- US Troops To Be Based In Saudi Arabia, Qatar Against "Iran Threat"
Just hours after US National Security Advisor John Bolton formally accused Tehran of conducing the May 12 tanker “sabotage” attacks near the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s foreign ministry has responded that “we are ready for war” amid fears that Washington could still be on a war footing in the Persian Gulf.
“We hope that we can start a dialogue, but we are ready for war,” Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told RIA Novosti.
Bolton had told a press conference earlier in the day in Dubai, “The point is to make it very clear to Iran and its surrogates that these kinds of actions risk a very strong response from the United States.”
AP file photo of US troops in Saudi Arabia during 1990 Gulf War. Bolton is in Abu Dhabi attending an emergency summit of gulf leaders to consider the implications of both the “sabotage” tanker attacks near Fujairah emiriate in the UAE and the drone strikes two days following on a Saudi Aramco pipeline and oil pumping station.
Meanwhile acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters while in Asia for a major policy speech on the region, “nobody wants war” with Iran. However, he added that the US is ready and willing to “defend ships in the Strait of Hormuz” if necessary.
Also of note is that Shanahan for the first time identified that 900 American troops newly deployed to the Middle East in response to the heightened Iran threat are headed to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
JUST IN: Acting SecDef Shanahan says that the 900 troops being sent to the Mideast in response to what the administration calls an elevated Iran threat are going to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. (This is interesting since the place officials say American troops were at risk was Iraq.)
— Katie Bo Williams (@KatieBoWill) May 29, 2019
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Riyadh hosting a new wave of American troops on Saudi soil is sure to be deeply controversial within the kingdom’s Wahhabi clerical establishment, given its strict form of Islam sees the region of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, as sacred ground which is off limits to US soldiers.
While there are already limited US Air Force units stationed across up to five Saudi air bases such as Riyadh Air Force Base and Eskan Village Air Base, the fact that the Saudis previously hosted American personnel for attacks on Iraq proved deeply controversial in the kingdom.
Meanwhile, Iran’s military leaders have slammed the latest announced US troop deployment — now made more interesting given at least some of those military personnel will be based out of Shia Iran’s foremost Sunni rival Saudi Arabia.
“If they commit the slightest stupidity, we will send these ships to the bottom of the sea along with their crew and planes using two missiles or two new secret weapons,” Gen. Morteza Qorbani, a top adviser to Iran’s military command, told the semiofficial news agency Mizan over the past weekend.
- The Western Media Is Key To Syria Deception
Authored by Jonathan Cook via Counterpunch.org,
The media are not a watchdog on power but the public relations arm of giant corporations pursuing their narrow interests in the Middle East…
By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province – their final holdout in Syria – should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism.
That the US and other western media enthusiastically picked up those claims should not have made them any more credible.
Scepticism was all the more warranted from the media given that no physical evidence has yet been produced to corroborate the jihadists’ claims. And the media should have been warier still given that the Syrian government was already poised to defeat these al-Qaeda groups without resort to chemical weapons — and without provoking the predictable ire (yet again) of the west.
But most of all scepticism was required because these latest claims arrive just as we have learnt that the last supposed major chemical attack — which took place in April 2018 and was, as ever, blamed by all western sources on Syria’s president, Bashar Assad — was very possibly staged, a false-flag operation by those very al-Qaeda groups now claiming the Syrian government has attacked them once again.
Addicted to incompetence
Most astounding in this week’s coverage of the claims made by al-Qaeda groups is the fact that the western media continues to refuse to learn any lessons, develop any critical distance from the sources it relies on, even as those sources are shown to have repeatedly deceived it.
This was true after the failure to find WMD in Iraq, and it has been confirmed after the the international community’s monitoring body on chemical weapons, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), was exposed this month as deeply dishonest.
It is bad enough that our governments and our expert institutions deceive and lie to us. But it is even worse that we have a corporate media addicted — at the most charitable interpretation — to its own incompetence. The evidence demonstrating that grows stronger by the day.
Unprovoked attack
In March the OPCW produced a report into a chemical weapons attack the Syrian government allegedly carried out in Douma in April last year. Several dozen civilians, many of them children, died apparently as a result of that attack.
The OPCW report concluded that there were “reasonable grounds” for believing a toxic form of chlorine had been used as a chemical weapon in Douma, and that the most likely method of delivery were two cylinders dropped from the air.
This as good as confirmed claims made by al-Qaeda groups, backed by western states, that the cylinders had been dropped by the Syrian military. Using dry technical language, the OPCW joined the US and Europe in pointing the finger squarely at Assad.
It was vitally important that the OPCW reached that conclusion — and not only because the west has an overarching ambition for regime change in Syria.
In response to the alleged Douma attack a year ago, the US fired a volley of Cruise missiles at Syrian army and government positions before there had been any investigation into who was responsible.
Those missiles were already a war crime — an unprovoked attack on another sovereign country. But without the OPCW’s implicit blessing, the US would have been deprived of even its flimsy, humanitarian pretext for launching the missiles.
Leaked document
Undoubtedly the OPCW was under huge political pressure to arrive at the “right” conclusion. But as a scientific body carrying out a forensic investigation surely it would not have dared to doctor the data.
Nonetheless, it seems that may well be precisely what it did. This month the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media — a group of academics who have grown increasingly sceptical of the western narratives told about Syria — published an internal, leaked OPCW document.
A few fays later the OPCW reluctantly confirmed that the document was genuine, and that it would identify and deal with those responsible for the leak.
The document was an assessment overseen by Ian Henderson, a senior OPCW expert, of the engineering data gathered by the OPCW’s fact-finding mission that attended the scene of the Douma attack. Its findings fly in the face of the OPCW’s published report.
Erased from the record
The leaked document is deeply troubling for two reasons.
First, the assessment, based on the available technical data, contradicts the conclusion of the final OPCW report that the two chemical cylinders were dropped from the air and crashed through building roofs. It argues instead that the cylinders were more likely placed at the locations they were found.
If that is right, the most probable explanation is that the cylinders were put there by al-Qaeda groups — presumably in a last desperate effort to persuade the west to intervene and to prevent the jihadists being driven out of Douma.
But, second, and even more shocking is the fact that the expert assessment based on the data collected by the OPCW team is entirely unaddressed in the OPCW’s final report.
It is not that the final report discounts or rebuts the findings of its own experts. It simply ignores those findings; it pretends they don’t exist. The report blacks them out, erases them from the official record. In short, it perpetrates a massive deception.
Experts ignored
All of this would be headline news if we had a responsible media that cared about the truth and about keeping its readers informed.
We now know both that the US attacked Syria on entirely bogus grounds, and that the OPCW — one of the international community’s most respected and authoritative bodies — has been caught redhanded in an outrageous deception with grave geopolitical implications. (In fact, it is not the first time the OPCW has been caught doing this, as I have previously explained here.)
