- Where Inflation Is Highest And Lowest Around The World
High inflation rates can hurt any country’s economy and point to underlying problems in economic policy. Currently, Iran, Turkey and Nigeria are three countries where high inflation rates are putting a strain on citizens and businesses, with effects ranging from exorbitant food prices, rising rents and falling sales on non-necessary items.
But, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, very low inflation, as Singapore, Ireland and Japan are experiencing at the moment, has its own set of problems. While low inflation will encourage consumers to make purchases, it can lead to less earnings for companies and decreased hiring and it also means people don’t get the benefit of paying off their debt quicker with the help of a little inflation. Ultimately, low inflation can lead prices into a downwards spiral, causing deflation and a deterioration of prices equally bad as an inflation crisis.
According to data complied by the World Bank, countries currently in price deflation around the world were Ecuador (-0.2 percent), the Maldives (-0.1 percent), Rwanda (-0.3 percent) and Burundi (-2.8 percent).
You will find more infographics at Statista
On the other hand, inflation in Venezuela has recently gone to extreme levels, causing a so-called hyperinflation which is inflation spiraling out of control at a 50 percent increase (and often much more) per month. Venezuelan inflation for 2018 was literally off the charts at approximately 1 million percent, according to the International Monetary Fund.
- Russia, Turkey, Iran: Adversaries Of The West's NATO Alliance
Authored by Con Coughlin via The Gatestone Institute,
Germany’s point-blank refusal to support Washington’s proposal for a maritime protection force in the Arabian Gulf to protect shipping from attacks by Iran is yet another example of Berlin’s diplomatic and economic sabotage of the Western alliance.
Following the recent upsurge in Iranian aggression in the all-important Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf shipping artery through which flows one-fifth of the world’s energy needs, Washington has sought international backing for Operation Sentinel, its naval operation to protect shipping in the region.
This search follows a series of Iranian attacks, including the shooting down of a US Navy drone operating in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as a number of attacks against merchant shipping, such as last month’s seizure of the British-registered oil tanker Stena Impero.
But while Washington has responded to Iran’s deliberate escalation of tensions in the region by deploying an aircraft carrier battle group, as well as troops, missiles, and fighter aircraft, its appeal to other nations to support its effort have received a muted response.
In particular, Washington would like to see Britain, France and Germany — the three European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran — provide tangible support for the mission.
From Washington’s perspective, the fact that Europe is far more reliant on the Gulf for its energy supplies than is the US, whose energy imports from the region today are negligible, it seems only fair that Europe, as well as other beneficiaries such as Japan, pay their fair share towards ensuring no further Iranian disruption of Gulf shipping takes place.
To date, though, only Britain has deployed warships to the Gulf — a frigate and a destroyer — while France is considering its options.
Germany, however, the country that enjoys Europe’s largest economy and is therefore more than capable of contributing to the American initiative, has bluntly rejected a State Department request to support the mission.
Pictured: U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a press conference on April 27, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
In an attempt to shame the Germans into joining the operation, Washington’s request was made public through the US Embassy in Berlin earlier this week.
“We’ve formally asked Germany to join France and the UK to help secure the Straits of Hormuz and combat Iranian aggression,” an embassy spokeswoman announced.
“Members of the German government have been clear that freedom of navigation should be protected… Our question is, protected by whom?”
The US ploy, though, has fallen on deaf ears in Berlin, where there is considerable opposition within German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition to becoming involved for fear that it might exacerbate tensions with Iran. Germany, like the rest of Europe, is still wedded to the naive notion that the Iranian nuclear deal can be saved, irrespective of the Trump administration’s decision last year to withdraw from the agreement.
Olaf Scholz, the German vice-chancellor, who is deputising for Mrs Merkel while she is on vacation, responded by confirming that his country would not take part in a US-led naval taskforce; he warned about the danger of the world “sleepwalking into a much larger conflict”.
Germany’s outright rejection of Washington’s request is likely to inflame tensions further between Washington and Berlin. U.S. President Donald J. Trump is already at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on a range of issues, from Germany’s obstinate refusal to meet its Nato funding commitments to its pursuit of closer energy ties with Russia through the construction of the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Mr Trump is highly critical of the project. He argues that it will make Europe, and especially Germany, too dependent on Moscow for its energy needs, which could undermine the resolve of the Nato alliance to take a robust stand against Moscow in any future confrontation.
