- $hithole Countries? 673 Million People Still Defecate Outdoors
The United Nations has released a new report focusing on water, sanitation and hygiene around the world. It has found that approximately 2.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water, 4.2 billion have to go without safe sanitation services and three billion lack basic handwashing facilities.
The report also examined the state of open defecation and progress in eliminating it. As Statista’s Niall McCarthy reports, as recently as 2015, close to a billion people were still defecating outdoors, resulting in widespread disease and millions of deaths. That drove the UN to call for an end to the practice and some parts of the world have proven hugely successful in eradicating it.
In 2000 for example, the rate of open defecation was even worse with 21 percent of the global population – 1.3 billion people – practicing it. The impact of the UN’s call to action has been telling and by 2017, the global share of people practicing open defecation had fallen to just 9 percent – 673 million people. Ethiopia saw the largest fall during that period, -57 percent. Cambodia and India also experienced declines of -53 and -47 percent respectively. The latter has been particularly ambitious in installing proper toilets. Before Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power, just under 40 percent of India’s population had access to a household toilet. He promised to change that and billions of dollars were invested under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (“Clean India”) campaign which kicked off in October 2014. India’s Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation states that toilet coverage today stands at an impressive 99.22 percent.
Altogether, 91 countries reduced open defecation by a combined total of 696 million people between 2000 and and 2017 with Central and Southern Asia accounting for three quarters of that figure.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The news isn’t positive everywhere though and 39 countries experienced increases during the same period, totaling 49 million people. The majority of that increase occurred in Sub-Sahara Africa which has experienced steady population growth since 2000.
That of course means that there’s still a lot of work to do but as India has shown with its toilet building marathon, progress can be rapid.
- Is The US Ambassador To Greece Faithfully Conveying Trump Administration Policy?
Authored by Maria Polizoidou via The Gatestone Institute,
A recent speech by U.S. Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt is causing Greek officials and the media alarm about American policy.
In an address to the 7th Annual Hellenic Air Force Academy Air Power Conferenceon May 15, Pyatt stressed America’s strong support for its long-standing alliance with Greece, but he seemed to imply that the State Department would be pressuring Athens and Cyprus to cede to Ankara in its dispute over drilling rights in the Aegean Sea.
U.S. Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt (right) at the 7th Annual Hellenic Air Force Academy Air Power Conference, on May 15, 2019. (Image source: U.S. Embassy & Consulate in Greece)
The first hint that Pyatt — an appointee of the Obama administration — was about to say something unpopular among Greeks was in his opening remarks:
“…[O]ne of the reasons I enjoy speaking to military audiences like this is that you always test me with your straight shooting. The fact is, militaries tend to operate with a black-and-white, shoot/no-shoot frankness, whereas us diplomats work in shades of gray.”
Given what Pyatt said during the question period that followed the lecture, his “shades of gray” comment took on a more ominous meaning.
When asked by a member of the audience about U.S. policy vis-a-vis Turkish drilling activities in the Aegean Sea, Pyatt responded:
“…[T]he United States has placed a lot of attention on the emerging trilateral relationship between Greece, Cyprus, and Israel. This reflects our recognition that the Eastern Mediterranean has reemerged as a zone of great power competition, and in that context our relationship with our three democratic partners is particularly important. That is why Secretary of State Pompeo traveled to Jerusalem this spring in order to participate in the trilateral with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Prime Minister Tsipras. On the question specifically of the Cypriot EEZ and Turkish drilling activities, you saw the very quick and clear reaction of my government through our spokesperson in Washington, DC, and in particular, our emphasis on avoiding provocative and escalatory actions.
“From that perspective… our long-term hope is that energy issues in the Eastern Mediterranean should become a driver of cooperation, a win-win, as opposed to a driver of conflict. It’s very important in that regard that President Anastasiadis has explicitly proposed the creation of an escrow account so that any resources from Cypriot drilling activities would be shared equally among the communities.
“I would note also the very strong support of my government for the efforts that the Greek government has made to engage with and develop rules of the road with Turkey. It’s very important that Prime Minister Tsipras traveled to Ankara and Istanbul. It’s extremely important that Minister Apostolakis and Secretary General Paraskevopoulos at the Foreign Ministry continue to offer and encourage a dialogue between Athens and Ankara on confidence-building measures. At the end of the day, Turkey is a NATO ally. We all seek to ensure that that NATO ally remains anchored in the West, anchored in Euro-Atlantic institutions, and indeed I would argue that among 29 NATO member states, the United States has no ally more closely aligned with us on the importance of keeping Turkey anchored in the West than Greece. So, we have spoken clearly on the escalatory nature of these drilling activities but we also are focused not just on stating our policy but also trying to reframe and redirect these issues in a way that’s to everybody’s benefit.”
