Feb 03

Today’s News 3rd February 2019

  • A Truthful State Of The Union (That Will Keep You Awake At Night)

    Authored by Skip Kaltenhauser via DownWithTyranny.com,

    Tick Tock. The good folks at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientistshave returned to wind their Doomsday Clock. Last Thursday at the National Press Club a group of well-credentialed speakers, including former California Governor Jerry Brown and former Secretary of Defense William Perry, underscored the organization’s warning that we have established residence in “the new abnormal.” Watch the press conference and supportive videos here.

    The Doomsday Clock was set last year at a two-minutes until midnight, (midnight being the endgame), and there it now remains. There’s little comfort to be had in standing on what University of Chicago astrophysicist Robert Rosner characterized as a precipice we’d best quickly leap back from. Bulletin president and CEO Rachel Bronson stressed that the clock remaining where it is, the closest it has been to world catastrophe, is not stability, but “a stark warning to leaders and citizens around the world.”

    William Perry said the organization views our current situation as precarious as it was in 1953, in the gloom of the Cold War while the Korean War still raged. Jerry Brown said, “The blindness and stupidity of the politicians and their consultants is truly shocking in the face of nuclear catastrophe and danger… the business of everyday politics blinds people to the risk, we’re playing Russian Roulette with humanity,” with the danger of an incident that will kill millions if not igniting a conflict that will kill billions.

    Brown told journalists while they may love the Trump tweets and news of the day, “the leads that get the clicks,” the final click could be a nuclear accident, a mistake. “It’s hard to even feel or sense the peril and danger we are in, but these scientists know what they’re talking about, and I can say, based on my understanding of the political process, the politicians, for the most part, do not.” Referring to Congress’s inaction on related matters, Brown called it “massive sleep walking all over the place.” He committed to spending the next few years doing everything he can to “sound the alarm and get us back on the track to dialogue, collaboration and arms control.”

    The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Doomsday Clock are creations of a group of scientists who participated in the Manhattan Project. The clock’s current position was determined by a group of scholars and scientists that includes fifteen Nobel Laureates. These are serious people. It is heartening to see their avoidance of political talking points or partisan tilt in favor of Joe Friday’s focus on “just the facts, ma’am.” Just the chilling facts that let the chips fall where they may. About thirty-three minutes into the conference Jerry Brown gave a Dutch uncle talk to Democrats who maintain the attack mode on Putin on all matters without holding open the option for nuclear dialogue. It brought to mind the discussions of Washington’s bipartisan War Party prompted by William Atkin’s recent critique of NBC and MSNBC.

    The Bulletin has been criticized for going beyond the original nuclear realm to include a number of other perils. But it seems if there is one thing we’re learning now from climate and polar ice studies and being slapped around by extreme weather events, it’s that seemingly unrelated factors cascade and overlap, interacting and accelerating in ways we hadn’t understood. No doubt more surprises will come. Certainly the impacts of climate change on food and water supplies, on ocean health and on migration will bear on political systems and on future tensions and conflicts. Perhaps it is too far afield, but a case could be made to include prospects of financial meltdowns from bankers behaving badly. Economic calamities have lit a lot of fuses throughout history.

    Stanford cyber expert Herb Lin focused on the ongoing debasement of institutions that hold leaders accountable. While nuclear risks and climate change lead the concerns, that witches brew is now put into the blender by the misinformation on steroids enabled by the Internet. Says Lin, “Events in 2018 have helped us to better understand an ongoing and intentional corruption of the information environment. Our leaders complain about fake news and invoke alternative facts when reality is inconvenient. They are shamelessly inconsistent.”

    So we have Information warfare combining with information overload to compromise the public’s ability to absorb and analyze critical issues. Among other things, information warfare delegitimizes the values and truths embodied by science, causing a cheapening and distrust of all information, opening a Pandora’s Box of distortions that allow the public and politicians to avoid grappling with the serious issues before them.

    Fine by me if the experiences of the past few years inoculate the public with a healthy cynicism, offering some protection from the gatling guns spewing talking points. But if the public discards the legitimacy of scientific thought and proof, not so good.

    Here’s a few excerpts from The Bulletin statement on the Doomsday Clock: 

    Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats– nuclear weapons and climate change– were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.

    In the nuclear realm, the United States abandoned the Iran nuclear deal and announced it would withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), grave steps towards a complete dismantlement of the global arms control process. Although the United States and North Korea moved away from the bellicose rhetoric of 2017, the urgent North Korean nuclear dilemma remains unresolved. Meanwhile, the world’s nuclear nations proceeded with programs of “nuclear modernization” that are all but indistinguishable from a worldwide arms race, and the military doctrines of Russia and the United States have increasingly eroded the long-held taboo against the use of nuclear weapons.

    On the climate change front, global carbon dioxide emissions– which seemed to plateau earlier this decade– resumed an upward climb in 2017 and 2018. To halt the worst effects of climate change, the countries of the world must cut net worldwide carbon dioxide emissions to zero by well before the end of the century. By such a measure, the world community failed dismally last year. At the same time, the main global accord on addressing climate change– the 2015 Paris agreement– has become increasingly beleaguered.The United States announced it will withdraw from that pact, and at the December climate summit in Poland, the United States allied itself with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait (all major petroleum-producing countries) to undercut an expert report on climate change impacts that the Paris climate conference had itself commissioned.

    Amid these unfortunate nuclear and climate developments, there was a rise during the last year in the intentional corruption of the information ecosystem on which modern civilization depends. In many forums, including particularly social media, nationalist leaders and their surrogates lied shamelessly, insisting that their lies were truth, and the truth “fake news.” These intentional attempts to distort reality exaggerate social divisions, undermine trust in science, and diminish confidence in elections and democratic institutions. Because these distortions attack the rational discourse required for solving the complex problems facing humanity, cyber-enabled information warfare aggravates other major global dangers– including those posed by nuclear weapons and climate change– as it undermines civilization generally.

    First clock, 1947

    Worrisome nuclear trends continue. 

    The global nuclear order has been deteriorating for many years, and 2018 was no exception to this trend. Relations between the United States and both Russia and China have grown more fraught. The architecture of nuclear arms control built up over half a century continues to decay, while the process of negotiating reductions in nuclear weapons and fissile material stockpiles is moribund. The nuclear-armed states remain committed to their arsenals, are determined to modernize their capabilities, and have increasingly espoused doctrines that envision nuclear use. Brash leaders, intense diplomatic disputes, and regional instabilities combine to create an international context in which nuclear dangers are all too real.

    A number of negative developments colored the nuclear story in 2018.

    First, the United States abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multilateral agreement that imposed unprecedented constraints on Iran’s nuclear program and allowed unprecedented verification of Iran’s nuclear facilities and activities. On May 8, President Trump announced that the United States would cease to observe the agreement and would instead launch a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran. So far, Iran and the other parties have continued to comply with the agreement, despite the absence of US participation. It is unclear whether they will keep the agreement alive, but one thing is certain: The Trump administration has launched an assault on one of the major nuclear nonproliferation successes of recent years and done so in a way that increases the likelihood of conflict with Iran and further heightens tensions with long-term allies.

    Second, in October the Trump administration announced that it intends to withdraw from the INF Treaty, which bans missiles of intermediate range. Though bedeviled by reciprocal complaints about compliance, the INF agreement has been in force for more than 30 years and has contributed to stability in Europe. Its potential death foreshadows a new competition to deploy weapons long banned. Unfortunately, while treaties are being eliminated, there is no process in place that will create a new regime of negotiated constraints on nuclear behavior. For the first time since the 1980s, it appears the world is headed into an unregulated nuclear environment– an outcome that could reproduce the intense arms racing that was the hallmark of the early, unregulated decades of the nuclear age.

