- Google Says Only "White People" Can Be Racist While Confirming That "Reverse Racism DOES NOT Exist"
Back in February, Google drew some heat when a Muslim blogger, Hind Makki, pointed out a seemingly racist “kink” in the search engine’s algorithm related to a search for “american muslims report terrorism.” Apparently Google made the incorrect assumption that Makki meant to search for “american muslims support terrorism.” Oops.
No Google, I didn’t. pic.twitter.com/hF0vXpjcoc
— Hind Makki (@HindMakki) February 12, 2016
Tosh.O even recorded an “Is Google Racist?” segment poking fun at the discovery.
Now, clearly not one to shy away from tackling the tough racially-charged questions, per The Sun, Google offers the following very specific answer to the question of whether or not it is “possible to be racist to a white person”:
Just to recap before moving on, according to Google “reverse racism DOES NOT exist” because “white people have power to oppress black people because they control the system and economic structure in society.”
Oddly, Google seems to have pulled their “facts” from a Huffington Post article entitled “4 ‘Reverse Racism’ Myths That Need To Stop” which succinctly concludes: “Reverse racism isn’t real. No, really.”
Now we’re not sure about all of you, but the first “news” outlet that comes to mind when we think about hard-hitting, fact-based, impartial, investigative journalism is the Huffington Post.
In fact, all you have to do is take a quick look at the Huffington Post article to find that they cite some pretty “credible” sources in defense of their controversial conclusion on reverse racism. Well, on second thought it actually only seems to cite 1 “source” and it just happens to be the 2014 film, “Dear White People.”
Still, the film, which was described as “a biting satire of racial politics” by critics, could still be considered a credible source, right?
So, just to summarize, Google offered up a “factual” answer to whether or not “reverse racism” exists in American society based on a 2014 Hollywood movie. Seem reasonable to everyone?
Of course, this should all come as a surprise to precisely no one as Silicon Valley has demonstrated multiple times in recent months that they’ve completely lost the ability to present impartial facts. For example, we recently shared a post entitled “Harvard PhD Explains How Google Search Bias Could “Shift 3 Million Votes” In Upcoming Election” that systematically illustrated how Google overtly censored popular search results to the explicit benefit of Hillary Clinton by editing out potentially harmful results. Or, there is that time that FaceBook openly admitted that it “routinely” suppressed conservative news.
With support like that it’s shocking that the presidential polls are even as close as they are.
- France: The Ticking Time Bomb Of Islamization
Submitted by Yves Manou via The Gatestone Institute,
- The last group, defined as the "Ultras", represent 28% of Muslims polled, and the most authoritarian profile. They say they prefer to live apart from Republican values. For them, Islamic values and Islamic law, or sharia, come first, before the common law of the Republic. They approve of polygamy and of wearing the niqab or the burqa.
- "These 28% adhere to Islam in its most retrograde version, which has become for them a kind of identity. Islam is the mainstay of their revolt; and this revolt is embodied in an Islam of rupture, conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism," according to Hamid el Karoui in an interview with Journal du Dimanche.
- More importantly, these 28% exist predominantly among the young (50% are under 25). In other words, one out of every two young French Muslims is a Salafist of the most radical type, even if he does not belong to a mosque.
- It is unbelievable that the only tools at our disposal are inadequate opinion polls. Without knowledge, no political action — or any other action — is possible. It is a situation that immeasurably benefits aggressive political Islamists.
- Willful blindness is the mother of the civil war to come — unless the French people choose to submit to Islam without a fight.
Recently, two important studies about French Muslims were released in France.
The first one, optimistically entitled, "A French Islam is Possible," was published under the auspices of Institut Montaigne, an independent French think tank.
The second study, entitled, "Work, the Company and the Religious Question," is the fourth annual joint study between the Randstad Institute (a recruiting company) and the Observatory of Religious Experience at Work (Observatoire du fait religieux en entreprise, OFRE), a research company.
Both studies, filling a huge knowledge-deficit on religious and ethnic demography, were widely reported in the media. France is a country well-equipped with demographers, scholars, professors and research institutes, but any official data or statistics based on race, origin or religion are prohibited by law.
France has 66.6 million inhabitants, according to a report dated January 1, 2016 from the National Institute of Statistics (Insee). But census questionnaires prohibit any question about race, origin or religion. So in France, it is impossible to know how many Muslims, black people, white people, Catholics, Arabs, Jews, etc. live in the country.
This prohibition is based on an old and once-healthy principle to avoid any discrimination in a country where "assimilation" is the rule. Assimilation, French-style, means that any foreigner who wants to live in the country has to copy the behavioral code of local population and marry a native quickly. This assimilation model worked perfectly for people of Spanish, Portuguese or Polish descent. But with Arabs and Muslims, it stopped.
Now, however, despite all good intentions, the rule prohibiting collection of data that might lead to discrimination, has become a national security handicap.
When any group of people, outspokenly acting on the basis of their religion or ethnicity, begin violently fighting the fundamentals of the society where you live, it becomes necessary — in fact urgent — to know what religions and ethnicities these are, and how many people they represent.
The two studies in question, therefore, are not based on census data but on polls. The Institut Montaigne study, for example, writes that Muslims represent 5.6% of the metropolitan population of France, or exactly three million. However, Michèle Tribalat, a demographer specializing in immigration problems, wrote that the five million mark had been crossed in around 2014. The Pew Research Center estimated the Muslim population in France in mid-2010 to be 4.7 million. Other scholars, such as Azouz Begag, former Minister of Equality (he left the government in 2007) estimates the number of Muslims in France to be closer to 15 million.
Institut Montaigne Study: The Secession of French Muslims
The study by Institut Montaigne, released on September 18, is based on a poll conducted by Ifop (French Institute of Public Opinion), which surveyed 1,029 Muslims. The author of the study is Hakim el Karoui, a consultant who was an adviser to then Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin (2002-2005).