Pyatt’s answer, which emphasized dialogue with Turkey, was construed by Greek politicians and the press as pressure from the State Department on Greece and Cyprus to cede their sovereign rights and natural-gas resources to Turkey. The phrase: “win-win” — and the sentence: “At the end of the day, Turkey is a NATO ally” — triggered Greek fears that U.S. President Donald Trump intends to use Greece as a decoy in order to bring Turkey back in NATO’s orbit. These fears have triggered anti-Trump sentiment among Greeks at home, and among millions of Greek-Americans abroad.
This anger was fueled further by former Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis. In an op-ed on June 9 in the newspaper Kathimerini, Simitis wrote:
“It is indicative that the U.S. ambassador in Greece, who was asked about Turkey’s challenges in the Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone, ‘noted the need for stability in the Eastern Mediterranean and talked about agreements equally beneficial to the parties involved’ – an answer which suggests initiatives that may not be profitable for our country [Greece]… [However]…the risk of incidents with negative consequences will be true if we do not try to find solutions that are not always pleasant, but they guarantee peace in the region. In an effort like that, Greece will have – I believe – the support of the European Union and the United States.”
After the negative reactions that Simitis’ article elicited, the American embassy’s press attaché, Eshel William Murad, claimed in a “letter to the editor” that Simitis had misinterpreted Pyatt’s statements. Murad’s letter read, in part:
“We read the editorial… by Costas Simitis… with special respect and consideration given the former prime minister’s deep knowledge of the topic and the recent, strong US government policy statements on these issues…
“I note here that [the article] does not accurately describe Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt’s response to the question at the May 15 Air Power Conference at the Hellenic Air Force Academy, which is the event where certain media misinterpreted his remarks.
“He [Pyatt] never spoke about agreements being equally beneficial. Instead, he said: ‘On the question specifically of the Cypriot EEZ and Turkish drilling activities, you saw the very quick and clear reaction of my government through our spokesperson in Washington, DC, and in particular our emphasis on avoiding provocative and escalatory actions. From that perspective, I would note also that our long-term hope – and this is again embodied in our support for the Greece-Israel-Cyprus trilateral – our long-term hope is that energy issues in the Eastern Mediterranean should become a driver of cooperation, a win-win, as opposed to a driver of conflict. It’s very important in that regard that [Cyprus] President [Nicos] Anastasiades has explicitly proposed the creation of an escrow account so that any resources from Cypriot drilling activities would be shared equally among the communities.’
“…In fact, the first outlets which misinterpreted the ambassador’s remarks were Pronews.gr and Pentapostagma.gr and, we would argue, they did so intentionally given their well-known slant toward Russian positions.
“Unfortunately, the narrative spread, despite other factual coverage, including on Defense-Point.gr and HellasJournal.com.
“I am writing to correct the record so that your readers have the text of what the ambassador said on this topic.”
Placing blame on pro-Russian news outlets for what Murad claims is a false narrative appears to be a form of verbal acrobatics, however. Simitis did not need to get his information from obscure websites that he probably never even heard of, let alone encountered.
Furthermore, Simitis is not the only figure, political or otherwise, to have interpreted Pyatt’s words as he did. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for instance, is likely to have understood Pyatt’s remarks to mean that the U.S. is preparing to impose an “agreement” on Greece that favors Turkey. Such a sense on Erdogan’s part would only make him hungrier for hegemony in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
In his speech, Pyatt twice referred to Pompeo as his boss, but the feeling among Greek elites is that the State Department — or at least its embassy in Greece — is still operating according to the policies and worldview of Pompeo’s predecessor, John Kerry, in particular, and the Obama administration in general. The sense in Greece is that the American embassy in Athens is not conveying Trump’s messages in many areas, such as illegal immigration, Islamic terrorism, Iran and U.S. trade disagreements with the Eurozone.
Do Pyatt’s recent comments mean that Turkey’s claims to Greek and Cypriot drilling rights in the Eastern Mediterranean can be added to the list?
- US Army Buys 9,000 Tiny 'Black Hornet' Drones Ahead Of Afghanistan Deployment
The US Army will deploy soldiers to Afghanistan with a new handheld drone it claims will dramatically reduce dead space on the battlefield.
The 1.16-ounce Black Hornet drone, developed by Prox Dynamics of Norway and later acquired by US-based FLIR Systems, is designed for local surveillance missions over the modern battlefield. The tiny drone has high-tech sensors that allow it to operate in day or night and has a flight time of approximately 25 minutes. Here’s a FLIR Systems promotional video of the Black Hornet:
According to Breaking Defense, the Army is procuring 9,000 systems over the next three years.
According to the service, each Black Hornet kit includes “the ground control system, which is composed of a base station with hand controller and display unit, and two air Vehicles (one day and one night). The display acts as the main hub for Soldiers to interact with the system, while the air vehicles are small, highly maneuverable airborne sensors with low visual and audio signatures that support pre-planned and on-the-fly reconnaissance missions.”
