- Chinese New Year: The Biggest Human Migration In The World
The Chinese New Year begins today, and the year of the dog will cede its place to the pig, a zodiac sign that is supposed to attract luck and success.
Chinese New Year is one of the largest holidays for travel. During the New Year, hundreds of millions of people take planes, trains, and automobiles to celebrate the event with their friends and families.
This year, more than 400 million people celebrating Chinese New Year are expected to travel, including nearly 7 million abroad mainly in Thailand, Japan and Indonesia, according to Ctrip estimates.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The second largest celebratory migration is for Purna Kumbh Mela, where in 2013 over 120 million Hindu people travelled to Allahabad for the two-month long holy festival. By comparison, only about 54 million people traveled for Thanksgiving in 2018.
- 5G Wireless: A "Massive Health Experiment" That Could Cause Cancer And Global Catastrophe
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
Experts are warning that superfast broadband known as 5G could cause cancer in humans, and the usage of 5G is nothing more than a “massive health experiment.” 5G could very well be a global catastrophe that kills wildlife, gives people terminal diseases, and causes the Earth’s magnetic field to change, according to shocking claims by a technology expert.
Arthur Robert Firstenberg is an American author and an activist for electromagnetic radiation and health. In his 1997 book Microwaving Our Planet: The Environmental Impact of the Wireless Revolution, he claimed:
“The telecommunications industry has suppressed damaging evidence about its technology since at least 1927.”
Firstenberg has also founded the independent campaign group the Celluar Phone Task Force and since 1996 he has argued in numerous publications that wireless technology is dangerous.
According to a report by the Daily Star, Firstenberg has also recently started an online petition calling on world organizations, such as the United Nations, World Health Organisation (WHO), and European Union to “urgently halt the development of 5G,” which is due to be rolled out this year. In fact, Verizon has activated the world’s first 5G networks in four cities in the United States: Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. According to the Firstenberg, wireless networks are “harmful for humans” and the development of the next generation is “defined as a crime” under international law, as he states it in the online petition.
When speaking to The Daily Star Online, Firstenberg said this 5G rollout is deadly.
“There is about to be as many as 20,000 satellites in the atmosphere. The FCC approved Elon Musk’s project for 12,000 satellites on November 15th and he’s going to launch his in mid-2019. I’m getting reports from various parts of the world that 5G antennas are being erected all over and people are already getting sick from what’s there now and the insect population is getting affected,” Firstenberg stated.
“This could become a global catastrophe. When the first satellites were launched in the late 1990s for mobile phones, on the day they were launched people sensitive to these things got very sick. The mortality rate rose in the US by 5-10% too and there were reports that birds were not flying. People who realized this the most were pigeon racers who released their birds who then didn’t return,” he added. And that was when there were only 77 satellites, not 20,000.
Firstenberg’s petition reads:
5G will massively increase exposure to radio frequency (RF) radiation on top of the 2G, 3G and 4G networks for telecommunications already in place.
RF radiation has been proven harmful for humans and the environment. The deployment of 5G constitutes an experiment on humanity and the environment that is defined as a crime under international law.
Despite widespread denial, the evidence that radio frequency (RF) radiation is harmful to life is already overwhelming. The accumulated clinical evidence of sick and injured human beings, experimental evidence of damage to DNA, cells and organ systems in a wide variety of plants and animals, and epidemiological evidence that the major diseases of modern civilization—cancer, heart disease, and diabetes—are in large part caused by electromagnetic pollution, forms a literature base of well over 10,000 peer-reviewed studies. –Petition written by Arthur Robert Firstenberg
Many more mainstream scientists are dismissing the claims made by Firstenberg. The WHO said there has been no evidence of detrimental effects caused by mobile phones despite the many studies conducted over the past two decades. Conspiracy fact or theory?
- Colorado Runner Suffocates Mountain Lion With Bare Hands In Self-Defense
Will PETA let him off based on “stand your ground” laws? In the most epic instance ever of a jogger fending off an attacker, a man running on remote mountain trails in Colorado on Monday found himself being trailed by a mountain lion, only to eventually defeat the attack using merely his bare hands in the life-or-death struggle.
According to now viral reports the jogger heard movement behind him on the trail and the moment he turned around the mountain lion lunged. The man fought off the big cat after it jumped on him, sustaining non-life threatening bites and injuries to his face and wrist, for which he reportedly was taken to the hospital.
Getty image However the outcome to the near deadly attack is summarized in the following report, which sounds straight out of The Onion, but believe it or not is NPR: “The man killed the animal by suffocating it, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Northeast Region. Exactly how he did so wasn’t immediately clear.”
