- Chinese Diplomat Warns UK: Ditch Huawei At Your Own Peril
Even with the 90 day delay, the Trump administration’s decision to blacklist Huawei and other foreign telecoms suspected of threatening national security has already prompted a handful of suppliers to cut ties with the Chinese telecoms giant, for fear that continuing to do business with Huawei would subject them to retaliation from the US.
Three British companies, mobile network operators EE and Vodafone, as well as semiconductor maker ARM, have already said they would end their business relationships with Huawei (EE and Vodafone said they wouldn’t offer Huawei phones on its 5G network, and ARM told employees to tear up all contracts with Huawei).
With all of the pressure on Huawei, Beijing is again resorting to threats to try and preserve Huawei’s business. The UK reviews its telecoms policy to determine whether Huawei will be allowed to supply ‘non-core’ 5G components, like antenna masts, Beijing would like UK bureaucrats to know that there will be consequences if they shun Huawei.
Top Chinese diplomat Chen Wen, the Charge D’affairs in London, told the BBC that China would scale back its investments in the UK if Huawei is excluded from its 5G network, according to the BBC.
Though she kept her comments vague, Wen told the BBC that the backlash would be “quite substantial.” This at a time when Brexit-related uncertainty is already complicating decisions relating to capex and FDI.
Speaking to the BBC’s World at One programme, Ms Chen, who is the Chinese Charge D’affairs in London, said the UK economy would be damaged by the message any ban on Huawei sent out to international and Chinese companies.
“The message is not going to be very positive,” she said.
“Is UK still open? Is UK still extending a welcoming arm to other Chinese investors?”
When asked how large the repercussions would be, the embassy official said: “It’s hard to predict at the moment, but I think it’s going to be quite substantial.”
Chen added that the Chinese government would never ask a domestic company to spy on its customers, before accusing President Trump of stoking ”hysteria”.
Ms Chen insisted that her government would never force a Chinese firm operating abroad to provide information to its intelligence agencies.
She went on to claim that there was a bit of “hysteria” in the United States about the rise of Chinese influence and the UK should make decisions based on its own national interest.
She called Huawei’s investment in the UK “a vote of confidence in the UK economy.”
As convincing as Beijing’s “no spying” pledge might sound, the notion that Huawei won’t spy on its customers isn’t just specious – it’s demonstrably false. Who can forget the suspicious ‘back doors’ discovered in Huawei’s networking equipment, or the suspicious ‘back doors’ discovered in its consumer-tech products.
With this in mind, it looks like the UK is facing a choice: Either grant Beijing ingress to its communications networks, or risk losing that China money.
Whatever they decide, the world will be watching closely to see if this is the start of a trend of European countries finally coming around to Washington’s line on Huawei.
- The Euro-Atlantic Populist Wave
Authored by Andrew Spannaus via ConsortiumNews.com,
In 2016, the world began to change, with the Brexit referendum in the U.K. and the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president. In both cases, an insurrection of “regular people” against the structures of political and media power upset the political balance of two of the leading countries of the Western world.
And the revolt didn’t stop there. It continued in 2017 and 2018 with a series of elections across continental Europe that saw the growth of protest movements and candidates willing to challenge the system of globalization that until recently seemed inevitable.
The anti-establishment revolt that has spread across the Western world is closely linked to the gradual transformation of the economic structure of the nations on both sides of the Atlantic over a period of decades, from one focused principally on production, to a system based increasingly on finance.
“Wall Street bubbles – Always the same.” 1901 cartoon depicting financier J. P. Morgan as a bull with eager investors.(Puck via Wikimedia Commons)
Finance has always had a role, of course, and speculative bubbles have often led to crashes and depressions in various periods of history. The characteristic of the shift over the past half-century is that of a structural change that despite provoking a series of crises, has not been effectively addressed. The result has been a widespread increase in inequality, interlinked with stagnation or even a decrease of purchasing power and living standards for a considerable portion of the population. This doesn’t mean that people don’t have more stuff nowadays, due to new digital technologies for example, they do. But most have to work more now, with more uncertainty, to make a decent living.