The drones were purchased under a $40 million contract in 1Q19 between the Army and FLIR Systems.
Paratroopers of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, will be using Black Hornets during their next deployment to Afghanistan, slated for later this summer.
The Black Hornet, for the first time, will allow a squad leader to scout ahead by air before exposing soldiers on the ground.
“It is the start of an era where every squad will have vision beyond their line of sight,” Nathan Heslink, Assistant Program Manager PEO Soldier, said in an Army press release.
Drones, automation, artificial intelligence, hypersonics, and fifth-generation warplanes have been a modernization effort spurred in part by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The Army has also been working on a next-generation assault rifle, high-tech targeting goggles, and robots.
- China: The Perfect High-Tech Totalitarian State
Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,
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In China, censorship, now largely automated, has reached “unprecedented levels of accuracy, aided by machine learning and voice and image recognition.” — Cate Cadell, Reuters, May 26, 2019.
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As in other Communist regimes, such as that of the former Soviet Union, the Communist ideology does not tolerate any competing narratives. “Religion is a source of authority, and an object of fidelity, that is greater than the state… This characteristic of religion has always been anathema to history’s totalitarian despots…” — Thomas F. Farr, President of the Religious Freedom Institute, in testimony before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, November 28, 2018.
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In 2018, China had an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, with plans for 626 million surveillance cameras by 2020. China’s aim is apparently an “Integrated Joint Operations Platform” which will integrate and coordinate data from surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology, citizen ID card numbers, biometric data, license plate numbers and information about vehicle ownership, health, family planning, banking, and legal records, “unusual activity”, and any other relevant data that can be gathered about citizens, such as religious practice, travels abroad, and so on, according to reports of local officials and police.
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At the moment, China is in the process of fulfilling what Stalin, Hitler and Mao could only dream about: The flawless totalitarian state, powered by digital technology, where the individual has nowhere to flee from the all-seeing eye of the Communist state.
The 30th anniversary on June 4 of the Chinese regime’s 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square served to highlight the extreme censorship in China under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and President Xi Jinping.
The Tiananmen anniversary is referred to euphemistically in mainland China, as ‘the June Fourth Incident’. The regime there evidently fears that any talk, let alone public commemoration, of that historical event will stir up anti-regime unrest, which could endanger the Chinese Communist Party’s absolute power.
The internet in China is under control of the Chinese Communist Party, especially through the rigorous censorship practiced by the party’s top internet censor, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), established in 2014. In May 2017, according to a Reuters report, the CAC introduced strict guidelines requiring all internet platforms that produce or distribute news “to be managed by party-sanctioned editorial staff” who have been “approved by the national or local government internet and information offices, while their workers must get training and reporting credentials from the central government”.
Freedom House, in “Freedom on the Net 2018,” its 2018 assessment of freedom on the internet in 65 countries, placed China dead last. Reporters without Borders, in its 2019 worldwide index of press freedom, ranked China 177 out of 180 countries, surpassed only by Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at the time of its 2018 prison census, counted at least 47 journalists jailed in China, but according to the CPJ, the number could be much higher: “authorities are deliberately preventing information from getting out”. In March 2019, the CPJ was investigating at least a dozen additional cases, including the arrests in December 2018 of 45 contributors to the human rights and religious-liberty magazine, Bitter Winter, which China targets as a “foreign hostile website“.
On ‘sensitive’ occasions such as the Tiananmen anniversary, entire websites are blocked. Since April, ahead of the Tiananmen anniversary, Wikipedia had been blocked in all languages. Wikipedia’s Chinese-language site has been blocked by China since 2015. Websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other websites have also long been blocked in China.
Search terms are also blocked on such ‘sensitive’ occasions. In the past, even common, innocuous words such as ‘today’ or ‘tomorrow’ have been blocked.
For the anniversary of Tiananmen, the Chinese Communist Party reportedly began its crackdown in January 2019: On January 3, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced on its website that it had launched a new campaign against “negative and harmful information” on the internet. The campaign was to last for six months — coinciding with Tiananmen’s June 4 anniversary. The definition of “negative and harmful information” was all-inclusive: Any content that was “pornographic, vulgar, violent, horrific, fraudulent, superstitious, abusive, threatening, inflammatory, rumor, and sensational,” or related to “gambling,” or spreading “bad lifestyles and bad culture” had to be removed from every conceivable internet platform. The CAC added, “Those who let illegal behavior go free will not be tolerated but be severely punished”.
In China, censorship, now largely automated, has reached “unprecedented levels of accuracy, aided by machine learning and voice and image recognition”, according to a recent Reuters report. It quotes Chinese censors as commenting:
“We sometimes say that the artificial intelligence is a scalpel, and a human is a machete… When I first began this kind of work four years ago there was opportunity to remove the images of Tiananmen, but now the artificial intelligence is very accurate”.
