the people” are more distrustful and fearful of each other and more reliant on the government to keep us safe.
Of course, that’s the point.
The powers-that-be want us to feel vulnerable.
They want us to fear each other and trust the government’s hired gunmen to keep us safe from terrorists, extremists, jihadists, psychopaths, etc.
Most of all, the powers-that-be want us to feel powerless to protect ourselves and reliant on and grateful for the dubious protection provided by the American police state.
Their strategy is working.
The tree of liberty is dying.
There will be no second American Revolution.
There is no place in our nation for the kind of armed revolution our forefathers mounted against a tyrannical Great Britain. Such an act would be futile and tragic. We are no longer dealing with a distant, imperial king but with a tyrant of our own making: a militarized, technologized, heavily-financed bureaucratic machine that operates beyond the reach of the law.
The message being sent to the citizenry is clear: there will be no revolution, armed or otherwise.
Anyone who believes that they can wage—and win—an armed revolt against the American police state has not been paying attention. Those who wage violence against the government and their fellow citizens are playing right into the government’s hands. Violence cannot and will not be the answer to what ails America.
Whether instigated by the government or the citizenry, violence will only lead to more violence. It does not matter how much firepower you have. The government has more firepower.
It does not matter how long you think you can hold out by relying on survivalist skills, guerilla tactics and sheer grit. The government has the resources to outwait, out-starve, outman, outgun and generally overpower you.
This government of wolves will not be overtaken by force.
Unfortunately, we waited too long to wake up to the government’s schemes.
We did not anticipate that “we the people” would become the enemy. For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.
What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, whether intentional or not.
By waging endless wars abroad, by bringing the instruments of war home, by transforming police into extensions of the military, by turning a free society into a suspect society, by treating American citizens like enemy combatants, by discouraging and criminalizing a free exchange of ideas, by making violence its calling card through SWAT team raids and militarized police, by fomenting division and strife among the citizenry, by acclimating the citizenry to the sights and sounds of war, and by generally making peaceful revolution all but impossible, the government has engineered an environment in which domestic violence has become inevitable.
What we are now experiencing is a civil war, devised and instigated in part by the U.S. government.
The outcome for this particular conflict is already foregone: the police state wins.
The objective: compliance and control.
The strategy: destabilize the economy through endless wars, escalate racial tensions, polarize the populace, heighten tensions through a show of force, intensify the use of violence, and then, when all hell breaks loose, clamp down on the nation for the good of the people and the security of the nation.
So where does that leave us?
Despite the fact that communities across the country are, for all intents and purposes, being held hostage by a government that is armed to the teeth and more than willing to use force in order to “maintain order,” most Americans seem relatively unconcerned. Worse, we have become so fragmented as a nation, so hostile to those with whom we might disagree, so distrustful of those who are different from us, that we are easily divided and conquered.
We have been desensitized to violence, acclimated to a military presence in our communities and persuaded that there is nothing we can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation. In this way, the floundering economy, the blowback arising from military occupations abroad, police shootings, the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure and all of the other mounting concerns have become non-issues to a populace that is easily entertained, distracted, manipulated and controlled.
The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.
We are fast becoming an anemic, weak, pathetically diluted offspring of our revolutionary forebears incapable of mounting a national uprising against a tyrannical regime.
If there is to be any hope of reclaiming our government and restoring our freedoms, it will require a different kind of coup: nonviolent, strategic and grassroots, starting locally and trickling upwards. Such revolutions are slow and painstaking. They are political, in part, but not through any established parties or politicians.
Most of all, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, for any chance of success, such a revolution will require more than a change of politics: it will require a change of heart among the American people, a reawakening of the American spirit, and a citizenry that cares more about their freedoms than their fantasy games.
- Did "China" Just Buy The Most Important Company In The World?
In the aftermath of last night stunning announcement that Japan’s Internet giant SoftBank would acquire UK-based ARM Holdings, a company which makes chips present in virtually every mobile and “connected” device, for $32 billion, sending the semiconductor sector surging, questions emerged why the company is doing this.
On one hand, even the founder of ARM Holdings himself, Hermann Hauser said, told the BBC he believes its imminent sale to Japanese technology giant Softbank is “a sad day for technology in Britain”. Hauser said the result of the Softbank deal meant the “determination of what comes next for technology will not be decided in Britain any more, but in Japan”.
On the other, the stock of SoftBank has tumbled now that the Japanese market has reopened after a one-day holiday.
Bloomberg gave the trivial answer first thing this morning in a piece titled ‘Why SoftBank Is Spending $32 Billion on U.K. Chip Designer ARM“, which concluded the following: “Softbank Chairman Masayoshi Son sees ARM’s future in being inside the legion of products that are becoming internet-connected, from street lamps to air conditioners, washing machines to drones — so-called “internet of things” devices.”
Perhaps. However, a more provocative explanation has emerged courtesy of SouthBay Research, which when looking at the same deal, asks if China (yes China) “just acquired the most important company in the world? “
Here is SouthBay‘s explanation why:
ARM Holdings (ARMH) holds the keys to the future of electronics That’s not hyberbole.