    …even as arms control efforts wane, modernization of nuclear forces around the world continues apace. In his Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly on March 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin described an extensive nuclear modernization program, justified as a response to US missile defense efforts. The Trump administration has added to the enormously expensive comprehensive nuclear modernization program it inherited from the Obama administration.

    Andrew Wheeler by Nancy Ohanian

    Ominous climate change trends.

    The existential threat from human-caused global warming is ominous and getting worse. Every year that human activities continue to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere irreversibly ratchets up the future level of human suffering and ecosystem destruction that will be wrought by global climate disruption. The key measure of improvement on the climate front is the extent of progress toward bringing global net carbon dioxide emissions to zero. On this measure, the countries of the world have failed dismally.

    Global carbon dioxide emissions rates had been rising exponentially until 2012 but ceased growing from 2013 to 2016. Even if this emissions plateau had continued, it would not have halted the growth of warming. Net emissions need to ultimately be brought to zero to do so, given the persistence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for up to thousands of years. The ominous news from 2017 and 2018 is that world emissions appear to have resumed their upward climb.

    Even nations that have strongly supported the need to decarbonize are not doing enough. Preliminary estimates show that almost all countries contributed to the rise in emissions. Some countries, including the United States and some members of the EU, increased their emissions after years of making progress in reducing them.

    The United States has also abandoned its responsibilities to lead the world decarbonization effort. The United States has more resources than poorer nations have; its failure to ambitiously reduce emissions represents an act of gross negligence. The United States stood alone while the other G20 countries signed on to a portion of a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to tackle climate change. Then in 2018, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland, the United States joined with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait– all major oil producers– to undercut a report on the impacts of climate change.

    Freedom of the Press, Money and the Media by Nancy Ohanian

    The threat of information warfare and other disruptive technologies. 

    Nuclear war and climate change threaten the physical infrastructure that provides the food, energy, and other necessities required for human life. But to thrive, prosper, and advance, people also need reliable information about their world– factual information, in abundance.

    Today, however, chaos reigns in much of the information ecosystem on which modern civilization depends. In many forums for political and societal discourse, we now see national leaders shouting about fake news, by which they mean information they do not like. These same leaders lie shamelessly, calling their lies truth. Acting across national boundaries, these leaders and their surrogates exacerbate existing divisions, creating rage and increasing distrust in public and private institutions. Using unsupported anecdotes and sketchy rhetoric, denialists raise fear and doubt regarding well-established science about climate change and other urgent issues. Established institutions of the government, journalism, and education– institutions that have traditionally provided stability– are under attack precisely because they have provided stability.

    In this environment, communication inflames passions rather than informing reason.

    Many countries have long employed propaganda and lies– otherwise known as information warfare– to advance their interests. But a quantitative change of sufficient magnitude qualifies as a qualitative change. In the Internet age, the volume and velocity of information has increased by orders of magnitude. Modern information technology and social media allow users easy connectivity and high degrees of anonymity across national borders. This widespread, inexpensive access to worldwide audiences has allowed practitioners of information warfare to broadcast false and manipulative messages to large populations at low cost, and at the same time to tailor political messages to narrow interest groups.

    By manipulating the natural cognitive predispositions of human beings, information warriors can exacerbate prejudices, biases, and ideological differences. They can invoke “alternative facts” to advance political positions based on outright falsehoods. Rather than a cyber Armageddon that causes financial meltdown or nationwide electrical blackouts, this is the more insidious use of cyber tools to target and exploit human insecurities and vulnerabilities, eroding the trust and cohesion on which civilized societies rely.

    The Enlightenment sought to establish reason as the foundational pillar of civilized discourse. In this conception, logical argument matters, and the truth of a statement is tested by examination of values, assumptions, and facts, not by how many people believe it. Cyber-enabled information warfare threatens to replace these pillars of logic and truth with fantasy and rage. If unchecked, such distortion will undermine the world’s ability to acknowledge and address the urgent threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change and will increase the potential for an end to civilization as we know it. The international community should begin multilateral discussions that aim to discourage cyber-enabled information warfare and to buttress institutions dedicated to rational, fact- based discourse and governance.

    Particularly regarding the 2016 election, Russia and fake news have become inseparable to many. 

    My lingering view remains that any impact from Internet mischief the Russians did during elections was a blip next to all the rot that’s been flying about for years, much of it funded by homegrown dark money and most of it owing to good old-fashioned American lack of integrity. On the other hand, I don’t have a cell phone, am not on cable and have never been on Facebook, so maybe I’m just clueless about how easily people are significantly swayed by a select few of the gazillion bits of information firehosing them, even those bits that people happily cobble into personal echo-chambers. But it seems that folks who are birthers and such don’t have to depend on the far flung for nonsense readily available and riding down a hotel escalator. The American realm of carefully calculated election misinformation from incognito sources is wonderfully underscored by the POV film Dark Money. It shows how dark money, ramped up by Citizens United, distorted elections in Montana, targeting both Democrats and Republicans who didn’t do a sufficient kowtow to the big money. Not to Putin’s druthers, but to the big money, to polluters, Koch brothers allies, ALEC objectives and such. But I digress, because that’s the beauty of a blog post.

    Back to bombs.

    According to the Federation of American Scientists, nine nations together have about 15,000 nuclear bombs, most far more powerful than those used on Japan, 1,800 of those possessed by the US and Russia are kept on high-alert status. Ride along with Major Kong here, and sing along with Vera Lynn here on “We’ll Meet Again,” as humanity exits stage left. Here’s a version picking some of the 331 atmospheric tests the US conducted from 1945 to 1962. Try the comfort of the largest bomb exploded, the Tsar Bomba, aka Ivan, aka Vanya, here. If you’d like to explore the impacts of a single one megaton bomb, (eighty times larger than the Hiroshima bomb but tiny compared to some modern bombs), as well as the global impacts of an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, perhaps a conflict between Pakistan and India,here you go. Perhaps pass these along to George W. Bush so he has a better idea of how to look for a WMD, maybe at a correspondents dinner.

    By the way, do you think kids in the Fifties might have had a few issues to work out later?

    Actions and statements by Trump figure significantly in the clock’s advancement in 2017 to two and a half minutes before midnight. A then-incoming President Trump made alarming statements regarding nuclear proliferation, the prospect of using nuclear weapons and his opposition to US commitments on climate change. And in 2018 he helped move the clock ahead thirty seconds with actions like pulling out of the Iran agreement. By the way, that idiocy is greased by nuclear power Israel, Sheldon Adelson and their American neocon minions like John Bolton. Invading Iraq wasn’t enough horror.

    Trump also announced his intent to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that for decades was a lynchpin for global arms control.

    I do wish Trump luck for a good follow-through with North Korea that might relax the minute hand a bit. The world needs a win.

    Trump recently reincarnated the illusion of a global defense system. A worthy critique by Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, is his essay Donald Trump’s Mission Impossible: Making His Unrealistic Missile Plan Work, is here.