China’s severe censorship runs parallel to its severe suppression of religious freedom. The President of the Religious Freedom Institute, Thomas F. Farr, at a November 2018 hearing at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, described China’s religious suppression as “the most systematic and brutal attempt to control Chinese religious communities since the Cultural Revolution”. As in other Communist regimes, such as that of the former Soviet Union, the Communist ideology does not tolerate any competing narratives.
“Religion is a source of authority, and an object of fidelity, that is greater than the state,” Farr wrote. “This characteristic of religion has always been anathema to history’s totalitarian despots, such as Stalin, Hitler, and Mao…”
The brutal religious and cultural oppression of Tibetans in China has been ongoing for nearly 70 years, but China has not only sought to destroy the Tibetan religion. Christianity, for instance, was seen from the beginning as a threat to the People’s Republic of China when it was established in 1949. “This was especially true at the height of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when places of worship were demolished, closed, or reappropriated and religious practices were banned”, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Some Christian clerics have been imprisoned for nearly 30 years. In recent years, oppression of Christians in China has apparently surged. Since the late 1990s, the Chinese regime has also targeted the Falun Gong.
China has been shutting down churches and removing crosses. They have been replaced with the national flag, and images of Jesus have been replaced with pictures of President Xi Jinping. Children, future bearers of the Communist ideology, have been banned from attending church. In September 2018, China shut down one of the largest underground churches, Beijing’s Zion Church. In December 2018, the pastor of the underground Early Rain Church, Wang Yi, and his wife were arrested and charged with ‘inciting subversion’, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Along with the pastor and his wife, more than 100 church members were also arrested. In April 2019, Chinese authorities forcibly took away an underground Catholic priest, Father Peter Zhang Guangjun, just after he celebrated Palm Sunday Mass. He was reportedly the third Catholic priest to be taken by the authorities in one month.
According to a confidential document obtained by Bitter Winter, China is currently also getting ready for a clampdown on Christian churches with ties with foreign religious communities.
The government has also been sending Uighurs, a populace that includes around 11 million people, mostly Muslim, in the western Xinjian province of China, to internment camps for ‘political reeducation’. China has said that the camps are vocational education training centers aimed at stemming the threat of Islamic extremism. Uighurs have launched several terror attacks in China, according to one 2017 report, “Uighur Foreign Fighters: An Underexamined Jihadist Challenge” by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague. The report also states:
“Uighurs consider themselves separate and distinct in ethnicity, culture, and religion from the Han Chinese majority that governs them. These distinctions form the basis of the Uighurs’ religious ethno-nationalist identity, leading some of them to engage in violent activities aimed at establishing their own state, East Turkestan…
“… the appeal of radical Islamic ideology outside of China has attracted many Uighurs to participate in violent jihadism as part of their religious identity and as a way to further their struggle against the Chinese authorities.”
“The [Chinese] are using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps,” Randall Schriver, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs recently said. “[G]iven what we understand to be the magnitude of the detention, at least a million but likely closer to three million citizens out of a population of about 10 million” could be imprisoned in the detention centers.
According to The Epoch Times, in the Chinese detention camps, Uighurs have been drugged, tortured, beaten and killed by injection. “I still remember the words of the Chinese authorities when I asked what my crime was,” said Mihrigul Tursun, a woman who escaped to the United States with two of her children. “They said, ‘You being a Uyghur is a crime'”.
Physically persecuting religious minorities, however, does not suffice for the Chinese Communist Party. It also seems to have campaigned against Christianity in schools throughout the country. It has, for instance, forced students to swear an oath to resist religious belief. Teachers were also indoctrinated to “ensure that education and teaching adhere to the correct political direction.” Classics taught in schools have been censored: In Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, references to the Bible were deleted, and references to Sunday service or God in stories by Anton Chekhov and Hans Christian Andersen were expunged.
Additionally, the use of ‘sensitive’ words related to religion, such as ‘prayer’, are not allowed in the classroom.
In both the oppression of religion, as in the censorship of free speech, the Chinese Communist Party is utilizing high-tech means to achieve its goals. There are reports that Xinjiang is being used as a testing ground for surveillance technology: Uighurs in Xinjiang, according to a report published in the Guardian, are “closely monitored, with surveillance cameras mounted over villages, street corners, mosques and schools. Commuters must go through security checkpoints between all towns and villages, where they undergo face scans and phone checks”. China uses facial recognition technology that matches faces from surveillance camera footage to a watch-list of suspects.
In 2018, China had an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, with plans for 626 million surveillance cameras by 2020. China’s aim is apparently an “Integrated Joint Operations Platform,” which will integrate and coordinate datafrom surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology, citizen ID card numbers, biometric data, license plate numbers and information about vehicle ownership, health, family planning, banking, and legal records, “unusual activity”, and any other relevant data that can be gathered about citizens, such as religious practice and travels abroad.