Three main Muslim profiles were highlighted:
First were the so-called "secular" (46%). These people said they were "totally secular, even when religion occupies an important place in their lives." Although they claim to be secular, many of them also belong to the group that favors all Muslim women wearing a hijab (58% of men and 70% of women). They also overlap with the group (60%) that supports wearing a hijab at school, although the hijab has been prohibited in schools since 2004. Many of these "seculars" also belong to the 70% of Muslims who "always" buy halal meat (only 6% never buy it). According to the study, wearing a hijab and eating only halal meat are considered by Muslims themselves as significant "markers" of Muslim identity.
A second group of Muslims, the "Islamic Pride Group" represent a quarter (25%) of the roughly thousand people polled. They defined themselves primarily as Muslims and claim their right to observe their faith (mainly reduced to hijab and halal) in public. They reject, however, the niqab and polygamy. They say they respect secularism and the laws of the Republic, but most of them say they do not accept prohibiting the hijab at school.
The last group, defined as the "Ultras", represent 28% of those polled, and the most authoritarian profile. They say they prefer to live apart from Republican values. For them, Islamic values and Islamic law, or sharia, come first, before the common law of the Republic. They approve of polygamy and of wearing the niqab or the burqa.
"These 28% adhere to Islam in its most retrograde version, which has become for them a kind of identity. Islam is the mainstay of their revolt; and this revolt is embodied in an Islam of rupture, conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism," according to Hamid el Karoui in an interview with Journal du Dimanche.
Hamid el Karoui, speaking of the opinions of French Muslims in an interview with Journal du Dimanche, said: "These 28% adhere to Islam in its most retrograde version, which has become for them a kind of identity. Islam is the mainstay of their revolt; and this revolt is embodied in an Islam of rupture, conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism."
More importantly, these 28% exist predominantly among the young (50% are under 25). In other words, one out of every two young French Muslims is a Salafist of the most radical type, even if he does not belong to a mosque.
The question is: how many will they be in five years, ten years, twenty years? It is important to ask, because polls always present a point in time, a freeze-frame of a situation. When we know that the veil and halal food restrictions are imposed on the whole family by "big brothers," we have to understand that a process is taking place, a secession process due to the re-Islamization of the whole Muslim community by the young.
Journalist and author Elisabeth Schemla wrote in Le Figaro:
To understand what re-Islamization means a definition of Islamism must be given. The most accurate is the definition given by one of his very fervent supporters, State Advisor Thierry Tuot, one of three judges chosen this summer to decide not to ban the burkini at the beach (…). Islamism, he writes, is the "public claim of a social behavior presented as a divine requirement and bursting into the public and political arena." In light of this definition, the Al Karoui report shows that Islamism is unalterably spreading.
Islam at Work; Islamism on the Move
This ticking time bomb is silently working… at work.
A poll, conducted between April and June 2016 by the Randstad Institute and Observatory of the Religious Experience at Work (OFRE), surveying 1,405 managers in different companies, revealed that two managers out of every three (65%) were reporting that "religious behavior" is a regular manifestation in the workplace — up from 50% in 2015.
Professor Lyonel Honoré, Director of OFRE and author of the study, recognizes quietly that "in 95% of cases," the "religious behavior at work is related to Muslims."
To understand the importance of this "visible Islam" in French factories and offices today, we have to know that traditionally, the workplace was considered neutral space. The law did not prohibit any type of religious or political expression in the workplace, but by tradition, employees and employers considered that restraint must be shown by all in exercising their freedom of belief.
The 2016 Ranstad study shows that this old tradition is over. Religious symbols are proliferating in the workplace, and 95% of these visible symbols are Islamic. Overt expressions and symbols of Christianity or Judaism at work do exist, of course, but are minimal compared to Islam.
The survey considered two types of the expression of religious beliefs:
- Personal practices, such as the right to be missing for religious holidays, flexible working hours, the right to pray during work breaks, and the right to wear symbols of religious belief.
- Disturbances at work or breaches of rules, such as the refusal of men to work with a woman or take orders from a female manager, refusal to work with people who are not co-religionists, refusal to perform specific tasks, and proselytizing during work time.
"In 2016," states the survey, "the wearing of religious symbols [hijab] became the top expression of religious belief (21% of cases, up from 17% in 2015 and 10% in 2014). The request to be absent because of religious holidays remains stable (18%) but now ranks in second place."
Under "disturbances at work", this politically correct study notes that conflicts between employee and employer on religious grounds are few: a "minority event" and "only" 9% of religious disturbances in 2016. But figures for conflicts have nevertheless risen by 50%, up from 6% in 2015. Conflicts have also tripled since 2014 (3%) and nearly quintupled since 2013 (2%).
Eric Manca, a lawyer in the law firm August & Debouzy who specializes in labor law and was assisting at the press conference, said that when a conflict on religious ground turns to litigation, "it is always a problem with Islam. Christians and Jews never turn to the court against their employer because of religion." When Islamists sue their employer, jurisprudence shows that the accusation is always based on "racism", and "discrimination" — charges that can only make employers regret having hired them in the first place.
Sources of conflict listed include proselytizing (6%), and refusing to perform tasks (6%) — for instance, a delivery man declining to deliver alcohol to customers; refusing to work with a woman or under the direction of a woman (5%), and requesting to work only with Muslims (1%). These cases are concentrated in business sectors "such as automotive suppliers, construction, waste processing, supermarkets… and are located in peri-urban regions."
Conclusions
The French model of assimilation is over. As noted, it worked for everyone except French Muslims; and public schools seem unable today to transmit republican values, especially among young Muslims. According to Hakim el Karoui:
"Muslims of France are living in the heart of multiple crises. Syria, of course, which shakes the spirit. But also the transformation of Arab societies where women take a new place: female students outnumber male students, girls are better educated than their fathers. Religion, in its authoritarian version, is a weapon of reaction against these evolutions. …. And finally, there is the social crisis: Muslims, two-thirds of child laborers and employees, are the first victims of deindustrialization."