    That man behind the curtain has nothing on Trump. Now we have the news of Trump’s latest misdirection, Venezuela. In 1975 I traveled overland to South America. Two impressions of Venezuela linger, the startling transition over a few hours going from snow in the Andes to the streamy tropics below, and the surreal feel while waterskiing between the oil derricks in Lake Maracaibo. Like slicks on the water, oil money was everywhere, a pleasant-looking lifestyle for many of the privileged youths darting about in convertibles filled with cheap gas. I can’t grasp the changes since then. Whatever way out of the miseries of a failed state might be found, it’s hard to imagine lighting the fuse for a civil war would prove beneficial. Perhaps Venezuelans will come knocking seeking asylum, quoting Trump’s description of their plight, never mind contributing US pressures. In any case, Venezuela should give us pause at how fast things can change.

    Tick Tock.

  • The Coming US-China Proxy War In Venezuela

    China won’t give up on embattled Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro anytime soon even as the US-led international noose of “delegitimizing” hangs around the socialist strongman, according to government statements released on Friday. Beijing reaffirmed it maintains “normal state-to-state relations” and cooperation between the two sides “shouldn’t be undermined no matter how the situation evolves,” according to press briefing by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Or rather, we could more simply translate: with billions of dollars in credit on the line, “non-interference” is simply not an option for China. 

    Image via CNN Chile

    “China has maintained close communication with all parties through different ways,” a ministry spokesperson said in response to question about whether China has had contact with National Assembly leader Juan Guaido. “We are ready to work with all parties to promote peace talks, and create favorable conditions for the proper settlement of the Venezuelan issue,” the ministry added. 

    But then there’s the not so minor issue of China over the past decade lending over $50 billion to Caracas as part of an oil-for-loan agreements program. It underscores just how quickly what appears a new White House full court press for regime change could bring Washington again into indirect conflict with both China and Russia. And in total Venezuela owes “more than $120 billion just to China and Russia” FOX reported this week. 

    A new Wall Street Journal report outlines what’s at stake, and the mounting costs for Beijing:

    When China hatched the first of a series of oil-for-loans agreements with Venezuela in 2007, it seemed like a perfect match. Venezuela had the world’s biggest oil reserves; China was poised to become the biggest energy consumer.

    Twelve years and more than $50 billion in loans later, a political crisis in Venezuela is threatening China’s payout and drawing Beijing into a proxy standoff as it supports a Venezuelan leader the U.S. is intent on toppling. It is a conflict with Washington that Beijing could do without, amid efforts to resolve a trade dispute that is weighing on the Chinese economy.

    And what remains of that loan which could potentially disappear with the stroke of an anti-Maduro coup?

    According to estimates by China’s Commerce Ministry, Venezuela still owes around $20 billion, the WSJ reports. 

    Source: WSJ

    Both China and Russia further remain the Latin American country’s biggest arms suppliers and Beijing had an additional $3.2 in direct investments in Venezuela in 2017, not to mention at least three joint ventures between between China National Petroleum Corp and Venezuela’s now US-sanctioned state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA.

    Though Venezuelan repayments to China reportedly began slowing to a “trickle” by 2015, current political unrest and Washington’s regime change efforts could prove devastating for Chinese investment:

    China’s investments are now at risk under Mr. Maduro—and Beijing also recognizes that a U.S.-backed Guaidó administration might refuse to honor outstanding debts.

    China’s Commerce Ministry spelled out this concern on Tuesday. “If the opposition party holds power in the future, a new Venezuelan government could use ‘protecting national interests’ as a reason to renegotiate contract terms with China and even just refuse to repay remaining debts,” the ministry said in its latest investment guidance report on Venezuela.

    Given that Beijing is all to aware of the outcome to any Venezuelan transition of power, and given it remains the Maduro regime’s top weapons supplier, there’s no telling what kind of possible clandestine military-to-military cooperation or contingency plans are already in effect. 

    Similar to China’s quiet military support to Syria’s Assad throughout the past years of international proxy war in the Levant, which has gone increasingly public , China could be gearing up to support Maduro in a more direct capacity. 

    “Cold War style map” presented at Monday White House press briefing: the map was aimed at showing the countries that support Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro (in red), and those countries that do not (in blue). via Bloomberg

    “Russia and China are using Venezuela as a proxy conflict to challenge the U.S. This is more than just economic support. Russia and China are leveraging its economic support to establish a military-industrial presence in Venezuela,” Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, told Fox News this week.

    For starters, China has a satellite tracking facility at the Capitán Manuel Rios Air Base in Guárico, while Russia has a cyberpresence at the Naval Base Antonio Diaz “Bandi” in La Orchilla, an island north of Caracas.

    “This adds space and cyberspace capabilities that the Maduro regime does not have,” Humire pointed out. “For Russia and China, pressuring the U.S. via Venezuela adds leverage to their regional ambitions in Ukraine and Eastern/Central Europe (for Russia) and Taiwan and South China Sea (for China).” — FOX News

    All of this suggests amidst what some analysts have dubbed “a new Cold War” scenario that another Cuban Missile Crisis in America’s backyard could be around the corner. 

    This is all the more likely considering the Trump White House may not be accurately assessing China and Russia’s resolve to stick by Maduro and his still loyal military. Yet unlike in Syria where Russian intervention at the invitation of Damascus in 2015 thwarted the US-Gulf-NATO drive for regime change, Washington has geography working clearly in its favor in the case of Venezuela. 

  • Paul Craig Roberts Exposes "The Lawless Government"

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    I remember when a suspect was regarded as innocent until proven guilty in a fair trial. Today prosecutors convict their victims in the media in order to make an unbiased jury impossible and thereby coerce a plea bargain that saves the prosecutor from having to prove his case. In the United States, law is no longer a shield of the people. Law is a weapon in the hands of prosecutors. (See Roberts & Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions.)

    Formerly, if a prosecutor staged an arrest for publicity purposes, as Mueller did by placing a CNN presstitute on the scene and sending a couple of dozen heavily armed men in a pre-dawn raid to arrest a well known political consultant for allegedly “lying to Congress” when the appropriate procedure is for Mueller to inform Stone’s lawyer to present his client for indictment, the judge would throw out the case on the grounds that the prosecutor’s unethical action had biased the juror pool and made a fair trial impossible. The judge might also have thrown out the case on the grounds of selective prosecution. James Clapper while serving as Director of National Intelligence lied to Congress under oath and suffered no consequences, and Hillary Clinton has clearly broken the law and lied about it.

    Today judges permit unethical behavior by prosecutors that deprives defendants of a fair trial, because judges don’t want the bother of trials any more than prosecutors do. Consequently, according to official statistics 97% of federal criminal cases are settled by a defendent pleaing guilty to a charge negotiated by his attorney and a prosecutor. As the charge is a negotiated or made-up one, most people in prison are there for confessing to crimes that never occurred.

    Prosecutors, now that they are no longer bound by constraints of legal integrity, often fabricate a case against a person in order to force the person to give false testimony against the prosecutor’s real target. This is what Mueller’s cases against Cohen, Manafort, and Roger Stone are. Trump is the target, not Cohen, Manafort, and Stone. In addition, prosecutors string out the investigation so long that they force the target to use up his net worth fighting off an indictment. Then when the indictment arrives, there is no money left for lawyers, which adds to the pressure to “cooperate.” If Trump were a fighting man, he would pardon Cohen, Manafort, and Stone, reimburse them out of the Justice (sic) Department’s budget for their legal expenses, and have Mueller arrested for sedition and plotting to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States. This would be hypocritical as Trump himself is plotting to overthrow the duly elected president of Venezuela.