Though the mountain lion didn’t come out alive, the jogger’s condition is said to be “serious” after he made it off the trail to seek help of his own accord but he’s expected to make a fast recovery. The incident took place inside Horsetooth Mountain Park in northern Colorado, and the runner’s identity has yet to be confirmed.
Interestingly, it appears the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) was initially skeptical of the man’s account, namely that he suffocated the mountain lion with his bare hands and having no other weapon, until an autopsy (or necropsy) was done on the animal.
The CPW later commented on Tuesday:
After additional investigation, including examination of the lion, we have confirmed the victim’s account that he was able to suffocate the animal while defending himself from the attack.
After additional investigation, including examination of the lion, we have confirmed the victim’s account that he was able to suffocate the animal while defending himself from the attack.
— CPW NE Region (@CPW_NE) February 5, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“It’s an amazing story. Everyone is baffled and impressed,” Rebecca Ferrell, spokeswoman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, told The Denver Post. “He had no weapons, no knives or trekking poles with him. How did he do it? It’s pretty rare. That is definitely a twist on this, I’m sure.”
Park officials were later able to locate the animal’s body as well as items left behind by the fleeing jogger. The CPW later said the mountain lion weighed at least 80 pounds and described it as a “juvenile” after an examination at a state health lab.
It’s unclear whether the runner — who has not yet been identified publicly — strangled or smothered the mountain lion. He had no weapons, so he killed the cat with his bare, bleeding hands after climbing on top of the animal, state wildlife officials said. — The Denver Post
“Mountain lion attacks are not common in Colorado and it is unfortunate that the lion’s hunting instincts were triggered by the runner,” Ty Petersburg, area wildlife manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife described in an official CPW news release. “This could have had a very different outcome.”
Park officials said further that “Mountain lion attacks on people are rare, with fewer than 20 fatalities in North America in more than 100 years.” And specifically in Colorado the CPW reported that since 1990 the state has had “16 injuries as a result of mountain lion attacks, and three fatalities.”
We expect PETA to weigh in at any moment… on the side of the deceased mountain lion.
- Alt-State Of The Union: These Are Dangerous Times, And The Government Is To Blame
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.”
– Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America
These are dangerous times.
Mind you, when I say that these are dangerous times, it is not because of violent crime, which remains at an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which is statistically rare, or because our borders are being invaded by armies, which data reports from the Department of Homeland Security refute.
No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing army to steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill.
The danger “we the people” face comes from masked invaders on the government payroll who crash through our doors in the dark of night, shoot our dogs, and terrorize our families.
This danger comes from militarized henchmen on the government payroll who demand absolute obedience, instill abject fear, and shoot first and ask questions later.
This danger comes from power-hungry bureaucrats on the government payroll who have little to no understanding of their constitutional limits.
This danger comes from greedy politicians and corporations for whom profit trumps principle.
You want to know about the state of our union? It’s downright scary.
Consider for yourself.
Americans have no protection against police abuse. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later, such as the 16-year-old teenager who skipped school only to be shot by police after they mistook him for a fleeing burglar. Then there was the unarmed black man in Texas “who was pursued and shot in the back of the neck by Austin Police… after failing to properly identify himself and leaving the scene of an unrelated incident.” And who could forget the 19-year-old Seattle woman who was accidentally shot in the leg by police after she refused to show her hands? What is increasingly common, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.
Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities. Rubbing salt in the wound, even monetary awards in lawsuits against government officials who are found guilty of wrongdoing are paid by the taxpayer.
Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty. We once operated under the assumption that you were innocent until proven guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Likewise, by subjecting Americans to full-body scans and license-plate readers without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the scans for later use, the government—in cahoots with the corporate state—has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, we are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.
Americans no longer have a right to self-defense. In the wake of various shootings in recent years, “gun control” has become a resounding theme. Those advocating gun reform see the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms as applying only to government officials. As a result, even Americans who legally own firearms are being treated with suspicion and, in some cases, undue violence. In one case, a Texas man had his home subjected to a no-knock raid and was shot in his bed after police, attempting to deliver a routine search warrant, learned that he was in legal possession of a firearm. In another incident, a Florida man who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm found himself detained for two hours during a routine traffic stop in Maryland while the arresting officer searched his vehicle in vain for the man’s gun, which he had left at home. Incidentally, the Trump Administration has done more to crack down on Second Amendment rightsthan anything the Obama Administration ever managed.
Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.
Americans no longer have a say about what their children are exposed to in school. Incredibly, the government continues to insist that parents essentially forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school. This growing tension over whether young people, especially those in the public schools, are essentially wards of the state, to do with as government officials deem appropriate, in defiance of the children’s constitutional rights and those of their parents, is reflected in the debate over sex education programs that expose young people to all manner of sexual practices and terminology, zero tolerance policies that strip students of any due process rights, let alone parental involvement in school discipline, and Common Core programs that teach students to be test-takers rather than critical thinkers.
Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police. In early America, citizens were considered equals with law enforcement officials. Authorities were rarely permitted to enter one’s home without permission or in a deceitful manner. And it was not uncommon for police officers to be held personally liable for trespass when they wrongfully invaded a citizen’s home. Unlike today, early Americans could resist arrest when a police officer tried to restrain them without proper justification or a warrant—which the police had to allow citizens to read before arresting them. (Daring to dispute a warrant with a police official today who is armed with high-tech military weapons and tasers would be nothing short of suicidal.) As police forces across the country continue to be transformed into outposts of the military, with police agencies acquiring military-grade hardware in droves, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts, complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield.
Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity. Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, strip search us, and probe us intimately. Accounts are on the rise of individuals—men and women—being subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of “routine” traffic stops. Remember the New Mexico man who was subjected to a 12-hour ordeal of anal probes, X-rays, enemas, and finally a colonoscopy—all because he allegedly rolled through a stop sign?
Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy. Despite the staggering number of revelations about government spying on Americans’ phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc., Congress, the president and the courts have done little to nothing to counteract these abuses. Instead, they seem determined to accustom us to life in this electronic concentration camp.
Americans no longer have a representative government. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age, let’s call it the age of authoritarianism. History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a militaristic state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom. Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal. It is not overstating matters to say that Congress, which has done its best to keep their unhappy constituents at a distance, may well be the most self-serving, semi-corrupt institution in America.
Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the Supreme Court have become the architects of the American police state in which we now live, while the lower courts have appointed themselves courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing the government’s agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal.
I haven’t even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.
There can be no denying that the world is indeed a dangerous place, but what you won’t hear in any State of the Union address—what the president and his cohorts fail to acknowledge—is that it’s the government that poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life, and no amount of politicking, parsing or pandering will change that.
So what do we do about this dangerous state of our union?
How do we go about reclaiming our freedoms and reining in our runaway government?
Essentially, there are four camps of thought among the citizenry when it comes to holding the government accountable. Which camp you fall into says a lot about your view of government—or, at least, your view of whichever administration happens to be in power at the time.
In the first camp are those who trust the government to do the right thing, despite the government’s repeated failures in this department.
In the second camp are those who not only don’t trust the government but think the government is out to get them.
In the third camp are those who see government neither as an angel nor a devil, but merely as an entity that needs to be controlled, or as Thomas Jefferson phrased it, bound “down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution.”
Then there’s the fourth camp, comprised of individuals who pay little to no attention to the workings of government. Easily entertained, easily distracted, easily led, these are the ones who make the government’s job far easier than it should be.
It is easy to be diverted, distracted and amused by the antics of politicians, the pomp and circumstance of awards shows, athletic events, and entertainment news, and the feel-good evangelism that passes for religion today.
What is far more difficult to face up to is the reality of life in America, where unemployment, poverty, inequality, injustice and violence by government agents are increasingly norms.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the powers-that-be want us to remain divided, alienated from each other based on our politics, our bank accounts, our religion, our race and our value systems.
Yet as George Orwell observed, “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”
- Huawei Tried To Steal His Technology, But He Was Working For The FBI All Along
Adam Khan believed he had invented nearly indestructible glass that was going to revolutionize the technology industry. His “diamond glass” looked like ordinary glass, but was 6 times stronger than the industry standard. His plan, according to a new Bloomberg article? License the technology to phone manufacturers and turn a pretty penny for his company, Akhan Semiconductor, Inc.
As part of his research, he sent a specimen of his glass to a San Diego lab that was owned by Huawei Technologies to have it evaluated for potential licensing – but the sample he received back after testing was badly damaged, leading him to believe it may have been tampered with.
Khan said he was optimistic at first: “We were very optimistic. Having one of the top three smartphone manufacturers back you, at least on paper, is very attractive.”
But he then found himself paranoid about knockoffs – and became even more paranoid when Huawei began to “behave suspiciously” after getting his sample. They missed a deadline to return his sample and when they did return it, it was broken in several pieces and three shards of glass were missing altogether.
He said: “My heart sank. I thought, ‘Great, this multibillion-dollar company is coming after our technology. What are we going to do now?’”
Khan was likely further surprised when he was approached by the FBI to help with an ongoing investigation into Huawei. The FBI wanted Khan and Akhan’s chief operations officer, Carl Shurboff, to conduct an undercover meeting with Huawei in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. Shurboff was outfitted with surveillance devices and recorded the conversation, while a reporter from Bloomberg watched from a safe distance.