The fact that the OPCW ignored its own expert and its own team’s technical findings when they proved politically indigestible casts a dark shadow over allthe OPCW’s work in Syria, and beyond. If it was prepared to perpetrate a deception on this occasion, why should we assume it did not do so on other occasions when it proved politically expedient?
Active combatants
The OPCW’s reports into other possible chemical attacks — assisting western efforts to implicate Assad — are now equally tainted. That is especially so given that in those other cases the OPCW violated its own procedures by drawing prejudicial conclusions without its experts being on the ground, at the site of the alleged attacks. Instead it received samples and photos via al-Qaeda groups, who could easily have tampered with the evidence.
And yet there has been not a peep from the corporate media about this exposure of the OPCW’s dishonesty, apart from commentary pieces from the only two maverick mainstream journalists in the UK — Peter Hitchens, a conservative but independent-minded columnist for the Mail on Sunday, and veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk, of the little-read Independent newspaper (more on his special involvement in Douma in a moment).
Just as the OPCW blanked the findings of its technical experts to avoid political discomfort, the media have chosen to stay silent on this new, politically sensitive information.
They have preferred to prop up the discredited narrative that our governments have been acting to protect the human rights of ordinary Syrians rather than the reality that they have been active combatants in the war, helping to destabilise a country in ways that have caused huge suffering and death in Syria.
Systematic failure
This isn’t a one-off failure. It’s part of a series of failures by the corporate media in its coverage of Douma.
They ignored very obvious grounds for caution at the time of the alleged attack. Award-winning reporter Robert Fisk was among the first journalists to enter Douma shortly after those events. He and a few independent reporters communicated eye-witness testimony that flatly contradicted the joint narrative promoted by al-Qaeda groups and western governments that Assad had bombed Douma with chemical weapons.
The corporate media also mocked a subsequent press conference at which many of the supposed victims of that alleged chemical attack made appearances to show that they were unharmed and spoke of how they had been coerced into play-acting their roles.
And now the western media has compounded that failure — revealing its systematic nature — by ignoring the leaked OPCW document too.
But it gets worse, far worse.
Al-Qaeda propaganda
This week the same al-Qaeda groups that were present in Douma — and may have staged that lethal attack — claimed that the Syrian government had again launched chemical weapons against them, this time on their final holdout in Idlib.
A responsible media, a media interested in the facts, in evidence, in truth-telling, in holding the powerful to account, would be dutybound to frame this latest, unsubstantiated claim in the context of the new doubts raised about the OPCW report into last year’s chemical attack blamed on Assad.
Given that the technical data suggest that al-Qaeda groups, and the White Helmets who work closely with them, were responsible for staging the attack — even possibly of murdering civilians to make the attack look more persuasive — the corporate media had a professional and moral obligation to raise the matter of the leaked document.
It is vital context as anyone tries to weigh up whether the latest al-Qaeda claims are likely to be true. To deprive readers of this information, this essential context would be to take a side, to propagandise on behalf not only of western governments but of al-Qaeda too.
And that is exactly what the corporate media have just done. All of them.
Media worthy of Stalin
It is clear how grave their dereliction of the most basic journalistic duty is if we consider the Guardian’s uncritical coverage of jihadist claims about the latest alleged chemical attack.
Like most other media, the Guardian article included two strange allusions — one by France, the other by the US — to the deception perpetrated by the OPCW in its recent Douma report. The Guardian reported these allusions even though it has never before uttered a word anywhere in its pages about that deception.
In other words, the corporate media are so committed to propagandising on behalf of the western powers that they have reported the denials of official wrongdoing even though they have never reported the actual wrongdoing. It is hard to imagine the Soviet media under Stalin behaving in such a craven and dishonest fashion.
The corporate media have given France and the US a platform to reject accusations against the OPCW that the media themselves have never publicly raised.
Doubts about OPCW
The following is a brief statement (unintelligible without the forgoing context) from France, reported by the Guardian in relation to the latest claim that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons this week: “We have full confidence in the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”
But no one, except bloggers and academics ignored by the media and state authorities, has ever raised doubts about the OPCW. Why would the Guardian think these French comments worthy of reporting unless there were reasons to doubt the OPCW? And if there are such reasons for doubt, why has the Guardian not thought to make them public, to report them to its readers?
The US state department similarly came to the aid of the OPCW. In the same Guardian report, a US official was quoted saying that the OPCW was facing “a continuing disinformation campaign” from Syria and Russia, and that the campaign was designed “to create the false narrative that others [rather than Assad] are to blame for chemical weapons attacks”.
So Washington too was rejecting accusations against the OPCW that have never been reported by the state-corporate media.
Interestingly, in the case of US officials, they claim that Syria and Russia are behind the “disinformation campaign” against the OPCW, even though the OPCW has admitted that the leaked document discrediting its work is genuine and written by one of its experts.
The OPCW is discredited, of course, only because it sought to conceal evidence contained in the leaked document that might have exonerated Assad of last year’s chemical attack. It is hard to see how Syria or Russia can be blamed for this.
Colluding in deception
But more astounding still, while US and French officials have at least acknowledged that there are doubts about the OPCW’s role in Syria, even if they unjustifiably reject such doubts, the corporate media have simply ignored those doubts as though they don’t exist.
The continuing media blackout on the leaked OPCW document cannot be viewed as accidental. It has been systematic across the media.
That blackout has remained resolutely in place even after the OPCW admitted the leaked document discrediting it was genuine and even after western countries began alluding to the leaked document themselves.
The corporate media is actively colluding both in the original deception perpetrated by al-Qaeda groups and the western powers, and in the subsequent dishonesty of the OPCW. They have worked together to deceive western publics.
The question is, why are the media so obviously incompetent? Why are they so eager to keep themselves and their readers in the dark? Why are they so willing to advance credulous narratives on behalf of western governments that have been repeatedly shown to have lied to them?
Iran the real target
The reason is that the corporate media are not what they claim. They are not a watchdog on power, or a fourth estate.
The media are actually the public relations wing of a handful of giant corporations — and states — that are pursuing two key goals in the Middle East.
First, they want to control its oil. Helping al-Qaeda in Syria — including in its propaganda war — against the Assad government serves a broader western agenda. The US and NATO bloc are ultimately gunning for the leadership of Iran, the one major oil producer in the region not under the US imperial thumb.
Powerful Shia groups in the region — Assad in Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon, and Iraqi leaders elevated by our invasion of that country in 2003 — are allies or potential allies of Iran. If they are in play, the US empire’s room for manoeuvre in taking on Iran is limited. Remove these smaller players and Iran stands isolated and vulnerable.
That is why Russia stepped in several years ago to save Assad, in a bid to stop the dominoes falling and the US engineering a third world war centred on the Middle East.