Islamization is growing everywhere. In city centers, most Arab women wear a veil, and in the suburbs, burqas and niqabs are increasingly common. At work, where non-religious behavior was usually the rule, managers try to learn how to deal with Islamist demands. In big corporations, such as Orange (telecom), a "director of diversity" was appointed to manage demands and conflicts. In small companies, managers are in disarray. Conflicts and litigation are escalating.
Silence of the politicians. Despite the wide media coverage around these two studies, an astounding silence was the only thing heard from politicians. This is disturbing because Institut Montaigne's study also included some proposals to build an "Islam of France," such as putting an end to foreign funding of mosques, and local training religious and civil leaders. Other ideas, such as teaching Arabic in secular schools "to prevent parents from sending their children in Koranic schools" are quite strange because they would perpetuate the failed strategy of integrating Islamism through institutions. Young French Muslims, even those born in France, have difficulty speaking and writing proper French. That is why they need to speak and write French correctly before anything else.
These two studies, although a start, are staggeringly insufficient. Politicians, journalists, and every citizen needs to learn more about Islam, its tenets and its goals in the country. It is unbelievable that the only tools at our disposal are inadequate opinion polls. Without knowledge, no political action — or any other action — is possible. It is a situation that immeasurably benefits aggressive political Islamists.
Without more knowledge, the denial of Islamization, and an immobility in addressing it, will continue. Willful blindness is the mother of the civil war to come — unless the people and their politicians choose to submit to Islam without a fight.
- INSiDe RoBBY MooK'S MoM'S BaSeMeNT…
- Big Brother Is Watching – New Emails Reveal Homeland Security Tracks License Plates At Gun Shows
Newly discovered emails from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), reveal efforts of the federal government to track American citizens who visit gun shows across the country. The discovery came via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Wall Street Journal that revealed internal emails from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent requesting the support of local California police officers to “deploy license plate readers” at a 2010 gun show in Del Mar, California.
In an email titled “Request for Assistance,” an ICE investigator wrote, “We would like to see if you can support an outbound guns/ammo operation on (redacted) at the Crossroads (Del Mar) Gun Show. We would like to deploy license plate readers.” The email, whose sender and recipient are redacted, includes a large section of operational details that are also redacted.
According to the emails, the program was intended to collect license plate data from gun shows and then cross reference that data with border crossings in an attempt to identify gun runners. Of course, the program has drawn criticism from gun rights organizations across the country who argue that this form of mass surveillance draws undue suspicion to people who happen to engage in two completely legal activities.
Jay Stanley, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the gun-show surveillance “highlights the problem with mass collection of data.” He said law enforcement can take two entirely legal activities, like buying guns and crossing the border, “and because those two activities in concert fit somebody’s idea of a crime, a person becomes inherently suspicious.”
Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said his group also opposes such surveillance. “Information on law-abiding gun owners ends up getting recorded, stored, and registered, which is a violation of the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act and of the Second Amendment,” Mr. Pratt said.
Of course, efforts to target gun owners is nothing new. Just last week we pointed out a new ballot measure being considered by voters in Washington state, officially referred to as Initiative Measure 1491, that would allow authorities to seize guns from people considered “significantly more likely to commit violence toward themselves or others in the near future” (see “WA Goes After Pre-Crime: Gun Confiscation Proposed For Those ‘Likely To Commit Violence In The Near Future’“). In most instances, seizing someone’s personal property on the mere suggestion of an ex-girlfriend would be considered outrageous but for gun owners our government seems to be increasingly willing make exceptions.
This type of data gathering continues to push the limits on how far the federal government is allowed to go in terms of mass surveillance before actually violating the constitutionally protected rights of American citizens to privacy.
License-plate readers are increasingly used by law-enforcement agencies as a way to search for fugitives, missing children, and, recently, the man who allegedly set off a bomb in New York City.
But their use at gun shows occupies a murky legal ground. While technology and data collection have greatly expanded the ability of government and companies to monitor citizens’ activity, U.S. courts, lawmakers, and senior officials have been slow to make clear what types of mass surveillance cross the line into violations of constitutional rights.
It has long been legal for police officers to record license plates they observe in the course of ordinary life. License-plate-reader technology, however, allows those observations to become mass-data collection. A single camera can record thousands of vehicle plates an hour, capturing the data at high speeds, in thick traffic and in other situations that the human eye cannot.
Boosters of the technology say it is a way to find a criminal in a sea of otherwise indistinguishable cars. Critics say that to find that criminal the government is tracking the movements of millions of innocent people—adding up to detailed surveillance of their daily lives and creating data that can be misused.
As the CEO of the “Crossroads of the West” gun show points out, the show attracted 6,000 – 9,000 customers who would probably “be resentful of having been the target of that kind of surveillance.”
Bob Templeton, the CEO of Crossroads of the West, which puts on the gun show, said he knew local police had been at the show, but was surprised to learn that federal agents had been gathering data about customers. The show at the Del Mar Fairgrounds typically draws 6,000 to 9,000 customers, meaning thousands of cars are in the parking lot, he said.
“It’s obviously intrusive and an activity that hasn’t proven to have any legitimate law-enforcement purpose,” said Mr. Templeton. “I think my customers would be resentful of having been the target of that kind of surveillance.”
So, just to clarify today’s events, the DHS can conduct mass surveillance of the American public just for choosing to attend a gun show but the FBI has to sign a “side agreement“ promising to physically destroy Cheryl Mills’ and Heather Samuelson’s computers before being able to review evidence in an actual criminal investigation?
- 40 Million Russians To Take Part In "Nuclear Disaster" Drill, Days After US General Warns Of War With Moscow
As relations between Russia and the US disintegrate as a result of the escalating proxy war in Syria, which today culminated with Putin halting a Plutonium cleanup effort with the US, shortly before the US State Department announced it would end negotiations with Russia over Syria, tomorrow an unprecedented 40 million Russian citizens, as well as 200,000 specialists from “emergency rescue divisions” and 50,000 units of equipment are set to take part in a four day-long civil defense, emergency evacuation and disaster preparedness drill, the Russian Ministry for Civil Defense reported on its website.