During the conversation, Khan and his COO “succeeded in getting Huawei representatives to admit, on tape, to breaking the contract with Akhan and, evidently, to violating U.S. export-control laws.”
Subsequent to that, when an FBI gemology expert was able to examine the glass Khan had received back, they determined the Huawei had blasted it with a 100 kW laser, which is “powerful enough to be used as a weapon”.
The investigation Khan is involved in is separate from recent indictments against the company. It is hardly the last as it seems that every day, more Huawei stones continue to turn over.
“Today should serve as a warning that we will not tolerate businesses that violate our laws, obstruct justice, or jeopardize national and economic well-being,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a January 28 press release about indictments regarding technology allegedly stolen by Huawei from T-Mobile. On that same day, the FBI raided the San Diego lab where Khan had sent his glass.
Display glass is considered to be a significant competitive advantage in the world of smart phones. Khan had been working on diamond glass going back to his college days when he began learning about nanodiamonds at the age of 19. According to Bloomberg:
After graduation, he ran experiments at the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility and teamed up with researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, eventually developing and patenting a way to deposit a thin coating of tiny diamonds on materials such as glass. He also licensed diamond-related patents for Akhan from the Argonne lab in 2014. By the following year, Khan was confident enough to start promoting his new technology.
If the FBI’s new investigation into Huawei continues to provide substantial evidence, it will bolster the Trump administration’s case to block the Chinese company from selling equipment for 5G use in the US. Some countries, like Australia, have already banned Huawei equipment for fear of not being able to protect IP that’s in the interest of national security.
Khan’s final take? All companies of all sizes should be watching out for Huawei as closely as possible: “I think they’re identifying technologies that are key to their road map and going after them no matter what the size or scale or status of the business. I wouldn’t say they’re discriminating.”
To read Bloomberg’s full long-form writeup with more details on the story, click here.
- US "Regime Changes" – The Historical Record
Authored by James Petras via The Unz Review,
As the US strives to overthrow the democratic and independent Venezuelan government, the historical record regarding the short, middle and long-term consequences are mixed.
We will proceed to examine the consequences and impact of US intervention in Venezuela over the past half century.
We will then turn to examine the success and failure of US ‘regime changes’ throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Venezuela: Results and Perspectives 1950-2019
During the post WWII decade, the US, working through the CIA and the Pentagon, brought to power authoritarian client regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and several other countries.
In the case of Venezuela, the US backed a near decade long military dictatorship (Perez Jimenez ) roughly between 1951-58. The dictatorship was overthrown in 1958 and replaced by a left-center coalition during a brief interim period. Subsequently, the US reshuffled its policy, and embraced and promoted center-right regimes led by social and christian democrats which alternated rule for nearly forty years.
In the 1990’s US client regimes riddled with corruption and facing a deepening socio-economic crises were voted out of power and replaced by the independent, anti-imperialist government led by President Chavez.
The free and democratic election of President Chavez withstood and defeated several US led ‘regime changes’ over the following two decades.
Following the election of President Maduro, under US direction,Washington mounted the political machinery for a new regime change. Washington launched, in full throttle, a coup by the winter of 2019.
The record of US intervention in Venezuela is mixed: a middle term military coup lasted less than a decade; US directed electoral regimes were in power for forty years; its replacement by an elected anti-imperialist populist government has been in power for nearly 20 years. A virulent US directed coup is underfoot today.
The Venezuela experience with ‘regime change’ speaks to US capacity to consummate long-term control if it can reshuffle its power base from a military dictatorship into an electoral regime, financed through the pillage of oil, backed by a reliable military and ‘legitimated’ by alternating client political parties which accept submission to Washington.
US client regimes are ruled by oligarchic elites, with little entrepreneurial capacity, living off of state rents (oil revenues).
Tied closely to the US, the ruling elites are unable to secure popular loyalty. Client regimes depend on the military strength of the Pentagon —but that is also their weakness.
Regime Change in Regional-Historical Perspective
Puppet-building is an essential strategic goal of the US imperial state.
The results vary over time depending on the capacity of independent governments to succeed in nation-building.
US long-term puppet-building has been most successful in small nations with vulnerable economies.
The US directed coup in Guatemala has lasted over sixty-years – from 1954 -2019. Major popular indigenous insurgencies have been repressed via US military advisers and aid.
Similar successful US puppet-building has occurred in Panama, Grenada, Dominican Republic and Haiti. Being small and poor and having weak military forces, the US is willing to directly invade and occupy the countries quickly and at small cost in military lives and economic costs.
In the above countries Washington succeeded in imposing and maintaining puppet regimes for prolonged periods of time.
The US has directed military coups over the past half century with contradictory results.