At the moment, China is in the process of fulfilling what Stalin, Hitler and Mao could only dream about: The flawless totalitarian state, powered by digital technology, where the individual has nowhere to flee from the all-seeing eye of the Communist state.
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- "Migration Is Part Of The Model": The Real Roots Of Central America's Migrant Crisis
When the average American thinks about Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, their initial impression is typically that these are destitute countries overrun by crime, poverty and malnutrition, with central governments that are, at best, only semi-functioning. The crisis at the southern border has only helped reinforce these perceptions, as the mainstream media spins a narrative about impoverished migrant families fleeing the ravages of gang violence.
But if these Central American countries are so extremely impoverished poor,
then why are bond investors willing to lend to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador at interest rates on par with the preferential terms enjoyed by regional economic powerhouses like Brazil? The truth, as it turns out, is more complicated: All three countries are viewed as stable, even safe, investments because they spend almost nothing on government services. And most of what little is spent is siphoned off by graft.
But if these countries can borrow so cheaply, then why aren’t they? Until last week, the group of three countries had gone more than two years without issuing a bond.
Fearing the type of runaway inflation presently plaguing Venezuela, fiscal austerity has become “almost like a religion” among the leaders of all three countries. Even the IMF, an institution that’s been criticized for years for pushing draconian budget cuts, has urged Guatemala to spend more.
“There’s an obsession with this issue,” said Ricardo Castaneda, an economist with ICEFI, a Guatemala City-based think tank that focuses on fiscal policy.
But with their infrastructure in shambles and their people reportedly suffering from high maternal mortality rates, why aren’t these governments willing to borrow more?
Well, as it turns out – and as a team of Bloomberg reporters explained in a lengthy report published on Wednesday – there’s a good reason. And it’s that the corrupt leaders of these countries don’t want to upset the apple cart that allows the system of widespread corruption and graft to flourish.
Perhaps inadvertently, the region has developed a system that encourages the poorest members of the population to emigrate by offering inadequate social services and almost no opportunities for advancement. That system is reinforced by the role that the growing remittance payments sent by illegal migrant workers in the US send back to their families. The payments represent a reliable flow of dollars that serves to underpin the financial systems of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. That sum is larger more than 30 times greater than the annual aid payments President Trump just scrapped.
Put all of these factors together, and this is what you get: an economic model that appears to be based upon the illegal export of citizens.
When all of these elements are stitched together and viewed holistically, it can appear as if the economic model these governments have adopted is one based on exporting people. That might be an oversimplification – and it may not be the governments’ intent – but it is the net effect of the policy mix, according to longtime observers of the region.
“Migration is part of the model,” said Seynabou Sakho, the World Bank’s director for Central America. “A country may not have a big deficit, but at the same time, the needs of its people aren’t being met.”
Regardless of the political class’s intentions, this is the situation and it doesn’t look likely to change any time soon. As the NYT just reported, Guatemalans have elected a new president who leveraged her connections within the country’s corrupt legal system to secure her victory.
And with Guatemala’s citizens receiving almost no support from the government…
The World Bank also tracks social spending on a per-capita basis. In El Salvador, the number came to $562. It was even lower in Honduras, $278, and Guatemala, $258. That’s a fraction of the $2,193 spent in Costa Rica or the $2,269 in Brazil. The World Bank hasn’t updated that data set since 2012, but analysts say there have been few signs of improvement in recent years. Patronage and corruption, they say, is compounding the shortfall, siphoning off funds earmarked for the poor. Transparency International ranks the three nations in the bottom half of its Corruption Perceptions Index, with Guatemala in the lowest quartile.
Lucrecia Mack said she was astonished by how rampant graft was when she took the top job at Guatemala’s Health Ministry in 2016. It’s “everywhere,” she said. Documents are falsified, signatures are forged, invoices are made up. She remembers one scheme where officials bought new tires for ambulances, re-sold them to pocket the cash and left the old ones on the vehicles..
The little money that the Health Ministry has winds up in the wrong hands,” said Mack, the daughter of a renowned human rights activist who was slain in 1990.
According to her calculations, Guatemala only spends about one-fifth of what it should annually on health care. “The budget has always been extremely tight.” As a result, she said, the ministry only has enough public clinics and hospitals to attend to about 6.5 million people. That was the population in 1975. It’s more than doubled since.
…As one analyst put it: People don’t just pick up and cross multiple borders for no reason.
“Immigration is a symptom of the diseases we have: violence, lack of economic growth, lack of investments in all of the rural areas,” Nayib Bukele said at a conference in Washington a few weeks before being sworn in as president of El Salvador this month. “People don’t leave their families and country to cross three frontiers and a desert because things are fine.”
