- Is The EU Volcano About To Erupt?
Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
I am wondering if the EU volcano is about to erupt.
My rationale is Matteo Renzi, Francois Hollande, and Angela Merkel met on a volcanic island near Naples, specifically chosen as a symbolic mark of their joint resolve to stay the course with the EU after the UK voted to leave.
Europe is the Solution Says Hollande
Please consider EU Leaders Pledge Brexit Will Not Weaken Bloc.
The leaders of Germany, France and Italy declared they would not allow Britain’s departure from the EU to propel the bloc into reverse as they discussed plans to deepen intelligence co-operation and bolster a pan-European investment plan.
At a summit on the Mediterranean island of Ventotene, they pledged to address some of the bloc’s most urgent problems by reinforcing European defence, overcoming a refugee crisis and spurring economic growth.
“We think that Europe is not the problem. It’s more the solution,” said Italian premier Matteo Renzi at a press conference with German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president François Hollande on the flight deck of an Italian aircraft carrier.
Almost two months after Britain voted to the leave the EU, the summit was cast as an opportunity for the three largest founder members of the union to declare their common commitment to European integration.
The volcanic island near Naples was specifically chosen for the meeting, the leaders’ second since the Brexit referendum, as a symbolic mark of their joint resolve to stay the course with the EU after the UK voted to leave.
Pure Ignorance
Earlier today a reader commented …
To think that EU is only a economic construction is pure ignorance, The main objective was (and still is) TO AVOID MILITARY CONFLICTS in the most violent continent in the last 3 centuries. This has been successful.
Analyzing EU with “nannycrats” and other silly notions denotes only the lack of culture, lack of meaningful readings and shortsighted view of the writer.
I know full well what the mission of the EU is. The problem is two fold.
- Mission creep: The nannycrats did not stick to the mission.
- The Euro: The euro is fatally flawed as a currency.
I fully embrace freedom of movement, within the EU, for the right reasons.
I do not embrace open invites to terrorists, from elsewhere. Nor do I embrace open invites from elsewhere for economic reasons.
The results speak for themselves, and the volcano is arguably ready to blow its top.
Volcano Offers Perfect Symbolism
- Beppe Grillo’s eurosceptic Five Star Movement party is in a dead heat with Matteo Renzi in Italian polls.
- Marine Le Pen eurosceptic National Front party is leading or in second place France.
The Eurosceptic AfD party is on the rise in Germany. - Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party, a right-populist group with an anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic platform, is in the lead in a presidential re-run in Austria.
- Spanish separatists in Catalonia threaten to break away from Spain and are in open defiance in Madrid.
Brexit happened because of inane nannycrat rules and also because of Merkel’s blatantly stupid open arms welcome of outsiders for political and economic reasons.
Termite Infestation
Europe is more splintered now in many ways than it was before the adoption of the Euro.
#eu Brexit is a direct result of nannycrat mission creep on a foundation consisting of termite infested wood commonly known as the euro.
— Mike Shedlock (@MishGEA) August 22, 2016
Anger is visible everywhere. The volcano is ready to blow.
- TRoLL MaGaZiNe
- Illinois Warns Of "Crippling Tax Hikes", "Devastating Impact" If Largest Pension Fund Admits Reality
Defined Benefit Pension Plans are, almost by definition, a ponzi scheme. Current assets are used to pay current claims in full in spite of insufficient funding to pay future liabilities: classic Ponzi. But unlike wall street and corporate ponzi schemes no one goes to jail here because the establishment is complicit. Everyone from government officials to union bosses are incentivized to maintain the status quo – public employees get to sleep better at night thinking they have a “retirement plan,” public legislators get to be re-elected by union membership while pretending their states are solvent and union bosses get to keep their jobs while hiding the truth from employees.
We even published a note several weeks ago titled “Establishment Tries To Suppress “Dissident Actuaries” Explosive Report On Public Pensions,” which pointed out that the American Academy of Actuaries and the Society of Actuaries killed a report that would have warned about the implications of lowering long-term expected returns on pension assets. Apparently the truth was just too scary.