Moreover, Germany’s refusal to support the Western alliance in combating Iranian aggression in the Gulf comes at a time when Nato is facing another major dilemma over the future participation of Turkey as a member.
This follows the decision by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to press ahead with the purchase of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems in the face of strong opposition from Washington, which has responded by cancelling Ankara’s continued involvement in the F-35 stealth fighter programme.
So, at a time when the Western alliance is already struggling with how to respond to Turkey’s deepening military ties with Russia, Germany’s refusal to fulfil its obligations to protect shipping in the Gulf will be interpreted by adversaries of the West such as Moscow and Tehran as yet further evidence of what would doubtless please them very much: deepening divisions within the Western alliance.
- India's Auto Market Crashes: 200,000 Job Losses In 3 Months, One Million At Risk
A downturn in the Indian automobile industry has led dealerships to cut at least 200,000 jobs in the last three months amid an unprecedented sales decline, reported India Today.
The Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) warned that the automobile downturn would continue to cycle down through 2H19, leading to more job losses with dealerships and across the entire industry.
“The majority of job cuts have happened in the last three months…It started around May and continued through June and July,” FADA President Ashish Harsharaj Kale told Press Trust of India.
Kale said, “Right now most of the cuts which have happened are in front-end sales jobs, but if this (slowdown) continues, then even the technical jobs will be affected because if we are selling less then we will also service less, so it is a cycle.”
When asked about job losses, he said, “Close to about two lakh [200,000].”
“It is a guesstimate that our members have already cut 7-8% of the jobs in most of the dealerships as the degrowth has been very high,” he added.
Around 2.5 million Indians were employed directly through 26,000 automobile showrooms operated by 15,000 dealers. Dealerships indirectly employ another 2.5 million, he added.
The 200,000 job cuts in the last three months exceeded the 32,000 layoffs when 286 dealerships closed across the country in the 18 months ended April this year, he said. Job losses in the auto industry point to an Indian economy that is quickly deteriorating through summer.
Figures from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) show vehicle wholesales plunged by 12.35% to 6,085,406 units in April-June versus 6,942,742 units in the same period last year.
Automakers such as Maruti Suzuki Ltd, Tata Motors Ltd, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd (M&M), Ashok Leyland Ltd and Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India Ltd have closed manufacturing facilities in the last month as demand for vehicles comes to a screeching halt.
July figures show passenger car sales crashed by 29%, making it the worst month for the automobile industry in two decades.
Automakers aren’t alone. Auto part makers in India such as Exide Industries, Continental Automotive Components (India), ZF, Brose India Automotive Systems, Schaeffler India, Brembo Brakes India, Kalyani Maxion Wheels, Varroc Group, Eaton, IAC India have adjusted production to slowing conditions or closed facilities to avoid a dangerous inventory build-up.
Last month, Bosch Ltd, the largest parts maker in India, published a memo that outlined how it suspended operations at its Gangaikondan plant in Tamil Nadu for a week in late July to “avoid unnecessary build-up of inventory.”
Ram Venkataramani, President, Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA), said the 15% to 20% cut in auto production had triggered an auto crisis in India, could lead to at least one million people being laid off.
The current slowdown in the India economy is cyclical and isn’t expected to turn back up for the next several years. Industrials have been the first domino to fall, and next will be Indian consumers.
- We're All Enemies Of The State: Draconian Laws, Precrime & The Surveillance State
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” – H.L. Mencken
We’ve been down this road many times before.
If the government is consistent about any one thing, it is this: it has an unnerving tendency to exploit crises and use them as opportunities for power grabs under the guise of national security.
As David C. Unger, a foreign affairs editorial writer for the New York Times, explains, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.”
Cue the Emergency State, the government’s Machiavellian version of crisis management that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.
Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”: the government has been anticipating and preparing for such crises for years now.
It’s all part of the grand plan for total control.
The government’s proposed response to the latest round of mass shootings—red flag gun laws, precrime surveillance, fusion centers, threat assessments, mental health assessments, involuntary confinement—is just more of the same.