According to the ministry, an all-Russian civil defense drill involving federal and regional executive authorities and local governments dubbed “Organization of civil defense during large natural and man-caused disasters in the Russian Federation” will start tomorrow morning in all constituent territories of Russia and last until October 7. While the ministry does not specify what kind of “man-caused disaster” it envisions, it would have to be a substantial one for 40 million Russians to take part in the emergency preparedness drill. Furthermore, be reading the guidelines of the drill, we can get a rather good idea of just what it is that Russia is “preparing” for.
The website adds that “the main goal of the drill is to practice organization of management during civil defense events and emergency and fire management, to check preparedness of management bodies and forces of civil defense on all levels to respond to natural and man-made disasters and to take civil defense measures.” Oleg Manuilov, director of the Civil Defence Ministry explained that the exercise will be a test of how the population would respond to a “disaster” under an “emergency” situation.
Some further details, on the 3-stage, 4 day drill:
I stage: organization of civil defense actions
The stage is going to practice notification and gathering of senior officials of federal and regional executive authorities, local governments and civil defense forces, deployment of civil defense management system on all levels, readying civil defense communication and notification system. After the National Crisis Management Center have brought the management signals, all management bodies, state authorities, forces and facilities on duty and people will be notified through notification systems available.
II stage: Planning and organization of civil defense actions. Deploying a team of civil defense forces and facilities designed to respond to large disasters and fires.
The stage plans to practice deployment a mobile interagency multi-functional team of civil defense forces and facilities in each federal district in order to carry our rescue and other urgent operations, civil defense actions and to deploy special civil defense units in constituent territories; putting rescue military units, divisions of the federal fire service, rescue units on standby. The stage provides for the team to be reinforced, activation of backup control centers and practicing collecting and exchanging information in the field of civil defense.
III stage: Organization of actions of civil defense management bodies and forces for response to large disasters and fires.
The stage will deal with the use of the civil defense team to respond to large disasters and fires, setting up aerial and mobile control centers, revising of routes for save evacuation of people, organization of vital services; taking off fire and rescue units of the federal fire service to put out fires and conduct rescue operations at potentially dangerous facilities, including closed administrative territorial entities.
The drill will rehearse radiation, chemical and biological protection of the personnel and population during emergencies at crucial and potentially dangerous facilities. Fire safety, civil defense and human protection at social institutions and public buildings are also planned to be checked. Response units will deploy radiation, chemical and biological monitoring centers and sanitation posts at the emergency areas, while laboratory control networks are going to be put on standby.
The fact that among the measures tasked for the civil defense team will be a response to “disasters and fires” as well as the rehearsal of “radiation, chemical and biological protection”, makes it clear that Russia is about to hold its biggest nuclear war drill since perhaps the end of the Cold War.
Why now? Perhaps, in addition to the sharp deterioration in relations between Russia and the west, where tensions are on par with the cold war, another answer may come from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, who last week warned Congress that the implementation of a No Fly Zone in Syria as proposed by John Kerry recently, and a centerpiece of Hillary’s foreign policy strategy, would result in World War III.
During testimony before the Senate Committee on Armed Services last week General Joseph Dunford rang the alarm over a policy shift that is gaining more traction within the halls of Washington following the collapse of the ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia in Syria saying that it could result in a major international war which he was not prepared to advocate on behalf of. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi asked about Hillary Clinton’s proposal for a no fly zone in Syria in response to allegations that Russia and Syria have intensified their aerial bombardment of rebel-held East Aleppo since the collapse of the ceasefire.
“What about the option of controlling the airspace so that barrel bombs cannot be dropped? What do you think of that option?” asked Wicker. “Right now, Senator, for us to control all of the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia. That is a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I’m not going to make,” said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff suggesting the policy was too hawkish even for military leaders.
As a reminder, Hillary Clinton strongly argued in favor of a no fly zone ever since October 2015, just days after Russia began a bombing campaign aimed at maintaining the stability of the Syrian government. “I personally would be advocating now for a no fly zone and humanitarian corridors to try to stop the carnage on the ground and from the air, to try to provide some way to take stock of what’s happening, to try to stem the flow of refugees,” said Clinton in an interview with NBC in October 2015.
Despite the warnings, the former Secretary of State and current presidential candidate, who has a well-known hawkish position towards regime change and matters related to Russia, has continued to advocate this position which has gained traction in recent weeks among top US diplomats.
Clinton is note alone: as the WSJ reported in June, more than 50 US diplomats endorsed a notorious dissent memo, demanding that that the Obama administration employ military options against Assad, such as the implementation of a no fly zone if not a direct attack against the Syrian regime. The argument from the diplomats is that the situation in Syria will continue to devolve without direct action by the US military, an argument of dubious legality if undertaken unilaterally without a UN Security Council resolution but which as Sputnik reports, the US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power has been laying the groundwork for under the controversial “right to protect” theory of international law arguing that Russia’s opposition to a resolution should be ignored because they are a party to the conflict.
Russia, in turn, has countered that if the Assad regime falls then terrorist groups including ISIS and al-Nusra Front will likely fill the resulting power vacuum descending the country into an even greater harbor for international terrorism. Ultimately, the Syrian conflict is fundamentally about the transport of energy, and whether Russia maintains its dominance over European natural gas imports, or if – with the Syrian regime deposed – a Qatar natural gas pipeline can cross the territory and make its way to Europe.
As for the Russian nuclear war drill, we can only hope that any such rising hints of nuclear warfare remain in the realm of the purely theoretical.
- More Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man: "This Time, They’re Coming For Your Democracy"
Submitted by Sarah van Gelder via YesMagazine.com,
Twelve years ago, John Perkins published his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and it rapidly rose up The New York Times’ best-seller list. In it, Perkins describes his career convincing heads of state to adopt economic policies that impoverished their countries and undermined democratic institutions. These policies helped to enrich tiny, local elite groups while padding the pockets of U.S.-based transnational corporations.