Similarly, Janus’ Bill Gross has been warning of the unintended consequences of low interest rates for years, and reiterated his concerns to Bloomberg recently:
Fund managers that have been counting on returns of 7 percent to 8 percent may need to adjust that to around 4 percent, Gross, who runs the $1.5 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, said during an Aug. 5 interview on Bloomberg TV. Public pensions, including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest in the U.S., are reporting gains of less than 1 percent for the fiscal year ended June 30.
Two weeks ago, we decided to take a look at what would happen if all federal, state and local pension plans decided to heed the advice of Mr. Gross. As one might suspect, the results were abysmal. We conservatively assume that public pensions are currently $2.0 trillion underfunded ($4.5 trillion of assets for $6.5 trillion of liabilities) even though we’ve seen estimates that suggest $3.5 trillion or more might be more appropriate. We then adjusted the return on asset assumption down from the 7.5% used by most pensions to the 4.0% suggested by Mr. Gross and found that true public pension underfunding could be closer to $5.5 trillion, or over 2.5x more than current estimates. Others have suggested that returns should be closer to risk-free rates which would imply an even more draconian $8.4 trillion underfunding.
The result which we dubbed an “Unsolvable Math Problem“, is the reason why so few pension funds have dared to address this issue face on.
However, to our surprise perhaps because they realize just how near to the end really is or for other unknown reason, certain pension funds are finally taking notice, and action. In early August, Richard Ingram of Illinois’s largest pension fund announced that he would be taking another look at long-term return expectations noting that “anybody that doesn’t consider revisiting what their assumed rate of return is would be ignoring reality.” Ingram’s Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System is only 41.5% funded and currently assumes annual returns of 7.5%, down from 8% in 2014.
And right here we get an example of precisely why US pensions are a legal ponzi, because the moment one person is willing to do the right thing, and evaluate the situation soberly, someone else promptly steps in, realizing that if just one card is removed from the house of cards, the whole thing collapses.
Enter Illinois governor Bruce Rauner, who warned that should his state’s largest public pension fund do what it should have done long ago, it would put a big dent in the state’s already fragile finances and lead to “crippling” pension payment hikes, Reuters reported today.
Bruce Rauner and his wife DianaAccording to a Monday memo from a top Rauner aide, the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) board could (or rather, should) decide at its meeting this week to lower the assumed investment return rate, warning that this move “would automatically boost Illinois’ annual pension payment.”
“If the (TRS) board were to approve a lower assumed rate of return taxpayers will be automatically and immediately on the hook for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in higher taxes or reduced services,” Michael Mahoney, Rauner’s senior advisor for revenue and pensions, wrote to the governor’s chief of staff, Richard Goldberg.
As a reminder, the TRS already lowered its assumed rate of return once, back in 2014, and as a result of the even bigger underfunding hole created by the lower assumed rate of return, the state’s pension payment increased by more than $200 million, according to the memo.
It is about to do it again, only this time it would have to cut the discount rate far lower, if it wishes to be even remotely realistic: recall Gross’ suggestion is to lower the expected return to 4% (or even lower). However, as we reported two weeks ago, the TRS hole is already gargantuan and about to get even bigger. Illinois’ fiscal 2017 pension payment to its five retirement systems was estimated at $7.9 billion, up from $7.617 billion in fiscal 2016 and $6.9 billion in fiscal 2015, according to a March report by a bipartisan legislative commission. The country’s fifth-largest state’s unfunded pension liability stood at $111 billion at the end of fiscal 2015, with TRS accounting for more than 55 percent of that gap. The funded ratio remains just under 42%, implying that any rate reductions will push the already frigthfully low funding ratio even lower.
And this is where the politicians come in.
An impasse between the Republican governor and Democrats who control the legislature left Illinois as the only state without a complete 2016 budget, however a six-month fiscal 2017 spending plan was passed in June.
Still, Mahoney has cautioned that “unforeseen and unknown automatic cost increases would have a devastating impact” on Illinois’ ability to fund social services and education.
What Rauner’s senior advisor is essentially saying, is that if the TRS does what the Fed and other central banks are forcing it to do, our political careers may be over, and that could be just the beginning.
