- The Militarization Of Xi Jinping's China: "Recovering" Areas They Have Never Ruled
Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,
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The People’s Liberation Army is arming fast, and that development is triggering alarm. Beijing has always claimed its military is for defensive purposes only, but no country threatens territory under China’s control. The buildup, therefore, looks like preparation for aggression.
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Chinese leaders – not just Xi Jinping – believe their domains should be far larger than they are today. The concern is that, acting on their own rhetoric, they will use shiny new weapons to grab territory and occupy, to the exclusion of others, international water and airspace.
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Moreover, in the 1930s the media publicized the idea that Japan was being surrounded by hostile powers that wished to prevent its rise. Eri Hotta in Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy writes that the Japanese “talked themselves into believing that they were victims of circumstances rather than aggressors.” That is exactly what the Chinese are doing at this moment.
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Unfortunately, this tragic pattern is evident today in a Beijing where Chinese, wearing stars on their shoulders, look as if they want to repeat one of the worst mistakes of the last century.
Much of the equipment that China’s People’s Liberation Army is acquiring — aircraft carriers, amphibious troop carriers, and stealth bombers — is for the projection of power, not homeland defense. Pictured: China’s Type 001A aircraft carrier, in 2017. (Image source: GG001213/Wikimedia Commons)
“Be ready for battle.” That’s how the South China Morning Post, the Hong Kong newspaper that increasingly reflects the Communist Party line, summarized Xi Jinping’s first order this year to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Xi, in his own words, which were broadcasted nationwide, demanded this: “prepare for a comprehensive military struggle from a new starting point.”
China’s bold leader has been threatening neighbors and the United States with frequency during the last several months. “Xi is not just toying with war,” Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania wrote on the Fanell Red Star Rising listserve this month. “He’s daring himself to actually start one. He’s in a dangerous frame of mind.”
Dangerous indeed. From Washington to New Delhi, policymakers wonder whether China will begin history’s next great conflict. Beijing of course wants to “win without fighting,” but the actions Xi Jinping are taking could lead to fighting nonetheless. One particularly disturbing development in this regard is the Chinese military gaining power in Beijing’s political circles.
The PLA, as the Chinese military is known, is arming fast, and that development is triggering alarm. Beijing has always claimed its military is for defensive purposes only, but no country threatens territory under China’s control. The buildup, therefore, looks like preparation for aggression. Much of the equipment the People’s Liberation Army is acquiring — aircraft carriers, amphibious troop carriers, and stealth bombers — is for the projection of power, not homeland defense.
Chinese leaders — not just Xi Jinping — believe their domains should be far larger than they are today. The concern is that, acting on their own rhetoric, they will use shiny new weapons to grab territory and occupy, to the exclusion of others, international water and airspace.
The Chinese — leaders and others — certainly have the world’s worst case of irredentism as they seek to “recover” areas they have in fact never ruled, but they do not necessarily envision military conquest as the means of acquiring vast “lost territories.” They believe they can intimidate and coerce and then take without force.
The fast rearmament also has other objectives. Speaking of China, Arthur Waldron of the University of Pennsylvania told Gatestone Institute:
“I think her goal is to increase her awesomeness in the eyes of the world, so her buildup is therefore to be understood as an attempt to become strong enough to flout the international system without consequences.”
Despite the rhetoric, the Chinese know the “imponderables” of actually going to war. For centuries, they have not been very good at it, enduring defeat after defeat and invasion after invasion.
Their military record during the tenure of the People’s Republic is similarly unimpressive. Yes, the Chinese grabbed control of the Paracel Islands and specks in the Spratlys in the South China Sea in a series of skirmishes with various Vietnamese governments, but these incidents were minor compared to the setbacks.
Mao Zedong sustained perhaps 600,000 killed — including his son, Mao Anying — to obtain a draw in Korea in the early 1950s. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, launched an incursion in 1979 “to teach Vietnam a lesson” and instead suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of his small communist neighbor.
Despite its undistinguished record, China causes grave concern. Xi was already beholden to the generals and admirals, who form the core of his political support in Communist Party circles, and they have gotten even more powerful as the Chinese people have become more restive.
As Willy Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong told Gatestone this month, “the top leadership is paranoid about massive social unrest” and so has given the military and police “extra power to tighten internal security… Xi understands very well that it is the army and the police that are keeping the Party alive.”
Xi has tried to bring the military under control with both “anti-corruption” efforts — in reality a series of political purges — and, as June Teufel Dreyer of the University of Miami told Gatestone, “a sweeping military organization.”
Yet those efforts have not been entirely successful. That is why Xi is trying, in the words of Waldron, to be viewed as the “martial emperor.” He knows the power of the PLA as “kingmaker,” able to back and depose civilian leaders. “The current Chinese focus on the military undoubtedly has internal political roots and is not related to changes in the security environment,” Waldron said. Xi, in order to curry favor, has to accede to the flag officers.