Not only does ARMH dominate the world of mobile devices, it is rapidly penetrating all electronics: from consumer electronics to the computer network.
ARMH designs and licenses semiconductors. Their designs are the core of the critical components of consumer electronics: smartphones, tablets, TVs, and so on. For example, most of today’s tablets and phones run on Qualcomm chips: they did $26B in sales last year. These chips re-package ARMH designs.
As electronics continue to penetrate everything from cars to refrigerators, they use ARM designs. The Internet of Things (IOT) uses ARMH technology.
Like a spider in the web, ARMH sits firmly at the heart of the future of all electronics.
I have reviewed ARMH two different times.
First, as the life preserver to save Intel. Intel is unable to survive in the post-PC world and ARMH was a way to buy their way back in. Unfortunately, anti-trust was probably a factor in preventing the buy.
Another time I mentioned ARMH was when discussing the future of China’s semiconductor efforts.
After airplanes, semiconductors are a major capital outflow. The South Korean and Taiwanese economies are driven by semiconductors. Beyond economics, semiconductor strength enables national security strength (super computers). For this and other reasons, the Chinese government has made a domestic semiconductor industry a major strategic goal. Even going so far as to earmark $10B for intellectual property development.
The fastest path is acquisition, and ARMH embodies the future. For China that presents two problems: price (ARMH was $19B last week) and politics (China buying the crown jewels of the internet touches some nerves in the Western world).
Today Softbank announced an offer to buy ARM Holdings.
Softbank = China
Softbank is a Japanese company best known for owning Yahoo Japan and Sprint.
With their background in telecommunications and the internet, why would they want to buy a major semiconductor company? And why, with $89B in debt, is Softbank adding another $31B?The answer: Softbank is not what they appear. What isn’t as well known is that Softbank is actually a major player in China’s internet economy.
For starters, they bankrolled Alibaba. They control 32% of Alibaba, and through Alibaba, they dominate the Chinese internet economy because Alibaba has invested in the top internet companies in China: Weibo, for example.Although based in Japan, Softbank is very much a Chinese company.
The fact remains that, despite the $10B budget, China has yet to land any major companies.
Perhaps Softbank on its own is front-running a bigger China budget.
Or perhaps Softbank was tapped to be the buyer, but not the ultimate buyer. After all, who is lending them to $31B to close the deal? And Softbank will earn a lot of political credits for doing a favor for the
Chinese government effort to ramp-up a semiconductor company.
Don’t be surprised if we see an announcement in a year or two that ARMH is up for sale and the buyer is a major Chinese company.
This was a brilliant move.
- Top Turkish Official In Charge Of Campaign Against ISIS Found Dead, Shot In The Neck
By now only the most naive believe the official narrative behind Turkey’s Friday coup.
We say that for two reasons: first, as even the EU commissioner dealing with Turkey’s membership bid, Johannes Hahn, said when discussing the unprecedented arrest purge in Turkey, “it looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage. I’m very concerned. It is exactly what we feared.” He did not exlaborate what exactly he had feared, but one can infer; second, as we caught Turkey’s press openly changing the narrative, Erdogan was not even able to figure out who to blame for the “coup attempt” until this afternoon, first accusing the US, then the former Turkish air force chief, before finally deciding on accusing the 77-year-old Pennsylvania resident, Fethullah Gulen, of being the frail mastermind behind it all.
To be sure, the western media was happy to glance over these “changeovers” and to spoonfeed a false story to the masses just to maintain the illusion of the official Turkish narrative.
An example of this is when Erdogan told CNN earlier today that “he escaped death by only a few minutes before coup plotters stormed the resort in southwest Turkey where he was vacationing last weekend. Erdogan’s interview was broadcast late Monday. He told CNN that soldiers supporting the coup killed two of his bodyguards when they stormed the resort early Saturday. “Had I stayed 10, 15 additional minutes, I would have been killed or I would have been taken,” he told CNN through a translator provided by the presidency.”
And yet, less than a day earlier we wrote that even though “Coup Pilots Had Erdogan’s Plane In Their Sights” they did nothing, prompting a former military officer “with knowledge of the events” to ask “why they didn’t fire is a mystery.” So just hours before two F-16 had radar lock on Erdogan and decided not to kill the dictator, troops from the same alleged “coup” were scrambling to get to Erdogan – many hours after the so-called coup had already started – in his resort hotel, and where they would have killed him… had he stayed “10, 15 additional minutes.”
We can see why not even the Europeans believe this any more.
Then another example of the media forced – and false – narrative came from the Guardian which earlier today published a piece titled “Military coup was well planned and very nearly succeeded, say Turkish officials” which contains pearls, such as the following:
It was midnight in the Turkish capital, just two and a half hours into the attempted coup, and the group of nine senior ministers who were gathered in a conference room at the prime ministry were convinced that they were all about to meet their end. “They probably will be successful and we will die tonight,” said one of the ministers, according to an official who was present at the meeting. “Let us be ready to die. We will all be martyred in this fight.”
Such drama… makes you feel like you were almost there.