And here is the punchline: one of Rauner’s top Republican legislative allies, Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, urged the TRS board to delay a vote Friday to give the public time to weigh in on its possible actions. “This issue is important enough at the very least to put the TRS board on notice we don’t want them taking any action that could cost taxpayers $200 to $300 million without appropriate scrutiny,” she said. The action in question, Radogano is demanding the TRS not take, is to lower its return expectations from the ludicrous 7.5% to something realistic; instead she is suggesting the fund pretend all is well, and avoid the day of reckoning for at least a few more years, ideally until she has quit as Senate Minority Leader, at which point the TRS can by all means go ahead and admit just how terrible its underfunding truly is.
Translation: please keep your heads stuck in the sand, and dare not admit the reality of near-zero returns in the new normal, but instead keep the projected return rate at 7.5%, or else you will not only admit just how much bigger the underfunding hole truly is, but the resultant surge in public anger following the broad rise in taxes coupled with cut to pensioner benefits could lead to millions of furious voters sweeping all of Illinois’ current career politicians right into the unemployment office.
Incidentally, this is precisely the fight that countless ponzi schemes, pardon pension funds, across the US will be forced to go through in the coming months, unless somehow the Fed funds a way to guarantee 8% returns every year, or else sending inflation soaring, and wiping out the fund’s liabilities.
Since neither is likely to happen for a while, the biggest losers will once again be taxpayers and pensions recipients, who this time will be forced to pay – literally – because their public fiduciaries lied to them, and because other fiduciaries are hoping the lies will continue for at least a few more years.
- Children Of The American Police State: Just Another Brick In The Wall
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rurtherford Institute,
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone…
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.
—Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall”The nation’s young people have been given front-row seats for an unfolding police drama that is rated R for profanity, violence and adult content.
In Arizona, a 7-year-old girl watched panic-stricken as a state trooper pointed his gun at her and her father during a traffic stop and reportedly threatened to shoot her father in the back (twice) based on the mistaken belief that they were driving a stolen rental car.
In Oklahoma, a 5-year-old boy watched as a police officer used a high-powered rifle to shoot his dog Opie multiple times in his family’s backyard while other children were also present. The police officer was mistakenly attempting to deliver a warrant on a 10-year-old case for someone who hadn’t lived at that address in a decade.
In Maryland, a 5-year-old boy was shot when police exchanged gunfire with the child’s mother—eventually killing her—over a dispute that began when Korryn Gaines refused to accept a traffic ticket for driving without a license plate on her car.
It’s difficult enough raising a child in a world ravaged by war, disease, poverty and hate, but when you add the police state into the mix, it becomes near impossible to guard against the growing unease that some of the monsters of our age come dressed in government uniforms.
The lesson being taught to our youngest—and most impressionable—citizens is this: in the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (politician, police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.).
Unfortunately, now that school is back in session, life is that much worse for the children of the American police state.
The nation’s public schools—extensions of the world beyond the schoolhouse gates, a world that is increasingly hostile to freedom—have become microcosms of the American police state, containing almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.”
If your child is fortunate enough to survive his encounter with the public schools with his individuality and freedoms intact, you should count yourself fortunate.
Most students are not so lucky.
From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of
- draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,
- overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,
- school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,
- standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,
- politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,
- and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.
Clearly, instead of making the schools safer, we have managed to make them more authoritarian.
Young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.
It used to be that if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school.
That is no longer the case.
Nowadays, students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.
Students have been suspended under school zero tolerance policies for bringing to school “look alike substances” such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.
Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in hot water.
Consider that by the time the average young person in America finishes their public school education, nearly one out of every three of them will have been arrested.
Moreover, just as militarized police who look, think and act like soldiers on a battlefield have made our communities less safe, the growing presence of police in the nation’s schools is resulting in environments in which it’s no longer safe for children to act like children.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers have become de facto wardens in elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepper spray, batons and brute force.
Now advocates for such harsh police tactics and weaponry will tell you that school safety should be our first priority.