Second, with the Middle East awash with oil money, western corporations have a chance to sell more of the lucrative weapons that get used in overt and covert wars like the one raging in Syria for the past eight years.
What better profit-generator for these corporations than wasteful and pointless wars against manufactured bogeymen like Assad?
Like a death cult
From the outside, this looks and sounds like a conspiracy. But actually it is something worse — and far more difficult to overcome.
The corporations that run our media and our governments have simply conflated in their own minds — and ours — the idea that their narrow corporate interests are synonymous with “western interests”.
The false narratives they generate are there to serve a system of power, as I have explained in previous blogs. That system’s worldview and values are enforced by a charmed circle that includes politicians, military generals, scientists, journalists and others operating as if brainwashed by some kind of death cult. They see the world through a single prism: the system’s need to hold on to power. Everything else — truth, evidence, justice, human rights, love, compassion — must take a back seat.
It is this same system that paradoxically is determined to preserve itself even if it means destroying the planet, ravaging our economies, and starting and maintaining endlessly destructive wars. It is a system that will drag us all into the abyss, unless we stop it.
- Radioactive Nuclear Dome Leak May Be Poisoning Shellfish In Pacific
Several weeks ago, we reported that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sounded the alarm over a large concrete dome constructed 40 years ago in the Marshall Islands to contain radioactive waste from Cold War-era nuclear tests.
According to Guterres, the dome – which houses approximately 73,000 cubic meters of nuclear debris on Runit Island, part of the Enewetak Atoll – may be leaking radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean, as the porous ground underneath the 18″ thick dome was never lined as initially planned.
Now, a new report from the Los Angeles Times shows that researchers have detected high levels of radiation in shellfish – confirming the worst case scenario: nuclear waste is devastating marine ecosystems near the dome.
The discovery is “raising concerns the contamination is spreading from the dump site’s tainted groundwater into the ocean and the food chain.”
The radiation “is either leaking from the waste site — which U.S. officials reject — or that authorities did not adequately clean up radiation left behind from past weapons testing, as some in the Marshall Islands claim.”
The U.S. tested 67 nuclear weapons tests from 1946 – 1958 at Bikini and Enewetak atolls. Despite U.S. efforts to move people to safety, thousands of islanders were exposed to radioactive fallout from above-ground tests conducted before a moratorium was enacted in 1958.
The tests included the 15 Megaton Castle Bravo on the Bikini Atoll, which was detonated on March 1, 1954. It was the most powerful ever detonated by the United States – and around 1,000 times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima just nine years before.
The effort to clean up the region in the 1970s included approximately 4,000 American members of the armed forces in what was known as the Enewetak Radiological Support Project.
In our report, we showed how cracks are visible in the dome’s surface, and the sea sometimes washes over its surface during storms.
“The United States Government has acknowledged that a major typhoon could break it apart and cause all of the radiation in it to disperse,” said Columbia University’s Michael Gerrard.
That said, a 2013 DoE report found that the soil outside of the dome is more contaminated than its contents– as the 1970s cleaning operation only removed an estimated 0.8% of the total nuclear waste in Enewetak Atoll.
It’s unclear whether the shellfish were poisoned by radioactive material from the dome, or the 67 previous tests in the surrounding area. However, one thing is obvious: the U.S. delayed the inevitable environmental disaster by burying nuclear waste inside a concrete dome some four decades ago.
- Technotyranny: The Iron-Fisted Authoritarianism Of The Surveillance State
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me.’” ― Philip K. Dick
Red pill or blue pill? You decide.
Twenty years after the Wachowskis’ iconic 1999 film, The Matrix, introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans exist in a computer-simulated non-reality powered by authoritarian machines – a world where the choice between existing in a denial-ridden virtual dream-state or facing up to the harsh, difficult realities of life comes down to a red pill or a blue pill – we stand at the precipice of a technologically-dominated matrix of our own making.
We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day, falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities, virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing us and eventually dominating every aspect of our lives.
Science fiction has become fact.
In The Matrix, computer programmer Thomas Anderson a.k.a. hacker Neo is wakened from a virtual slumber by Morpheus, a freedom fighter seeking to liberate humanity from a lifelong hibernation state imposed by hyper-advanced artificial intelligence machines that rely on humans as an organic power source. With their minds plugged into a perfectly crafted virtual reality, few humans ever realize they are living in a dream world.
Neo is given a choice: to wake up and join the resistance, or remain asleep and serve as fodder for the powers-that-be. “You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe,” Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix. “You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
Most people opt for the red pill.
In our case, the red pill—a one-way ticket to a life sentence in an electronic concentration camp—has been honey-coated to hide the bitter aftertaste, sold to us in the name of expediency and delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet, cell phone signals that never drop a call, thermostats that keep us at the perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger, and entertainment that can be simultaneously streamed to our TVs, tablets and cell phones.
Yet we are not merely in thrall with these technologies that were intended to make our lives easier. We have become enslaved by them.
Look around you. Everywhere you turn, people are so addicted to their internet-connected screen devices—smart phones, tablets, computers, televisions—that they can go for hours at a time submerged in a virtual world where human interaction is filtered through the medium of technology.
This is not freedom.
This is not even progress.
This is technological tyranny and iron-fisted control delivered by way of the surveillance state, corporate giants such as Google and Facebook, and government spy agencies such as the National Security Agency.
We are living in a virtual world carefully crafted to resemble a representative government, while in reality we are little more than slaves in thrall to an authoritarian regime, with its constant surveillance, manufactured media spectacles, secret courts, inverted justice, and violent repression of dissent.
So consumed are we with availing ourselves of all the latest technologies that we have spared barely a thought for the ramifications of our heedless, headlong stumble towards a world in which our abject reliance on internet-connected gadgets and gizmos is grooming us for a future in which freedom is an illusion.
It’s not just freedom that hangs in the balance. Humanity itself is on the line.
Indeed, while most people are busily taking selfies, Google has been busily partnering with the NSA, the Pentagon, and other governmental agencies to develop a new “human” species.
Essentially, Google—a neural network that approximates a global brain—is fusing with the human mind in a phenomenon that is called “singularity.” Google will know the answer to your question before you have asked it, said transhumanist scientist Ray Kurzweil. “It will have read every email you will ever have written, every document, every idle thought you’ve ever tapped into a search-engine box. It will know you better than your intimate partner does. Better, perhaps, than even yourself.”
But here’s the catch: the NSA and all other government agencies will also know you better than yourself. As William Binney, one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA said, “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”
Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things, in which internet-connected “things” will monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.
The key word here is control.
In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have — and even products like chairs, that you don’t normally expect to see technology in — will be connected and talking to each other.”