Just because the process is internally driven does not make it less dangerous. Xi has sponsored overly large military budgets and has allowed senior officers to have outsized roles in formulating provocative external policies. The November 2013 declaration of the East China Sea Air-Defense Identification Zone, an audacious attempt to control the skies off its shores, is a clear example of the military influence. The seizure of Scarborough Shoal in early 2012 and the reclamation and militarization of features in the Spratly chain in the South China Sea are other destabilizing events.
Military influence in the Chinese capital means that hostility never goes out of fashion. Twice in December, senior PLA officers publicly threatened unprovoked attacks on the U.S. Navy. “The United States is most afraid of death,” said Rear Admiral Luo Yuan in the second of the outbursts.
“We now have Dong Feng-21D, Dong Feng-26 missiles. These are aircraft carrier killers. We attack and sink one of their aircraft carriers. Let them suffer 5,000 casualties. Attack and sink two carriers, casualties 10,000. Let’s see if the U.S. is afraid or not?”
Everyone, not just the U.S., should be afraid, in part because of the parallels between China’s military today and Japan’s in the 1930s.
In the 1930s, Japan’s military officers, as Dreyer told Gatestone, took “drastic action to force the government into a war footing, even assassinating Japanese politicians who opposed such moves.”
Then, the Japanese military, like the Chinese one today, was emboldened by success and ultra-nationalism. Then, like now, civilians controlled Asia’s biggest army only loosely. Then, like today, Asia’s largest military is full of assertion and belligerence.
Moreover, in the 1930s the media publicized the idea that Japan was being surrounded by hostile powers that wished to prevent its rise. Eri Hotta in Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy writes that the Japanese “talked themselves into believing that they were victims of circumstances rather than aggressors.” That is exactly what the Chinese are doing at this moment.
“If we ask, ‘Did they want war?’ the answer is yes; and if we ask ‘Did they want to avoid war?’ the answer is still yes,” noted Maruyama Masao, a leading postwar political scientist, as recounted by Hotta.
“Though wanting war, they tried to avoid it; though wanting to avoid it, they deliberately chose the path that led to it.”
Unfortunately, this tragic pattern is evident today in a Beijing where Chinese, wearing stars on their shoulders, look as if they want to repeat one of the worst mistakes of the last century.
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- The Suicide Of Europe
Europe is committing suicide. How did this happen?
Douglas Murray explains the two major causes of Europe’s impending downfall…
- India And Pakistan Rattle Their Nuclear Sabres
While Americans were obsessing over a third-rate actor’s fake claims of a racial assault, old foes India and Pakistan were rattling their nuclear weapons in a very dangerous crisis over Kashmir. But hardly anyone noticed that nuclear war could break out in South Asia.
India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed, have fought four wars over divided Kashmir since 1947, the lovely mountain state of forests and lakes whose population is predominantly Muslim. India controls two thirds of Kashmir; Pakistan and China the rest. This bitter dispute, one of the world’s oldest confrontations, has defied all attempts to resolve it.
The United Nations called on India to hold a plebiscite to determine Kashmir’s future, but Delhi ignored this demand, knowing it would probably lose the vote.
Muslim Kashmiris have been in armed revolt against harsh Indian occupation since the 1980’s. Some 70,000 civilians, mostly Muslims, have died to date. Today, India stations a million soldiers and paramilitary forces in Kashmir to repress popular demands by Muslim Kashmiris for either union with neighboring Pakistan or an independent Kashmiri state.
India’s human rights groups accuse Delhi of grave human rights violations, including torture, murder, rape and collective punishment. Delhi says it is protecting Kashmir’s Hindus and Sikhs from Muslim reprisals, and blames the uprising on what it calls ‘cross border terrorism’ initiated by old enemy, Pakistan.
Last week, a Kashmiri ‘mujahidin’ rammed his explosive-laden car into a bus filled with paramilitary Indian troops at Pulwama, killing over 40 and provoking outrage across India.
Unable to crush the decades-old uprising in Kashmir, India threatens major reprisal attacks on Pakistan. However, Kashmir is mountainous, offering poor terrain for India’s overwhelming superiority in tanks and artillery. So Indian commanders have long pressed Delhi to allow them to attack further south on the flat plains of Punjab.
Powerful Indian armored strike corps are poised to slice into vulnerable Pakistan and chop it up into pieces. India has also considered heavy air strikes into Pakistani Punjab and even a naval blockade to cut off Pakistan’s oil imports.