Speculative Financial Attacks
The mechanisms of the globalized financial economy have brought profound change in the international political sphere as well. Speculative movements have become a form of pressure under which countries can be brought to their knees, as national governments are no longer able to think of their own citizens’ interests in the face of a financial attack. Some might say that in the long run the markets are generally right, i.e. capital movements tend to reward or punish countries based on the quality of their economic policies. This ideological, tautological position is easily unmasked with reference to any number of speculative bubbles, from that of the “Asian Tigers” in the 1990s to the debt bubbles of Argentina and Russia in the 2000s; the pursuit of immediate profits in the name of shareholder value often means ignoring economic fundamentals, and exploiting misperceptions despite their lack of justification being fairly obvious to a reasonable observer.
The problem is not the existence of financial markets per se, but rather the role they have been given in determining economic policy, de facto shifting the aims of policymakers from the pursuit of the general welfare to the appeasement of investors in a model whose goals are generally not aligned with the long-term needs of the population.
The discontent produced by this process has now boiled over; and predictably, the targets of the protest are not only the executives who exploit the revolving door between finance and government (of which there have been many). A broader opposition has developed, a cultural revolt that mixes multiple factors associated with the same process. In the case of globalization there is no denying that many changes have been due not to some inevitable process of upheaval ultimately leading to progress. Rather, numerous Western industries have been uprooted in order to exploit weak labor and environmental regulations in countries that were desperate for investment. Political decisions were made to further this process, essentially disregarding the long-term effects they would have on the workforce in developed nations.
Yellow Vest protesters in France, Jan. 12, 2019. (Pascal Maga via Flickr)
The defenders of globalization say that people have to be ready to adapt to this process, yet when adaptation means seeing a worsening of one’s standard of living, accompanied by a loss of social cohesion, it’s not surprising that frustration and discontent grow over time.
Immigration
Another major issue that has emerged in this context is, of course, immigration. A strong reaction has developed among conservatives in particular, but has expanded to have a general effect beyond those who would normally be considered xenophobic or racist. In many countries, right-wing populists have used immigration as one of their major issues in criticizing globalization. The notion that the disappearance of borders means that people should be able to go wherever they wish, has fed into fears of a rapid change in the identity of Western European countries in particular, in both economic and social terms.
There is no denying the centrality of the issue of immigration, yet it is political malpractice not to recognize how it is linked to the overall reaction to globalization, starting in the economic sphere. The insecurity people feel due to more difficult living conditions feeds a fear of immigrants, who are seen as a threat to economic well-being. If immigrants are willing to accept lower pay and less comfortable living conditions, it is not hard to see how that can put downward pressure on the living standards of others.
Disastrous Wars
A third key issue is foreign policy. While the notion of free markets has been used to promote neoliberal economic policies, the defense of human rights has been proclaimed as the justification for a series of disastrous wars. President Barack Obama made great use of Hillary Clinton’s hawkishness to win the Democratic primaries in 2008, only to later be pushed into another regime-change war a few years later, in Libya. Donald Trump went further, decrying the “$6 trillion wasted in the Middle East” that could have been used to “rebuild our country.” This attack on the so-called shared values of the international liberal order struck a strong chord in U.S. citizens tired of endless conflict, making a connection between a failed foreign policy and economic decline. The effects were felt in Europe as well, in particular as regards a potential shift in the Western stance towards Russia.