Not surprisingly, the bulk of the piece by Kareem Shaheen is poor on facts but heavy on florid descriptions, interpretations, hearsay and all those other literary techniques that make for a good piece of fiction. Some more examples:
But as Turkey picks up the pieces after the failed coup, new details are emerging of how it unfolded, and just how close the military intervention came to succeeding. Many observers have labelled the attempt amateurish, but accounts by officials contradict this characterisation, describing it as well organised and very nearly successful.
In Ankara on Friday, the day of the coup, the interior minister had been invited, along with other top officials, to a high-level security meeting in military headquarters that was supposed to take place after 5pm, a ploy that turned out to be intended as a pretext to detain him. He did not go because he was too busy, and later when the coup unfolded he was stuck in Ankara’s Esenbo?a airport, setting up a crisis cell there to manage the fallout, protected by crowds that had gathered to oppose the coup.
Again, zero actual facts. Not surprisingly, the author himself catches this tangent of his “story:
Stories emerged of those crucial hours, between the president’s address and the successful quelling of the coup by 4am, that are sure to pass into the official mythology of the events. At 1am, officials say the police chief the city of Bursa arrested the local army commander, who possessed a 6-page list that included the names of designated judges and military officials who were to be appointed to various positions in the bureaucracy in the aftermath of the coup. Other pro-coup soldiers possessed lists of secure telephone lines to receive orders.
Why he would give himself up knowing he would most likely face death if i) the coup was real and ii) Erdogan remained in power… well, let’s not worry about that.
But then, painfully, we finally stumbled on something which could be factually disproven, i.e. a precious fact. And it may shine a far different light on what happened during the chaos of the staged coup. It was the following:
The top counter-terrorism official responsible for Turkey’s campaign against Islamic State did go to a “meeting” at the presidential palace in Ankara. He was later found with his hands tied behind his back, shot in the neck, according to a senior official.
And suddenly so many pieces of the Turkish “puzzle” fall into place, because while the rest of the narrative about the coup is so glaringly fabricated and literally made up on the spot, the death of Turkey’s chief anti-ISIS counter-terrorism official being quietly killed, makes so much sense sense for a country where as we first presented back in November, “The Man Who Funds ISIS is Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey’s President” followed by “ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: “Raqqa’s Rockefellers”, Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection“, and of course, “Erdogan Says Will Resign If Oil Purchases From ISIS Proven After Putin Says Has “More Proof.”
Having arrested 20,000 people already, Erdogan’s witch hunts are just starting. However, it appears he had some very loose ends he had to take care of already on Friday night. One such loose end was the man who fought ISIS on behalf of Turkey, the same Turkey which – incidentally – funded and armed ISIS.
We eagerly look forward to finding out what else will emerge as the fascinating story of Erdogan’s getting rid of all loose ends, is finally revealed.
- RNC Day 1: Make America Safe Again – Live Feed
After four months of primaries and barely 12 months after Donald Trump first announced his candidacy for president of the United States, the Republican National Committee’s convention has officially kicked off today in Cleveland with the theme – Make America Great Again. While the 'main event' is not until Thursday; Day 1 of the Republican National Convention's sub-theme is "Make America Safe Again" with Melania Trump headlining (introduced by her husband) along with Duck Dynasty's Willie Robertson, 'Lone Survivor' Marcus Luttrell, Governor Rick Perry, outspoken Milwaukee Sheriff David Clark, and Mark Geist & John Tiegen (Benghazi security team members).
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Some highlights from earlier in the day include:
Gingrich Slams Bushes…
Newt Gingrich says the Bush family is behaving "childishly" for skipping this week's Republican National Convention.
In a Monday morning interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" at the RNC site in Cleveland, the former GOP House speaker said "the Republican party has been awfully good to the Bushes and they're showing remarkably little gratitude."
He says the family needs to "get over" former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's loss to presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in the primary race.
Gingrich also says he's not disappointed that he was passed over by Trump for the vice presidential slot on the Republican ticket in favor of Indiana Governor Mike Pence. He says if the job is to court support from "regular Republicans," then Pence "will do a much better job."
A group of dissident conservatives says it's gathered the signatures needed to force a showdown vote over Republican rules on the GOP national convention's first day.
Party leaders have been trying to avert the clash in hopes of projecting an image of a united party as delegates gather to formally nominate Donald Trump to be president. They've been lobbying to try to head off the clash, and expect to win if such a vote occurs.
But just after the convention was gaveled into session on Monday, a dissident group called Delegates Unbound said in an email that it had gathered statements calling for a roll call by a majority of delegates from 10 states. Under GOP rules, a roll call can be demanded if most delegates from seven states sign such a statement.
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Live Feed (main event due to start at 1950ET):
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Conventions give candidates a second chance to make a first impression, even candidates who have been covered by the media as obsessively as Donald Trump. The Republican convention in Cleveland gives Trump that chance. NPR details six things to watch this week…
1. Will the Cleveland convention stick to a script?
Successful conventions drive home a message relentlessly, with every speech, video and testimonial designed to highlight the strengths of the candidate and minimize his weaknesses. Trump has shown that he is allergic to this kind of discipline. Even the rollout of his vice presidential pick was shambolic and off message. Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, told the Washington Post that one goal of the convention is to make Trump more "likable." After all, electing a president is more about "Like" Q than IQ.