    Mueller is not an agent of law. He is the agent of the military/security complex and the Democratic Party who intend to do away with Trump, because Trump positioned himself between them and their agendas.

    The preposterous charge against Trump is that he, in league with Russian President Vladimir Putin somehow through computer hacking and backdoor deals stole the presidential election from Hillary Clinton. This is the fabrication known as “Russiagate.” The creation of this fabrication involves far more crimes than those of which Trump, Cohen, Manafort, and Stone are accused. “Russiagate” rests on a fake “dossier” paid for by the Democrats and perhaps the FBI that was used to mislead the FISA court in order to obtain permission to spy on the Trump team. This is a felony for which the officials responsible are not being charged. The spying failed to turn up any real evidence, and neither has Muller’s “investigation.” The charges against Cohen, Manafort, and Stone are unrelated to the election and are likely false and used as threats for the purpose of eliciting false testimony against Trump in exchange for dropping the charges.

    Mueller’s tactics in his effort to frame the President of the United States are more despicable than the tactics to which the Gestapo stooped. Even worse, they are the tactics commonly in use today by US attorneys, and this evil has spread into state and local prosecutions. That prosecutors routinely behave in a way that once would have caused them to be dismissed from office shows the collapse of law and prosecutorial integrity in the United States.

    The American and British media are as accommodating in the frameups as the German media was with the Nazi government. The Guardian, once an honest voice for the British working class, is now a propaganda sheet for British intelligence just as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR are for the CIA and FBI. The US media has never been very good, but until the Clinton regime during which 90 percent of the media was concentrated in six corporate hands, there was more than one explanation.

    Since Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination, the media has been allied with the military/security complex and the Democratic Party in an effort to deep-six Trump. As I expected would be the case, Trump had no idea how to staff a government that would have supported him against the Establishment. He has been blocked on every front from normalizing relations with Russia to establishing control over US borders to withdrawal from Syria. The latest line from the military/security complex and the presstitutes is that the US cannot withdraw its troops illegally occupying a rump section of Syria, because ISIS is resurgent in Syria and Iraq and will renew the war if US troops are withdrawn.

    This is nonsense. As General Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said on television, it was a willful decision of the Obama regime to send ISIS to overthrow Assad once Russia and the UK Parliament blocked a US invasion. It is Russia and Syria who fought and defeated Washington’s proxy army known as ISIS. Washington is blocking Trump’s order to withdraw US troops, because Israel wants the US to renew the attack on Syria and to carry it into Iran. Israel and its American vassals must think that Russia is going to stand down and permit the destabilization of the Islamic world to proceed into the Russian Federation.

    Once upon a time the media and the foreign policy community would have publicly examined these issues. Now the media reads out the script handed to them.

    As for Roger Stone, the media’s instructions are to convict Stone in the public’s mind as a facilitator of the Trump/Putin theft of the US presidential election. The actual facts do not matter, and the facts will never emerge from the media or from Mueller’s “investigation.”

  • BofA: The Typical Professional Investor Is Focused On Momentum, Is Unused To Volatility And Sees Valuation As Irrelevant

    With the S&P having soared 350 points in just over a month, banks are once again finding themselves chasing their own penguin shadows, and having cut their 2019 year end S&P500 forecasts in the depth of the December near bear market, will soon be forced to start lifting them again. Or perhaps not: some like Bank of America, courtesy of a strategic typo, has all its bases covered, expecting the S&P to close at both 2900 (its old target) and at 2,688 – its fair value target.

    Its schizophrenic, and oddly specific, S&P targets notwithstanding, BofA has a relatively accurate take on the two themes that seem most likely and most relevant to equity markets this year:  (1) a secular upward trend in the cost of capital and 2) an upward bias to volatility.

    To BofA, the combination of Fed hikes, quantitative tightening, wider credit spreads, a higher equity risk premium and less advantageous treatment of debt post tax reform will combine to push the cost of capital higher.

    And as cost of capital rises – absent rate cuts or more QE from the Fed – BofA favors companies that generate, rather than burn, cash.

    With regard to volatility, the slope of the yield curve has been a reliable forecast tool for the VIX, and suggests the VIX could double.

    And with an upward bias to volatility, BofA now favors high quality companies, especially since high quality are only now trading at a natural premium to low quality “after a decade of stimulus distorted multiples.”

    That said, the bank still sees some upside to the S&P 500, hedging that from 95 to 98, when the VIX doubled, the S&P 500 returned 80% amidst high quality leadership.

    Yet while BofA remains “cautiously optimistic”, it makes an amusing assessment of the state of the (broke) market: not only are central banks and HFTs the dominant, marginal price makers, but – what may be worse – “the average 30-something investor may be ill-prepared for 2019.”

    And it’s not just the millennials who are ill-prepared. According to Bank of America, the average professional investor’s biases may be challenged in years to come. Here’s why, in one of the most memorable and scathing criticisms of the farce that “professional investing” has become at a time when central banks step in every time the S&P500 dares to even approach a bear market:

    The largest age cohort of financial services employees is now 25 to 34 year olds (source: BLS). The most memorable early event of their careers was likely the Financial Crisis. Growth and momentum stocks have outperformed for their entire careers, whereas value investing has been a losing proposition. The average level of the VIX since they began working is 17, ~25% lower than the prior two decades’ average of 22.

    And the punchline:

    The prototypical professional investor is likely focused on growth and momentum, thinks Financials are un-investible, is unused to volatility, and sees valuation as largely irrelevant.

    But, as BofA’s Savita Subramanian concludes, “momentum is now expensive, crowded and at risk, Financials are transformed and valuation always matters, eventually.”

    Which also means that when the next crash finally does happen, and it will only happen when the Fed finally loses control as Powell has now made clear the Fed will never allow the market to drop, a generation of traders – according to Emolument calculations nearly two-thirds of traders active today have never seen a bear market…

    … will have no idea what to do. Come to think of it, when the market is crashing and the Fed has lost all credibility and is unable to prop it up, nobody else will either.

  • If You Are Warm Right Now, Thank Capitalism

    Authored by Raymond Niles via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    Last night the temperature fell 3 degrees an hour. As I write this, it is negative 10 degrees outside. A “once in a generation” polar vortex has swept into the American Midwest from the Arctic.

    I am lucky to be alive. It would take me just a couple of hours to die from hypothermia if I were outside in such weather. But I am not just alive, I am comfortable. It is a balmy 73 degrees in my home. I am relaxing by my gas fireplace that gives off a warm heat as gentle flames dance about and please my eye. I can hear the gentle whir of fans blowing heat around my living room, generated by my furnace. I write this on my comfortable sofa with a computer on my lap powered by electricity and fed information via the Internet, itself powered by electricity and glass-fiber conduits that carry information to me from computers and minds from across the earth.

    My refrigerator is full. I went to the grocery store last night in my car that is powered by an internal combustion engine and fueled by gasoline, which was refined from petroleum that was pumped out of wells drilled in miles-long holes and transported in pipelines and rail cars and refined at complex and gargantuan refineries and made accessible to me via pumps placed at stations in convenient locations for me to use. I am eating an orange that was grown in Florida or Brazil thousands of miles away and transported to me by railroads and airplanes powered by jet engines.

    You can continue this description of bounties that, as we go back in time, human beings could only dream about. Even to a person living as recently as 1900, the Internet and jet airplanes would have seemed like science fiction. To a person living in 1800, electricity and railroads and combustion engines would have seemed like science fiction. And to a peasant working the fields — as more than 90% of all humans did for the past 10,000 years until the 1800s — technology itself is a concept they could not even understand, as they lived lives so hard that we can scarcely imagine it.