Protest in Minneapolis, April 2, 2011, against U.S. military intervention in Libya. (Fibonnaci Blue via Flickr)
Little Progress
In the United States, while pundits concentrate on the tone of the political/public debate as it is affected by Trump’s style, there is little progress on addressing the long-term process that has brought us to this point. Yes, there has been economic growth, and even an uptick in manufacturing jobs, yet the middle and lower classes in the United States still struggle to make ends meet, while younger workers in particular suffer from uncertainty regarding their future. Ignoring this reality, claiming that whoever still feels an aversion to the mainstream narrative regarding the economic and political conditions of the country, merely strengthens the disconnect between different segments of the population. Fortunately for the Democratic Party, in the 2018 mid-terms most candidates decided to concentrate on pocketbook issues, starting with healthcare, rather than trumpeting the cause of the resistance against the “deplorables,” the term used by Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The similarity with the political situation in Europe is obvious. For years the political and media establishment branded any anti-European Union positions as being inherently racist and reactionary, simply feeding the perception that the institutions were out of touch with the demands of a significant portion of the population. From the Netherlands to France, from Germany to Italy, populist parties have all drawn on opposition to globalization and austerity to grow their support, often — but not always — mixed in with criticism of increased immigration. Despite the different political systems, the issues are so similar to those in the United States that it is hard to deny a connection, or to reduce the popular reaction to one based only on racism or fear of others.
Given the parallels between the situations in Europe and the United States, the only practicable remedy is also quite evident: either political institutions begin to deal seriously with the fundamental economic changes that have taken place over a period of decades, or nobody should expect the revolt of the voters to subside, with all of the negative side effects seen to this point. And there is no doubt things could get even worse, in Europe in particular, where the last cases of dictatorship and destruction of democratic institutions are not so far in the past.
- Meanwhile In China: If You Don't Recycle, Big Brother Will Get You
Starting in September, residents of Xi’an, located in China’s northwest Shaanxi Province, will receive negative social credit points if they refuse to observe local garbage sorting regulations, according to the CCP-friendly Global Times.
The Xi’an government requires its residents to sort their waste into at least four categories – recyclable, hazardous waste, kitchen and other waste. Those who refuse to fulfill the obligation will be recorded under the personal credit system or will be fined up to 200 yuan ($28). –Global Times
“Residents are forbidden from mixing industrial solid waste, construction waste, medical waste and animal carcasses in household garbage. Each residential area should have at least one “recyclable” and one “hazardous waste” collection container, the regulation says.”
China’s social credit system is a technological behemoth of oppression – used to regulate public behavior with the goal of punishing people into compliance. People with great social credit will get “green channel” benefits while those who violate laws will be punished with restrictions and penalties.
Hangzhou, the capital city of China’s Zhejiang province, rolled out its social credit system earlier last year, rewarding “pro-social behaviors” such as blood donations, healthy lifestyles, and volunteer work while punishing those who violate traffic laws, smoke and drink, and speak poorly about government.
According to a February report, Chinese officials collected 14.21 million pieces of information of “untrustworthy conduct” by both business and individuals – including failure to repay loans, illegal fund collection, false and misleading advertising, swindling customers, and – for individuals, acts such as taking reserved seats on trains or causing trouble in hospitals, SCMP reports.
Meanwhile, around 17.46 million people who are “discredited” were prevented from buying plane tickets, while 5.47 million were disallowed from purchasing tickets to China’s high-speed train system.
Tracking of individual behavior in China, meanwhile, has become more accessible to the government with apps such as Tencent’s WeChat and And Financial’s Alipay – a central point for making payments, obtaining loans and organizing transport. These accounts are linked to mobile phone numbers, which in turn require government IDs.
Other technologies, including social media, facial recognition, smartphones, artificial intelligence and smart cameras will play a critical role in this Orwellian strategy for social compliance.
In the next few years, every action of a citizen will leave a permanent digital fingerprint that the government will either assign a good or bad score based on how they view the action.
And now, if residents of Xi’an fail to properly sort their trash, they will be docked social credit points or fined.