Trump has promised to add some "showbiz" to what he says is the usual boring convention formula. He'll have a lot of eyeballs this week. Most analysts predict record audiences, and viewers are expecting something pretty fantastic from the king of reality TV. A boring convention packed with B-list celebrities could drive voters away, or motivate Trump to do or say something even more outrageous to keep their attention.
2. Does Trump expand his message?
Trump has shown time and time again that he's more comfortable with a spontaneous stream of consciousness rant than reading a speech from a teleprompter. And he's been phenomenally successful at capturing the emotions of people upset about a way of life they feel is being eroded by wage stagnation, demographic change and terrorist attacks.
The convention gives him a chance to lay out an actual agenda, to explain with specificity what he would do to improve their lives. The Trump campaign sees its path to the White House running through the Rust Belt — boosting turnout of white-working class men to historic levels. But the message for those voters may clash with what Trump needs to do to attract swing-state voters, suburban women and minorities. The convention will give us a good idea of whether Trump feels he has to modify his message to reach both his base and beyond — or not.
3. Breakout stars?
Conventions can give a rising star a chance to break out. That's what happened in 2004 when Barack Obama electrified the Democratic convention in Boston. The absence of so many leading Republicans in Cleveland may give others a chance to shine. We're watching to see if there is a 2004 Obama in the GOP lineup — maybe Ivanka Trump? Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator? Pro-golfer Natalie Gulbis?
4. Will Mrs. Trump connect?
Wives are the best validators a candidate has. They can humanize a politician — the way Ann Romney and Michelle Obama both did in 2012. Melania Trump, with her unusual background as a supermodel, could come across as affecting or too exotic.
5. Unity — will it happen or not?
"Never Trump" is nevermore, but there is still less enthusiasm about the nominee than at any modern presidential convention. Trump himself has been ambivalent about whether he really needs a unified party, but he has acknowledged that he doesn't have it yet. And he has admitted that party unity was the reason he chose Mike Pence as his running mate.
Polls show that Trump is getting the support of only about three-quarters of Republicans, a very low number. Conventions are often derided as four-day infomercials, but they serve an important purpose — getting an entire political party fired up behind the nominee. Will Cleveland do that for Trump?
6. Will Trump get a bump?
The average convention poll bounce for Democrats since 1964 is 6.8 percent; for Republicans, it has been 5.3 percent, according to Gallup. Sometimes a candidate gets no bounce at all. Romney didn't in 2012.
Trump is currently running a few points behind his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Cleveland gives him a chance to close that gap.
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Full Republican National Convention Schedule:
- How Aristocracies Benefit Both From Racism And From Anti-Racism
Submitted by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,
A good example of the way in which aristocracies benefit both from racism and from anti-racism, is Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the US Presidency, which is heavily backed by America’s aristocracy, and which is fueled not only by their money but also by the widespread racism in American culture, and especially by the equally widespread repudiation by many Americans against racism.
Her opponent in the Democratic Party primaries, Bernie Sanders, was loathed by America’s aristocracy, because he was accusing them of destroying the country and was proposing policies to restore democracy to America, by means of various governmental interventions to reverse the existing undemocratic government’s wealth-transfers «from the masses to the classes». Sanders was publicly acknowledging that any government is a societal-prioritizing instrument, and that it therefore transfers wealth from some to others, via taxes and other essential policies, and so the wealth-distribution needs to be an independent focus of governmental policies – not simply ignored by government and subsumed within the «economic growth» concern.
Here is how Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination in the primaries: She won 84% of the Black vote in the crucial South Carolina primary, where 61% of the voters, in that Democratic primary, were Blacks. Sanders won 58% of Whites voting there. Clinton won, of the total SC primary vote, 73% to Sanders’s 26%, a crushing 47% margin of victory. And then in the later southern primaries, her margins of victory among the overwhelmingly high proportion of Blacks in the Democratic Parties those states, were similar, which fact (her numerous primaries crushing him, especially on Super Tuesday) cemented Sanders’s loss, and her win, of the Democratic nomination.
Whereas both of the primaries that preceded South Carolina (the caucus in Iowa, and the election in New Hampshire) were in overwhelmingly White northern states, which had been little shaped by the legacy of slavery, the racial situation was much more tense in SC, and also in the other southern states, where the culture of slavery still persists, more than a century after the Civil War that was fought over slavery.
Sanders’s message, that economic inequality is the linchpin of America’s increasing inequality of economic opportunity, was a colossal flop among southern Blacks, for whom the pervasive anti-Black racism amongst their local non-Blacks, seemed to be far more the cause of Blacks’ suppressed economic opportunities than did the existing economic inequality itself. To them, Sanders’s argument (that economic inequality is self-perpetuating, and thus needs specific governmental policies to address) seemed false (because the racism there is so intense). They couldn’t understand rich-versus-poor, because what they saw around them every day was Black-versus-White. As Hillary and Bill Clinton’s, and Barack Obama’s, friend and chief economic advisor, Lawrence Summers, taught to his students at Harvard, «I think we can accept, I think we should accept inequality of results, recognizing that those who earn more are in a better position to contribute more to support society».