    A couple statistics hardly do justice to the gulf in quality of life between 1800 and today:

    Then vs. Now

    For those who did survive, most of them were in pain most of the time. Today, most of us live pain-free lives most of the time. 200+ years ago, George Washington rarely smiled because his wooden teeth caused him near constant pain. Today, one can have pain-free and near permanent dental implants, while going to the dentist itself — which used to be a terrifying ordeal — is nearly pain-free due to the inventions of novocaine and high-speed dental drills.

    Who can I thank for all this? I can thank the inventors who invented the internal combustion engine and the electric grid. I can thank the scientists who discovered the principles of optics and physics that made possible the transmission of data on fiber optic lines. I can thank the philosophers who discovered the principles of reason used by the scientists. I can thank the businessmen who put it all together and delivered it to customers. And I can thank the financiers who picked the winning ideas and the winning businessmen who could turn those ideas into life-giving products and services.

    In a word, I can thank capitalism. Capitalism is the political and economic system that makes all of it possible. Capitalism is the system of liberty – of individual freedom and private property rights – that enables and rewards individuals to take their ideas and turn them into the products and services that benefit themselves and others through trade. To the extent it exists, capitalism unleashes the human ingenuity that keeps me – and millions of my fellows – alive and comfortable on this unseasonably cold morning.

    Unfortunately, capitalism exists only imperfectly in the world but, to the extent societies embrace it, they are experiencing economic growth and prosperity that translates, on the ground and in people’s homes to the comfort, safety, and pleasure that I am experiencing now. Without these life-giving technologies two hundred years ago, I might have suffered frostbite or died on a day like today.

    Thank you capitalism – and to the scientists, inventors, businessmen, and financiers who flourish in capitalism – for keeping me alive and safe this frosty morning.

  • Banks And Buyers Favor Short-Dated CLOs As Fears Of Credit Crunch Intensify

    After a disastrous Q4 where “the wheels came off the leveraged loan market”, leaving banks unable to sell their loans as retail investors and institutional buyers yanked money out and moved it to more secure areas in the credit market (sending the yield on the 10-year Treasury back toward 2.5% during the opening days of 2019), the market has made a sudden and surprising comeback, with the average bid price in the leveraged loan market retracing 40% of its decline from the prior quarter, according to the credit team at Goldman Sachs.

    drop

    Still, many are uneasy about upping their exposure to leveraged loans – including private equity giant KKR, which, as we noted a couple of weeks ago, has opted to reduce its exposure to leveraged loans to zero from overweight. In its place, KKR Balance Sheet CIO Henry McVey said he’s shifting the firm’s holdings to more liquid areas of the credit market (high yield, structured credit and loans), based on the view that these assets have already priced in the growth slowdown that KKR is forecasting in 2019. All discussion of KKR’s macro view – and its merits – aside, as we’ve explained, a cautious approach to lev loans and CLOs is probably prudent, given the looming risks of one “unexpected development” with the potential to crush the market.

    Euro

    With both long- and short-term risks looming on the horizon, Bloomberg pointed out a strategy that banks are employing to once again shift warehoused inventory off of their books: Offering CLOs comprised of short-dated deals. Of course, it’s not hard to find reasons why buyers might be more interested in shorter-dated offerings at this point in time, particularly given the nascent slowdown in global growth that has surfaced in the data from the developed and developing world, banks who are selling these loans have one overweening reason to push the inventory: To avoid getting stuck with a bunch of crap loans and being forced to “liquidate” them from their books.

    This latest crop may be driven by several different motivations. In some cases a manager may be trying to time the maturing credit cycle, by leaving the door open for a refinancing in a year’s time and before defaults start to rise.

    But for others, the shorter maturity may be the final lifeline to converting an older warehouse into a CLO. That could help them avoid the worst case scenario of having to liquidate a warehouse, while allowing the arranger to unclog some of these older facilities from its balance sheet and move ahead with its pipeline.

    By selling loans with shorter non-call periods, buyers can rest easy knowing that borrowers can always call the loans and refinance if, say, a recession in the US or Europe suddenly surfaces on the horizon.

    A shorter maturity deal might help improve the chances of a take out because you get cheaper liabilities and also more leverage with a shorter reinvestment period, according to one U.S.-based CLO manager. That in turn can improve both the arbitrage between assets and liabilities and the equity returns.

    And just with the maturing cycle motivated deals, the shorter non-call period gives the manager and equity investors the option to refinance the transaction earlier. That will allow them to reduce funding costs if liability spreads have decreased or to call the CLO earlier.

    Perhaps this is why there’s suddenly a large universe of investors asking for long-dated loans.

    There’s a larger universe of AAA-rated investors with an appetite for shorter duration, said the U.S. manager. That may have to do with their view of the credit cycle, or it may just be that the liabilities they are using to fund their investment are shorter and they are just matching that duration, he added.

    A let up in the volume of CLO refinancings reaching the market might bolster demand for shorter dated new issue paper given there is a group of investors who typically support the refinancing trade.

    Or maybe its a simple issue of matching assets and liabilities. To be sure, not everybody shares KKR’s pessimism. Goldman recently attached an overweight call to HY loans, citing the spread compression between HY bonds and HY loans. But the fact that fund outflows have continued even as new CLO issuance ramps (loan creation accelerated to $5.2 billion across 10 deals after a slow start to the year) should give some investors pause.

  • "I Oppose Intervention, But…" – But Nothing! Don't Be A Pro Bono CIA Propagandist

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    In a recent interview with The Corbett Report, the Ron Paul Institute’s Daniel McAdams spoke disdainfully of those ostensibly anti-interventionist libertarians who picked this moment of all times to loudly and aggressively condemn Venezuela’s president Maduro, just as the US power establishment is ramping up its campaign to topple the Venezuelan government.

    “All of a sudden now there are millions of Venezuela experts in America, and many of them could not point Venezuela out on a map five days ago,” McAdams said.

    “And everyone has to have this disclaimer, ‘Well, I know it’s probably worse than North Korea, but the US government shouldn’t get involved.’ It’s cowardice, because once the war starts, they can say ‘Hey I never called for US intervention!’ No, but you’re a conveyor belt for propaganda. You’re a conveyor belt to get the machine ginned up for war. And so you’ve got to stand up and take responsibility.”

    McAdams has for years consistently operated in the hub of one of America’s most forceful and effective branches of opposition to US interventionism, and he is absolutely correct here. On both sides of America’s political divide, the primary objections you will see to this administration’s campaign to delegitimize and topple the Venezuelan government are prefaced with a strong condemnation of Maduro followed by some feeble equivocations voicing vague objections to Trump’s actions, if that.

    Even more often, what you will see is excuses made for the US government’s aggressive attempts to control who runs Venezuela, followed by some mumbling along the lines of “I don’t want us to go to war, though” dribbling out of the corner of their mouths. Some silly, arbitrary line in the sand saying that Trump’s current ongoing starvation sanctions, CIA covert ops and premeditated campaign to delegitimize and overthrow Venezuela’s government is fine, and hey, maybe arming some right-wing militias via Columbia would be fine too, but don’t send American troops to do the killing or we’ll be a tad upset.

    All these wimpy, wishy washy “I oppose US interventionism sorta kinda but not really P.S. fuck Maduro” mouth noises are infuriatingly obnoxious, for a number of reasons.