These tactics have been employed before, here in the U.S. and elsewhere, by other totalitarian regimes, with devastating results.
It’s a simple enough formula: first, you create fear, then you capitalize on it by seizing power.
For instance, in his remarks on the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Trump promised to give the FBI “whatever they need” to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism.
Let that sink in a moment.
In a post-9/11 America, Trump’s promise bodes ill for whatever remnants of freedom we have left. With that promise, flippantly delivered without any apparent thought for the Constitution’s prohibitions on such overreach, the president has given the FBI the green light to violate Americans’ civil liberties in every which way.
This is how the Emergency State works, after all.
Although the damage wrought by these power grabs has been most evident in recent presidential administrations—under Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton—the seeds of this present madness were sown, according to Unger, in 1940, when President Roosevelt, the “founding father of modern extraconstitutional presidential war-making, the military-industrial complex, and covert federal surveillance of lawful domestic political activity,” declared a national emergency.
So what does the government’s carefully calibrated response to this current crisis mean for freedom as we know it? Compliance and control.
For starters, consider Trump’s embrace of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats, will only add to the government’s power.
As The Washington Post reports, these laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”
Be warned: these laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.
Seventeen states, plus the District of Columbia, now have red flag laws on their books. That number is growing.
In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings, these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.
Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.
Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.
With these red flag gun laws, the intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats.
“We need to stop dangerous people before they act”: that’s the rationale behind the NRA’s support of these red flag laws, and at first glance, it appears to be perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others.
However, consider what happened in Maryland after a police officer attempted to “enforce” the state’s new red flag law, which went into effect in Oct. 2018.
At 5 am on a Monday, two police officers showed up at 61-year-old Gary Willis’ house to serve him with a court order requiring that he surrender his guns. Willis answered the door holding a gun. (In some states, merely answering the door holding a gun is enough to get you killed by police who have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.) Willis initially set his gun aside while he spoke with the police. However, when the police attempted to serve him with the gun confiscation order, Willis reportedly became “irate” and picked up his gun again. At that point, a struggle ensued, causing the gun to go off. Although no one was harmed by the struggle, one of the cops shot and killed Willis.
According to the Anne Arundel County police chief, the shooting was a sign that the red flag law is needed. What the police can’t say with any certainty is what they prevented by shooting and killing Willis.
Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally, especially when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
After all, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
This is the same government that, in 2009, issued a series of Department of Homeland Security reports on Rightwing and Leftwing “Extremism,” which broadly define extremists as individuals, military veterans and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.”
This is the same government that, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal, tracks military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”
This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain and imprison American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.
This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.
For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.
According to the FBI’s latest report, you might also be classified as a domestic terrorism threat if you espouse conspiracy theories, especially if you “attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others” and are “usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”
Additionally, according to Michael C. McGarrity, the FBI’s assistant director of the counterterrorism division, the bureau now “classifies domestic terrorism threats into four main categories: racially motivated violent extremism, anti-government/anti-authority extremism, animal rights/environmental extremism, and abortion extremism.”
In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly.
Where many Americans go wrong is in assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or challenging the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.
That is not the case.
All you really need to do is question government authority.
With the help of artificial intelligence, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potentialenemies of the state.
It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.
What’s more, the technocrats who run the surveillance state don’t even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate. Computers guided by artificial intelligence now do the tedious work of trolling social media, the internet, text messages and phone calls for potentially anti-government remarks—all of which is carefully recorded, documented, and stored to be used against you someday at a time and place of the government’s choosing.
This is the world that science fiction author Philip K. Dick envisioned for Minority Report in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will crack a few skulls in order to bring the populace under control.
In Dick’s dystopian police state, the police combine widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining and precognitive technology to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage: precrime.
In the film Minority Report, the technology that John Anderton, Chief of the Department of Pre-Crime in Washington, DC, relies on for his predictive policing proves to be fallible, identifying him as the next would-be criminal and targeting him for preemptive measures. Consequently, Anderton finds himself not only attempting to prove his innocence but forced to take drastic measures in order to avoid capture in a surveillance state that uses biometric data and sophisticated computer networks to track its citizens.
With every passing day, the American police state moves that much closer to mirroring the fictional pre-crime prevention world of Minority Report.