In the case of Honduras, the Pentagon was able to overturn a progressive liberal democratic government of very short duration. The Honduran army was under US direction, and elected President Manual Zelaya depended on an unarmed electoral popular majority. Following the successful coup the Honduran puppet-regime remained under US rule for the next decade and likely beyond.
Chile has been under US tutelage for the better part of the 20th century with a brief respite during a Popular Front government between 1937-41 and a democratic socialist government between 1970-73. The US military directed coup in 1973 imposed the Pinochet dictatorship which lasted for seventeen years. It was followed by an electoral regime which continued the Pinochet-US neo-liberal agenda, including the reversal of all the popular national and social reforms. In a word, Chile remained within the US political orbit for the better part of a half-century.
Chile’s democratic-socialist regime (1970-73) never armed its people nor established overseas economic linkage to sustain an independent foreign policy.
It is not surprising that in recent times Chile followed US commands calling for the overthrow of Venezuela’s President Maduro.
Contradictory Puppet-Building
Several US coups were reversed, for the longer or shorter duration.
The classical case of a successful defeat of a client regime is Cuba which overthrew a ten-year old US client, the Batista dictatorship, and proceeded to successfully resist a CIA directed invasion and economic blockade for the better part of a half century (up to the present day).
Cuba’s defeat of puppet restorationist policy was a result of the Castro leadership’s decision to arm the people, expropriate and take control of hostile US and multinational corporations and establish strategic overseas allies – USSR , China and more recently Venezuela.
In contrast, a US military backed military coup in Brazil (1964) endured for over two decades, before electoral politics were partially restored under elite leadership.
Twenty years of failed neo-liberal economic policies led to the election of the social reformist Workers Party (WP) which proceeded to implement extensive anti-poverty programs within the context of neo-liberal policies.
After a decade and a half of social reforms and a relatively independent foreign policy, the WP succumbed to a downturn of the commodity dependent economy and a hostile state (namely judiciary and military) and was replaced by a pair of far-right US client regimes which functioned under Wall Street and Pentagon direction.
The US frequently intervened in Bolivia, backing military coups and client regimes against short-term national populist regimes (1954, 1970 and 2001).
In 2005 a popular uprising led to free elections and the election of Evo Morales, the leader of the coca farmers movements. Between 2005 – 2019 (the present period) President Morales led a moderate left-of-center anti imperialist government.
Unsuccessful efforts by the US to overthrow the Morales government were a result of several factors: Morales organized and mobilized a coalition of peasants and workers (especially miners and coca farmers). He secured the loyalty of the military, expelled US Trojan Horse “aid agencies’ and extended control over oil and gas and promoted ties with agro business.
The combination of an independent foreign policy, a mixed economy , high growth and moderate reforms neutralized US puppet-building.
Not so the case in Argentina. Following a bloody coup (1976) in which the US backed military murdered 30,000 citizens, the military was defeated by the British army in the Malvinas war and withdrew after seven years in power.
The post military puppet regime ruled and plundered for a decade before collapsing in 2001. They were overthrown by a popular insurrection. However, the radical left lacking cohesion was replaced by center-left (Kirchner-Fernandez) regimes which ruled for the better part of a decade (2003 – 15).
The progressive social welfare – neo-liberal regimes entered in crises and were ousted by a US backed puppet regime (Macri) in 2015 which proceeded to reverse reforms, privatize the economy and subordinate the state to US bankers and speculators.
After two years in power, the puppet regime faltered, the economy spiraled downward and another cycle of repression and mass protest emerged. The US puppet regime’s rule is tenuous, the populace fills the streets, while the Pentagon sharpens its knives and prepares puppets to replace their current client regime.
Conclusion
The US has not succeeded in consolidating regime changes among the large countries with mass organizations and military supporters.
Washington has succeeded in overthrowing popular – national regimes in Brazil, and Argentina . However, over time puppet regimes have been reversed.
While the US resorts to largely a single ‘track’ (military coups and invasions)in overwhelming smaller and more vulnerable popular governments, it relies on ‘multiple tracks’ strategy with regard to large and more formidable countries.
In the former cases, usually a call to the military or the dispatch of the marines is enough to snuff an electoral democracy.
In the latter case, the US relies on a multi-proxy strategy which includes a mass media blitz, labeling democrats as dictatorships, extremists, corrupt, security threats, etc.
As the tension mounts, regional client and European states are organized to back the local puppets.
Phony “Presidents” are crowned by the US President whose index finger counters the vote of millions of voters. Street demonstrations and violence paid and organized by the CIA destabilize the economy; business elites boycott and paralyze production and distribution… Millions are spent in bribing judges and military officials.
If the regime change can be accomplished by local military satraps, the US refrains from direct military intervention.