Outnumbered and outgunned six to one by India, Pakistan has developed a potent arsenal of nuclear weapons that can be delivered by aircraft, short and medium-ranged missiles and artillery. Pakistan says it will riposte almost immediately with tactical nuclear weapons to a major Indian attack. Both sides’ nuclear forces are on a hair-trigger alert, greatly increasing the risks of an accidental nuclear exchange.
More detail on this threat scenario may be found in my ground-breaking book on the region’s many dangers, ‘War at the Top of the World.’ Rand Corp estimated a decade ago that an Indo-Pak nuclear exchange would kill two million immediately and 100 million in ensuing weeks. India’s and Pakistan’s major water sources would be contaminated. Clouds of radioactive dust would blow around the globe.
India is deeply frustrated by its inability to crush the independence movement in Kashmir, labeling it ‘terrorism.’ True enough, Pakistan’s crack intelligence service, ISI, has links to the many Kashmiri mujahidin groups. But the uprising is also due to often brutal, corrupt Indian rule over Kashmir and the desire by Muslims for self-rule. As I have often written, every people has a god-given right to be misruled by their own people.
Right now, India is debating a major punitive strike against Pakistan. India national elections are imminent. The Hindu nationalist government in Delhi fears being accused of being soft on Pakistan. It was during a similar crisis in the 1980’s that Pakistan’s tough leader, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, flew to Delhi in a surprise visit and averted a war being planned by India.
If India does launch attacks they will likely be large in scale and involve heavy use of tactical air power. If units on either side become bogged down in fighting, commanders may call for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Far outgunned Pakistan has been clear about such recourse. The urge to be first to strike with nuclear arms will be powerful.
Once again, the bitter Kashmir dispute endangers the rest of the world. The great powers should be pressing both India and Pakistan to reach a compromise on this problem. But India has long opposed internationalization of the issue, saying it is a domestic Indian matter. It is difficult to imagine the current Hindu nationalist government in Delhi backing down over Kashmir. But India must be very cautious because behind Pakistan stands its ally China which shares a long, often poorly-defined border with India. Kashmir, not Korea, is the world’s most dangerous border.
- This Small Texas Town Has 1,000 Registered Aircraft But No Airport
WFAA, an ABC-affiliated television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, has revealed a secret in a small East Texas town called Onalaska, has more than 1,000 registered aircraft – and no airport.
The investigation found planes were registered to two standard post office boxes in Onalaska.
According to the most recent government data, the town had a population of 2,755, indicating that there were enough registered aircraft for nearly 37% of its residents.
Considering the median income for a household in the area was $28,750, it is kind of difficult to fathom that a considerable number of residents owned a plane.
WFAA said Onalaska had more registered planes than New York, San Antonio, Seattle, and San Diego.
The report said most of the aircraft owners were not based in Texas nor the US but were foreigners.
WFAA learned Onalaska is the epicenter for a practice that allows foreigners to register their planes anonymously; a former FAA official warns this practice allows drug dealers, terrorists, and other criminals to register aircraft in the US quickly.
“When you can conceal the true ownership of a plane, you’re putting a lot of people in jeopardy,” said Joe Gutheinz, a former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) special agent. “If you’re a terrorist and you have a way of concealing your secret ownership of a plane in the United States, you’re going to do it.”
Industry leaders told WFAA that foreign multinational corporations often use trusts to register a plane because the FAA demands registrations have a US citizen on file.
To register an aircraft, owners are required to be a US citizen. However, there is a loophole. The FAA allows foreigners to register their planes by transferring a title to a US Trustee.
It only costs $5 for an owner to register a plane with the FAA. Once the clearing process is complete, the FAA will assign the aircraft a tail code that starts with an “N.” If that insignia was not present, the plane would have difficulty transversing across the US border and could be intercepted by US Air Force fighter jets.
WFAA said it examined “trust companies” that handled registrations for foreign owners, and some of the trusts told the television station there was a vigorous vetting process that each foreign owner went through.
“We shouldn’t require less information to…to register a car than to register an aircraft,” U.S. Representative Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, said. “If you are a foreign national…you can register an aircraft here and the government doesn’t know anything about it. Come one. It’s laughable.”
A 2013 audit by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Transportation said there were about 5,600 aircraft across the US that “lacked key information” about ownership.
In another audit of the five major trust companies, federal investigators found the companies “could not or would not provide” the identities of 75% of the foreign owners requested.
One trustee told federal agents that they would need to subpoena the information.
“Without collecting and maintaining complete and accurate aircraft data, FAA increases the risk of not meeting its aviation safety mission,” the audit found.
Lynch said trustees are now required to handle over critical information to the FAA relating to foreign owners within 48-hours.
“That is not a good policy,” said Lynch, who chairs the House National Security Subcommittee. “We shouldn’t be into accident re-construction. At that point we’re too late in the game.”