It’s standard aristocratic propaganda, that economic inequality doesn’t result from economic inequality. The aristocracy want the public to believe the lie that inequality of the wealth-distribution isn’t self-perpetuating and thus doesn’t need governmental policy-changes in order to be reduced – wealth-redistribution by means of conscious targeted governmental policy in order to redistribute it. The aristocracy, and their agents, at Harvard and elsewhere, hide from the public (and from students) the fact that wealth-redistribution doesn’t occur on its own and can’t be addressed by policies that also help aristocrats (such as «more spending on infrastructure» etc. – the standard liberal growth-oriented policies, which don’t also really affect the wealth-distribution, which the aristocracy want to remain tilted in their favor). This lie – that economic inequality doesn’t itself stunt the economic opportunity for the public in the future – also caused Sanders’s support to be less among people who had PhD’s and other post-college degrees, than among mere college-graduates. Clinton won biggest among people with no education beyond high school, and with PhD’s and other post-college degrees. Upper-level education is strongly dependent upon funding from the aristocracy, so the more of it one had, the less progressive and more authoritarian one tended to be, and this showed in the vote. Clinton’s high support also among the low-educated mass of Democrats (ones with no exposure to college) resulted from the primacy there of two other stanchions of conservatism: religion and family (including ancestry, which brings in also clan and tribe). Furthermore, those voters are usually working so hard just to stay alive; they haven’t the time to be able to see politics beyond the mass-media, which of course are owned by the aristocrats and thus slanted toward Clinton, against Sanders.
Clinton also benefited (though only to a lesser extent) from the fact that most of the voters in the South Carolina Democratic primary were women, to whom she was likewise targeting an anti-bigotry pitch: in that case, anti-sexist.
By «racism» in the title here, is meant also any discrimination against a racial, ethnic, gender, religious, or any other non-economically-defined segment of the population; so, it includes also gender-discrimination and other forms of discrimination. In other words: all forms of bigotry, and of opposition to bigotry, distract from the oppression of the public by the aristocrats (the billionaires and centi-millionaires and their agents), and focus the attention instead against bigotry (or in favor of a particular type of bigotry, against a particular group); and, thus, bigotry and anti-bigotry benefit the aristocracy.
Clinton’s basic message is that America’s inequality of economic opportunity isn’t a class-phenomenon, but a bigotry-phenomenon, such as discrimination against Blacks, against women, against gays, etc. This message won among the Democratic Party’s many minority-groups (Blacks, Hispanics, etc.), even though the economic inequality that her financial backers foster (and which here policies advance) has produced these people’s rotten education, inability to get out of debt, high assessed interest-rates, high rates of illness, etc. These conceptual connections as blockages against economic opportunity are abstract, whereas the incidences of bigotry against these people are concrete, blatant blockages.
Clinton’s contest against the other Party’s nominee, the Republican Party’s Donald Trump, is against an aristocratic candidate who has largely been pitching to bigots for his votes – especially to bigots against Muslims, and against Hispanics. He now is faced with two contradictory demands: he can either focus more on the economic-class divide (hoping to draw off some of the Sanders voters), and thereby antagonize America’s aristocracy even more than he already has (by his opposition against Clinton’s record as a war-monger, and against her blatant lying and corruption, things that are mainstays in any aristocracy and thus insult aristocrats including himself), or else he can continue to focus on bigots; but, if he does the latter, then the contest will largely become one between bigots (voting for him) and anti-bigots (voting for Clinton), in which case there will continue to be many aristocrats who (unlike the aristocrat Trump himself) flee from any public association with any form of bigotry (almost all aristocrats pretend to be opposed to it, just as the Clintons and Obama so prominently do) and so (in addition to Hillary’s being an ideal nominee for aristocrats) they’ll starve Trump’s campaign of cash, and he’ll then almost certainly lose – or, at least, that’s the scenario.
This is not a prediction that he will lose. The current US Presidential contest has no clear historical precedent, although the strategic realities in it are the standard ones in political contests. Trump is an extremely formidable campaigner, who has beaten all of his opponents so far and also every one of the ‘experts’ or pundits. (I’m actually expecting him to win; but that’s neither here nor there.)
The irony is that what the current contest displays with especially stark clarity is the historically well-established reality, that aristocracies benefit both from racism and from anti-racism. It has hardly been clearer than it is here, despite the other, highly unusual, aspects of the current US Presidential contest.
One thing that rather directly displays the undemocratic reality of today’s American politics is that both Trump and Clinton have (and throughout the contest did have) exceptionally high net-disapproval ratings from the American public, and that the only two candidates, of either Party, who had net-positive approval-ratings, were Bernie Sanders, and (the Republican candidate) John Kasich. If this country had been a democracy, then those were clearly the most-preferred candidates, and so the final contest would have been between those two, but neither of them even made it to the final round. This fact is yet another example showing that, at the present stage in American history, the US is a dictatorship by its aristocracy (who disliked both of the nation’s most-preferred candidates).
In theocratic Iran, the clergy determine what final choices the public will have; in aristocratic-dictatorial US, the aristocracy do. Bigotry, and its natural response – anti-bigotry – both advance the cause of the aristocracy, anywhere. It’s not just divide-and-conquer. It’s also redirect-and-distract.