    Firstly, someone who claims to be antiwar or anti-interventionist but reserves their objections solely for the most overt forms of warfare is not really antiwar or anti-interventionist, because warfare in modern times is designed to take many less overt forms in order to prevent the kind of attention-grabbing public objections seen over Vietnam and Iraq. A look at what the US empire did to Libya and Syria shows that hundreds of thousands can be killed, millions can be displaced, and humanitarian disasters beyond our ability to imagine can be unleashed without any overt conventional invasion.

    Secondly, by wrapping your resistance to US warmongering in loud criticisms of the Venezuelan government and “Go people’s rebellion!” cheerleading, you are functioning as a pro bono propagandist for the CIA and the US State Department, and thereby helping to advance the warmongering agendas of those depraved agencies.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    A common refrain is “It’s possible to be opposed to US interventionism while also opposing these tyrannical governments, you know.” But it isn’t. Not really. It’s impossible to oppose US interventionism while also helping to advance its propaganda narratives against targeted governments.

    All US-led military agendas begin with propaganda. If the public were allowed to see the reality of war with fresh eyes, they would all instantly recoil in horror and adamantly demand its immediate end. The only reason the US-centralized empire is able to sow death and destruction around the world without this happening is because of propaganda, which is why Americans are the most aggressively propagandized people in the world: the violent agendas of the most powerful military force ever assembled are far too important to be left up to the will of the citizenry.

    So before they can launch missiles, planes, and ships, they launch propaganda. They launch mass media psyops. They launch narrative control campaigns to make sure that Americans hate the leader of Targeted Nation X and want the people of Targeted Nation X to have Freedom and Democracy™. Day after day after day, they seed the idea that Targeted Leader X “must go”, until the story has become so thoroughly indoctrinated that it almost looks like the US and its allies have no choice but to intervene with increasingly violent measures.

    When you help advance those propaganda narratives, you are actively facilitating the first steps of war in a very real way. It’s the same as if you personally picked up a rifle and began picking people off; the only difference is that you’re participating in an earlier stage of the bloodshed rather than a later one. The people are just as dead in the end as if you personally had killed them with your own hands, you just helped with an earlier part of the mechanizations of war rather than a later one. Hell, the one firing the bullets is arguably in a more moral position, because at least they’re putting something on the line and reckoning sincerely with the reality of what they’re doing. The one hiding behind a keyboard and acting as a pro bono war propagandist while inserting “…but I oppose direct interventionism” at the end is vastly more cowardly and dishonest. In the end, the one with the gun is just delivering the bullet that was put in the mail by the propagandist.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Over and over and over I run into this stupid herd mentality while arguing about this stuff online where people (seemingly deliberately) conflate the notion of Venezuelans sorting out Venezuelan affairs with US interventionism. I’ll be clearly and explicitly condemning US interventionism, and some foam-brained Trump supporter will come up to me saying “I don’t understand, Caitlin! Why don’t you support the Venezuelan people??”

    That phrase, “the Venezuelan people,” incidentally, is exclusively used in propaganda articles to refer to those who support regime change in Venezuela, as documented here by Fair.org’s Alan MacLeod. Like the people who support their government aren’t Venezuelan people.

    And I don’t mean to just single out Trump supporters here; they’re just the ones who are more vocally gung-ho for this particular intervention. For the last two years I’ve had Democrats up in my face all the time calling me a “genocide denier” and an “Assad apologist” for opposing the Syrian war propaganda and demanding to know why I hate the Syrian people. The rest of the time I’m being asked why I don’t support the Iranian people by Republicans and why I love Putin by Democrats. This mind virus is totally bipartisan.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It is unlikely that the US war machine is gearing up for an all-out invasion of Venezuela as its Plan A. That’s not its MO. First we’re likely to see continually tightening starvation sanctions, more narrative control, more CIA covert operations, and the arming of oppositional militias within Venezuela. If that doesn’t work we can perhaps expect to see some drone warfare and a coalition being formed, with ground troops sent in only if these other measures fail to rip the country apart by themselves, and only if our rulers can manufacture consent for it. The time to begin disrupting that consent-manufacturing apparatus is now, not later.

    The only thing keeping the public from using its numbers to force an end to imperialist warmongering is that most people lack a deep understanding of how horrific and widespread it is, and the only thing preventing them from developing that understanding is propaganda. By regurgitating the propaganda narratives being spouted by neoconservative death cultists like Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Elliott Abrams, you are helping them pave the road to acts of mass slaughter as sure as if you were perpetrating it yourself.

    If you wouldn’t go to a country and start killing everyone between you and its leader personally, stop helping to construct the narrative framework that is being set up to accomplish exactly that. The most powerful thing in our society is narrative. Please treat it with an appropriate level of respect.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.

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  • Deutsche Bank Refused To Lend To Trump During 2016 Race: NYT

    “Kerosene Maxine” isn’t going to like this.

    As the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee prepares to subpoena Deutsche Bank, which she described in a recent interview as “perhaps the biggest money laundering banks in the world”, the New York Times on Saturday revealed that just as Trump was winning primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina in March 2016, DB refused to expand a loan to the Trump Organization, which had been requested to pay for renovations at Turnberry, one of Trump’s golf clubs in Scotland. The money was to be backed by Trump’s golf club in Doral, Fla.

    At the time, the bank already had hundreds of millions of dollars in loans oustanding to the Trump Organization, and Trump’s go-to bankers in Deutsche’s private banking unit were inclined to approve his request. However, senior executives at the bank – including now-CEO Christian Sewing – were skittish because of the “reputational risks” pertaining to Trump’s divisive statements on the campaign trail. They also were uncomfortable with the political risks, fearing that if Trump won and then defaulted on the loan, Deutsche would be left in the awkward position of having to seize assets from the president of the US.

    Trump

    According to the NYT, Trump asked for the money at a time when he was lending tens of millions of dollars to his campaign. But as the request wound its way to a committee of senior executives in Frankfurt, executives at the bank reportedly became aware for the first time just how much business DB had with the New York real estate developer who would soon become president. 

    Since Trump’s relationship with Deutsche first blossomed in the late 1990s, when the bank agreed to lend him $125 million to finance renovations on a Wall Street skyscraper, the relationship has endured its ups and downs.

    At the time, Deutsche was struggling to break into the US market and was more tolerant of risk than its US peers, who had more or less severed ties with Trump after a series of bankruptcies in the early 1990s.

    Though it was rocky at times (Trump sued DB during the apex of the financial crisis), his relationship with the bank continued through the dawn of his political career.

    The relationship between Mr. Trump and Deutsche Bank had survived some rocky moments. In 2008, amid the financial crisis, Mr. Trump stopped repaying a loan to finance the construction of a skyscraper in Chicago – and then sued the bank, accusing it of helping cause the crisis. After that lawsuit, Deutsche Bank’s investment-banking arm severed ties with Mr. Trump.

    But by 2010, he was back doing business with Deutsche Bank through its private-banking unit, which catered to some of the world’s wealthiest people. That unit arranged the Doral loans, and another in 2012 tied to the Chicago skyscraper.

    Mr. Trump’s go-to in the private bank was Rosemary Vrablic, a senior banker in its New York office. In 2013, she was the subject of a flattering profile in The Mortgage Observer, a real estate magazine owned by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was also among her clients. In 2015, she arranged the loan that financed Mr. Trump’s transformation of Washington’s Old Post Office Building into the Trump International Hotel, a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

    In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, a rep from the Trump organization denied that it had sought money for Turnberry in 2016, and denounced the NYT story as “absolutely false.”