What they might fail to mention in their zeal to lock down the schools are the lucrative, multi-million dollar deals being cut with military contractors to equip school cops with tasers, tanks, rifles and $100,000 shooting detection systems.
Indeed, the militarization of the police has been mirrored in the public schools, where school police have been gifted with high-powered M16 rifles, MRAP armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and other military gear. One Texas school district even boasts its own 12-member SWAT team.
What we’re grappling with is not merely a public school system that resembles a prison and is treating young people like prisoners but also a profit-driven system of incarceration has given rise to a growth in juvenile prisons and financial incentives for jailing young people.
It has been said that America’s schools are the training ground for future generations.
Instead of raising up a generation of freedom fighters, however, we seem to be busy churning out newly minted citizens of the American police state who are being taught the hard way what it means to comply, fear and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s getting harder by the day to convince young people that we live in a nation that values freedom and which is governed by the rule of law.
With every school police raid and overzealous punishment that is carried out in the name of school safety, the lesson being imparted is that Americans – especially young people – have no rights at all against the state or the police.
The bottom line is this: if you want a nation of criminals, treat the citizenry like criminals.
If you want young people who grow up seeing themselves as prisoners, run the schools like prisons.
But if you want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters, who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, then run the schools like freedom forums. Remove the metal detectors and surveillance cameras, re-assign the cops elsewhere, and start treating our nation’s young people like citizens of a republic and not inmates in a police state.
- TIME Argues "Trolling" Demands Formal Policing Of The Internet
How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet, Joel Stein … Troll Culture of Hate, Time … They’re turning the web into a cesspool of aggression and violence. What watching them is doing to the rest of us may be even worse … This story is not a good idea. Not for society and certainly not for me. Because what trolls feed on is attention. And this little bit–these several thousand words–is like leaving bears a pan of baklava. It would be smarter to be cautious, because the Internet’s personality has changed. – TIME
TIME magazine has written yet another horrible article, this one basically calling for the Internet to be controlled and censored because of too many “trolls.”
It’s not clear why there are more of them now than before. The only reason the article gives is that “mores” are being stripped away by anonymity and “aggression and violence” are “seeping from our smartphones into every aspect of our lives.”
This doesn’t make much sense but TIME often doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense. Smartphones have been around for years but TIME has only decided now, apparently, that trolling is a big enough problem to warrant a major article.
And it’s one, eventually, that TIME suggests ought to be dealt with by civilian policing. You’d think the Internet itself provides enough ways, for the most part, to deal with all but the most persistent harassment. But TIME doesn’t see it that way.
TIME is actually a little late to the party. The article actually builds on reports (here) that London’s Metropolitan Police are setting up a £1.7 million “Twitter squad” to fight social media trolling. Some £500,000 is funding a Home Office Online Hate Crime “hub” as well.
More:
Once it was a geek with lofty ideals about the free flow of information. Now, if you need help improving your upload speeds the web is eager to help with technical details, but if you tell it you’re struggling with depression it will try to goad you into killing yourself.
Psychologists call this the online disinhibition effect, in which factors like anonymity, invisibility, a lack of authority and not communicating in real time strip away the mores society spent millennia building.
… The people who relish this online freedom are called trolls, a term that originally came from a fishing method online thieves use to find victims. It quickly morphed to refer to the monsters who hide in darkness and threaten people.
Internet trolls have a manifesto of sorts, which states they are doing it for the “lulz,” or laughs. What trolls do for the lulz ranges from clever pranks to harassment to violent threats.
The article goes on to mention “doxxing” – which is “publishing personal data, such as Social Security numbers and bank accounts.”
Also something called “swatting,” – “calling in an emergency to a victim’s house so the SWAT team busts in.”
So we can see the article is conflating words with actions. Trolling, it is implied includes the theft of data and false reports of an emergency. Additionally, some of the examples of trolling seem aimed at men and women whose belief structures seem to be emphatically politically correct.
No matter. Toward the end of the article, we get to the argument that the Internet needs official policing.
As more trolling occurs, many victims are finding laws insufficient and local police untrained. “Where we run into the problem is the social-media platforms are very hesitant to step on someone’s First Amendment rights,” says Mike Bires, a senior police officer in Southern California who co-founded LawEnforcement.social, a tool for cops to fight on-line crime and use social media to work with their communities.