- The Hamptons Housing Market Has Crashed: Luxury Home Sales Drop By Half As Prices Plunge
It is not looking good for the US housing market.
One week ago, when we reported that “On Manhattan’s “Billionaire’s Row”, A Death Knell Just Tolled For Luxury Real Estate“, we documented the sudden trapdoor that opened beneath the ultra-luxury segment in the Manhattan housing market. Then several days later, we observed that it is not just the luxury NYC market that is in trouble, but the broader market across all of the US, when we noted three “Red Flags” that the broader US housing market was starting to roll over, among which i) a surge in inexperienced, third-party “mom and pop” auction buyers who were arriving just as institutional investors are starting to flee the auction market, ii) a collapse in retail purchases for home goods and furniture – traditionally a coincident or slightly lagging indicator of home purchasing activity, and iii) a plunge in housing buyer traffic according to the Credit Suisse real-estate agent survey.
Then this afternoon, another flashing red flag emerged when we learned that overall sales in the Hamptons plunged by half and home prices fell sharply in the second quarter in the toniest enclaves of the Hamptons, New York’s weekend haunt for the wealthy. Reuters blamed this on “stock market jitters earlier in the year” which damped the appetite to buy, however one can also blame the halt of offshore money laundering, a slowing global economy, the collapse of the petrodollar, and the drastic drop in Wall Street bonuses. In short: a sudden loss of confidence that a greater fool may emerge just around the corner, which in turn has frozen buyer interest.
And frozen it has.
According to realtor Town & Country Real Estate, total sales volume in East Hampton fell 53% from a year ago to $44.7 million as the median sale price fell 54% to $2.38 million. In fact, a drop this steep has not been observed since the financial crisis.
A beachfront residence is seen in East Hampton, New York, March 16, 2016.
In Southampton, total sales fell 48% from the second quarter of 2015 to $45.3 million, with the median sale price falling 21 percent to $1.65 million, data showed.
In East Hampton, only 12 homes were sold and 17 in larger Southampton, due to a lack of inventory and because sales typically lag when the stock market underperforms, said Judi Desiderio, chief executive at Town & Country.
“This is just a shift of the needle that I expected because 2014 was a high cycle for the high end,” said Desiderio, who says luxury home sales in the Hamptons run in seven-year cycles. The stock market surged 30 percent in 2013, with record sales in excess of $100 million set the following year.
In the 12 submarkets that make up the Hamptons, sales volume slipped 18 percent from a year ago, with the median price falling to $999,000 from $1.1 million, Town & Country data showed.
Sales in the Hampton submarkets of Shelter Island and Sag Harbor surged after several years of poor performance. The median sale price in Sag Harbor jumped 37 percent to $1.43 million, and 27 percent to $950,000 in Shelter Island.
Despite the clear crash, local tealtors remain hopeful: third-quarter sales should pick up, in part because Wall Street touched record highs the past week and because the summer months are usually better, Desiderio said. Then again, if they don’t, what is merely a trickle of selling now will become an all out liquidation as the greater fool bid is now officially dead.
- It Is A Smoking Gun – Prince Bandar And Other Saudis Financed The 9/11 Terrorists
Submitted by Justin Raimondo via Anti-War.com,
News reports about the recently released 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks are typically dismissive: this is nothing new, it’s just circumstantial evidence, and there’s no “smoking gun.” Yet given what the report actually says – and these news accounts are remarkably sparse when it comes to verbatim quotes – it’s hard to fathom what would constitute a smoking gun.
To begin with, let’s start with what’s not in these pages: there are numerous redactions. And they are rather odd. When one expects to read the words “CIA” or “FBI,” instead we get a blacked-out word. Entire paragraphs are redacted – often at crucial points. So it’s reasonable to assume that, if there is a smoking gun, it’s contained in the portions we’re not allowed to see. Presumably the members of Congress with access to the document prior to its release who have been telling us that it changes their entire conception of the 9/11 attacks – and our relationship with the Saudis – read the unredacted version. Which points to the conclusion that the omissions left out crucial information – perhaps including the vaunted smoking gun.
In any case, what we have access to makes more than just a substantial case: it shows that the Saudi government – including top officials, such as then Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and other members of the royal family – financed and actively aided the hijackers prior to September 11, 2001.
Support for at least two of the hijackers when they arrived in the US was extended by three key individuals:
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Omar al-Bayoumi – Bayoumi was clearly a Saudi intelligence agent: the FBI all but identifies him as such. His salary was paid for by companies directly owned and operated by the Saudi government, although he apparently rarely showed up for “work.” He was directly subsidized by the wife of then Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, and these subsidies were substantially increased when the hijackers arrived in the US. It was Bayoumi who hovered over two of the hijackers – Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Midhar – as soon as they arrived in the United States. He got them an apartment, co-signed the rental agreement, chauffeured them around – and helped them obtain information on flight schools.