According to the WFAA report, there have been several incidents involving aircraft registered by trusts that raised significant red flags:
- In 2006, A U.S. bank became a trustee on an aircraft for a Lebanese politician who turned out to be “backed by a well-known U.S. Government-designated terrorist organization.” “It wasn’t until the bank found out that they were affiliated with Hezbollah that the relationship ended,” Lynch told WFAA.
- In 2010, an airplane registered to a trust approached the Tripoli International Airport with no landing permit just hours before the U.N. Security Council met to approve a “no-fly zone” over Libya. The owner of a foreign oil corporation had registered the plane through a trust but sold a “large percentage” of his company to a Chinese company.
- In 2012, an FAA inspector was unable to find out who was flying a Boeing 737 registered on behalf of a foreign owner. When the FAA contacted the foreign owner, officials were told the airplane had been leased to a United Arab Emirates-based rental company. The foreign owner couldn’t “provide the inspector” with information about who was flying the plane.
- The $32 Trillion Push To Disrupt The Entire Oil Industry
Authored by Cyril Widdershoven via Oilprice.com,
Global oil and gas companies are increasingly facing an uphill battle as global warming policies are taking their toll. Most analysts and market watchers are focusing on peak oil demand scenarios, but the reality could be much darker. International oil companies (IOCs) are likely to face a Black Swan scenario, which could end up being a boon for state-owned oil companies (NOCs).
Increased shareholder activism, combined with global warming policies of institutional investors and NGOs, are pushing IOCs in a corner, constricting financing options for oil companies.
The first signs of a green revolution in the shareholder-investors universe are there, as investors have forced Dutch oil and gas major Shell to officially change its strategy, investing in more renewable energy and energy storage. The Dutch IOC wasn’t forced by to do so because of mismanagement or a lack of reserves but due to a well-orchestrated investor/stakeholder offensive. Several other peers, such as BP, ENI or Total, are expected to experience comparable situations.
And it has become clear that not only oil and gas giants are being targeted, after one of the world’s largest mining and commodity trading companies, Glencore, decided to put a limit on its thermal coal investment. The group stated that this was done after it was confronted by a largely unknown shareholder network called Climate Action 100+, which claims to be backed by more than 300 investors, managing assets of around $32 trillion. The group was founded a little over a year ago but has already forced oil majors’ boardrooms to take radical decisions.
The above shows that international hydrocarbon and mining sectors are facing a new obstacle, being confronted by large groups of socially and environmentally engaged shareholders, which are no longer looking at commercial value only. A combination of activist institutional investors, international pension funds and NGOs, is a new force to be dealt with. Stock-exchanged listed companies will need to address the will of their shareholders, especially with regards to climate change policies or decarbonization of the economy. After decades of having focused on creating maximum shareholder returns, things have changed dramatically, but maybe not for the better.
For Climate Action 100+, which includes investors such as Calpers, Allianz SE, and HSBC Global Asset Management, making profitable investments remains a top priority, but they will no longer look accept a passive stance towards climate change. Without complying with the demands of NGOs and socially engaged investors, access to new capital for new oil and gas upstream projects will be reduced. Some even expect that the role of Western IOCs could decline in the next couple of years, due to political shareholder engagement policies. To force IOCs, such as Shell or BP, to comply with policies that would halve their “net carbon footprint” by 2050 could result in a death-wish for these companies in the long-run.
The demise of IOCs, as we know them right now, could come sooner than many may expect. This will, of course, come at a cost for energy-hungry regions or consumers. With a net demand growth for oil and gas in the coming years, the world will need all hands on deck to support upstream investments to bring the hard-needed oil and gas reserves and volumes to the market. With less financing options for IOCs, and also oilfield services, the already existing investment gap in upstream investment worldwide will only grow wider. In contrast to what some media sources are suggesting, oil and gas demand will not diminish, on the contrary, oil and gas prices will rise due to a lack of supply.
That this picture is not a future nightmare scenario but is already the reality, is shown by the fact that a growing amount of smaller oil and gas companies have become insolvent. The latter is partly caused by “global warming constraints” and lower oil prices in general. The first casualties are falling in Europe, mainly the UK, where 16 companies went bankrupt in 2018, in comparison to zero in 2012. British accountancy firm Moore Stephenson stated that lower prices were the main cause. At the same time, increased costs (North Sea decommissioning) and lower oil price expectations are doing the rest. If the international financial markets are going to take over the doomsday scenarios presented by pressure groups and NGOs, independent oil and gas companies are going to be hit extremely hard. No investor is willing to invest in a sector or company that looks to hit rock-bottom in the next decade. Stranded reserves reports, as presented by the Bank of England and others, are not helping at all to change perceptions.