Perkins was recruited, he says, by the National Security Agency (NSA), but he worked for a private consulting company. His job as an undertrained, overpaid economist was to generate reports that justified lucrative contracts for U.S. corporations, while plunging vulnerable nations into debt. Countries that didn’t cooperate saw the screws tightened on their economies. In Chile, for example, President Richard Nixon famously called on the CIA to “make the economy scream” to undermine the prospects of the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.
If economic pressure and threats didn’t work, Perkins says, the jackals were called to either overthrow or assassinate the noncompliant heads of state. That is, indeed, what happened to Allende, with the backing of the CIA.
Perkins’ book has been controversial, and some have disputed some of his claims, including, for example, that the NSA was involved in activities beyond code making and breaking.
Perkins has just reissued his book with major updates. The basic premise of the book remains the same, but the update shows how the economic hit man approach has evolved in the last 12 years. Among other things, U.S. cities are now on the target list. The combination of debt, enforced austerity, underinvestment, privatization, and the undermining of democratically elected governments is now happening here.
I couldn’t help but think about Flint, Michigan, under emergency management as I read The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
I interviewed Perkins at his home in the Seattle area. In addition to being a recovering economic hit man, he is a grandfather and a founder and board member of Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance, organizations that work for “a world that future generations will want to inherit.”
Sarah van Gelder: What’s changed in our world since you wrote the first Confessions of an Economic Hit Man?
John Perkins: Things have just gotten so much worse in the last 12 years since the first Confessions was written. Economic hit men and jackals have expanded tremendously, including the United States and Europe.
Back in my day we were pretty much limited to what we called the third world, or economically developing countries, but now it’s everywhere.
And in fact, the cancer of the corporate empire has metastasized into what I would call a failed global death economy. This is an economy that’s based on destroying the very resources upon which it depends, and upon the military. It’s become totally global, and it’s a failure.
van Gelder: So how has this switched from us being the beneficiaries of this hit-man economy, perhaps in the past, to us now being more of the victims of it?
Perkins: It’s been interesting because, in the past, the economic hit man economy was being propagated in order to make America wealthier and presumably to make people here better off, but as this whole process has expanded in the U.S. and Europe, what we’ve seen is a tremendous growth in the very wealthy at the expense of everybody else.
On a global basis we now know that 62 individuals have as many assets as half the world’s population.
We of course in the U.S. have seen how our government is frozen, it’s just not working. It’s controlled by the big corporations and they’ve really taken over. They’ve understood that the new market, the new resource, is the U.S. and Europe, and the incredibly awful things that have happened to Greece and Ireland and Iceland, are now happening here in the U.S.
We’re seeing this situation where we can have what statistically shows economic growth, and at the same time increased foreclosures on homes and unemployment.
van Gelder: Is this the same kind of dynamic about debt that leads to emergency managers who then turn over the reins of the economy to private enterprises? The same thing that you are seeing in third-world countries?
Perkins: Yes, when I was an economic hit man, one of the things that we did, we raised these huge loans for these countries, but the money never actually went to the countries, it went to our own corporations to build infrastructure in those countries. And when the countries could not pay off their debt, we insisted that they privatize their water systems, their sewage systems, their electric systems.
Now we’re seeing that same thing happen in the United States. Flint, Michigan, is a very good example of that. This is not a U.S. empire, it’s a corporate empire protected and supported by the U.S. military and the CIA. But it is not an American empire, it’s not helping Americans. It’s exploiting us in the same way that we used to exploit all these other countries around the world.
van Gelder: So it seems like Americans are starting to get this. What is your sense about where the American public is in terms of readiness to do something?
Perkins: As I travel around the U.S., as I travel around the world, I see that people are really waking up. We’re getting it. We’re understanding that we live on a very fragile space station, and it’s got no shuttles; we can’t get off. We’ve got to fix it, we’ve got to take care of it, and we’re in the process of destroying it. The big corporations are destroying it, but the big corporations are just run by people, and they’re vulnerable to us. If we really consider it, the market place is a democracy, if we just use it as such.
van Gelder: I want to push back on that one a little bit because so many corporations don’t sell to ordinary consumers, they sell to other companies or to governments, and so many corporations have such an entrenched reward system where if one person doesn’t perform by exploiting the earth they’ll simply get replaced with somebody else who does.
Perkins: I’ve recently been speaking at a number of corporate conferences. I hear time after time after time that many of them want to leave a green legacy. They’ve got children, they’ve got grandchildren, they understand we can’t go on like this.
So what they say is, “Go out there, start consumer movements. What I want is to receive a hundred thousand emails from my customers saying, ’Hey, I love your product but I’m not going to buy it anymore until you pay your workers a fair wage in Indonesia, or wherever, or clean up the environment, or do something.’ And then I can take that to my board of directors and my big stockholders, to the people who really control whether I get hired or fired.”
van Gelder: I agree, and those campaigns, as you know, have been going on for decades now, and sometimes they have little incremental changes around the edge. But then we look back on it later and we see that there’s enormous resistance because of the profits to be made in continuing the system.
Perkins: I think we’ve seen tremendous changes, though. Just in the last few years, we’ve seen organic foods become very big. Twenty years ago they couldn’t make a go of it. We’ve seen women having bigger positions in corporations, and minorities, and we need to get better at this.
We’ve seen the labeling of many foods. GMOs aren’t included yet, but nutrition and calories and so forth are. And what we really need to do is convince corporations that they’ve got to have a new goal.
We’ve got to let corporations know what their job is: It’s to serve a public interest, and make a decent rate of return for investors. We need investors, but beyond that, every corporation should serve a public interest, should serve the earth, should serve future generations.
van Gelder: I want to ask you about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and other trade deals. Is there any way that we can beat these things back so they don’t continue supercharging the corporate sphere at the expense of local democracies?
Perkins: They’re devastating; they give sovereignty to corporations over governments. It’s ridiculous.