For instance, police in major American cities have been using predictive policing technology that allows them to identify individuals—or groups of individuals—most likely to commit a crime in a given community. Those individuals are then put on notice that their movements and activities will be closely monitored and any criminal activity (by them or their associates) will result in harsh penalties.
In other words, the burden of proof is reversed: you are guilty before you are given any chance to prove you are innocent.
Dig beneath the surface of this kind of surveillance/police state, however, and you will find that the real purpose of pre-crime is not safety but control.
Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.
Again, where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.
In fact, U.S. police agencies have been working to identify and manage potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats for some time now.
In much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect, the government’s anti-extremism program renders otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.
In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, or appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom.
Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.
You will be tracked wherever you go.
You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.
This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.
The government has been building its pre-crime, surveillance network in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the corporate sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).
If you’re not scared yet, you should be.
Connect the dots.
Start with the powers amassed by the government under the USA Patriot Act, note the government’s ever-broadening definition of what it considers to be an “extremist,” then add in the government’s detention powers under NDAA, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.
To that, add tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones and balloons that are beginning to blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the picture, toss in the real-time crime centers being deployed in cities across the country, which will be attempting to “predict” crimes and identify so-called criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.
Hopefully you’re starting to understand how easy we’ve made it for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat for a variety of reasons that run the gamut from mental illness to having a military background to challenging its authority to just being on the government’s list of persona non grata.
There’s always a price to pay for standing up to the powers-that-be.
Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, you don’t even have to be a dissident to get flagged by the government for surveillance, censorship and detention.
All you really need to be is a citizen of the American police state.
- Beijing Threatens 'Reverse Sanctions' If Huawei Excluded From Indian 5G Network
Just as relations between India and China were beginning to improve, New Delhi has found itself caught in the middle of Washington and Beijing’s war over the future of 5G, according to a recent Reuters report.
Like many countries, India is just beginning the bidding process to find a provider to build out its 5G infrastructure. But thanks to rumors that New Delhi might shut Chinese telecoms giant Huawei out of the bidding process due to Washington’s insistence that Huawei could present a threat to national security – making India vulnerable to espionage directed by China’s Ministry of State Security – China’s Foreign Ministry recently summoned Vikram Misri, India’s ambassador to Beijing, to express its “concerns” about Washington’s campaign to block Huawei equipment from being used in 5G networks around the world.
During the meeting, Chinese officials said they could impose “reverse sanctions” on Indian firms operating on the mainland if India doesn’t allow Huawei to participate in the bidding process, according to a readout of the conversation shared with Reuters.
Neither the Indian foreign ministry nor the Chinese foreign ministry responded to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Indian companies have a far smaller presence in China than in other major economies. But still, Indian companies including Infosys, TCS, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Reliance Industries and Mahindra & Mahindra operate in the manufacturing, healthcare, technology and financial services space on the mainland.
Now, the row over Huawei threatens to escalate and sour relations between the world’s two most populous countries just as they were getting over their territorial disputes over Arunachal Pradesh.
India is expected to hold trials for installing its next-generation 5G cellular network in the next few months. But it has not yet decided whether it will invite the Chinese telecoms giant to participate, telecoms minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said.
Prasad recently told parliament that six proposals have been received for 5G technology trials, including from Huawei. He didn’t name the other companies, but there are only a handful of companies in the world who have the capabilities that would allow them to participate, including Finland’s Nokia, Sweden’s Ericcson and South Korea’s Samsung.
And although India’s intelligence service has been looking for evidence that Huawei could use its equipment as an embedded spy network, so far, it has found no evidence of this.
Sources from within India’s government told Reuters that one solution might be using different providers for hardware and software.
Since winning re-election, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has felt the brunt of the Trump Administration’s protectionist bent: Like Turkey, it recently lost its special status granted by the Department of Commerce, which raised tariffs on Indian-made goods entering the US. And thanks to Modi’s flirtations with Russia (it recently agreed to buy the Russia S-400 missile defense system, which could open it up to US sanctions under CAATSA), it’s already in hot water with Washington.
President Xi is presently planning a visit to India in October that was intended as a sign of the improving relations between the two countries. If the dispute over Huawei continues to escalate, he could cancel. If that happens, the dispute over Huawei will officially have gone international.