By 2020, there will be 152 million cars connected to the Internet and 100 million Internet-connected bulbs and lamps. By 2021, it is estimated there will be 240 million wearable devices such as smartwatches, keeping users connected it real time to their phones, emails, text messages and the Internet. By 2022, there will be 1.1 billion smart meters installed in homes, reporting real-time usage to utility companies and other interested parties.
This “connected” industry—estimated to add more than $14 trillion to the economy by 2020—is about to be the next big thing in terms of societal transformations, right up there with the Industrial Revolution, a watershed moment in technology and culture.
Between driverless cars that completely lacking a steering wheel, accelerator, or brake pedal and smart pills embedded with computer chips, sensors, cameras and robots, we are poised to outpace the imaginations of science fiction writers such as Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov. (By the way, there is no such thing as a driverless car. Someone or something will be driving, but it won’t be you.)
The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.
Internet-connected techno gadgets as smart light bulbs can discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats will regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells will let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.
Nest, Google’s $3 billion acquisition, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.
It’s not just our homes that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government and our very bodies that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.
Moreover, given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices are operating entirely independent of their human creators, which poses a whole new set of worries.
As technology expert Nicholas Carr notes, “As soon as you allow robots, or software programs, to act freely in the world, they’re going to run up against ethically fraught situations and face hard choices that can’t be resolved through statistical models. That will be true of self-driving cars, self-flying drones, and battlefield robots, just as it’s already true, on a lesser scale, with automated vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.”
For instance, just as the robotic vacuum, Roomba, “makes no distinction between a dust bunny and an insect,” weaponized drones will be incapable of distinguishing between a fleeing criminal and someone merely jogging down a street.
For that matter, how do you defend yourself against a robotic cop—such as the Atlas android being developed by the Pentagon—that has been programmed to respond to any perceived threat with violence?
Unfortunately, in our race to the future, we have failed to consider what such dependence on technology might mean for our humanity, not to mention our freedoms.
Ingestible or implantable chips are a good example of how unprepared we are, morally and otherwise, to navigate this uncharted terrain. Hailed as revolutionary for their ability to access, analyze and manipulate your body from the inside, these smart pills can remind you to take your medication, search for cancer, and even send an alert to your doctor warning of an impending heart attack.
Sure, the technology could save lives, but is that all we need to know? Have we done our due diligence in dealing with the ramifications of giving the government and its cronies access to such intrusive programs? For example, asks reporter Ariana Eunjung Cha, “How will patients be assured that the technology won’t be used to compel them to take medications they don’t really want to take? Could what started as a voluntary experiment be turned into a compulsory government identification program that could erode civil liberties?”
Let me put it another way.
If you were shocked by Edward Snowden’s revelations about how NSA agents have used surveillance to spy on Americans’ phone calls, emails and text messages, can you imagine what unscrupulous government agents could do with access to your internet-connected car, home and medications?
All of those internet-connected gadgets we just have to have (Forbes refers to them as “(data) pipelines to our intimate bodily processes”)—the smart watches that can monitor our blood pressure and the smart phones that let us pay for purchases with our fingerprints and iris scans—are setting us up for a brave new world where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Imagine what a SWAT team could do with the ability to access, monitor and control your internet-connected home: locking you in, turning off the lights, activating alarms, etc.
Thus far, the public response to concerns about government surveillance has amounted to a collective shrug.
After all, who cares if the government can track your whereabouts on your GPS-enabled device so long as it helps you find the fastest route from Point A to Point B? Who cares if the NSA is listening in on your phone calls and downloading your emails so long as you can get your phone calls and emails on the go and get lightning fast Internet on the fly? Who cares if the government can monitor your activities in your home by tapping into your internet-connected devices—thermostat, water, lights—so long as you can control those things with the flick of a finger, whether you’re across the house or across the country?
It’s hard to truly appreciate the intangible menace of technology-enabled government surveillance in the face of the all-too-tangible menace of police shootings of unarmed citizens, SWAT team raids, and government violence and corruption.
However, both dangers are just as lethal to our freedoms if left unchecked.
Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business is monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in virtually every way by both government and corporate eyes and ears.
Whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, will be listening in and tracking your behavior.
This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.
In other words, there is no form of digital communication that the government cannot and does not monitor: phone calls, emails, text messages, tweets, Facebook posts, internet video chats, etc., are all accessible, trackable and downloadable by federal agents.
The government and its corporate partners-in-crime have been bypassing the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions for so long that this constitutional bulwark against warrantless searches and seizures has largely been rendered antiquated and irrelevant.
We are now in the final stage of the transition from a police state to a surveillance state.
Having already transformed local police into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are in the process of turning the nation’s police officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone Stingray devices and so much more.
Add in the fusion centers and real-time crime centers, city-wide surveillance networks, data clouds conveniently hosted overseas by Amazon and Microsoft, drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras, and biometric databases, and you’ve got the makings of a world in which “privacy” is reserved exclusively for government agencies.
In other words, the surveillance state that came into being with the 9/11 attacks is alive and well and kicking privacy to shreds in America. Having been persuaded to trade freedom for a phantom promise of security, Americans now find themselves imprisoned in a virtual cage of cameras, wiretaps, sensors and watchful government eyes.
Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people.
And of course that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine. Indeed, Facebook, Amazon and Google are among the government’s closest competitors when it comes to carrying out surveillance on Americans, monitoring the content of your emails, tracking your purchases and exploiting your social media posts.
“Few consumers understand what data are being shared, with whom, or how the information is being used,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Most Americans emit a stream of personal digital exhaust — what they search for, what they buy, who they communicate with, where they are — that is captured and exploited in a largely unregulated fashion.”
It’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked.
We’re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics—our faces, irises, voices, genetics, even our gait—runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique “identifiers,” and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses.
For instance, imagine what the NSA could do (and is likely already doing) with voiceprint technology, which has been likened to a fingerprint. Described as “the next frontline in the battle against overweening public surveillance,” the collection of voiceprints is a booming industry for governments and businesses alike. As The Guardian reports, “voice biometrics could be used to pinpoint the location of individuals. There is already discussion about placing voice sensors in public spaces, and … multiple sensors could be triangulated to identify individuals and specify their location within very small areas.”
The NSA is merely one small part of a shadowy permanent government comprised of unelected bureaucrats who march in lockstep with profit-driven corporations that actually runs Washington, DC, and works to keep us under surveillance and, thus, under control. For example, Google openly works with the NSA, Amazon has built a massive $600 million intelligence database for CIA, and the telecommunications industry is making a fat profit by spying on us for the government.
In other words, Corporate America is making a hefty profit by aiding and abetting the government in its domestic surveillance efforts.
Control is the key here.
Total control over every aspect of our lives, right down to our inner thoughts, is the objective of any totalitarian regime.