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Osama Bassnan – This individual, who, according to the report, has “many ties to the Saudi government,” boasted to an informant that he did more for the two hijackers than Bayoumi. He was certainly in a position to do so, since he lived directly across the street from them in San Diego. The FBI characterized him as “an extremist and supporter of Osama bin Laden”: like Bayoumi, his longtime associate – with whom he was in constant communication at the time of the hijackers’ American sojourn – Bassnan was subsidized by the Saudi royal family, and specifically Prince Bandar and his wife. A search of Basnan’s apartment turned up indications that he had cashiers checks amounting to $74,000. Bandar’s wife’s account had a standing arrangement to send monthly checks to Basan’s wife for “nursing services.” There is no evidence that such services were ever performed. The suppressed 28 pages cite direct payments from Prince Bandar to Basnan:
“On at least one occasion, Bassnan received a check directly from Prince Bandar’s account. Accordion to the FBI, on May 14, 1998, Bassnan cashed a check from Bandar in the amount of $15,000. Bassnan’s wife also received at least one check directly from Bandar She also received one additional check froth Bandar’s wife, which she cashed on January 8, 1998 for 10,000.”
- Shayk Fahah al-Thumairy – He was a diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles and imam of the King Fahad mosque, which is a focal point of Muslim-Saudi activity in the area. US intelligence avers that “initial indications are that al-Thumairy may have had a physical or financial connection to al-Hamzi and al-Midhar.” Both attended the King Fahad mosque. Thumairy was interviewed by US law enforcement after fleeing to Saudi Arabia, and denied having any contact with the two hijackers – in spite of evidence that he was in telephonic contact with them. This, he asserted, was an attempt to “smear” him.
The two hijackers had extensive contacts with Saudi naval officers in the United States, according to telephone records. And when Abu Zubaydah, one of the accused 9/11 conspirators, was captured in Pakistan, they found the phone number of a Colorado company that managed “the affairs of the Colorado residence of the Saudi Ambassador.” Prince Bandar is practically the star of the suppressed 28 pages – no wonder the Bush administration, which had close ties to him, fought so hard to keep this secret.
The 28 pages also reveal that an individual – name redacted – associated with al-Qaeda and the hijackers sneaked into the US, avoiding Customs agents and the INS due to the fact that he was traveling with a member of the Saudi royal family. We are also told that “Another Saudi national with close ties to the Saudi Royal Family, [redacted], is the subject of FBI counterterrorism investigations and reportedly was checking security at the United States’ southwest border in 1999 and discussing the possibility of infiltrating individuals into the United States.”
The Saudi government’s financial and operational ties to at least two of the 9/11 hijackers are myriad, and largely substantiated. Furthermore, although some of these links as detailed in the 28 pages are tentative, it’s important to remember that this report was written in 2002, and that the intelligence community was strongly admonished to follow up because lawmakers deemed the lack of investigation into the Saudi connection “unacceptable.” So what did they find out in the fourteen years after that admonition was delivered? Inquiring minds want to know….
Prince Bandar went on to become head of Saudi intelligence: his personal relationship with the Bush family is well-known, and his access to US government officials – and his powerful influence in Washington – makes his starring role in the nurturing of the two hijackers into a gun that, while not quite smoking, is exuding vapors of a highly suggestive nature.
“Circumstantial evidence”? Perhaps – but people have been convicted of murder on the basis of such evidence, and, in this case, there is such a preponderance of evidence that a guilty verdict is unavoidable.
It would not be stretching the evidence to bluntly state that the suppressed 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry report on the 9/11 terrorist attacks places agents of the Saudi government at the epicenter of the plot. In short, there’s no two ways about it: the Saudis did 9/11.
Why did our government cover up this shocking evidence for so long?
The reason is because they had no desire to retaliate against the real perpetrators of 9/11. Instead, as we now know, they were determined to pin the blame on Saddam Hussein: indeed, the Bush administration pressed this talking point relentlessly, until it was forced to backtrack. We attacked Iraq, in the words of neocon grise eminence and top Bush administration official Paul Wolfowitz, because it was “doable.” A years long neoconservative campaign to target Iraq gained new impetus in the wake of 9/11, and the administration and its journalistic camarilla pushed the lie that Iraq was behind the attack. The evidence that the Saudis were involved had to be suppressed – because the Bush administration’s war plans depended on it.
Now that we know the truth, what do we do about it?
To begin with, if any other government had connections to a terrorist attack on the US of this nature, their capital would’ve been a smoking ruin. I’m not suggesting we do that, but at the very least the Saudis must be made to pay a high price for their complicity, starting with a moratorium on all US aid and arms sales to the Kingdom. We imposed trade sanctions on Russia for far less. Cutting off the Saudis from the US banking system should put a crimp in their extensive international network of terror-financing and money-laundering. And I know it’s too much to expect a public statement from our President pointing out that a US “ally” aided and abetted those who murdered over 3,000 people on 9/11, but I can dream, can’t I?
The Saudis aren’t our allies: as the 28 pages make all too clear, they are our deadly enemies. And they ought to be treated as such.
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- Millennials Face An Existential Crisis: "It Won't Be A Short Period Of Difficulty"
Authored by John Mauldin, originally posted at MauldinEconomics.com,
Psychologists from Sigmund Freud forward have generally agreed: our core attitudes about life are largely locked in by age five or so. Changing those attitudes requires intense effort.