- You Can 'Major' In Social Justice At This Nearly $70,000/Year California College
Authored by Adam Sabes via Campus Reform,
Dominican University in California has added a new major, wholly focused on social justice that will begin accepting students in the fall.
The school created the major after a “growing number” of students became interested in social justice careers, according to a university news release. Dominican will be combining courses from its minors entitled “Performing Arts and Social Change” and “Community Action and Social Change” for the major.
Students who major in social justice will have the chance to “examine the links between well-being, social justice, and diverse worldviews.”
Additionally, students will “analyze social injustices and work toward positive social change.”
The major starts off with a class titled “Theory and Practice for Community Action and Social Change,” which “provides foundational frameworks for analyzing oppression, power, and privilege.”
Other courses that students can take range from “Prophets, Psalms, & Social Justice” to “Liberation Theologies.”
Dominican University suggests that possible careers for those studying social justice include “Journalist/Photographer/Filmmaker,“ ”Community Organizer,” “Educator,” “Political Campaign Staffer,” and even a “Socially Engaged Artist.”
The new major is being funded in part by a $30,000 grant from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Religion.
A spokesperson from the California Federation of College Republicans commented on the major to Campus Reform.
“While we feel this program is for psuedo-educational purposes and pushes a certain political agenda, students will be spending $67,385 each academic year ($269,540 after four years) on a bachelor’s degree in social justice,” the spokesperson said.
“The United States is on the precipice of our $1.5 trillion student loan debt bubble bursting; therefore, it is clearly not wise for students to take out nearly $300,000 in student loans just to study social justice.”
The $67,385 per year cost cited by the CFCR spokesperson includes tuition, room and board, books, and other fees.
Dominican University is not the first school to push social justice initiatives, as Campus Reform has reported.
Hamline University in Minnesota has a social justice major boasting classes like “gender politics” and “sexuality, gender identity, and the law.” Tuition for the 2019-2020 academic year at that school is $41,734.
The University of Michigan took the issue further and opened up an entire “social justice-themed” high school where UMich grad students will have the opportunity to teach.
- Pentagon's Next Dystopian Surveillance Exercise Will Launch Spy Balloons Over These States
The Guardian reported Friday that the US military is conducting a surveillance exercise across six midwest states using surveillance radars attached to high-altitude balloons.
Sierra Nevada Corporation, an aerospace and defense company, filed for a Special Temporary Authorization (through July 12 to Sept. 01) with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fly 25 solar-powered spy balloons, will be launched from South Dakota and will drift 250 miles through an area covering Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri, before landing in central Illinois.
The Defense Department’s Southern Command (Southcom) approved the exercise in mid-July, which is being supervised by Sierra Nevada.
The spy balloons will travel with wind currents, expected to reach altitudes of up to 65,000 feet, will “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotics trafficking and homeland security threats,” the FCC filing said.
The balloons are carrying next-generation radars, designed for the modern battlefield to track vehicles day or night, through any weather.
Arthur Holland Michel, the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York, told The Guardian, “What this new technology proposes is to watch everything at once. Sometimes it’s referred to as ‘combat TiVo’ because when an event happens somewhere in the surveilled area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly what occurred, and rewind even further to see who was involved and where they came from.”
Southcom, which is responsible for security and intelligence operations in the Caribbean and Central and South America, could roll out these spy balloons across the Mexico-US border to identify and intercept drug shipments headed for the US.
Civil liberties advocates were shocked at what they read in the FCC filing:
“The deployment of this kind of surveillance capability in the United States is incredibly alarming,” Mana Azarmi, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Common Dreams.
“Persistent government surveillance, such as that facilitated by this technology, raises many civil liberties concerns and should not be permitted in the absence of a warrant.”
Mass surveillance doesn’t make us safer
Mass surveillance doesn’t make us safer
Mass surveillance doesn’t make us safer
Mass surveillance doesn’t make us safer
Mass surveillance doesn’t make us safer
Mass surveillance doesn’t make us saferhttps://t.co/jpHTWfwItd— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) August 2, 2019
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Advance technology programs like the Pentagon’s balloon exercise “pose a grave threat to basic human rights, freedom of expression, and civil liberties,” Fight for the Future Deputy Director Evan Greer told Common Dreams. “These programs are not about stopping the violence; they’re about social control.”