- The Next Economic Crisis And The Looming Post-Multipolar System
The Impending Crisis
At one time, specifically during the post-World War 2 Bretton Woods era, it looked like as if the capitalist model could be indefinitely sustainable and avoid plunging the world into major world conflicts. That era began to come to an end during the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, and came to a complete end at the end of the Cold War which ushered in the era of the so-called “globalization” which took form of unbridled competition for markets and resources. At first this competition did not show many signs of trouble. There were many “emerging markets” created as a result of the collapse of the Soviet bloc into which Western corporations could expand.
However, the law of diminishing returns being what it is, the initial rapid economic growth rates could not be sustained and attempts to goose it using extremely liberal central bank policies, to the point of zero and even negative interest rates, succeeded in inflating—and bursting—several financial “bubbles”.
Even today’s US economy bears many hallmarks of such a bubble, and it is only one of many. Sooner or later the proverbial “black swan” event will unleash a veritable domino effect of popping bubbles and plunge the global economy into a crisis of a magnitude it has not seen since the 1930s. A crisis against which the leading world powers have few weapons to deploy, since they have expended their monetary and fiscal “firepower” on the 2008 crisis, to little avail. The low interest rates and high levels of national debt mean that the next big crisis will not be simply “more of the same.” It will fundamentally rearrange the global economy.
The Once and Future Multipolar System?
While the 1944 Bretton Woods conference sought to re-establish a global economic order that was destroyed in the Great Depression, the formation of the United Nations served a rather different aim. The UN Security Council, with five veto-wielding permanent members, meant that for as long as these five countries abided by its rules, there would be five spheres of influence and therefore also five relatively exclusive economic zones. British leaders in 1945, for example, hardly desired the dissolution of their empire; records of wartime discussions between FDR and Churchill show the two clashed repeatedly over the tariff barriers separating British colonial possessions from international trade. That which became known as the “Iron Curtain” was a feature, not a bug, of that system—Churchill himself wanted one for his empire, after all. However, is the apparent multi-polar system of today any more viable than the one which appeared to emerge after 1945?
“We have always been at war with Eurasia”
The post-WW2 multipolar world did not come to pass because the French and British empires collapsed and its newly independent states became aligned with either the United States or the USSR, and the PRC was in no shape to exert much power outside of its own borders since it was recovering from decades of civil war and foreign occupation. Seven decades after WW2’s conclusion, however, one can readily see that the era of US and European economic dominance is giving way to a multipolar world in which Russia and China are once again capable of standing up for their economic interests.
However, a return to genuine multipolarity does not appear very likely. Russia and China need each other too much to risk conflict by pursuing their own separate and mutually exclusive economic spheres of influence. Rather, we can expect a gradual merger of the two. When it comes to the US and the EU, the situation is slightly more complicated.
Welcome to Oceania, Citizen
While George Orwell imagined the future of Russia (Eurasia) and China (Eastasia) as imperial entities unintegrated with one another, a prediction that does not appear to be coming true, the establishment of Oceania, governed from the United States and UK playing the role of “Airstrip One” seems to be looming every closer. Only the status of Europe remains unclear at this point.
The European Union is still unfit to shoulder world power responsibilities, it has barely weathered the last economic crisis, and the next one could easily be the final nail in its coffin. It certainly does not help that the United States is attempting to thoroughly economically dominate the European Union in order to deal with its own economic problems. Reducing European exports to the US and expanding US energy exports to the EU is very high on the list of White House priorities, to the point of risking trade war. Europe’s behavior following the US unilateral JCPOA withdrawal shows that the Europeans are incapable to oppose US power, even if it means defending important economic interests.
On the other hand, and in response to the Trump administration increasingly brazen attempts to subjugate Europe in political and economic terms, Germany and France are pursuing efforts to establish a solid EU “core”. This “core” would boast a European army, a concept whose popularity has grown in recent years, and be capable of collective action in the event of a crisis even if it means shedding the less well integrated eastern and southern EU members or at least relegating them to second-class status. However, it remains to be seen whether anything viable can be created before the next crisis topples the European house of cards and leads to power struggles over the political and economic alignment of the individual European states. As logical as developing a unified political and economic European may seem, it practice it is a very difficult idea to implement.