Western consumers and politicians, however, should not already start to cheer a green revolution and the end of the oil era. The future is different and could be even less positive than currently is assessed. Financial pressure on IOCs is opening up a Pandora’s Box. By removing market-oriented oil and gas giants from global markets, the only way to gain access to oil and gas will be the national oil companies (NOCs). Not only are they the real owners of the overwhelming majority of hydrocarbon reserves in the world, but NOCs are also not constrained by shareholder activism or NGO pressure.
The main driver for NOCs is to support the sustainable economic growth of their home country or government. In stark contrast to IOCs, which are fully focused on shareholder value and profits, NOCs have a long-term national approach, in which other factors are playing a role. Saudi Aramco and its peers are not only the sole owner of the reserves but also of most of the value chain. The ongoing downstream focus of NOCs can be seen as a push to gain control of the entire value chain, from exploration to sales.
This position is still of value to institutional investors and national financial institutions, as the combination of long-term access, ownership and extensive value chain control, is very attractive. The Fitch AA+ rating of Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC shows that NOCs have become very attractive, even more than IOCs at present.
Mainstream investors, hedge- and pension funds, are and will be interested in financing NOCs, as long as demand and profits are there. Western consumers and the industry should however also realize that a transformation of power to NOCs will also mean that market fundamentals will change, and possible unexpected hiccups in supply will occur at the will of governments, not due to market fundamentals. NOCs are still controlled and owned by national governments.
Supply risks will increase if IOCs see their influence in the hydrocarbon sector diminish. Destruction of knowledge, technical capabilities and additional financing, could constrain the hard-needed push for new oil and gas production.
(Click to enlarge)
Political and environmental pressure groups should realize that pushing too hard for change could produce a boomerang effect of unwanted-order. To force IOCs to change their investment strategies, and abandon highly profitable upstream projects, while investing in renewables, could be more destabilizing than anticipated. Between 2014 and 2018, upstream oil and gas investments have been hit hard, leaving a $1 trillion investment gap. This development will impact the market within the next 24 months. Lower oil supply will push up prices if demand continues to grow.
- Most Economists See Recession By 2021, Stocks Don't Care
Once again, economists are attempting to talk out of both sides of their mouths and hope no one is paying attention to the smoke and mirrors behind the curtain.
Bloomberg reports that more than three-quarters of business economists expect the U.S. to enter a recession by the end of 2021. This confirms the surging probability of recession implied by none other than the NY Fed’s model…
Ten percent saw a recession beginning this year, 42 percent project one next year, while 25 percent expect a contraction starting in 2021, according to a semiannual National Association for Business Economics survey released Monday. The rest expect a recession later than 2021 or expressed no opinion, the Jan. 30-Feb. 8 poll of nearly 300 members showed.
At the same time, a majority still estimate the Fed will continue raising interest rates this year (even if the market has entirely priced that out)…
The gap between forecasts and market-implied expectations is dramatic to say the least.
“There is a schism between what the NABE panel and the markets think about the Fed’s rate path and the shrinking of its balance sheet,” said Megan Greene, chief economist at Manulife Asset Management and chair of the survey.
“Markets are pricing in no more interest-rate hikes in 2019, whereas a majority of the NABE panel expects one or two rate hikes.”
And it seems no one is paying attention to the fact that as cyclical growth hopes get priced back in to stocks…
…then that raises the probability that The Fed will indeed follow the economists’ forecast trajectory and bank a few more rate-hikes before the big one hits in 2020 or 2021. And no one is expecting that!
Of course, for now, stocks don’t care.
- The Brutal Truth About The CARNET: The Venezuelan Biometric ID Also Known As The Fatherland Card
Authored by Daisy Luther and J. G. Martinez D. via THe Organic Prepper blog,
If you want a totalitarian regime, you have to take extra steps to control the populace. And that’s just what Venezuela has done with the advent of a biometric ID called Carnet, loosely translated as The Fatherland Card. Carnet is closely related to the dystopian Chinese social credit program and in fact, uses much of the same technology to track and spy on citizens.
And it’s been in the works for a long time.
In April 2008, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dispatched Justice Ministry officials to visit counterparts in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen.
Their mission, according to a member of the Venezuela delegation, was to learn the workings of China’s national identity card program…
…Once in Shenzhen, though, the Venezuelans realized a card could do far more than just identify the recipient.
There, at the headquarters of Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp, they learned how China, using smart cards, was developing a system that would help Beijing track social, political, and economic behavior.
Using vast databases to store information gathered with the card’s use, a government could monitor everything from a citizen’s personal finances to medical history and voting activity…
…10 years after the Shenzhen trip, Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID known as the “carnet de la patria,” or “fatherland card.”