George Orwell understood this. His masterpiece, 1984, portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. And people are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother, who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”
Make no mistake: the Internet of Things is just Big Brother in a more appealing disguise.
Now there are still those who insist that they have nothing to hide from the surveillance state and nothing to fear from the police state because they have done nothing wrong. To those sanctimonious few, secure in their delusions, let this be a warning: the danger posed by the American police state applies equally to all of us, lawbreaker and law-abider alike.
In an age of too many laws, too many prisons, too many government spies, and too many corporations eager to make a fast buck at the expense of the American taxpayer, there is no safe place and no watertight alibi.
We are all guilty of some transgression or other.
Eventually, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we will all be made to suffer the same consequences in the electronic concentration camp that surrounds us.
- Footage Captures Arms "Rat Line" On "Mysterious Planes" Fueling Libya War 2.0
We might call it the war for Libya 2.0, given that following the Arab North African country turning to chaos and ruin following the 2011 US-NATO regime change war against Gaddafi, a new war for Tripoli is fast becoming internationalized in what threatens to be a full-blown proxy war.
New reports this week have uncovered what appear to be covert arms shipments pouring into the war-torn country on “mysterious planes” in support of General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA), which has since early April laid siege to the capital city. At the same time, there’s new evidence that external countries like Turkey as well as foreign mercenaries are bolstering the ranks of the UN-backed Government of National Accord which Haftar is trying to unseat.
Via Al Jazeera investigation: Two Ilyushin 76 aircraft made several trips between Egypt, Israel, and Jordan before landing at air bases controlled by Haftar A new Al-Jazeera investigation caught what’s presumed to be weapons-laden cargo planes making repeat trips to makeshift battlefront air bases. What’s more is that they are attempting to go “covert” during the deliveries by flipping their tracking transponders off.
According to the report:
Cargo planes were discovered flying clandestinely into bases controlled by renegade Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar and dropping off unidentifed payloads at the time his forces attacked Tripoli last month, an Al Jazeera Arabic TV investigation found.
Satellite images and flight data show two Russian-made Ilyushin 76 aircraft registered to a joint Emirati-Kazakh company called Reem Travel made several trips between Egypt, Israel, and Jordan before landing at military bases controlled by Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) in early April, just as it attempted to seize the capital.
Haftar has long been described by many analysts as “the CIA’s man in Libya” — given he spent a couple decades living in exile a mere few minutes from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia during Gaddafi’s rule.
In late April the White House had shocked UN and western allies by reversing policy which had up until then recognized the GNA’s authority, and bestowed legitimacy of Gen. Haftar’s forces. President Trump went so far as to thank Haftar for “securing Libya’s oil resources” in a phone call.
This week Al Jazeera published photos and video footage of the illegal (under a recent UN arms embargo) arms shipments, as well as satellite and tracking data from the planes:
Flight transponders appear to have been turned off while flying into the war-torn North African country. Libya is currently under an arms embargo imposed by the United Nations after years of fighting.
Video published by Haftar’s forces shows one of the cargo planes – with the registration number UP-I7645 – after landing at LNA’s Tamanhant military base in southern Libya. It had taken off from Benghazi in the east, Haftar’s stronghold.
The report cites a gulf affairs analyst named Bill Law, who said the war for Libya is now expanding into a full proxy war. “What we’re seeing are lots of players coming into Libya. It’s a recipe that’s almost heading to a Yemen scenario. We’re beginning to see a proxy war emerging. We’re looking at a pretty bleak situation. In this situation of a vacuum, you see players emerge and we’re seeing this now,” he told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera published screengrabs of a video published to Gen. Haftar’s media site, showing cargo unloaded from aircraft at a LNA military base.
Aircraft have been observed flying into Libya with their trackers off, in what appears violation of a UN arms embargo on the country.
Recent UN numbers and humanitarian monitors have put the number of displaced due to Haftar’s offensive on the capital at more than 40,000 civilians and a rising death toll of multiple hundreds, and thousands wounded.
Among Haftar’s main backers include the UAE, Egypt, France, Russia, and recently the United States. Foreign mercenaries have been observed backing both sides, with Turkish as well as European military trainers reported to have recently assisted the Tripoli-based GNA.
Interestingly, in a reversal of the well-known “weapons rat line” which in 2011 to 2012 ran from Libya into Syria, Damascus has this week condemned what it says is a covert program to transfer Syrian jihadists to Libya.
Syria’s Ambassador to the UN Bashar Al-Ja’afari told the UNSC on Tuesday: “How can the fighters be transferred from Syria to Libya unless the support of governments benefiting from it?” as cited by The Libyan Address. “We have warned against the transfer of fighters to neighboring countries,” Jaafari added.
According to a summary of the intensifying influx of foreign fighters into Libya, the Middle East news site Al-Masdar noted:
Members of both the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh) and Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham have somehow made their way from Syria to Libya over the last year, prompting the governments in Damascus and Benghazi to question who is aiding their transfer.
Damascus and Benghazi have accused Turkey in recent months of helping to facilitate this transfer, despite Ankara’s rejection of accusations.
Turkey is considered a close ally to the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA); they are currently fighting the Libyan National Army (LNA), which is led by Field Marshal General Khalifa Haftar.
The twisted irony is that whereas Libya less than a decade ago was a main departure point for foreign jihadists entering the Levant region via Turkey to fight Assad, it now appears the same jihadists are headed the other way, and again in support of a NATO country (Turkey and the GNA’s UN allies).
- Transgender Woman (Who Competed As A Man Last Year) Wins NCAA Track Championship
A student-athlete at Franklin Pierce University on Saturday became the first in the school’s history to collect an individual national title. That student-athlete is also transgender.
“A transgender woman who competed as a man as recently as last year won an NCAA women’s track national championship on Saturday. Franklin Pierce University senior Cece Telfer beat the eight-woman field in the Division II women’s 400-meter hurdles by more than a second, with a personal collegiate-best time of 57.53,” the Tribune-Review reports.
“As recently as January 2018, Telfer had been competing as an athlete for Franklin Pierce men’s team as Craig. Telfer finished eighth in a field of nine in the Men’s 400 meters at the Middlebury Winter Classic in Vermont,” the Trib reported. “The NCAA allows male athletes to compete as women if they suppress their testosterone levels for a full calendar year. Before that, they compete on mixed teams — with men and women — in the men’s division but not the women’s.”