In theory, Germany, France, and Italy as well as other industrialized European states have the potential of becoming an independent force operating in the interests of their nations. In practice, this possibility has almost been lost. In the event of a confrontation with the Anglo-Saxon power center under conditions of difficult relations with Russia and intense struggle over markets with China and other “Asian Tigers” (Japan, ROK, Taiwan), Germany and other above-mentioned European powers lack potential for future economic expansion or even scientific and technological development. Their internal markets lack expansion potential, instead, they appear to be shrinking instead. Populations which produced the most value-added products are aging. The youth has been to a large extent replaced by newcomers who are not interested in industrial labor or hard work in general. These countries’ export capabilitiies are also limited.
On the other hand, if one considers the US competitors, we can readily see groups of actors whose elites have not consented to the roles being imposed upon them by the global elites. This is a heterogeneous group which cannot be termed to exist as a single bloc. National elites’ interests diverge significantly from, and often clash with those of the globalists to a certain degree and at different times. For example, Russian and Chinese national elites do not have identical economic interests. That which interests Chinese capital may be directly counter to the interests of Russian capital. The same is true for social questions. When it comes to Iran, the situation is more complicated still. Accordingly, the main problem of those who seek to compete or oppose the global dominion is that they lack a shared strategic vision and long-term coordinated position. They actions often have only localized significance.
Hybrid War Forever
Once that process of coalescence is complete, proxy wars will continue over certain parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, even Latin America, as key powers will struggle over vital markets and resources, using the full array of military, political, economic, cyber, and information weapons that we have seen used in Libya, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela.
This hybrid warfare will be accompanied by a level of official propaganda that will make for example the current “Russiagate” reporting pale in comparison. However, at the same time, the rhetoric will be considerably more heated than the actual level of hostilities between the nuclear weapons-wielding states. Instead, that propaganda will be used to justify internal political censorship and repression, on a scale even greater than we have seen used against the Yellow Vests protests in France.
Deprived of the ability to expand into ever new territories, the West will gradually sink into stagnation , poverty, and domestic disorder. At that point, the world will be in a state of a genuine bi-polar Cold War, a war of political and economic attrition whose outcome is currently impossible to predict.
- Employees Of 'Sexting-Central' Snapchat Spied On Users
Employees at social media giant Snap have been abusing internal tools for accessing user data in order to spy on Snapchat users, according to an investigative report by Motherboard, which interviewed multiple current and former employees and viewed internal Snap communications.
“employees have used data access processes for illegitimate reasons to spy on users, according to two former employees.” –Motherboard
Snapchat, which boasts over 186 million users, is a mobile app for Android and iOS devices which allows people to send ‘self-destructing’ photos or videos to another person. The ‘snap’ can be set to expire within a few seconds of the receiver opening it, or the sender can elect not to delete it at all.
As such, the app has fueled an explosion in sexting – the exchange of sexually explicit messages over electronic devices, which has consequently led to legal trouble for those breaking the law. Earlier this month, five Fairfax County, VA students were hit with nine felony child porn charges and one charge for unlawful filming tied to a sexting case in which the students were trading naked pictures of female students over Snapchat.
One of the tools Snap employees use to access sensitive user information, often for law enforcement purposes, is called SnapLion. Originally designed to comply with court orders and other valid law enforcement requests, SnapLion can reveal a user’s location data (when enabled) and message metadata, as well as photos or videos backed up by Snap users.
Snap’s publicly available guide to law enforcement for requesting information about users elaborates on the sort of data available from the company, including the phone number linked to an account; the user’s location data (such as when the user has turned on that setting on their phone and enabled location services on Snapchat); their message metadata, which may show who they spoke to and when; and in some cases limited Snap content, such as the user’s “Memories,” which are saved versions of their usually ephemeral Snaps, as well as other photos or videos the user backs-up. –Motherboard
According to the report, Snap’s entire “Spam and Abuse” team has access to the program according to one of the former employees, along with a department called “Customer Ops.” One current employee suggested that the tool is also used to combat bullying or harassment on the platform.