…And ZTE, whose role in the fatherland project is detailed here for the first time, is at the heart of the program.
As part of a $70 million government effort to bolster “national security,” Venezuela last year hired ZTE to build a fatherland database and create a mobile payment system for use with the card, according to contracts reviewed by Reuters.
A team of ZTE employees is now embedded in a special unit within Cantv, the Venezuelan state telecommunications company that manages the database, according to four current and former Cantv employees. (source)
Without this card, just to name a few things, Venezuelans cannot access services like healthcare, they can’t purchase food, and they are unable to vote in elections.
What exactly is the Carnet?
Although the media has only been talking about it being launched in 2017, there have been predecessors to the current ID, which you’ll hear about in a moment.
Although it existed before, it was rolled out with fanfare in 2017.
The National Radio of Venezuela (Radio Nacional de Venezuela, RNV), the government’s public radio station, reports that in January 2017, the government of Venezuela launched the homeland card, a [translation] “tool” to “broaden the policies to protect the people, increase efficiency and efficacy, and increase the deployment capacity of the national government” (RNV [2017]). The Ministry of People’s Power for Communications and Information (Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Comunicación y la Información, MIPPCI) indicates that the homeland card is a [translation] “‘means for social justice and inclusion that connects the people directly with their President; without red tape, bureaucracy, intermediaries and corruption’” (source)
So, long story short, to get any desperately needed government aid, you had to get this card.
One of its most powerful tools is the Carnet de la Patria (Homeland Card). This is an identity card ostensibly meant to improve the efficiency of government social programmes by linking everyone who requests and receives services and handouts to their government records. But, in reality, the card’s main function is to keep a tight grip on the state’s 2.8memployees and also the millions of people seeking government assistance, many of whose livelihoods depend on it.
Because 15m people are registered for the Homeland Card, it’s an effective means of controlling the poor population and ensuring their obedience.
Without registering for the card, Venezuelans cannot access public healthcare, universities, or much-needed subsidised food provided in the Comités Locales de Abastecimiento y Producción (CLAP) box, a food package containing basic products such as rice, pasta, lentils, corn flour and oil.
Because most of Venezuela’s productive farming and food production industries have been expropriated, nationalised – and thereafter poorly managed or closed – this fertile country is struggling to produce enough food for domestic consumption. As a result, the basic foodstuffs in the CLAP box come from Mexico under a contract run by a company owned by Nicolás Maduro. (source)
To get a “Carnet” you have to provide biometric data – your fingerprint. To ensure you are who you say you are, you may have to scan your fingerprint in order to purchase food, vote, access healthcare, etc.
So what is the reality of living with the Carnet system? I talked to Jose about it.
Here’s how Carnet was instituted.
It seems to have started out with employees who were forced to get the card. Jose writes:
As a former oil worker, we were forced by the corporation to go to a temporary office so they could take a digital picture (I believe I remember my right thumb and index were digitally scanned just like at election time) and print it on a carnet. Oddly, the code of this card had just one or two digits more than my national ID card. We were notified by our supervisors that everyone up to the last member of the personnel was under the obligation to get the Carnet.
Those who refused to get it were going to be severely punished. I know this perhaps sounds exaggerated, but it is the truth. Some people were even fired. Without any serious institution to go to, those who were fired had nothing to do to reclaim their rights. This kind of stuff had happened before, indeed. Former candidates used to buy votes from the poor people by providing them with cement blocks, rebar, roofing materials, and some other similar stuff to improve their hutches in the barrios. And this under “democratic” governments, go figure. So people were somewhat used to blackmail.
Of course, it didn’t stop with employees of big corporations.
Soon, people who refused to get the Carnet were denied basic needs.
It spread to public employees next.
The approach of these twisted people that were given authority through democratic ways to make decisions in the economy harmed severely the already stressed productive means of Venezuela. Our population is (was) mostly young, and with a vibrant, growing fertility rate. Therefore, the need for food was increased at a much faster rate than the accompanying growth of the food and services industry.
The tyrants then decided to seize the production media (once they started to lose popularity) and ration whatever production they could put their paws on. The result was the mess that we are seeing now. One of the social control means was the FORCING of this card into every public employee. The refusing of getting into that system allowed them to clean whatever reluctant opposition they could have in the public management system. Now, this very same sector is screaming for food in the own Maduro’s doors.
The carnet would supposedly provide access to medicines, food, and housing programs. I know that the military personnel even would get cars, in a country where the new car production was seized for the socialist party elite…just like Russia, Cuba, North Korea and such. No one can get a new car there and it has been like this for years. Prices in dollars are twice what they are in other countries.