    “This story is absolutely false. We bought Trump Turnberry without any financing and put tens of millions of dollars of our own money into the renovation which began in 2014. At no time was any money needed to finance the purchase or the refurbishment of Trump Turnberry,” she said.

    In a separate but similar story, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that Deutsche Bank rushed to offload a $600 million loan to Russian state-controlled banking giant VTB in late 2016 as the German lender sought to limit its exposure to Russia following the infamous mirror trading scandal.

    The bank decided to shed the loan amid worries about its financial relationships with Russian entities. And though WSJ couldn’t figure out how VTB used the money that DB lent it, a Deutsche spokesman insisted that the money wasn’t intended to benefit President Trump or his businesses as part of some back-door deal.

    The Wall Street Journal couldn’t determine where the loan money went. Deutsche Bank considered the VTB financing standard bank-to-bank funding, provided to VTB in U.S. dollars, according to the people familiar with the funding. VTB said in a statement to the Journal that the loan “was intended for the purposes of VTB’s treasury business activities,” and wasn’t directed to President Trump or any business affiliated with him.

    A spokesman for Deutsche Bank said, “Any assertion that our financing to VTB was intended to benefit President Trump or anyone else connected to him is false.”

    The scrutiny of VTB is tied to an email exchange between Michael Cohen and former Trump associate Felix Sater, who promised Cohen that the Russian bank would be willing to finance the infamous Trump Tower Moscow project. Cohen had also reportedly planned to meet with senior VTB executives during a trip to Moscow back in May 2016, but the trip didn’t pan out.

    One prominent golf journalist, cited in the NYT story about Deutsche refusing a loan to the Trump Organization during the campaign, claimed that Eric Trump once told him back in 2013 that the Trump Org used money it had received from Russian sources to finance the purchases and renovations of about a dozen golf clubs and resorts around the world. The Trump Org has insisted that it relied on its own money to finance these projects.

    VTB was among a handful of Russian lenders who were hit with US sanctions after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, making the Deutsche Bank’s loan even more valuable to the bank – and even more difficult for Deutsche to sell.

    Still, if nothing else, the deal shows how closely interlinked Deutsche and VTB had become. But so far, at least, nobody has uncovered any evidence linking the Trump Organization to VTB.

    But it looks like “Kerosine Maxine” is hoping to change that.

  • Doug Casey On Toxic Masculinity And White Privilege

    Via InternationalMan.com,

    Gillette thinks men can do better.

    The razor company made this clear in a controversial ad that came out on January 13. If you haven’t seen it yet, I suggest you take a couple minutes to watch it. As you’ll see, it’s a clear response to the #MeToo movement and the ongoing war on “toxic masculinity.”

    It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there were a lot of strong opinions regarding it. Some people love it. Others despise it. But I wanted to hear what Doug Casey thought… So I called him up last week.

    Below, Doug shares his thoughts on the ad… toxic masculinity… as well as white privilege.

    Just a forewarning, this is one of the most controversial Conversations With Casey we’ve ever published. You might want to skip reading this one if you’re easily offended.

    *  *  *

    Justin: Doug, what did you think of that Gillette ad?

    Doug: The first thing that came to mind was that, when I was a kid in the ’50s, Schick razors used to sponsor boxing on television. Boxing, ritualized unarmed combat, is about the height of masculinity. It was, logically, sponsored by a razor company.

    Now, we have a razor company that’s saying that almost any kind of masculinity is toxic. It’s a complete turnaround, an inversion. And, just as an FYI, Schick has run ads making the same point. As have Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s – both of which are owned by major corporations. I never previously cared what kind of razor I used – never even noticed the brand. But I’m simply not going to buy their stuff from now on, simply because I refuse to support these despicable people even on the tiniest level. I suppose I’ll give Porter Stansberry’s OneBlade razor a second shot. It’s a great shave, just rather retro.

    Anyway, the Gillette ad basically says you should be ashamed to be a man, particularly if you’re a white man. The ad – which happens to have been directed by a woman I’ll describe as borderline psychotic – portrays men as horrible human beings. I haven’t done a count, but the only men even trying to do the right thing and moderate so-called toxic masculinity, are black men. So it’s not just that being a man is bad, but being a white man is particularly bad. No wonder 60,000 American white men commit suicide with opioids every year.

    This is just one of many signs of the accelerating collapse of Western civilization and everything it stands for.

    The whole politically correct [PC] culture has spread from universities, legislatures, entertainers, and the media into mainstream culture. Now, it’s reached the top of major corporations; it seems they all have “diversity officers” to ensure whites are put in their proper place. And if a corporation is involved in anything that impresses the morality police as even mildly non-PC, they don’t just abjectly apologize. They roll over on their backs like whipped dogs and wet themselves. It makes you sympathetic with Vanderbilt, when he said, “The public be damned.”

    I don’t know how this is going to end, but trends in motion tend to stay in motion until they reach a crisis. And we’re heading for one at absolutely every level. Economically? That’s completely obvious. Politically? That’s completely obvious, too. It’s also clear that a psychological – spiritual, if you like – crisis is definitely in the making, too. A cultural crisis. This ad is indicative of that.

    Justin: Yeah, the whole political correctness movement has taken on a life of its own. But I couldn’t help but wonder if the PC and outrage culture is about to peak. I mean how much worse can it get?

    Doug: Well, the first time that I ever heard the term “politically correct” was on Saturday Night Live back in the early ’80s. I thought it was a spoof, part of a comedy gig. Maybe a riff on “politically unreliable,” a term the Soviets used to use. But it wasn’t. It was an opening shot for the whole movement. That movement has been gaining momentum, like an avalanche, for at least the last 40 years. It’s still gaining momentum.

    Eventually there’s going to be some backlash. Probably a violent one. The popularity – no, celebrity status – of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a person with about as much worth as Venezuela’s Maduro – tells us that this thing hasn’t nearly peaked. All manner of Millennials are now “woke,” and emerging from the “safe space” in their parent’s basements.

    Let me draw your attention to the fact there is no limit to how far out of control stupidity can get. Einstein was right. After hydrogen, it’s the most common thing in the universe.

    We’ve already undergone a gradual revolution in economic thinking. It seems most people are now at least sympathetic, if not active supporters, of socialism and the welfare state.

    We’ve had a slow-motion political revolution, with a gigantic and irreversible concentration of power in the State.

    The next step seems inevitable. Cultural revolution.

    As evidence for that assertion, let me point to China’s “Great Cultural Revolution” from about 1966 to 1976. The Red Guards, mostly teenagers and people in their twenties, took over the country. The idea was to destroy the “Four Olds” – old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. China had already undergone a serious economic and political revolution since Mao took over after World War II. Now it was time to destroy what was left of traditional Chinese civilization.

    Most people are unaware of how violent and completely out of control it became. Book burnings of pre-Mao literature. Red Guards – and everybody else if they were smart – waved Mao’s Little Red Book as “virtue signaling.” There was wholesale destruction of artwork, furniture, and clothing. Everyone, everywhere, wore “Mao suits” – your choice of grey, brown, or blue. Public shaming and beating. Millions were sent to the countryside for sessions of self and mutual criticism after 12 hours in the fields.

    Is the U.S. Cultural Revolution going to be like the one in China? Not in its particulars, of course. This is 50 years later, and the U.S. isn’t full of starving workers and peasants. But something like it is underway. Social movements like Antifa, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and many others want major changes. They all want to be rid of old customs, old culture, old ideas, and old habits.