In just its 7th year of existence, the @FPURavensXCTF has its first national champion. Senior CeCe Telfer took control of the 400-meter hurdles on Sat. PM and went on to post victory w/ a personal best time of 57.53. Read more here; https://t.co/vCukMSb7vS pic.twitter.com/gE3v7HQ3Ml
— Franklin Pierce (@FPUniversity) May 26, 2019
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A news release published by the small, private New Hampshire-based university celebrated the win:
In just its seventh year of existence, the Franklin Pierce University women’s track & field team has its first national champion. Senior CeCe Telfer (Lebanon, N.H.) took control of the 400-meter hurdles down the back stretch on Saturday night and went on to post victory by more than a second, in a personal collegiate-best time of 57.53 seconds. Telfer also added All-America First Team accolades in the 100-meter hurdles earlier in the day, on the third and final day of the NCAA Championships, hosted by Texas A&M-Kingsville, at Javelina Stadium.
Telfer is the first student-athlete in Franklin Pierce history to collect an individual national title. It marks the seventh NCAA national championship overall in the history of the University, with all the previous crowns coming on the soccer field. …
Earlier in the day, Telfer also earned All-America First Team honors in the 100-meter hurdles, with a fifth-place finish. Running out of lane 7, she crossed the line at 13.56 seconds, just one half-second behind the winner. Pittsburg State senior Courtney Nelson, who had been the top qualifier out of Friday’s preliminary heats, took home the national title in 13.06 seconds. San Francisco State junior Monisha Lewis followed in second (13.29), while Minnesota-Duluth senior Danielle Kohlwey took third (13.31). Lindenwood senior Erin Hodge narrowly edged Telfer at the line for fourth place, with a time of 13.47 seconds.
Read the university’s press release and the Trib article.
h/t: Instapundit
- Navy Denies Tarping USS McCain For Trump; WaPo Doubles Down
Update 4: CNBC has obtained the purported email which reads in part: “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.”
Two sources confirm to @CNBC that this is the email showing coordinated efforts to put the USS John McCain “out of sight.”
The Pentagon maintains that Acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan was unaware of such plans. (H/T @RyanRuggiero) pic.twitter.com/adaZKtp1oE
— Amanda Macias (@amanda_m_macias) May 30, 2019
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Update 3: The plot thickens as the Navy’s Chief of Information denies that the USS John McCain was obscured during President Trump’s visit (and explains that the images used by the media are from the day before the president’s visit)…
The name of USS John S. McCain was not obscured during the POTUS visit to Yokosuka on Memorial Day. The Navy is proud of that ship, its crew, its namesake and its heritage.
— Navy Chief of Information (@chinfo) May 30, 2019
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That photo is not from the day of the POTUS visit (Monday in Japan, Sunday in US), as the WSJ report itself mentions.
— Navy Chief of Information (@chinfo) May 30, 2019
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However, we do note that the Twitter account used to provide this info was last used in 2014 which raised an eyebrow, and furthermore, The Washington Post refuses to let the story go, claiming that administration officials, anonymously sourced of course, have confirmed WSJ’s version of the story, that a request was made to make sure the USS John McCain wasn’t visible, but WaPo admits that aides confirm that President Trump wasn’t involved in the request (but WaPo adds that the request was made to prevent any potential ire from Trump.)
* * *
Update 2: In an even more clear rejection of the fake news from the ‘source’ used by WSJ (and ‘confirmed’ by WaPo), one serviceman speaks up…” I served on the McCain for 2 years. This ship is currently undergoing maintenance, which is why there’s scaffolding and protective sheets around it. Also, the ship is named after Senator McCain’s *father*. This is 100% Fake News.”
“Fortune favors the brave.” pic.twitter.com/FcEnx575MA
— Children Of The Dust (@Me2S3M) May 30, 2019
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Update 1: Just minutes after the WSJ story hit, Trump responded with an tweet, thanksing the military service-members for the “spectacular job” they are doing, but denying the WSJ story: “I was not informed about anything having to do with the Navy Ship USS John S. McCain during my recent visit to Japan.”
I was not informed about anything having to do with the Navy Ship USS John S. McCain during my recent visit to Japan. Nevertheless, @FLOTUS and I loved being with our great Military Men and Women – what a spectacular job they do!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2019
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As we detailed earlier, Donald Trump’s vendetta with John McCain has reportedly crossed over into the afterlife.
Ahead of Trump’s visit to Japan this past weekend, the White House asked the U.S. Navy to move “out of sight” a warship named for the late Senator John McCain, the WSJ reported citing according to an email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The email dated May 15 to Navy and Air Force officials, outlined plans for the president’s arrival and included instructions for the proper landing areas for helicopters and preparation for the USS Wasp – where Trump was scheduled to speak – the official issued a third directive: “USS John McCain needs to be out of sight” the email said. “Please confirm #3 will be satisfied.“
The ship has been stationed at the Yokosuka Naval Base near the USS Wasp, where Trump delivered Memorial Day remarks and visited U.S. officers.
As the WSJ adds, acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan was aware of the concern about the presence of the USS John McCain in Japan and approved measures to ensure it didn’t interfere with the president’s visit, a U.S. official said.
When a Navy commander expressed surprise about the directive for the USS John McCain, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command official replied: “First I heard of it as well.” He said he would work with the White House Military Office to obtain more information about the order.
Before Trump’s address, a tarp was hung over the USS John McCain’s name and sailors were reportedly directed to remove any coverings that showed the ship’s name. A barge was also reportedly moved near the ship to make it harder to see its name from the USS Wasp.
A tarp obscures the name of the USS John McCain ahead of President Trump’s visit to Japan. The animosity between Trump and John McCain, and even his name, was so great that the sailors on the ship, who normally wear caps with its name, were given the day off when Trump gave his address.
Speaking to the roughly 800 military men and women, some of whom wore “Make Aircrew Great Again” patches with a likeness of the president on their jumpsuits, Mr. Trump said he was joined by sailors from six other ships. He made no mention of the USS John McCain.
Trump also visited two military outfits to cap off his weekend trip to Japan. The president then met with U.S. troops aboard the USS Wasp, where he wished them a “very happy Memorial Day.” As we reported previously, over the course of his 30-minute visit, Trump critiqued plans to change the design of some aircraft carriers’ catapults, recounted his trip to Japan and praised those aboard for their service.
The White House declined to answer questions about the reason for the directive or where it originated. The White House Military Office provides support for presidential travel, among other matters.
In July 2018, a month before the death of McCain’s – who feuded repeatedly with Trump in his last years – the Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer formally added McCain as a namesake of the USS John McCain, which had been named for his father and grandfather after it launched in 1994. McCain said at the time that he was “deeply honored.”
In August 2017, the USS John McCain collided with a merchant vessel, killing 10 sailors and tearing a hole in the left rear side of the destroyer. Trump, asked about the collision at the time, told reporters: “That’s too bad.” He later tweeted that his thoughts and prayers were with the sailors aboard the ship.
- Bilderberg 2019 Meeting Details Revealed: Stacey Abrams, Jared Kushner To Attend
Authored by Robert Wenzel via Target Liberty,
The 67th Bilderberg Meeting will take place from May 30 to June 2, 2019 in Montreux, Switzerland, the group has just announced.