Oh and I forgot to mention that subsidized gasoline is available for those holding the carnet. Mostly they would fill their tanks in the border cities like San Cristobal, get that gasoline in some jerry cans, and would sell it or trade it for food in Colombia. Without cars passing through the bridge now, chances are that this gasoline is going through the bushes. Without any means to get food, medicines at affordable prices (we are talking about prices here, people holding the carnet could barely make a living some time ago), or even gasoline, people without the carnet were better off leaving the country. Those most affected are the elders. Payment of pensions was to be made through this system, forcing poor older people to make rows for 8 or 10 hours to receive a pack of money barely enough to buy a dozen eggs. But without the carnet, even this handout was impossible to get for them. Of course, those elder people who have refused to get the carnet in these last 3 years have died like flies. By the thousands.
I do know that Nico sold this as the big socialist achievement in history. He even issued bonuses for proven single, pregnant women with more than 2 children, encouraging them to have more children because they would receive an allowance for every one of the babies. Of course, they would receive money throughout the carnet de la patria.
JEEZ-CHRIST, people.
It’s even embarrassing mentioning this!
Does this sound familiar?
A lot has been written on this website about the advent of personal microchips and how they might be forced upon people at some point in the not so distant future. Of course, it will be done with our “convenience” in mind and then at some point, it will be nearly impossible to function in society without being chipped. Basically everyone, according to some experts, will get chipped.
And so it is in Venezuela too, that functioning without the Carnet is nearly impossible. And functioning with the Carnet is nearly impossible too unless you toe the Maduro party line.
Of course, this restriction of resources is entirely against our Constitution. Ironically, the Constitution that Hugo left behind him.
After the election process, the people holding the carnet was instructed to immediately go to some data collection points called “red points” where they had to register themselves and were asked an entire series of questions about what programs they received, like housing, pensions, medication or feeding. If they voted against Maduro, they would be rejected from those programs. I know this first hand because I was there.
However, things have changed. They will try (perhaps that will change soon once Maduro is no longer in place) only payment means can be done with this carnet. I don’t know because never used it to receive any money, or make some payments, nor even to get some gasoline. I left before this implementation was fully achieved. I do have my carnet, though…as a memory of the infamy of these years.
At the present, the menaces have made more effect that the carnet itself, which has only been used to receive bonuses and pensions, and the access to some different programs that have not still gone dry because lack of funding…something that will run entirely dry because it is Pres. Guaido now who holds the checkbook.
But used as a psychological tool, its impact has been huge. Of course, China has much more advances in this area. They use it effectively to control political activity and to forbid access to public transportation and even to schools. To provide a little of our Venezuelan style, and that we have some good hackers around there, when they used the carnet in the first voting to choose the fraudulent constituent assembly, Nico was the first to vote…just to receive a screen message that said his carnet had been revoked or did not exist….on national TV, embarrassing him in front of tens of thousands of followers. Quite funny. One of my best memories regarding that stuff indeed.
And this has worked against them, too, because it is totally against our Constitution. It has been used as a means of EXCLUSION AND BLACKMAIL of the most vulnerable population. This is a crime.
This is a case study in control.
Years ago, back in 2014, I wrote about this card although, at the time, I didn’t know the name of it. I wrote about the fingerprint registry that was required to buy food so that the Venezuelan government could prevent the “crime” of food “hoarding.” This is when people were really beginning to see that things were going downhill fast in the country.
People were told things would be better for them with the card, and many welcomed it, thinking it would solve the problems of food shortages. I could easily see certain groups of people here in the United States greeting such a move with open arms, blithely oblivious to where it was heading. (I’m talking to you, “AOC” and friends.)
Back in 2014, I wrote:
The AP reports that in an effort to crack down on “hoarding” that ID cards will be issued to families. These will have to be presented before foodstuffs can be purchased.
President Nicolas Maduro’s administration says the cards to track families’ purchases will foil people who stock up on groceries at subsidized prices and then illegally resell them for several times the amount…
Registration began Tuesday at more than 100 government-run supermarkets across the country. Working-class shoppers who sometimes endure hours-long lines at government-run stores to buy groceries at steeply reduced prices are welcoming the plan.
“The rich people have things all hoarded away, and they pull the strings,” said Juan Rodriguez, who waited two hours to enter the government-run Abastos Bicentenario supermarket near downtown Caracas on Monday, and then waited another three hours to check out.
Checkout workers at Abastos Bicentenario were taking down customers’ cellphone numbers Monday, to ensure they couldn’t return for eight days. Shoppers said employees also banned purchases by minors, to stop parents from using their children to engage in hoarding, which the government calls “nervous buying.”
Rodriguez supports both measures.
“People who go shopping every day hurt us all,” he said, drawing approving nods from the friends he made over the course of his afternoon slowly snaking through the aisles with his oversized cart.