Regime changes among larger and wealthier countries have between one or two decades duration. However, the switch to an electoral puppet regime may consolidate imperial power over a longer period – as was the case of Chile.
Where there is powerful popular support for a democratic regime, the US will provide the ideological and military support for a large-scale massacre, as was the case in Argentina.
The coming showdown in Venezuela will be a case of a bloody regime change as the US will have to murder hundreds of thousands to destroy the millions who have life-long and deep commitments to their social gains , their loyalty to the nation and their dignity.
In contrast the bourgeoisie, and their followers among political traitors, will seek revenge and resort to the vilest forms of violence in order to strip the poor of their social advances and their memories of freedom and dignity.
It is no wonder that the Venezuela masses are girding for a prolonged and decisive struggle: everything can be won or lost in this final confrontation with the Empire and its puppets.
- OPEC Proposes Formal Oil-Production Alliance With Russia
Even as the US brought sanctions against Venezuela’s state-run oil company, oil prices have slumped over the past week, erasing some of a January rebound that saw crude prices rebound alongside equities. But oil bulls who worried that Saudi Arabia and Russia’s tandem production cuts wouldn’t be enough to finally wedge a floor under crude prices can relax: Because if a plan reported Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal pans out, OPEC might recover the price-setting power it is in fear of ceding to the US as the shale boom continues to…well…boom.
With the US having cemented its new position as the biggest oil producer in the world thanks to shale, and President Trump exerting pressure on Saudi Arabia to drive oil prices lower, WSJ reports that Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies in OPEC have proposed a formal alliance with a 10-nation group of petroleum producers led by Russia – and alliance that would “transform the cartel” (which has recently suffered speculation that it has lost its relevance after Qatar announced its plans to leave the bloc).
However, Iran and some of its allies within the cartel have opposed the tighter partnership, fearing it could lead to Saudi Arabia and Russia dominating the organization.
The proposal would formalize the loose union between members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and the group led by Moscow, which includes some former Soviet republics and other countries. The two groups have increasingly worked together in recent years, including in December when they agreed on a deal to curb production.
Iran and other producers have opposed a tighter partnership, fearing it could be dominated by Saudi Arabia and Russia, according to officials in the cartel. Riyadh and Moscow are the world’s top two oil exporters. A Russian energy ministry spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Given that Saudi needs oil back at $80 a barrel to balance its national budget, the alliance would likely be geared toward Saudi and Russia achieving the goal of higher prices. To achieve higher prices, they need more leverage against the US.
To be sure, it’s not like this level of collusion between OPEC and non-OPEC producers would be unprecedented. The two groups have been increasingly working together in recent years. As recently as December, the 14-member OPEC and the 10-member bloc led by Russia struck a deal to cut production in a bid to lift prices after global oil prices shed more than one-third of their value during the month of October.
According to a proposal detailed by WSJ, once formalized, the deal – which would function like a non-legally-binding, informal arrangement, wouldn’t be all that different than the process that led to the December agreement.
In December, the 14-strong OPEC and 10 allies led by Russia reached a new agreement to tackle an oversupplied global crude market by cutting production by a combined 1.2 million barrels a day.
At the time, the groups put off a final decision on the nature of their future cooperation. The groups first collaborated in late 2016 to help oil prices to rebound after a two-year crash. It was Russia’s first solid alliance with the cartel in decades.
Under the proposal, OPEC would continue regular meetings to agree on production and monitor implementation with the Russia-led group, according to OPEC officials. Under the current draft document, the alliance could last up to three years and wouldn’t be legally binding, one of the OPEC officials said.
Participants still need to iron out differences, said another OPEC official. The first cartel official said all sides were likely to end up agreeing on some arrangement as oil prices could crash without a deal.
Still, a more formalized – but still not legally binding – pact faces some hurdles from wary members of OPEC, because some members of the new pact would need to run the issue by their Parliaments. And Iran wants any relationship with producers outside of OPEC to remain as loose as possible. Ideally, Tehran would want the expanded group to meet as infrequently as possible – only when a market crisis requires it – and it would also like all OPEC and non-OPEC members to attend the same meeting. Oman, meanwhile, would like to limit the number of meetings with the non-OPEC members.
Suhail Al Mazrouei, the UAE energy minister, reportedly said that a long-term pact still faces hurdles (though the current plan would call for the alliance to last three years).
Notably, the plan is a compromise between the status quo and a Saudi and Russia-led proposal that called for the creation of an entirely new bloc which would have been de facto controlled by the Kingdom and Russia, which would have been granted full membership.
The latest proposal is a compromise of earlier plans floated by the Saudis and Emiratis. Under its own proposal, Saudi Arabia advocated the creation of a completely new organization integrating Russia as a full member. In June, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, through his oil minister Khalid al-Falih, proposed a new Vienna-based cartel, according to OPEC officials.