It is believed that the announcement was made only days before the meeting to make it as difficult as possible for protesters and independent journalists to make it to the event.
Here are the details.
The annual Bilderberg Meeting is a three-day forum for informal discussions, between global insiders. Every year, approx. 130 political leaders and experts from industry, finance, labour, academia and the media comprise the group. About two-thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America (But Asia can come up on the agenda though Asia-based leaders and experts are not invited–see below).
The first Meeting took place at the Hotel De Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, The Netherlands, from May 29 to 31 1954. Thus, the name.
The Meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor of any other participant may be revealed.
According to the group, this is this year’s agenda:
1. A Stable Strategic Order
2. What Next for Europe?
3. Climate Change and Sustainability
4. China
5. Russia
6. The Future of Capitalism
7. Brexit
8. The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
9. The Weaponisation of Social Media
10. The Importance of Space
11. Cyber Threats
As can be seen, the members will be discussing (plotting?) with regard to issues of the day that seem to be moving in a direction away from freedom.
You don’t have topics such as “The Weaponisation of Social Media” and “What Next for Europe?” unless you have, or are looking for, solutions to the “problems,” solutions that are unlikely to be moving in the direction of freedom.
The lead topic, “A Stable Strategic Order” is also a tell.
The group has released these names as this year’s participants (my highlights).
BOARD
Castries, Henri de (FRA), Chairman, Steering Committee; Chairman, Institut Montaigne
Kravis, Marie-Josée (USA), President, American Friends of Bilderberg Inc.; Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
Halberstadt, Victor (NLD), Chairman Foundation Bilderberg Meetings; Professor of Economics, Leiden University
Achleitner, Paul M. (DEU), Treasurer Foundation Bilderberg Meetings; Chairman Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank AGPARTICIPANTS
Abrams, Stacey (USA), Founder and Chair, Fair Fight
Adonis, Andrew (GBR), Member, House of Lords
Albers, Isabel (BEL), Editorial Director, De Tijd / L’Echo
Altman, Roger C. (USA), Founder and Senior Chairman, Evercore
Arbour, Louise (CAN), Senior Counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP
Arrimadas, Inés (ESP), Party Leader, Ciudadanos
Azoulay, Audrey (INT), Director-General, UNESCO
Baker, James H. (USA), Director, Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense
Balta, Evren (TUR), Associate Professor of Political Science, Özyegin University
Barbizet, Patricia (FRA), Chairwoman and CEO, Temaris & Associés
Barbot, Estela (PRT), Member of the Board and Audit Committee, REN (Redes Energéticas Nacionais)
Barroso, José Manuel (PRT), Chairman, Goldman Sachs International; Former President, European Commission
Barton, Dominic (CAN), Senior Partner and former Global Managing Partner, McKinsey & Company
Beaune, Clément (FRA), Adviser Europe and G20, Office of the President of the Republic of France
Boos, Hans-Christian (DEU), CEO and Founder, Arago GmbH
Bostrom, Nick (UK), Director, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University
Botín, Ana P. (ESP), Group Executive Chair, Banco Santander
Brandtzæg, Svein Richard (NOR), Chairman, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Brende, Børge (NOR), President, World Economic Forum
Buberl, Thomas (FRA), CEO, AXA
Buitenweg, Kathalijne (NLD), MP, Green Party
Caine, Patrice (FRA), Chairman and CEO, Thales Group
Carney, Mark J. (GBR), Governor, Bank of England
Casado, Pablo (ESP), President, Partido Popular
Ceviköz, Ahmet Ünal (TUR), MP, Republican People’s Party (CHP)
Champagne, François Philippe (CAN), Minister of Infrastructure and Communities
Cohen, Jared (USA), Founder and CEO, Jigsaw, Alphabet Inc.
Croiset van Uchelen, Arnold (NLD), Partner, Allen & Overy LLP
Daniels, Matthew (USA), New space and technology projects, Office of the Secretary of Defense
Davignon, Etienne (BEL), Minister of State
Demiralp, Selva (TUR), Professor of Economics, Koç University
Donohoe, Paschal (IRL), Minister for Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform
Döpfner, Mathias (DEU), Chairman and CEO, Axel Springer SE
Ellis, James O. (USA), Chairman, Users’ Advisory Group, National Space Council
Feltri, Stefano (ITA), Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Il Fatto Quotidiano
Ferguson, Niall (USA), Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Findsen, Lars (DNK), Director, Danish Defence Intelligence Service
Fleming, Jeremy (GBR), Director, British Government Communications Headquarters
Garton Ash, Timothy (GBR), Professor of European Studies, Oxford University
Gnodde, Richard J. (IRL), CEO, Goldman Sachs International
Godement, François (FRA), Senior Adviser for Asia, Institut Montaigne
Grant, Adam M. (USA), Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Gruber, Lilli (ITA), Editor-in-Chief and Anchor “Otto e mezzo”, La7 TV
Hanappi-Egger, Edeltraud (AUT), Rector, Vienna University of Economics and Business
Hedegaard, Connie (DNK), Chair, KR Foundation; Former European Commissioner
Henry, Mary Kay (USA), International President, Service Employees International Union
Hirayama, Martina (CHE), State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation
Hobson, Mellody (USA), President, Ariel Investments LLC
Hoffman, Reid (USA), Co-Founder, LinkedIn; Partner, Greylock Partners
Hoffmann, André (CHE), Vice-Chairman, Roche Holding Ltd.
Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. (USA), Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
Jost, Sonja (DEU), CEO, DexLeChem
Kaag, Sigrid (NLD), Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation
Karp, Alex (USA), CEO, Palantir Technologies
Kerameus, Niki K. (GRC), MP; Partner, Kerameus & Partners
Kissinger, Henry A. (USA), Chairman, Kissinger Associates Inc.
Koç, Ömer (TUR), Chairman, Koç Holding A.S.
Kotkin, Stephen (USA), Professor in History and International Affairs, Princeton University
Kramp-Karrenbauer, Annegret (DEU), Leader, CDU
Krastev, Ivan (BUL), Chairman, Centre for Liberal Strategies
Kravis, Henry R. (USA), Co-Chairman and Co-CEO, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
Kristersson, Ulf (SWE), Leader of the Moderate Party
Kudelski, André (CHE), Chairman and CEO, Kudelski Group
Kushner, Jared (USA), Senior Advisor to the President, The White House
Le Maire, Bruno (FRA), Minister of Finance
Leyen, Ursula von der (DEU), Federal Minster of Defence
Leysen, Thomas (BEL), Chairman, KBC Group and Umicore
Liikanen, Erkki (FIN), Chairman, IFRS Trustees; Helsinki Graduate School of Economics
Lund, Helge (GBR), Chairman, BP plc; Chairman, Novo Nordisk AS
Maurer, Ueli (CHE), President of the Swiss Federation and Federal Councillor of Finance
Mazur, Sara (SWE), Director, Investor AB
McArdle, Megan (USA), Columnist, The Washington Post
McCaskill, Claire (USA), Former Senator; Analyst, NBC News
Medina, Fernando (PRT), Mayor of Lisbon
Micklethwait, John (USA), Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg LP
Minton Beddoes, Zanny (GBR), Editor-in-Chief, The Economist
Monzón, Javier (ESP), Chairman, PRISA
Mundie, Craig J. (USA), President, Mundie & Associates
Nadella, Satya (USA), CEO, Microsoft
Netherlands, His Majesty the King of the (NLD)
Nora, Dominique (FRA), Managing Editor, L’Obs
O’Leary, Michael (IRL), CEO, Ryanair D.A.C.