One of the former employees said that data access abuse occurred “a few times” at Snap. That source and another former employee specified the abuse was carried out by multiple individuals. A Snapchat email obtained by Motherboard also shows employees broadly discussing the issue of insider threats and access to data, and how they need to be combatted. –Motherboard
While Motherboard was able to view internal communications, the investigation “was unable to verify exactly how the data abuse occurred, or what specific system or process the employees leveraged to access Snapchat user data.“
You’ll just have to use your imagination – and always keep in mind that whatever you send over somebody else’s network is always subject to internal abuse.
Leonie Tanczer, a lecturer in International Security and Emerging Technologies at University College London, said in an online chat this episode “really resonates with the idea that one should not perceive companies as monolithic entities but rather set together by individuals all who have flaws and biases of their own. Thus, it is important that access to data is strictly regulated internally and that there are proper oversights and checks and balances needed.” –Motherboard
“For the normal user, they need to understand that anything they’re doing that is not encrypted is, at some point, available to humans,” said former Facebook chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, who added that insider data access abuse ‘is not exceptionally rare.’
As Motherboard notes – that while Snap has taken measures to introduce strict access controls over user data, and takes abuse an user privacy very seriously, “the news highlights something that many users may forget: behind the products we use everyday there are people with access to highly sensitive customer data, who need it to perform essential work on the service.”
- Skype Co-Founder Is "Desperate" To Save Humanity From AI
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
The co-founder of Skype, Jaan Tallinn, is on a desperate mission to save the human race from the destruction of artificial intelligence. Since 2007, Tallinn’s dedicated more than $1 million toward preventing super-smart AIs from replacing humans as Earth’s dominant species and from destroying humanity in the process.
According to an interesting Popular Science article, the programmer discovered AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky’s essay “Staring into the Singularity” in 2007, two years after cashing in his Skype shares following the startup’s sale to eBay. That’s when Tallinn started pouring money into the cause of saving humanity from AI.
So far, [Tallinn has] given more than $600,000 to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, the nonprofit where Yudkowsky is a research fellow. He’s also given $310,000 to the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, which PopSci quotes him as calling “the most interesting place in the universe.” –Futurism
It’s a lofty goal, and it may not be having much of an effect. Tallinn is strategic about his donations, however. He spreads his money among 11 organizations, each working on different approaches to AI safety, in the hope that one might stick. In 2012, he co-founded the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) with an initial outlay of close to $200,000.
Tallinn says that super-intelligent AI brings unique threats to the human race.
Ultimately, he hopes that the AI community might follow the lead of the anti-nuclear movement in the 1940s. In the wake of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists realized what a destructive force nuclear weapons had become and joined together to try to limit further nuclear testing.
“The Manhattan Project scientists could have said, ‘Look, we are doing innovation here, and innovation is always good, so let’s just plunge ahead,’” he tells me.
“But they were more responsible than that.”
Tallinn says that we need to take responsibility for what we create and AI, once it reaches the singularity, has the potential to overpower and outsmart human beings. If an AI is sufficiently smart, he explains, it might have a better understanding of the constraints placed on it than its creators do.
Imagine, he says, “waking up in a prison built by a bunch of blind 5-year-olds.”
That is very likely what it could be like for a super-intelligent AI that is confined by humans.
- DoJ Launches Anti-Trust Probe Into Real Estate Brokerage Industry
As homes in the US become increasingly unaffordable, those who can afford to buy probably chafe at the insanely high commissions paid to agents and brokers, which can amount to 6% of the sales price.
And as more buyers balk at these fees, turning instead to ‘iBuyers’ like Open Door and Zillow (which will buy a home with the intention of flipping it), it appears the DoJ has finally taken an interest in the phenomenon.