We’re seeing terrible desperation from people in Central America trying to get away from a system that’s broken, primarily because our trade agreements and our policies toward Latin America have broken them. And we’re seeing, of course, those similar things in the Middle East and in Africa, these waves of immigrants that are swarming into Europe from the Middle East. These terrible problems that have been created because of the greed of big corporations.
I was just in Central America and what we talk about in the U.S. as being an immigration problem is really a trade agreement problem.
They’re not allowed to impose tariffs under the trade agreements—NAFTA and CAFTA—but the U.S. is allowed to subsidize its farmers. Those governments can’t afford to subsidize their farmers. So our farmers can undercut theirs, and that’s destroyed the economies, and a number of other things, and that’s why we’ve got immigration problems.
van Gelder: Can you talk about the violence that people are fleeing in Central America, and how that links back to the role the U.S. has had there?
Perkins: Three or four years ago the CIA orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected president of Honduras, President Zelaya, because he stood up to Dole and Chiquita and some other big, global, basically U.S.-based corporations.
He wanted to raise the minimum wage to a reasonable level, and he wanted some land reform that would make sure that his own people were able to make money off their own land, rather than having big international corporations do it.
The big corporations couldn’t stand for this. He wasn’t assassinated but he was overthrown in a coup and sent to another country, and replaced by a terribly brutal dictator, and today Honduras is one of the most violent, homicidal countries in the hemisphere.
It’s frightening what we’ve done. And when that happens to a president, it sends a message to every other president throughout the hemisphere, and in fact throughout the world: Don’t mess with us. Don’t mess with the big corporations. Either cooperate and get rich in the process, and have all your friends and family get rich in the process, or go get overthrown or assassinated. It’s a very strong message.
van Gelder: I wanted to ask about your time spent in Ecuador with indigenous people. I’m wondering if you could talk about how that experience has changed you?
Perkins: Many years ago when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Amazon with the Shuar indigenous people there, I was dying. I got very ill, and my life was saved in one night by a shaman. I’d come out of business school this is 1968, ’69, and I had no idea what a shaman was, but it changed my life by helping me understand that what was killing me was a mindset—what they would call the dream.
I spent many years studying all this, and working with many different indigenous groups, and what I saw was the power of the mindset.
The shamans teach us—the indigenous people teach us—once you change the mindset, then it’s pretty easy to have the objective reality change around it. So, instead of the kind of economy we have now, a death economy, if we can change the mindset we can very quickly move into a life economy.
van Gelder: So what are the mechanisms by which a change in consciousness actually shifts things on the ground?
Perkins: Well, in my opinion the biggest catalyst that needs to go forward to change this is we’ve got to change the corporations. We’ve got to move from that goal that was stated by Milton Friedman in the 1970s, that the only responsibility of corporations is to maximize profits regardless of social and environmental costs.
We change the big corporations by telling them we’re not going to buy from you anymore unless you change your goal. No longer should your goal be to maximize profits regardless of social and environmental costs. Make a decent rate of return for your investors, but serve us, we the people, or we’re not buying from you.
van Gelder : You quote Tom Paine in your book: “If there must be trouble let it be in my day that my child may have peace.” Why did you decide to use that quote?
Perkins : Well, I think Tom Paine was brilliant in that statement. He understood how that would impact people. And he wrote that statement in December 1776.
Washington had lost just about every battle he ever fought; he wasn’t getting any support from the Continental Congress; they weren’t giving his men guns or ammunition or even blankets and shoes, and he was bogged down at Valley Forge. Paine realizes that he’s got to somehow write something that will rally people, and there’s nothing that rallies people more than to think about their children
That to me is where we’re at right now. I’ve got a daughter and I’ve got an 8-year-old grandson. Bring on the trouble for me, OK, but let’s create a world they’re going to want to live in. And let’s understand that my 8-year-old grandson cannot have an environmentally sustainable and regenerative, socially just, fulfilling world unless every child on the planet has that.
And this is new. It used to be all we had to worry about was our local community, maybe our country. But we didn’t have to worry about the world. But what we know now is that we can’t have peace anywhere in the world, we can’t have peace in the U.S., unless everybody has peace.
- FBI Allowed 2 Hillary Aides To "Destroy" Their Laptops In Newly Exposed "Side Agreements"
Just when you think the Hillary email scandal can’t get any more bizarre and corrupt, it does. According to a just released letter from the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte (R – Virginia), to Attorney General Lynch, the FBI apparently struck “side agreements” with both Cheryl Mills an Heather Samuelson to “destroy” their “laptops after concluding its search.”
In the attached, Goodlatte questioned why the destruction of the laptops used to sort Clinton’s emails was included in immunity deals that already protected Mills and Samuelson from prosecution based on the records recovered from their computers. Furthermore, we learn that according to the immunity agreements, FBI agents limited their search to documents authored before Jan. 2015. The Republican argued such parameters prevented investigators from examining potential proof of the destruction of evidence that may have occurred after that date, and that the deals offered to Mills and Samuelson already protected the aides from prosecution related to their alleged roles in the deletion of federal records.
“Like many things about this case, these new materials raise more questions than answers,” Goodlatte wrote of the “side agreements,” which lawmakers were allowed to read even though they have not yet been released in full to members of Congress.
The immunity deals for Mills and Samuelson were negotiated before they agreed to hand over their laptops which we now learn were subsequently destroyed.
While we parse the letter to understand what basis for action the FBI may have had when pursuing such a course of action, we can’t help but note that the FBI appears to have acted as a co-conspirator in what appears to be an unprecedented case of destruction of key evidence.
Below are some of the key excerpts from the letter (full document attached at the end of this post):
As part of the Judiciary Committee’s ongoing oversight of Secretary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State, the Justice Department (DOJ) provided in camera review’ of certain immunity agreements. After a specific request from the Committee, based on references made in the immunity agreements to certain “side agreements,” DOJ subsequently provided in camera review of those “side agreements” between DOJ, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Beth Wilkinson, the lawyer representing both Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson. Like many things about this case, these new materials raise more questions than answers. Please provide a written response to the below questions and make DOJ staff available for a briefing on this matter no later than October 10, 2016.