DHS is installing a contingent of boots-on-the-ground agents to work with these governments to try and dampen the flow of migrants.
But without structural reform, there’s little hope for real, lasting change on the immigration front.
- Dominoes, Hegemonies, & The Future Of Humanity
Authored by Mahwah Salamah via Off-Guardian.org,
What did the domino tile say to its neighbour?
“Don’t worry, it is happening far away!” and they both happily continued to stare at their ‘white dots’, ignoring the collapsing carnage down the line. Dominoes aren’t very smart; they are, after all, inanimate objects!
People, however, are supposed to have brains and are expected to be cognizant of what’s happening around them and able to assess its implications on their wellbeing. Unfortunately, this rarely is the case, which may add credence to the theory that by settling into early agrarian communities, humans became more caring and supportive of each other, thus undermining the successful natural selection process by retaining idiot genes!
It is not as though the concept of danger is a new phenomenon. Ever since humans got over the fear of carnivorous beasts and learnt how to kill them, they have concentrated on killing each other. Hegemonic tendencies have existed for thousands of years; as early as the Sumerians and Assyrians and continued through to the colonization monsters of the past few hundred years.
STATUS OF HEGEMONY
Hegemonies come in different sizes; small, medium and big; an amusing “pecking order” whose interaction can be observed on the daily news broadcasts. It also comes in different styles; softly spoken but treacherous, generous with economic assistance but containing hidden strings to hang you, belligerent with a viscous warmongering streak and lastly, schizophrenic; oscillating between all the previous styles. There are also the would-be-hegemons if given half a chance.
More recently, the hegemony arena has, though knock-out matches, been narrowed down to one grand hegemon and a couple of runners-up, and the heat is now rising as the final tournament approaches – Let us hope it will not be too bloody and Armageddon-ish.
Despite that, many nations continue to dream of becoming hegemons. But at the same time, they continue to concentrate on their ‘white dots’ and disregard the likelihood that they are already in the crosshairs of a bigger hegemon.
They seem oblivious to the hegemonic ploys that undermine their political and economic structures through unending sanctions, onerous trade or military treaties, contemptuous disregard for local and international laws, negative and false news reporting, regime change tactics, false flag incidences, scaremongering, and outright threats that are occasionally translated into destructive military action. Like the proverbial deer, they are frozen in the headlights of the oncoming speeding car and wait until it is too late to save themselves.
What happened in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Somalia, Grenada, Venezuela, Argentine, Brazil, Cuba, Greece, Iran, North Korea and many other places are only the tip of the iceberg. What is likely to happen elsewhere is still being baked in the oven and will come out once done and ready. What is surprising is that, not only were the signs written on all the walls but, again, the victims failed to comprehend the messages and continued to stare at their ‘white dots’!
Southeast Asia, South China Sea, Ex-Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South & Central America and Africa are all candidates for destabilization and possible splintering into smaller pieces – especially those that exhibit economic weakness or cracks in their demographic, ethnic, religious makeup and are rife with internal disharmony.
Even the European EU is now beginning to feel the brunt of the hegemon pressure of tariff and sanctions threats. Japan, Mexico, India and Canada too, have just got a taste of an ear pinching to remind them to dance to the grand hegemon’s tune. Who is left? Not even Timbuktu!
What about the runner-up hegemons? What about the smaller hegemons? Well, all hegemons have the same strain of nasty genes. However, they are dormant and only begin to grow as their host’s power increases. This, most likely, is a genetic relic from the early human hunters-gatherers’ need for viciousness to survive. Maybe natural selection and/or wisdom will eventually weed out those nasty genes, but don’t bet your farm or country on it.
IS ALL LOST?
Not necessarily, because all hegemons (big and small) also suffer from the same weaknesses and dis-harmonies that beset their victims, although they cunningly keep them secret. Powerful mass media and propaganda are used extensively to camouflage all the ills that would otherwise stumble their seemingly confident and steady footsteps. This means that they are as also vulnerable to the same ploys that they have repeatedly used on others.
Also, history confirms that all empires eventually collapse and disappear, regardless of how long they last. Some lasted over a thousand years, which may sound too long, but in the modern world of technology, digital communications, social media and financialized economies, the average lifespan of hegemons has been drastically cut short.
Empires and hegemons generally start with a strategic vision of expansion and moderate usurpation of other nations’ resources; then, gluttony takes over at a rapidly increased pace.
But as the world and its resources are limited, they sooner or later bump into and clash with other hegemons; and are forced to change their tactics. As matters heat up, their tactics not only become shorter and shorter-term, but become ad hoc not fully thought through and, even haphazard – until they begin to shoot themselves in the foot.
This usually is an early sign of their demise (compare this to the Roman/Byzantine, Safavid Iran and Ottoman empires and their confusion with multi-front wars – in addition to their poor governance systems and economic mismanagement).