According to Bloomberg, anti-trust authorities are looking into allegations that members of the Realtors Association conspired with brokerage companies like Realogy Holdings Corp and Re/Max Holdings to stop home sellers from negotiating their commissions. Bloomberg learned about the investigation from sources at CoreLogic, a data provider that offers real-estate data to government agencies, lenders and brokers.
CoreLogic spokeswoman Alyson Austin confirmed the company received a civil investigative demand “relating to an investigation of practices of residential real estate brokerages.” CoreLogic is not the focus of the investigation, she said.
If anything, the investigation is long overdue. The DoJ has been trying to lower real-estate commissions for the past 10 years.
The U.S. residential real estate industry has long faced criticism that it stifles competition among brokerages, protecting agent commissions that are higher than those paid by sellers in many other countries. In 2008, the Justice Department reached a settlement with the National Association of Realtors, a trade group, that was designed to lower commissions paid by consumers by opening the industry to internet-based brokers.
While CoreLogic couldn’t provide any specifics beyond disclosing that the investigative demand sought information about the ability to search real estate listings on multiple platforms, the DoJ declined to comment, and BBG noted that a lawsuit filed against real-estate broker franchisors and the Realtors association might hold a few more clues.
The investigative demand to CoreLogic, dated last month, follows a lawsuit filed against the Realtors association and real estate broker franchisors, including Realogy Holdings Corp., claiming they conspired to prevent home sellers from negotiating commissions they pay to buyers’ agents.
The Realtors association filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it misunderstands the role of brokers. The trade group didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit or the Department of Justice investigation.
“We believe this case has no merit and have moved jointly with the other corporate defendants to dismiss the case,” Realogy spokesman Trey Sarten said in an email. “Additionally, we have joined in NAR’s motion to dismiss.”
The Internet has made it easy for anybody to look up listings, so why have commissions for real-estate agents remained so high? Though, while lower commissions could lead to lower prices, for most millennials, a mere 6% differential likely won’t be enough to revive the lost dream of homeownership.
- How Media Propagandists Create "Symbolic" Meaning
Authored by Joshua Philipp via The Epoch Times,
In the information age, propaganda has become one of the most powerful forces in the world. And political factions, legacy news outlets, and special interest groups looking to manipulate societies to their wills use propaganda’s various tactics to advance their goals.
Yet, if we can manage to understand the inner workings of these propaganda tactics, their effects can be blunted. Like watching a magician at work, the tricks lose their charm when we can recognize the sleight of hand.
Among the most common methods used by legacy news outlets and political factions to manipulate public opinion is to deceive people into interpreting their adversaries as “symbols” of intended emotions and concepts.
Edward Bernays, whose 1928 book “Propaganda” directed modern tactics for advertising and politics, wrote that the intentional manipulation of societies, and of the habits and opinions of people, “is an important element in democratic society.”
“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society,” he wrote, “constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
The manipulation of symbols is one of the tactics at the foundation of many other tactics. And to understand how these broader tactics work, we first need to understand how propagandists break down how a person views the world, and how they can trigger people’s emotions. This ties to one’s “mythos” and “cycle of meaning.”
The “mythos” is used to describe a person’s system of values and perceptions of the world. It can be your interpretation of right and wrong, your beliefs shaped by religion, and your worldview shaped by stories and experiences.
Propagandists look to alter a person’s “mythos” by subverting what’s described as your “cycle of meaning.” This is the cycle that makes people interpret things as symbols. It holds that people don’t interpret reality directly, but instead interpret reality through a series of symbols onto which they attach meaning. Through the cycle of meaning, it’s held that a person can alter the way people interpret these symbols through things including ritual, myth, art, and experience.
The concept isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As an example, a crucifix has no meaning in and of itself. It would carry no meaning if shown to someone unfamiliar with the story of Jesus. For people with the story, however, the crucifix is seen as a symbol of salvation.