Pagoulatos, George (GRC), Vice-President of ELIAMEP, Professor; Athens University of Economics
Papalexopoulos, Dimitri (GRC), CEO, TITAN Cement Company S.A.
Petraeus, David H. (USA), Chairman, KKR Global Institute
Pienkowska, Jolanta (POL), Anchor woman, journalist
Pottinger, Matthew (USA), Senior Director, National Security Council
Pouyanné, Patrick (FRA), Chairman and CEO, Total S.A.
Ratas, Jüri (EST), Prime Minister
Renzi, Matteo (ITA), Former Prime Minister; Senator, Senate of the Italian Republic
Rockström, Johan (SWE), Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Rubin, Robert E. (USA), Co-Chairman Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations; Former Treasury Secretary
Rutte, Mark (NLD), Prime Minister
Sabia, Michael (CAN), President and CEO, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec
Sanger, David E. (USA), National Security Correspondent, The New York Times
Sarts, Janis (INT), Director, NATO StratCom Centre of Excellence
Sawers, John (GBR), Executive Chairman, Newbridge Advisory
Schadlow, Nadia (USA), Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
Schmidt, Eric E. (USA), Technical Advisor, Alphabet Inc.
Scholten, Rudolf (AUT), President, Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue
Seres, Silvija (NOR), Independent Investor
Shafik, Minouche (GBR), Director, The London School of Economics and Political Science
Sikorski, Radoslaw (POL), MP, European Parliament
Singer, Peter Warren (USA), Strategist, New America
Sitti, Metin (TUR), Professor, Koç University; Director, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Snyder, Timothy (USA), Richard C. Levin Professor of History, Yale University
Solhjell, Bård Vegar (NOR), CEO, WWF – Norway
Stoltenberg, Jens (INT), Secretary General, NATO
Suleyman, Mustafa (GBR), Co-Founder, Deepmind
Supino, Pietro (CHE), Publisher and Chairman, Tamedia Group
Teuteberg, Linda (DEU), General Secretary, Free Democratic Party
Thiam, Tidjane (CHE), CEO, Credit Suisse Group AG
Thiel, Peter (USA), President, Thiel Capital
Trzaskowski, Rafal (POL), Mayor of Warsaw
Tucker, Mark (GBR), Group Chairman, HSBC Holding plc
Tugendhat, Tom (GBR), MP, Conservative Party
Turpin, Matthew (USA), Director for China, National Security Council
Uhl, Jessica (NLD), CFO and Executive Director, Royal Dutch Shell plc
Vestergaard Knudsen, Ulrik (DNK), Deputy Secretary-General, OECD
Walker, Darren (USA), President, Ford Foundation
Wallenberg, Marcus (SWE), Chairman, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB
Wolf, Martin H. (GBR), Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times
Zeiler, Gerhard (AUT), Chief Revenue Officer, WarnerMedia
Zetsche, Dieter (DEU), Former Chairman, Daimler AG* * *
- Japan Is About To Sell Its First Ever Junk Bond… With A 1% Coupon
While corporate bond yields have been plumbing ever lower lows in the yield-starved “New Normal”, prompting even the world’s largest bond fund Pimco to warn that this is the riskiest credit market ever, Japan is about to deliver the proverbial “hold my beer” moment to the entire world.
Aiful, the consumer lender which almost went bankrupt a decade ago, is preparing to sell Japan’s first ever yen-denominated “high yield” – and in this case we use the term very, very loosely – in the public markets, showing how desperate for yield local investors are, and how much risk they are willing to take in exchange for virtually no return, as negative interest rates have now become the new normal.
What is most remarkable about the bond sale in the country where the 10Y yield has been trading mostly in negative territory for over half a decade, is that the 18 month yen junk bond is set to price on Friday with a coupon of, wait for it, 1%.
Another unique aspect of the upcoming issuance is that it is taking place in the first place. As Bloomberg notes, the junk bond offering will be historic for Japan’s bond market, where companies haven’t felt compelled to sell below investment grade notes as they’ve traditionally had close ties with banks, who tend to be more forgiving than bondholders in tough times.
While few expect the offering to trigger an avalanche of junk bond issuance in conservative Japan, recent regulatory changes have raised the possibility that the country could eventually develop such a market.
One reason is that the world’s largest state-run pension fund, the Government Pension Investment Fund, revised guidelines last year to push its return envelope, allowing it to buy yen bonds with ratings of BB or lower. As such it will likely be a beacon for Japanese debt investors, who are traditionally quite conservative, have only been slowly buying more bonds rated BBB in the past few years.
Why Aiful? According to Kinya Numata, a manager in the company’s finance department, the easing in investment criteria, together with an improvement in Aiful’s own ratings, helped pave the way for the offering, The company intends to use the proceeds from the planned bond sale for its lending business, he said.
Japan Credit Rating Agency raised Aiful’s credit rating two levels to BB with a positive outlook in November, citing expectations that the company will be able to generate stable profits in the future as interest repayment claims decline. In other words Aiful was a C credit roughly half a year ago. Even more striking is that the company – which is neither a unicorn, nor “growthy” – recorded a profit for the first time in a decade in March.
And this company, which may or may not have a sustained positive cash flow is about to add billions in new debt at the coast of 1%. If only US shale drillers could get them some of this “high yield” Japanese debt, then the entire world would be floating in oil right now.
As for Aiful’s management, the bond offering comes as a modest consolation prize for over a decade of misery. Japanese consumer lenders have been under siege since 2006, when a Supreme Court ruling ordered moneylenders to repay exorbitant interest charges on loans, and lawmakers capped how much they could charge.
And now that Japan’s lowest rated companies have discovered the holy grail to keep corporate zombies “alive” a few extra quarters, how long until all of Japan is swimming under an ocean of 1%-yielding junk bonds, extending the NIRP misery of the New Normal even longer.
One final thought: imagine what Michael Milken could have done if US junk bond yields in the 1980s were 1%…
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