“If they feel like someone’s life is in danger, Twitter and Snapchat are very receptive. But when it comes to someone harassing you online, getting the social-media companies to act can be very frustrating.” Until police are fully caught up, he recommends that victims go to the officer who runs the force’s social-media department.
This excerpt mentions Twitter, which (controversially) has been relatively aggressive about punishing users it deems abusive. In some cases, lifetime bans are levied. Of course, it’s not just Twitter. Facebook and Google (via YouTube) monitor user communications on an ongoing basis.
This is ironic, however, because both Facebook and Google are basically CIA-supported and funded facilities (here and here). One can make the argument within this context that the Internet’s largest providers are basically part of the US’s military-industrial complex.
Thus the same groups that fight interminable overseas conflicts wounding and killing millions are also concerned with “trolling.”
Certainly some “trolling” may be extremely malicious and even dangerous. But it obvious as well that the Internet has given people an independent voice along with important, alternative points of view. And this is obviously – and increasingly – disturbing to those who control society from behind the scenes.
Conclusion: The idea is to generate yet another faux reason to regulate and police information technology. Britain has already begun, and TIME apparently wants to ensure that the US won’t be far behind.
- Chicago Violent Crime Spreading To The "Safe" North Side Neighborhoods
Chicago’s violent crime problem seems to be spreading to the historically safe “north side” neighborhoods. The spike in crime on the north side comes as Chicago’s police department has diverted more officers to the city’s violent south and west side neighborhoods to fight extreme levels of violence there. As reported by local Chicago news station WGN, violent crime is up 61% in the Loop this year with Near North Side up 50%, Lincoln Park up 42% and Edgewater up 44%.
WGN also reports that officers have seemingly lost control of Chicago’s streets as they’re growing increasingly hesitant to confront people out of fear of being humiliated by the next viral arrest video. Meanwhile, local gangs are reported to be offering incentives to “cop killers.”
Officers are reportedly more hesitant to confront people engaging in criminal activity, for fear of having their arrests posted on viral video.
Some local gangs are said to be offering incentives to cop killers.
Per data collected by HeyJackass!, while crime on the north side is elevated it’s still no where near the level of violence reported in the city’s infamous south and west side neighborhoods like Austin, Englewood and Garfield Park.
Chicago experienced a violent weekend with over 50 shootings and 7 homicides reported in just 2 days.
With 470 homicides expected by the end of August, Chicago is well on its way to eclipsing the 508 homicides committed throughout all of 2015.
- The US Has A Huge Rate Of Whites In Incarceration (But Nobody's Talking About It)
Submitted by Alice Salles via TheAntiMedia.org,
Data provided by PrisonStudies.org is helping shed light on America’s incarceration problem, demonstrating that only the small archipelago of Seychelles, located in the Indian Ocean off East Africa, has a higher incarceration rate than the U.S.
But when studied carefully, the rates demonstrate yet another trend: America’s white prison population has been increasing in recent years while the number of blacks in prison has been dropping — and nobody is talking about it.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, America holds “more than 2.3 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 942 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails.” And while the racial disparities in the American justice system are well reported — especially considering one in every five people in jail is arrested for breaking drug-related laws — we are seldom asked to review imprisonment rates among other ethnic groups.
Data provided by the U.S. Department of Justice shows 0.5 percent of white U.S. residents were in prison in December 2013, placing the rate of incarceration among whites in America at 466 per 100,000 citizens.
When compared to the incarceration rates of other countries without regard for other ethnic groups, the rate of white prisoners in America is still higher than most. At 466 per 100,000 citizens in jail, America still has a place in the top ten list of countries with the largest prison population in the world if only the white population is taken into account.
Despite the trend, the media seldom discusses the high incarceration rate among whites.
In an article published earlier this year by the Washington Post, Keith Humphreys writes that “[t]here’s been a big decline in the black incarceration rate [in America], and almost nobody’s paying attention.”