Neil Howe and William Strauss took this obvious truth and drew an obvious conclusion: if our attitudes form in early childhood, then the point in history at which we live our childhood must play a large part in shaping our attitudes.
It’s not only early childhood, however, that forms us. Howe and Strauss think we go through a second formative period in early adulthood. The challenges we face as we become independent adults determine our approach to life.
These insights mean we can divide the population into generational cohorts, each spanning roughly 20 years. Each generation consists of people who were born and came of age at the same point in history.
These generations had similar experiences and thus gravitated toward similar attitudes.
At this year’s Strategic Investment Conference, Howe illustrated the point with this cartoon. (I think we should now add an illustration of a couple texting on their phones, saying “Let’s tell our friends online first.”)
Amusing, yes, but true. Young love, a universal experience, took different forms for Americans who grew up in the 1950s vs. the 1970s vs. the 1990s. Ditto for many other aspects of life.
Four generational archetypes: Heroes, Artists, Prophets, & Nomads
In their book The Fourth Turning, Howe and Strauss identified four generational archetypes: Hero, Artist, Prophet, and Nomad. Each consists of people born in a roughly 20-year period. As each archetypal generation reaches the end of its 80-year lifespan, the cycle repeats.
Each archetypal generation goes through the normal phases of life: childhood, young adulthood, mature adulthood, and old age. Each tends to dominate society during middle age (40–60 years old) then begins dying off as the next generation takes the helm.
This change of control from one generation to the next is called a “turning” in the Strauss/Howe scheme. The cycle repeats on a “fourth turning” as a new hero generation comes of age and replaces the nomads. Each fourth turning, however, is a great crisis.
Now, let’s get back to the archetypes and see how they match the generations alive today.
The characteristics of each archetype aren’t neatly divided by the calendar; they are better seen as evolving along a continuum. (This is a very important point. It’s why we get trends and changes, not abrupt turnarounds. Thankfully.) People born toward the beginning or end of a generation share some aspects of the previous or following one.
Hero generations are usually raised by protective parents. Heroes come of age during a time of great crisis. Howe calls them heroes because they resolve that crisis, an accomplishment that then defines the rest of their lives.
Following the crisis, heroes become institutionally powerful in midlife and remain focused on meeting great challenges. In old age, they tend to have a spiritual awakening as they watch younger generations work through cultural upheaval.
The G.I. Generation that fought World War II is the most recent example of the hero archetype. They built the US into an economic powerhouse in the postwar years and then confronted youthful rebellion in the 1960s.
Further back, the generation of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, heroes of the American Revolution, experienced the religious “Great Awakening” in their twilight years.
Artists are the children of heroes, born before and during the crisis. They are, however, not old enough to be an active part of the solution. Highly protected during childhood, Artists are risk-averse young adults in the post-crisis years.
They see conformity as the best path to success. They develop and refine the innovations forged in the crisis. Artists experience the same cultural awakening as heroes but from the perspective of mid-adulthood.
Today’s older retirees are mostly artists, part of the “Silent Generation” that may remember World War II but were too young to participate. They married early and moved into gleaming new 1950s suburbs.
The Silent Generation went through its own midlife crisis in the 1970s and 1980s before entering a historically affluent, active, gated-community retirement.
Prophet generations experience childhood in a period of post-crisis affluence. Having not seen a real crisis, they often create cultural upheaval during their young adult years. In midlife, they become moralistic, values-obsessed leaders and parents. As they enter old age, prophets lay the groundwork for the next crisis.
The postwar Baby Boomers are the latest prophet generation. They grew up in generally comfortable times with the US at the height of its global power. They expanded their consciousness when they came of age in the “Awakening” period of the 1960s. They defined the 1970s/1980s “yuppie” lifestyle and are now entering old age, having shaped the culture by virtue of sheer numbers.
Nomads are the fourth and final archetype. They are children during the “Awakening” periods of cultural chaos. Unlike the overly indulged and protected prophets, nomads go through childhood with minimal supervision and guidance. They learn early in life not to trust society’s basic institutions. They come of age as individualistic pragmatists.
The most recent nomads are Generation X, born in the 1960s and 1970s. Their earliest memories are of faraway war, urban protests, no-fault divorce, and broken homes.
Now entering midlife, Generation X is trying to give its own children a better experience. They find success elusive because they distrust large institutions and have no strong connections to public life. They prefer to stay out of the spotlight and trust only themselves. Their story is still unfolding today.
Millennials are a new hero generation
After the nomad archetype, the cycle repeats with another hero generation: the Millennials (born from 1982 through about 2004) are beginning to take root in American culture.
They are a large generation numerically, filling schools and colleges and propelling new technology into the mainstream. If the pattern holds, they will face a great crisis. It will influence the rest of their lives… just as World War II shaped the G.I. Generation heroes.
It’s not going to be a short period of difficulty. It will be an existential crisis, one in which society’s strongest institutions collapse (or are severely challenged and stressed) and national survival is in serious doubt. The Crisis can be economic, cultural, religious, military, or all the above.
Using Neil Howe’s timeline, we are currently about halfway through the fourth turning. We may have another decade to go. Maybe not. We’ll figure this out soon.
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