1. Why did the FBI agree to destroy both Cheryl Mills’ and Heather Samuelson’s laptops after concluding its search?
2. Doesn’t the willingness of Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson to have their laptops destroyed by the FBI contradict their claim that the laptops could have been withheld because they contained non-relevant, privileged information? If so, doesn’t that undermine the claim that the side agreements were necessary?
7. Please explain why DOJ agreed to limit their search of the Mills and Samuelson laptops to a date no later than January 31, 2015 and therefore give up any opportunity to find evidence related to the destruction of evidence or obstruction of justice related to Secretary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State.
8. Why was this time limit necessary when Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson were granted immunity for any potential destruction of evidence charges?
9. Please confirm whether a grand jury was convened to investigate Secretary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a private email server. Disclosure is authorized under Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e)(3)(A)(i) and (e)(3)(D).
Of course, since this will be promptly spun as just more “plumes of smoke” we hope people will stop trying to “criminalize behavior that is normal.”
- Kuroda Ruined His Chance Of A Second Term By Doing "Stupid Things", Abe Advisor Says
It was one thing when Wall Street slammed Haruhiko Kuroda, and the BOJ, for the latest “QQE with Yield Curve Control” monetary contraption unveiled last month by the Japanese central bank as a “disaster”, coupled with such dire forecasts “it may be over for the BOJ.” But when politicians such Nobuyuki Nakahara, a close advisor to Japan’s prime minister on the economy and an intellectual father of the Bank of Japan’s first run at quantitative easing in 2001, say that “Kuroda has ruined his chances of getting a second full term”, things start to get serious for everyone’s favorite monetary policy Peter Pan.
In a stinging attack on the BOJ’s recent actions, Nakahara said during an interview on September 30 that the central bank’s switch to yield-curve targeting compounds its earlier error of adopting negative interest rates (which we learned was launched following “peer pressure” by billionaires and policy makers at Davos, early in 2016) and is a disappointing move away from monetary-base expansion. Abe’s advisor also said the decision to conduct a comprehensive review of monetary policy had invited defeat on reflationist efforts and would raise questions about Abenomics as a whole.
Echoing our thoughts on QQEWYCC, Nakahara said that the BOJ is “trying to clean up the mess of negative rates. It’s impossible to do a stupid thing like keeping the yield curve under government control. They changed the regime to rates from quantity, meaning those who support quantitative easing were defeated. Reflationists on the BOJ policy board lost. An exit from deflation is going to be far away.” Kuroda has insisted after the BOJ’s policy decision that it hadn’t reached the practical limits of its bond buying and wasn’t moving toward tapering.
Under the new yield-curve regime, the central bank has pledged to keep the yield on benchmark 10-year debt around zero. The problem in this, according to Nakahara, is that if the yield falls further below zero, the BOJ will have to slow its sovereign debt purchases to push the yield back up and markets will interpret this as tapering. This in turn will push the yen up and stocks down. This was explained previously on this website, and was observed in practical terms this past Friday when the BOJ’s indicated purchases for super-long-term debt could see the central bank buying the smallest amount since expanding QQE two years ago. As Bloomberg reporter previously, for the first operations next month, BOJ plans to buy 110b yen for debt maturing in more than 25 years, 190b yen for bonds with maturities of 10 to 25 years, down by 10b yen each compared with the latest operation, the BOJ said on Friday. This would be the smallest purchases of debt of more than 10 years since BOJ expanded quantitative easing in Oct. 2014, and is the definitional equivalent of “tapering.”
Perhaps shaken by the comments, in parliament on Monday Bloomberg reported that Kuroda defended his policies and reiterated that there is room for additional monetary easing, adding that the recent changes have strengthened the previous framework and increased the sustainability of his policy. Ultimately, whether or not he will be reappointed to another term is a matter for the government and the parliament to decide, Kuroda said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters he was “aware that there are various opinions regarding monetary policy among private-sector economists and critics. I want to decline to comment on individual views,” said Suga. “The government wants the BOJ to continue make its utmost efforts to reach the price target as early as possible.”
As Bloomberg adds, after being greeted with fanfare when he took the helm, Kuroda, 71, now faces a reversal of fortunes on multiple fronts. Markets – that biggest driver behind “Abenomics” – have moved against him and critics are growing more vocal. The extended honeymoon he enjoyed with a rising stock market and falling yen are long gone and his 2 percent inflation goal is nowhere in sight. Kuroda has less than 19 months to go in his term. While no BOJ governor has been tapped for a second five-year term since the 1960s, Kuroda’s central role in Abenomics has led to speculation that he may be different.
“They should end negative rates, but they took action to save face and offset the failure of negative rates,” Nakahara said. “Bringing the rate up to zero means tightening, causing the yen to rise. The current framework is very vulnerable to external factors.”
Meanwhile, Fitch Ratings said on Monday that the negative rate may be cut to minus 0.5% , from minus 0.1% now, by the end of 2017. This would weigh on the profitability of commercial banks, Fitch said. However, Moody’s Investors Service was more upbeat and raised its forecast for real gross domestic product growth in Japan this year to 0.7 percent.
In June Nakahara suggested that the central bank boost its purchases of Japanese government bonds to 100 trillion yen ($988 billion) a year, from 80 trillion yen. The governor’s propensity to deliver surprises also drew the ire of Nakahara. He described the about-face in adopting negative rates in January – which came the same month as ruling this out – as being “like the attack of Pearl Harbor.”
* * *
One person, however, who did not share Nakahara’s gloomy perspective on Abenomics, is RBC’s Charlie McElligott, who in a note today, explained why the BOJ’s announcement last week merely sets the stage for much more aggressive action in the future.
This is what he said:
KURODA IN A CORNER = ASYMMETRICAL POLICY RISK: The final point above regarding Kuroda mentality and the BoJ is of great importance for global risk assets. Japan is the “weathervane” for markets and their sentiment towards QE monpol, which is how our most recent version of the “taper tantrum” with the global long-end selloff originated there following the Sakurai / JGB curve steepening commentary.