    Everything associated with the old America is being discredited. Big things like free speech, the free market, individualism, limited government. Old religious traditions are debunked. The work ethic is laughed at, to be replaced by a guaranteed annual income. Little things from the car culture, to fast food, to houses in the suburbs are derided as toxic.

    Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of things – in America and everywhere else – I’d like to see improved. And what constitutes improvement is a matter of opinion, open to discussion. But a wholesale overturning of the culture is vastly more serious than degradations in economics and politics. What’s happening is an attempt at cultural revolution.

    The average American doesn’t realize what’s going on. Just like the average Chinese in the ’60s, he’s got his hands full just keeping his head above water. He doesn’t like the cultural revolution on a gut level. But he doesn’t understand it. Or think about it.

    Soon, however, there’s going to be reaction, a backlash. It’s likely to be much more serious and violent than what we saw in the U.S. in the ’60s. Why? In those days, college students were a small minority. And not all their professors were hard-core leftists. Now almost everybody goes to college, and the indoctrination and peer pressure are overwhelming. That’s compounded by the pervasive influence of the entertainment business and the media.

    On the other hand, the traditionalists are big on the internet, looking for their own interpretation of current events. Jordan Peterson is getting some traction, for instance. They’re also coalescing around various banners – much more than was possible in the ’60s. The country is dividing into traditionalists and antitraditionalists, like two heavy weights on the ends of a barbell.

    The economics and politics of the U.S. have changed a lot over the last couple of generations – in the direction of the antitraditionalists. But the cultural battleground is the biggie. I see absolutely no indication that current trends are peaking – rather the contrary.

    Justin: So the focus of the Gillette ad was mainly toxic masculinity. But PC types are also really concerned about “white privilege.”

    What are your thoughts on this concept? Does white privilege exist in your eyes? I mean, most people would agree that many white people enjoy some privileges over minorities.

    Doug: Well, Western civilization is the product of Europe and America. And Europe and America have historically been run by white people. This has been true since the founding of Western civilization in the days of the ancient Greeks, up through the Romans, through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Industrial Revolution. These are all exclusively products of Western civilization. Which, coincidentally, means the product of white males.

    The so-called Social Justice Warriors, PC types, socialists, etc. and their numerous allies, hate Western civilization. Despite being – no, actually because it is – by far, by an order of magnitude, the freest, most accepting, most progress-oriented civilization ever. By an order of magnitude. And white males are inextricably associated with those values.

    It’s very dangerous to talk about race these days because you’ll be accused of being either a racist or a Nazi – which are not the same things incidentally, but that’s a different discussion.

    As I’ve explained before, everybody is a racist: blacks, whites, Chinese, you name it. We’re all racist. We tend to favor our own kind. Race is just the lowest common denominator. If there are no racial differences, people invent others – religious, political, cultural, what-have-you. You’ll recall Jonathan Swift talking about the Big Enders and the Little Enders – fighting over which end of a soft-boiled egg should be opened.

    Religious groups are probably the worst offenders, after racial groups – which are just an accident of birth. Jews tend to favor Jews. Mormons tend to favor Mormons, Evangelicals prefer dealing with other Evangelicals.

    I grew up with a lot of Irish Catholics, and if you weren’t an Irish Catholic you were suspect. This is not intellectually or morally admirable, but it’s genetically bred in human beings to favor your own kind.

    At this point the U.S. has the makings of a race war. In the near future, whites will become a minority. They’ll represent less than 50% of the population. That plays nicely into the Identity Politics being promoted by the Left. They’re telling everyone that who you are as an individual isn’t nearly as important as what group you belong to.

    Right now, it’s mostly a black/white divide. It’s incredibly stupid – but the Identity Politics agitators are encouraging blacks to see themselves first and foremost as blacks, not as individuals.

    The fact is – and here’s a statement that many will find shocking – that the blacks who were stolen from Africa and enslaved were the lucky ones. As a libertarian, I’m opposed to slavery. That goes without saying. But blacks in the U.S. have it much better – about 30 times in economic terms – than blacks anywhere in Africa. Except the billionaire kleptocrats who control their governments.

    Nobody can say with a straight face that blacks are held down by the whites in the U.S. It’s ridiculous. Black athletes are praised and worshiped by white people as much as white athletes. Black entertainers are paid tens of millions of dollars per year and idolized. There are plenty of very wealthy black businessmen. The black man in the U.S. can do absolutely anything that a white man can do.

    However, this false meme that blacks are underprivileged has resulted in things like Affirmative Action. Which is totally counterproductive. If a black man graduates from a top university, everybody is suspicious of his credentials. Perhaps, they think, he got them through Affirmative Action.

    Many people don’t want to have a black surgeon because he might be a product of Affirmative Action. Unlike having a Korean or a Chinese surgeon, who probably had to swim upstream, and be extra competent, to get to where he is.

    The idea of “white privilege,” and blacks being held down as an underclass, is pernicious nonsense. Except, perversely, for the fact that white liberals are the ones who destroyed black culture by basically putting huge numbers of them on welfare, and essentially herding them into vertical ghettos in the inner city. White liberals, while claiming the moral high ground, are the ones who’ve turned the majority of blacks into an underclass, cemented to the bottom of society by the philosophy of Identity Politics, implemented by government programs.

    Justin: What would you say are the objectives of these movements? Should we expect politicians to combat toxic masculinity and white privilege with legislation?

    Doug: Of course. Having identified a non-problem, they’ll try to be heroes – with other people’s money – and use coercion to “solve” it. Now that the rabid left wing of the Demopublican Party controls the House, expect a flood of destructive proposals. There’s going to be more legislation that is pro-women, pro-colored people, pro-people with psychological or sexual aberrations, and pro-people of whatever the current meme is.

    It’s only going to exacerbate the problem, which originated with legislation classifying people into groups according to their ethnic background or skin color. Sure, people tend to do that naturally. But when it’s solidified and concretized with laws, and they attempt to give privileges to the perceived underclass, that creates resentment, even hatred.

    While, in the meantime, the trillions of dollars created by Central Banks has made the rich vastly richer while impoverishing the middle class. It’s building up to an explosion.

    Legislation to solve a perceived problem usually makes it much worse. Almost everything government does winds up having the almost exact opposite effect that it’s intended to have.

    The fact is that the average millennial is pro-socialism and pro-welfare. He accepts Neo-Marxist political and economic concepts as givens. And he buys into the idea of identity politics, where you’re viewed not as an individual but as black, a woman, or some other subdivision.

    My main question is to what degree the cultural revolution will be violent. It may well be, especially since people seem to be self-segregating into red and blue areas. I can’t see that this is going to turn around and get better. When the economy collapses, which it will over the next couple of years, it’s likely to be a match to the social tinderbox these people have created over at least 50 years.

    So, I’m not very optimistic about how this is going to sort out. If you want to be entertained, just turn off the audio on the news in the future and put The Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” on continuous loop. That’s all the audio you’re going to need.

    I’m well aware that if this interview is widely circulated in Europe or Canada I could be banned from those places. But frankly I don’t give a damn.

    Justin: Thanks for speaking with me today, Doug.

    Doug: You’re welcome.

    *  *  *

    If you’re not offended by these discussions, you’ll definitely want to get your hands on Doug’s book: Totally Incorrect 2. It’s his most controversial book yet… as well as a vital guide for surviving the changes happening in America today. This book isn’t available anywhere else right now. Learn how to get your copy right here.

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