Reflecting Maduro’s increasingly militarized discourse against opponents he accuses of waging “economic war,” the government is calling the new program the “system of secure supply.”
Patrons will register with their fingerprints, and the new ID card will be linked to a computer system that monitors purchases. On Tuesday, Food Minister Felix Osorio said the process was off to a smooth start. He says the system will sound an alarm when it detects suspicious purchasing patterns, barring people from buying the same goods every day. But he also says the cards will be voluntary, with incentives like discounts and entry into raffles for homes and cars.
Expressionless men with rifles patrolled the warehouse-size supermarket Monday as shoppers hurried by, focusing on grabbing meat and pantry items before they were gone. (source)
Last year in Venezuela, it became a crime to “hoard” food, and the country’s Attorney General called upon prosecutors to crack down on “hoarders” by imprisoning them for the “crime”.
Is it just me or do you see the future unless something changes dramatically?
- On Friday The Debt Ceiling Returns, And The Treasury Runs Out Of Cash 6 Months Later
While president Trump may have postponed one of the two major events scheduled to hit this Friday, March 1, the second one is still set to proceed as scheduled: that’s when the US debt limit suspension expires and the US debt ceiling will again return (incidentally the current debt ceiling was suspended when total debt was $1.5 trillion lower!), prompting Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to draw upon extraordinary measures to keep the government within its statutory borrowing capacity for some time beyond March 1.
Which means that rates traders are wearily looking at the T-Bill curve to determine when analysts expect the Treasury to exhaust its extraordinary measures, at which point another debt ceiling crisis will become a very hot topic. And as the following chart of the infamous “kink” in bill yields shows, where the curve dislocation approximate the timing of the D-Date, the market believes that the US will run out of extenuating measures some time in the last week of August.
Making an accurate D-Date forecast problematic, this year the changes to the Treasury’s tax code has created additional uncertainty around IRS tax receipts.
That said, with at least six months to go until politicians once again repeat the debt ceiling charade, there has already been soft demand for six-month bill auctions in recent weeks.
There are other ways this Friday’s debt ceiling return will impact markets, most notably with a sharp decline in the Treasury’s cash balance which currently stands at $331 billion, and is set to plunge as low as $200 billion over the next few days, as by Friday the cash balance should be at or below the level it was at when the current suspension went into effect in February 2018. And since the commercial banking system will be on the receiving end of that liquidity, this development should lead to sharp drop in Libor/OIS…
… while also work potentially serving to depress the USD over the next 60-90 trading days (due to the excess USD liquidity which will be released by the Treasury.)
But a bigger question is how will negotiations between Trump and the democrats play out heading into the August D-Date. Should trump fold in the current negotiations with China just to see his precious stock market gain another several hundred points, his core constituency – some of whom are already fuming over his border wall concession, when Trump decided to fund government and keep it open – will demand that Trump hold tough on this last point of leverage with the Democrat-controlled House. Should Trump fold here too, he will burn through much of his remaining political capital. On the other hand, the alternative is a US technical default. Which is why we urge traders not to rush to schedule their summer vacation plans: if the past is any indication, late August will be anything but a peaceful time.
- China Plans To Build Space Solar Station
Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via Oilprice.com,
Chinese scientists have revealed plans to build and launch in orbit a space solar station that could capture the Sun’s rays 24/7, Chinese media report.
China has already started to build an early experimental space power plant in the city of Chongqing, The Sydney Morning Herald reported, citing an article in China’s Science and Technology Daily.
The space solar station, planned to orbit the Earth at 36,000 kilometers (22,370 miles) could provide “an inexhaustible source of clean energy for humans,” according to Pang Zhihao, a researcher at the China Academy of Space Technology Corporation.
Such solar power technology could supply reliable energy 99 percent of the time and have six times the intensity of the solar farms that work on the earth, the scientist says.
China will start by launching small solar stations between 2021 and 2025, while a possible next step would be a Megawatt-level station planned to be built in 2030.
The energy from the space solar station would be converted into a microwave or laser beam that would be sent to the earth.
However, the project has two major hurdles to overcome in order to become a practical solution. One is the weight of a space solar station, expected to be more than two times the weight of the International Space Station. The other is the safety impact of laser or microwave beams sent to the earth.
China is not the only country studying the potential of harnessing the power of the Sun in space.
Caltech for example has its Space Solar Power Project, which has researched the use of ultralight, foldable, 2D integrated elements, Caltech has developed a prototype which collects sunlight, converts it to RF electrical power, then wirelessly transmit that power in a steerable beam.
According to Caltech’s research, “Collecting solar power in space and transmitting the energy wirelessly to Earth through microwaves enables terrestrial power availability unaffected by weather or time of day. Solar power could be continuously available anywhere on earth.”
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