The structure would have ended OPEC’s current United Nations-style, egalitarian system, in which each member has the same power to vote on decisions regardless of the size of its production. Instead, the new organization would have bestowed outsize power on Saudi Arabia and Russia.
The Saudi proposal irked OPEC members Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Angola and Algeria. At the meeting in December, Iraq’s oil minister, Thamir Ghadhban, reminded Mr. Falih that OPEC had been founded in Baghdad—a pointed criticism of the plan. At the gathering, the Saudi minister said he had no plan to create a new organization.
After receiving the Saudi proposal, Russia’s energy minister, Alexander Novak, told OPEC the decision is outside his control and escalated its study to foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and the Kremlin, the OPEC officials said. In late December, Moscow officially rejected the Saudi proposal.
“There will be no formal organization like OPEC,” Russian state TV RT quoted Mr. Novak as saying on Dec. 29. He cited the prospect of additional bureaucracy and antitrust risks for the decision.
OPEC members and Russia are expected to debate the proposal in Vienna during a meeting during the week of Feb 18. If OPEC and its sometimes fractious members decide to give it a shot in the name of pushing back against Trump, expect to see oil prices retrace their Q4 drop.
- China's S-Curve Of Expansion, Stagnation, And Decline
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
All the policies that worked in the Boost Phase no longer work.
Natural and human systems tend to go through stages of expansion, stagnation and decline that follow what’s known as the S-Curve. The dynamic isn’t difficult to understand: an unfilled ecological niche is suddenly open due to a new adaptation; a bacteria evolves to exploit a new host, etc. Expansion is rapid until the niche is fully occupied, and then growth matures and stagnates; the low-hanging fruit has all been picked, and it’s much more costly to reach what little is left.
Human economies starved of capital, credit, access to markets and freedom are akin to unexploited ecological niches. Lacking capital, credit and the freedom to innovate, experiment and advance, economies wallow in a self-reinforcing stagnation.
Should capital, credit, access to markets and freedom become available, the economic expansion can be breath-taking. This is the basic script of postwar Japan and the Asian Tiger economies: economies with either minimal or war-damaged infrastructure, limited capital/credit and stifling status quo power structures that limited the freedom of the populace to access markets and innovations were suddenly open to credit, markets and innovation.
This territory of opportunity was quickly exploited in the Boost Phase: all the low-hanging fruit could finally be picked.
In the Boost Phase, policies that open the economy to credit and innovation generate virtuous cycles of expanding credit, markets, capital, employment and development. In the Boost Phase, everyone’s a genius; everyone joining the land rush can get a piece of the action.
In this expansive phase, everyone extrapolates this rapid growth into the future, as if the Boost Phase can last essentially forever. Thus all sorts of pundits predicted that Japan’s late-bubble GDP of 1989 would soon surpass the GDP of the U.S.
A year later, Japan’s bubble burst and it has wallowed in stagnation since. The policies of the Boost Phase all work because any loosening of limits works wonders in economies with an abundance of low-hanging fruit. But once the easy fruit’s been picked, those policies no longer have the same efficacy. In fact, policies that worked wonders are now active impediments, as they were designed for an era that has passed: all the low-hanging fruit is long gone.
We cling to whatever seems to have worked so gloriously in the past, long after the virtuous cycles have turned into self-defeating cycles that only deepen the stagnation and rot. Japan’s core policies remain fixed in 1955, or 1965 if one wants to be generous. Other than Softbank, no major Japanese corporations have emerged since 1955. The central state / central planning model of state agencies coordinating the expansion of exports with major corporations is now crippling Japan; that model worked wonders from 1955 to 1989 and then its internal limits became apparent.
The heavy cost of corruption that was offset by growth in the boost phase becomes destructive in the stagnation phase. Stripped of growth, the economy is sapped by institutionalized corruption: bribes, sweetheart deals, poor quality being ignored, accounting fraud–all become embedded and institutionalized, to the detriment of organic growth.
As a result of one disastrous policy after another–The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution–China’s 1989 economy was mired in 1949. Once the leadership enabled modest reforms that opened access to credit and markets, and the central planning machinery started building infrastructure at a scale unseen in world history, China’s Boost Phase took off.
But just as trees don’t grow to the moon, no Boost Phase lasts beyond the depletion of the low-hanging fruit. Rational investments in infrastructure and housing inevitably give way to speculative gambles, the classic recipe for mal-investment and excessive leverage that guarantee a collapse of the resulting credit and asset bubbles.
China entered 2008 with $8 billion in officially counted debt; 10 years later that debt is $40 trillion, plus unknown trillions more in the shadow banking system which expanded the options for risky speculation and massive expansions of credit.