In the article, Humphreys suggests that as the overall number of prisoners drops, the biggest winners are members of the black community. But hidden in plain sight is the new trend: the growth of incarceration rates among whites, both female and male.
According to the Washington Post article, the rate of incarceration among white women went from 34 per 100,000 in 2000 to 53 per 100,000 people in 2014. Among the black female community, 205 out of 100,000 were imprisoned in 2000 while nearly half that number (109 per 100,000) were imprisoned in 2014.
Among the black male population, 3,457 inmates per 100,000 people were imprisoned in 2000 while in 2014, there were 2,724 black inmates per 100,000 people. In 2000, there were 449 white inmates per 100,000 citizens while in 2014, the rate increased slightly with 465 inmates per 100,000.
Though rates of incarceration among the black population are still higher than other groups, the number of white prisoners has grown considerably over the past 15 years, prompting experts in the area to attempt to identify the causes behind the shift.
To Pew Charitable Trusts’ Adam Gelb, the director of the organization’s public safety performance project, “changes in drug use and enforcement over the past 15 years” could be responsible for this demographic shift.
“Methamphetamine, prescription opioid and heroin epidemics have affected whites more than did the crack cocaine epidemic,” reported the Washington Post. In the 1980s and 1990s, incarceration rates among blacks increased because of the crack cocaine epidemic, a phenomenon that may be repeating itself now among whites.
But whether blacks, Latinos, or whites go to jail more often is far from the most important point one should take from the data at hand. Instead, one should look into how the drug war has been exploited by law enforcement, placing a great number of low-level, nonviolent offenders in jail — at times for life — over drug-related laws.
- "In Preparation For Crisis" Germany Considers Bringing Back Military Service
If ordinary Germans were not traumatized enough by this weekend’s shocking official announcement that they should prepare to stockpile several days of food and water “in case of an attack of catastrophe” as part of the country’s revised “Civil Defense Concept”, then the latest news from German press agency DPA, which cites a confidential document prepared by the government according to which the government is considering “bringing back nationwide conscription in times of crisis”, such as situations in which the country needs to “defend NATO’s external borders,” will surely put them over the edge.
“An attack on German territory that would require conventional defence is unlikely,” the document said. However, civil defence measures are necessary because a “major security threat in the future cannot be ruled out,” it added.
The German government abolished compulsory military service in 2011, arguing that there was no longer a geopolitical need for it. Even before then, many young men had avoided military service by opting to perform non-military service, such as working in care homes or in hospitals.
However, it appears that the government is now quietly considering its reintroduction under the controversial Civil Defense Plan, which is due to be discussed by the German cabinet on Wednesday, and focuses on fulfilling Germany’s obligations to defend NATO’s external border. However, as DPA adds, the proposal to revive military service is not readily apparent and can only be found buried in a section entitled “Civil support for the armed forces.”
According to DPA, Germany is considering new security strategies after two terrorist attacks and a mass shooting last month, as well as tensions between the NATO military alliance and Russia about the 2014 annexation of Crimea and subsequent military involvement in eastern Ukraine.
“Quick and reliable delivery of mail especially important for the Bundeswehr (in particular, call-up papers and notices of performance in times of reintroduction of conscription) is ensured under Post- and Telecommunications Safety Act,” the draft reads according to the German press agency.
Adding to the unexpected militarization of German society, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said earlier this month that the Bundeswehr would undergo training with federal police in preparation for deployment in domestic counterterrorism operations.
Should the government decide that there is sufficient grounds for it, conscription can be easily reintroduced as it is specifically authorized in the German constitution and can be returned with a simple law approved by the parliament, according to Die Zeit.
Apart from conscription, the German Interior Ministry’s paper also mentions the obligations of civilians and civilian organizations to assist the Bundeswehr in other ways, particularly by helping “recruitment organizations and accommodation infrastructure.” Some of the military’s support functions could also be outsourced to civilian companies, such as “a limited provision of catering for the troops during operations,” the paper reportedly says. In other words, should war break out German GDP will soar.