The same concept of symbology ties to people in your life, and how your past experiences with them shape your perceptions of them. When you encounter a person, you may feel the past emotions they caused in you. Some people may evoke love, others resentment, depending on how your perceptions have been shaped by experience.
Propagandists look to subvert your cycle of meaning, and your mythos, in order to alter the way you react emotionally to things and how you interpret reality.
Bernays wrote that when people desire something, it’s often not for that thing’s actual worth or usefulness, but instead because they interpret surface meanings as symbols of deeper unspoken desires. He explained, a person desires something “because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself.”
“A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion… He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in business, or a means of pleasing his wife.”
These deeper desires, or surface meanings, then become tools for propagandists to manipulate—since using them can directly trigger a person’s emotional responses.
If people find insects disgusting, then a propagandist looking to make a target appear disgusting will name that target alongside insects. If people find a group reprehensible, a propagandist will mention that group in relation to a target that they want to paint as reprehensible.
We’ve seen this tactic used heavily, for example, by legacy news outlets and politicians attempting to paint conservatives badly. To do this, they try to associate in people’s minds all conservatives with negative emotions by always naming them alongside words such as “fascist,” “alt-right,” or “racist.”
This is of course done through a jump in logic.
Mussolini was a socialist, as was Adolf Hitler’s “National Socialist” (NAZI) party. The concept that they were “far right” came about through a re-framing of political spectrums done under the Marxist Frankfurt School, which looked only at the ideas of nationalism versus internationalism to separate their systems from the full body of socialism (a necessary move for the survival of socialism, since its association with Hitler’s National Socialists would have been devastating to socialist movements during the denazification movement after World War II).
Yet, using this tactic, legacy news outlets have convinced their followers to interpret “MAGA” hats as “symbols” of hate. Conservatives are seen as being “symbols” of “fascism” and are targeted for violence by leftist radical groups like Antifa. It’s a “guilty by association” concept – only the propagandists pulling the strings are fabricating what the symbolic “associations” are.
- Mississippi Floodway May Be Opened, Unleashing 17 Million Liters Of Water Per Second
One of the major barriers that keeps the Mississippi River on its course could be opened for only the third time in its history. The opening would be the result of rising river levels and could also flood parts of Louisiana, which would affect businesses in the region, according to Bloomberg.
The Army Corps of Engineers may be forced to open the Morganza Floodway, a lengthy dam-like barrier that redirects 600,000 cubic feet, or 17 million liters of water, per second to take pressure off the Mississippi. The river has been at high levels since last October as a result of massive rainfalls that have also had a negative effect on crops in the region.
The floodway is about 45 miles northwest of Baton Rouge and, when opened, sends water into the “rural area between the Atchafalaya and Mississippi Rivers in central Louisiana.”
The area along the river between New Orleans and Baton Rogue is littered with refineries, chemical plants and grain elevators. High water on the river has already caused delays for shipments of raw materials in and out of these businesses and, due to the high levels, traffic through Vicksburg was shut down earlier this year already.
Exacerbating things further is the fact that meteorologists are calling for a new deluge into the river as a result of thunderstorms across the Great Plains and the Midwest this week. A large amount of this water will flow into the Mississippi, coupled with water from the Arkansas river.
Jeff Graschel, service coordination hydrologist with the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center said: “We are really close to the trigger levels.” Speaking to Bloomberg, he added that while the Mississippi could dip lower in the next few days, forecasters are expecting a new deluge caused by a week’s worth of thunderstorms across the Great Plains and Midwest to send the river rising again by the end of next week.
John Bel Edwards, the state’s governor will be holding a press conference to explain the action he will take.
The floods occurring now are not as severe as they were in 2011, which was the last time the floodway was forced open. River levels are about 2 feet lower than they were during 2011.
The Bonnet Carre Spillway, about 28 miles downstream, was opened in February to help prevent flood risk in New Orleans.
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