Todd Cross on our Asia USD Rates Trading desk has been making the case that Kuroda is being further ‘backed into a corner’ via the increasingly negative rhetoric from his former peers…which in turn will only make him MORE LIKELY to get asymmetrical on policy at the next meeting. Todd’s view is that the BoJ now has a “free option to exercise” with Kuroda, where since he will be either read as “hero” (if “kitchen-sinking-it” works) or “scapegoat” (if the policy fails, he’ll be out of a job)…so in a sense, the BoJ is liberated to act MORE AGGRESSIVELY on stimulus. This also ties-in nicely to a thought we’ve been discussing for a while now within the “RBC Big Picture” too, which has been the market’s misinterpretation that the BoJ “assessment” outcome was a shift towards ‘curve control / yield targeting,’ and a move AWAY from NIRP…when in fact, we are more confident than ever that the BoJ will be pushing even MORE negative on rates. And “not for nuthin,” but Kuroda himself stated in front of the Japanese Parliament today that the BoJ has further room to add stimulus.
The mix of the market being “lulled to sleep” thinking that the BoJ has “moved away from NIRP” into an increasingly-threatened Kuroda (who, along with Abe, believes that negative interest rates are the ‘key monpol vehicle’ to drive inflation) is a dangerous dynamic for global risk if they do indeed “shock” markets with more NIRP. The most brutal part of this scenario? We could get the ‘policy surprise’ call “right,” but get a completely binary response in $yen / JGB markets. The “macro minds” team is having a ton of debate on whether we see a stronger or weaker $yen if this did indeed “play out.” A purely “mechanical” market response would seemingly see the VERY substantial ‘long Yen’ positioning get spooked by such a surprise and get ‘puked.’ BUTTTTTTT, a view where a policy shock causes a counter-intuitive flight to quality / risk-aversion response in Yen (as experienced since the initial NIRP announcement) could see $yen travel to mid-90s in a heartbeat.
Whatever the outcome for the BOJ, and Kuroda, one thing is increasingly clear: even the central bankers are now in openly uncharted waters, and having largely exhausted most options, not even they know where the hyper-unorthofox monetary policies will take them, which for an entity that can purchase any and every asset using an unlimited source of funds, is a truly concerning place to be.
- Dilbert Creator Scott Adams "Shadowbanned" From Twitter After Trump Support
Following the permanent banning of conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos from using its service; the suspension of the account of Glenn Reynolds, aka @instapundit and creator of the Instapundit blog, a University of Tennessee law professor and a conservative columnist for USA TODAY; and blocking veteran reporter Mahir Zeynalov after bowing to pressure from Turkish president Erdogan; last week saw the ‘shadowbanning’ of thoughtful – non-violent – twitter-er Scott Adams – the creator of the Dilbert cartoon character.
Following a blog post daring to discuss how “dangerous” Donald Trump was compared to Hillary Clinton… (excerpt below)
…the alleged risks of each candidate so you can see how they compare on the “scariness” dimension.
Alleged Clinton Risks
- Dementia risk (because of age)
- Low energy (maybe can’t perform the job)
- Temperament (alleged to yell and throw things)
- Might allow more terrorists into country via immigration
- Influenced by lobbyists to start wars (Eisenhower warned of this)
- Drinks alcohol (We don’t know how much or how often)
- General brain health is questionable lately
- Adversaries won’t know who she serves or how she will react.
Alleged Trump Risks
- Dementia risk (because of age)
- Trump is “literally Hitler” (This risk is cognitive dissonance, not real)
- Con man (Sure, but we’ll be watching him closely)
- Temperament (responds proportionately every time)
- Race riots (Clinton’s side created this risk by framing Trump as a racist)
- Inexperience (But Trump routinely succeeds where he has no experience)
If you think Trump is risky because of his “temperament” or because he is “literally Hitler” you are experiencing cognitive dissonance caused by Clinton’s persuasion game. I mean that literally. And remember that I’m a trained hypnotist. That doesn’t mean I’m always right, but it does mean I’m trained to spot cognitive dissonance and you probably aren’t.
I don’t think any of us is smart enough to evaluate the relative risk of either candidate. And that’s my point. If you think Trump is the dangerous one, that isn’t supported by his history, his patterns, or the facts. It is literally an illusion created by his opponents.
Scott Adams asked his followers for examples of Clinton supporters being violent against peaceful Trump supports in public… which seems to have ‘triggered’ some people and got Adams “Shadowbanned” from Twitter…
This weekend I got “shadowbanned” on Twitter. It lasted until my followers noticed and protested. Shadowbanning prevents my followers from seeing my tweets and replies, but in a way that is not obvious until you do some digging.
Why did I get shadowbanned?
Beats me.
But it was probably because I asked people to tweet me examples of Clinton supporters being violent against peaceful Trump supporters in public. I got a lot of them. It was chilling.
Late last week my Twitter feed was invaded by an army of Clinton trolls (it’s a real thing) leaving sarcastic insults and not much else on my feed. There was an obvious similarity to them, meaning it was organized.
At around the same time, a bottom-feeder at Slate wrote a hit piece on me that had nothing to do with anything. Except obviously it was politically motivated. It was so lame that I retweeted it myself. The timing of the hit piece might be a coincidence, but I stopped believing in coincidences this year.
All things considered, I had a great week. I didn’t realize I was having enough impact to get on the Clinton enemies list. I don’t think I’m supposed to be happy about any of this, but that’s not how I’m wired.
Mmm, critics. Delicious 🙂
—
P.S. The one and only speaking gig I had on my calendar for the coming year cancelled yesterday because they decided to “go in a different direction.” I estimate my opportunity cost from speaking events alone to be around $1 million. That’s based on how the rate of offers went from several per month (for decades) to zero this year. Blogging about Trump is expensive.
But it is also a system, not a goal. I wrote a book about that.
Oh and we are sure it is just coincidence that Dilbert’s blog site is currently down…
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...