WHAT TO DO
In all events, we cannot wait out the hegemons to die out as the dinosaurs did; it would take far too long.
More realistically, we can address the modern hegemonic world threat via a two-pronged approach. The first is individual effort and the second is collective action.
Individual effort means to treat the sources of weakness and internal disharmony that make individual countries susceptible to hegemonic ploys. This requires the recreation of the governance systems to tackle all the maladies that drag nations down, including poor economic policies, corruption, inequality, ineffective representative systems, etc.
In short, seal the cracks that invite enemies to destabilize a country. It is not easy but is certainly better than being sucked dry off your freedom, resources and future.
As for collective action, this means getting together with other small and medium nations to form groups/alliances that can stand up to hegemons and resist, at least, their economic sanctions and threats. The Non-Aligned Movement was, and still is a good idea, but needs more teeth. Alternatively, new and more practical types of groupings could be envisaged and created – always conditional that no one nation, big or small, is allowed to become the group’s hegemon.
Dominoes may be flimsy and unstable, but if laid in parallel rows and columns and closely bonded (zero-spaced), they become much more difficult to topple. So, don’t be a lone domino dumbly staring at your ‘white dots’!
- Lululemon Shutters Two Men's Stores, Despite Luring Beta Males With Cold Brew Coffee And Ping Pong
Shockingly, the appeal of men in yoga pants isn’t anywhere near as close to the appeal of women. Lululemon is finding this out the hard way, watching two of its “Men’s exclusive” stores shutter in short order, despite the fact that a large part of the company’s business going forward is going to be reliant on men’s clothing, according to Bloomberg.
Instead, Lululemon is finding out that it works better “as a dual-gender brand,” company spokeswoman Erin Hankinson said. She continued: “We continually test and learn at Lululemon — which is what we did with the men’s stores.”
That, of course, will beg the question from millennials: what if I don’t identify as one of the two genders? Riots and protests incoming…
The Toronto location had opened in December 2016 – and even had a ping pong table and cold brew coffee. Because, what better ways to lure in beta males than table tennis and pretentious drinks? It shuttered last year and the New York location in Soho that opened in 2014 was made part of a larger women’s store about 4 blocks away.
But this doesn’t mean that Lululemon is giving up on men. Instead, it says that it expects to “more than double its men’s revenues by 2023.” And in the first quarter, Lululemon men’s same-store sales were up 26%.
Lululemon has also recently announced its intention to introduce shoes and personal care products for both men and women.
Its new stores “will continue to create space for category expansions and will help to grow our business, specifically in men’s,” Hankinson commented.
She continued: “When we expand our stores, we create space to merchandise the men’s assortment in a more impactful way.”
- Rejoice. The End Of Banking Is Nigh…
Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
On January 3, 2009, about six months before I launched Sovereign Man more than a decade ago, the Bitcoin blockchain came into existence.
50 bitcoins were mined by the network’s creator in that very first transaction. And within a few days, the first open-source Bitcoin software was released.
Few people noticed. By October of 2009, the value of a single Bitcoin was still just $0.0009 (9/100th of a penny).
A decade later, Bitcoin has seen a 10,000,000x increase and triggered perhaps the most spectacular financial bubble in human history.
For the next few weeks I plan on writing about how the world has changed over the last decade– Sovereign Man just celebrated its 10-year anniversary a few days ago, and I thought it was an appropriate opportunity for reflection.
Today I want to kick off that series of emails and discuss crypto.
Ten years of cryptocurrency has been a wild roller coaster. In 2009 few people had heard of it. Today, most of the world knows about Bitcoin. Tens of millions of people have bought some. And a fair number of those have been burned.
The 2017 bubble saw the Bitcoin price rise from less than $1,000 in January to nearly $20,000 by the end of the year.
It was a classic bubble mentality– people threw money at something they didn’t understand based solely on an uninformed belief that the Bitcoin price would keep rising.
And no one wanted to miss out. Some people even went into debt and mortgaged their homes to speculate in cryptocurrency.
By the end of 2017, there were far more cryptocurrencies than fiat currencies, not to mention innumerable ‘tokens’ and ICOs that had taken place.
It got to the point that anyone under the age of 30 who could write a White Paper was able to raise a few million dollars through an ICO.
By the middle of 2018, most cryptocurrencies had been left for dead.
But now there are real signs of life: just yesterday, Facebook announced details on a cryptocurrency that they have been developing for more than a year.
They’re calling it the Libra. It’s quite a bit different than most existing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin:
Libra is less decentralized. It’s backed by fiat currency. And it has already attracted huge partners like Visa– the same types of companies that early cryptocurrency developers hoped to displace.
But out of everything in the marketplace, Facebook’s Libra is the only cryptocurrency that could have global, mainstream appeal.