Like all the other stagnating economies, China’s “solution” to stagnation was to expand debt-funded speculation and “investments” with little to no actual return.
The high water mark of China’s financialization orgy was 2018. From now on, adding debt simply adds more drag on the underlying economy, as income is diverted to service speculative debt and defaults start hollowing out both the official banking system and the shadow banking system.
All the policies that worked in the Boost Phase no longer work. the policy tool chest is empty, and so China’s leadership is doing more of what’s failed: burying bad debt off the visible balance sheets, re-issuing new loans to pay off defaulted debt, and all the usual tricks of a failed banking/credit system.
Japan has papered over its systemic rot and decline for 30 years by using a financial Perpetual Motion Machine: the state borrows and spends trillions by selling bonds to the central bank, which in effect prints “free money” for the state to burn propping up a sclerotic, corrupt, failed status quo.
If that’s policy makers’ idea of success, they are delusional. Credit/asset bubbles all deflate, and central bank buying of assets only gives the lie to the illusion of stability and market liquidity.
Simply put, there is no indication China’s leadership has any plan to manage the inevitable stagnation and decline of China’s economy that is now painfully obvious to anyone with the slightest willingness to look beneath the flimsy propaganda of official statistics. They are not alone, of course; every other major economy is equally bereft of policies and equally dependent on bogus statistics and debt to paper over the decline.
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- Bangladeshi "Dexter" Goes On Murder Spree Targeting Rapists
Authorities in Bangladesh are looking for a potential serial-killer vigilante after three men accused of rape were found dead with notes around their necks, according to the Daily Star – invoking images of Showtime’s fictional psychopath with a golden heart, Dexter.
Instead of “Dexter,” however, the killer left notes on the body signed “Hercules.”
“I am Rakib. I am the rapist of a madrasa girl…of Bhandaria. This is the consequence of a rapist. Be aware rapists…Hercules,” read the note attached to the body of 20-year-old accused rapist Rakib Hossain, one of two men who stood accused of participating in the gang rape of a madrasa student.
Hossain, a law student at a private university, was found with a bullet wound to the head according to the officer in charge of the Rajapur Police Station, Md Jahidul Islam.
On January 14, a madrasa student was allegedly gang raped by two men when she was on the way to her grandparents’ house.
Her father filed a case with Bhandaria Police Station accusing Sajal and Rakib on January 17.
On January 24, police recovered Sajal’s bullet-hit body in Jhalakathi’s Kathalia upazila, with a similar note hanging round the neck.
Sajal’s father Shah Alam Jommadar lodged a case with Kathalia Police Station over his son’s murder on January 26, said Md Eanamul Haque, officer-in-charge of the police station. –Daily Star
A third victim was one of four men accused of gang-raping a government worker in Savar, located near the capital city of Dhaka, on January 7 – around 270 kilometers (170 miles) away. The alleged rape victim was found dead hours after reporting the incident.
On January 17, police found the body of Ripon, 39, a key suspect in the gang rape and murder of a female garment worker, in Savar on the outskirts of the capital, with a similar note hanging around the neck.
In the early hours of January 7, an 18-year-old girl was found dead in her house in Ashulia’s Berun area, hours after she had filed a case with Ashulia Police Station against Ripon and three other co-workers for raping her.
Later, the girl’s father filed another case with Ashulia Police Station accusing Ripon and the three others of murdering his daughter. —Daily Star
“I am Pirojpur Bhandaria’s … rapist Rakib,” read the note around Ripon’s neck, according to the Dhaka Tribune newspaper.
All three victims were found dead with bullet wounds and notes within the last two weeks.
According to a 2015 special report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council, rape is the second-most common form of violence committed against Bangladeshi females – while the perpetrators are rarely punished.
“In Bangladesh, women’s access to justice and participation in political and public life are particularly affected by violence against women,” reads the report by law professor Rashida Manjoo of the University of Cape Town. According to her report, limited resources, poor infrastructure and a lack of legal experts make it difficult for women to seek legal remedies after being raped.
According to Reuters, Dhaka was ranked the seventh-most dangerous city in the world for women in 2017, and fourth when it comes to sexual violence in particular. Karachi, Pakistan, ranks #1.
Police in Dhaka arrested 10 men last month in connection with the alleged rape of a woman who voted against the prime minister in Bangladesh’s December election.
The woman’s husband told Reuters that a group of 10-12 men barged into their house in the southeastern district of Noakhali on the night of the election, tied up him and his four children inside the house, and assaulted her.
The husband said she was raped because she voted for the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. –Global News
In short, rape is so common in Bangladesh that it’s used as an intimidation tactic. Perhaps this will all change if Hercules continues his murder spree.
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