However, then the document goes far beyond modern-day military outsourcing tasks and discusses other proposals resembling war-time measures. Cited by RT, in times of crisis, the draft reads, the federal government can ensure “nutritional emergency preparedness” by imposing “tax obligations relating to cultivation, processing, distribution and sale of food products.” The plan also includes the abovementioned suggestion to ration food and water in case of crisis.
As we reported on Sunday, the proposed “Civil Defense Concept” is the first time since the Cold War that the German government has considered such measures, but the plan was devised as early as 2012, according to Germany’s FAZ newspaper.
The German cabinet will review and decide on the “defense concept” plan tomorrow, at which point – if endorsed – we will likely have more details on how Germany is preparing for war crisis.
- How The Fed's Facebook PR Campaign Went Terribly Wrong
Over the weekend we reported that just days after the Fed’s launched its first Facebook page last Thursday, in an attempt to mollify the masses with this odd public relations gambit in which the Fed tried to pass off as “one of the people”, the result was… “not what it had expected.” Overnight, even American Banker chimed in, reported that “when the Federal Reserve Board finally launched its own Facebook page last week, the response was as swift as it was predictable. The page was quickly overrun by critics, who angrily denounced the central bank as a tool of Wall Street and accused it of working against the American public. “The Federal Reserve is the root of all problems in the United States,” Luke Peets, a libertarian, wrote in a response that earned nearly 500 likes on its own and was typical of the commentary on the page.”
Ironically, while the Fed racked up “likes” for the page, topping 11,000 by Monday afternoon leading many to wonder just which Bangladeshi clickfarm Janet was printing money for to burnish the Fed’s image, the comments it received were universally negative, leaving some – like this website for example – to wonder how long it would be before the central bank would decide to retreat.
Amusingly, American Banker pointed out something spot on: just like everything else it does, the Fed had zero real world experience when it came even to its first foray into FaceBook, which also explains why this PR attempt was such a debacle:
The Fed’s move surprised more than internet trolls, however, but also social media experts, who questioned what the central bank was trying to accomplish and its overall commitment to social media. To some, the page appeared to take a particularly clueless approach.
All of the postings — eight by deadline — were either press releases, speeches by officials or general explainers on the nature of the Fed system. Essentially, the Fed is using Facebook as one more way in which it releases its standard public relations material.
That fundamentally misunderstands the nature of Facebook, which is a social network designed for interaction and conversation — not the simple spouting of PR.
The Fed is “checking a box,” said Frank Eliason, the head of customer experience for Zeno Group and formerly head of global social media at Citigroup. ” ‘We were told we should be in social media.’ This is the biggest mistake I see.” Perhaps just like the Fed “was told” to lower rates to zero and print money 7 years ago, and realize in retrospect that all those “conspiracy theorists” who had slammed its policy as destructive and clueless, had been spot on.
Meanwhile, the farce continued:
Social media experts universally faulted the Fed for failing to respond to any comments it received. No one expected the central bank to take on trolls opposed to, say, the existence of the Fed itself. But failing to even generally respond is a big mistake, they said.
“They are not responding at all from what I can see,” said Jennifer Abernethy, president of Socially Delivered, a global social media management concierge firm, and the author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Social Media Marketing.”
“They don’t need to respond to everybody, but at the end of the day, post some kind of response,” Abernethy said. “They need to see if they can turn it back around and get it to be more of a conversation.”
Sadly they can’t, because in this particular case it really is the Fed, alone, against the entire world, and any additional response would lead to an even more aggravated battering by the commentariat.
“That may be its most egregious error, experts said — and a sign that the Fed’s social media strategy will be a failure.” By just posting press releases and speeches, the Fed may be inadvertently reinforcing critics’ views of the institution.
Considering how many times the Fed itself has admitted that its critics were right, this shouldn’t really be a surprise.
“You really want to come across as one with the community rather than ‘I’m speaking at you,’ ” Eliason said. ” ‘Let me teach you about the Federal Reserve’ — that’s not being one with the community. It’s sending a message that we view ourselves as above. It’s playing into the stereotype of what people think.”
Frank… it’s not a stereotype.
And for those who missed all the fun on Sunday, here is a great video summary courtesy of Mile Maloney.
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