Within the next 12 months there could be hundreds of millions of users worldwide sending payments to one another as easily as sending an email… or using their Libra to buy coffee at Starbucks.
I doubt this is the end of the road, either. While I’m wary of Facebook, I believe Libra will likely serve as a catalyst, opening doors for more interest, more development, and better applications of the technology.
One thing is certain– banks are in big trouble.
They’ve had a monopoly on our money for thousands of years and have abused this trusted privilege countless times.
Today, the primary functions of banks– holding deposits, making loans, payments & transfers, and exchanging currency– can all be done better, faster, and cheaper outside of the banking system.
There are already plenty of Peer-to-Peer websites where borrowers and lenders can arrange their own loans.
And even more ways to send money, make payments, and exchange currency– from older establishments like Western Union to newer ones like Google Wallet, TransferWise, and PayPal.
Facebook’s Libra represents a direct threat to the banks’ sole remaining monopoly– holdings customer deposits.
We already have a few alternatives for holding our savings, including physical cash, short-term government bonds, gold, crypto, etc.
But with Libra, people will have an easy, mainstream option to hold their money, as well as make transfers and payments. They won’t really need a bank account any longer.
Just in the same way that a lot of people stopped signing up for home telephone lines in favor of their mobile phones, it’s now much more realistic that people (especially younger people) will forgo bank accounts for their crypto wallets.
This is an enormous change from where we were ten years ago. Over the past decade crypto has seen its genesis, bubble, collapse, and resurgence.
And now there’s finally a catalyst to mainstream use that poses a direct threat to banks’ financial dominance. It’s about time.
- 10,000 Of The 'World's Best' Spies Operating In Washington DC
Over a million people flood into the nation’s capital every day; lawmakers, lobbyists, civil servants, students and tourists – and around 10,000 of the world’s best spies.
As WTOP‘s J.J. Green notes in his three-part series on Washington D.C.; “Woven into that orderly bedlam are sophisticated networks of foreign nationals whose sole purpose is to steal secrets.
Green’s figure for 10,000 spies comes from the International Spy Museum in D.C. – and while there is “some quabbling about the numbers,” the FBI apparently agrees with the premise.
“It’s unprecedented — the threat from our foreign adversaries, specifically China on the economic espionage and the espionage front,” said the FBI’s Brian Dugan – Assistant Special Agent in Charge of Counterintelligence in the Washington Field Office.
“A spy is nondescript. A spy is going to be someone that’s going to be a student in school, a visiting professor, your neighbor. It could be a colleague or someone that shares the soccer field with you,” Dugan added.
The archetypal international spy in Washington for many years has been undercover diplomats and foreign intelligence agency assets.
There are more than 175 foreign embassies, residences, chanceries and diplomatic missions in D.C. Tens of thousands of international students reside in the region. And untold numbers of business people with links to foreign intelligence services flow in and out every day.
The training of highly skilled spies, especially those who work in Washington, makes them virtually invisible to ordinary, unsuspecting people.
Washington, according to current and former U.S. intelligence sources, is normally the place where most countries send their best spies. –WTOP
Longtime CIA covert operative Robert Baer told WTOP that even the best spy chasers have a hard time catching foreign operatives in Washington.
“Everybody in the espionage business is working undercover. So if they’re in Washington, they’re either in an embassy or they’re a businessman and you can’t tell them apart because they never acknowledge what they’re doing. And they’re good, so they leave no trace of their communications,” according to Baer, who added: “With the darknet and various private encryption platforms, algorithms and the rest of it, you can operate right here in Washington, D.C., and if you’re good and you’re disciplined and careful, the FBI will never see it.“
Russia Russia Russia
According to Kremlin defector Sergei Tretyakov before his untimely death in 2010, Russia regards the USA as its “main target,” where they sent their best assets.
Retired CIA official and Russia expert John Sipher agrees – telling WTOP in April 2018 that Moscow has hundreds of spies living on American soil.
“They have somewhere on the order of 175 to 200 spies in the United States,” said Sipher. That said, Green notes that Russia’s actual intelligence footprint in the United States is much larger.
“The Russians are hyper focused on the United States. They see us as their main adversary, the main enemy. All the elements of state power — whether it be their diplomatic service or intelligence services or police services — are focused on the United States, Sipher added.”
Accomplices
According to Baer, one focus of D.C. spies is enlisting the help of Americans willing to break the law to help them.
“There’s a large population in retirement or getting close to retirement. The baby boomers are all leaving and that population is looking for post-government jobs,” said Dugan, adding that foreign spies are using social media and other resources to recruit those with national security and intelligence backgrounds.
“Of course there’s always going to be moments that we’re going to have people decide to cooperate with the enemy. And we’re going to find them, and we’re going to catch them,” said an optimistic Dugan.
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