The government is testing wide-area surveillance systems, intended for war zones, on Americans is a massive privacy violation, the ACLU said.
“Even in tests, they’re still collecting a lot of data on Americans: who’s driving to the union house, the church, the mosque, the Alzheimer’s clinic,” Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the organization, told The Guardian. “We should not go down the road of allowing this to be used in the United States and it’s disturbing to hear that these tests are being carried out, by the military no less.”
Greer told Common Dreams that the spy balloons is the latest example of new surveillance infrastructure that the government is creating, with the help from defense and technology companies.
“From police partnerships with Amazon’s Ring doorbells to these privately contracted spying balloons,” Greer said, “a dystopian surveillance state is being built in plain sight, by government agencies with authoritarian dreams and corporations willing to trample our rights to turn a profit.”
About four years ago, has since been discontinued, Baltimore was one of the first major cities in the US to have spy blimps flying overhead with surveillance equipment.
The Spy Blimp from Aberdeen monitoring Baltimore’s current police state. pic.twitter.com/VeuEzJSIpa
— Al Clark (@PikesvilleAL) April 28, 2015
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If the upcoming tests with Sierra Nevada and Southcom go well, these spy balloons could enter series production in the near term and be ready for deployment on the Mexico-US border and in warzones across the world. However, as shown in Baltimore, these balloons could also be surveilling major US cities in the early 2020s.
- Forget Iran, Maximum Pressure Has Shifted To China
In the past week the pressure on China by the U.S. has escalated daily. Since the trade delegation came back from China with lunch barely digested the Trump Administration has gone into over drive on demonizing China here at home.
From finally declaring China a currency manipulator after years of threats on Monday the latest is now a planted story in Axios that Vice-President Mike Pence bringing forth a list of Chinese officials to sanction for Human Rights violations under the Global Magnitsky Act.
This is based on a lie, of course. A lie helped along by Bob Fu, the head of ChinaAid, an NGO working, nominally, to alleviate the horrors of the Chinese government. Or, at least, that’s what you’re supposed to believe.
Vice President Mike Pence has signaled that the Trump administration is open to using the Global Magnitsky Act to sanction top officials in Xinjiang, China, where more than 1 million Uighur Muslims are being held in internment camps, according to a Chinese religious freedom advocate who met with Pence at the White House Monday.
Notice how Axios still states this as fact, that the Chinese are running 1 million people in concentration camps, even though the story was quickly debunked as the rogue statement by U.N. committee member, Gay MacDougall, who claimed this 1 million number was real.
It’s not true, because if it was someone credible would have confirmed it. But it’s a lie that has been breathlessly repeated for the past year to create the illusion of reality so that now Pence can pile on to further inflame the ‘China is evil’ story to hapless Trump supporters giddy at their chosen savior’s tough stance on China.
That tough stance on China in economic areas will require even more farm subsidies as China now refuses to buy our soybeans, corn and other agricultural products as a result of Trump’s asinine trade war.
Because Trump cares about farmers. Yeah, right. Trump cares about getting re-elected.
But it is in Hong Kong where things are really dangerous from a geopolitical perspective.
China has had to respond to the riots in Hong Kong with a firm hand and is being backed into a dangerous situation to quell the unrest. The stink of outside influence is very strong.
And it very well could turn into a military intervention in Hong Kong, which will be denounced by the U.S. and the U.K. as a violation of the “1 country, 2 systems” agreement the British left in place until 2047.
See the pattern? This human rights abuse stuff is 1 part truth and 2 parts fiction. It’s an operation on multiple fronts to demonize China.
It’s became clear that to me a long time ago that even if Trump wanted to de-escalate tensions with China he has neither the temperament nor the control of his own administration to do so.
His response to the Fed’s shallow rate cut and policy statement was childish. Forcing down equity prices and creating chaos in the currency markets is not the work of a ‘stable genius.’ Then blaming China for what was a predictable market reaction to what he did was moronic.
If you raise tariffs and retard trade, the exchange rate between the two countries has to adjust. Period.
To then pile on three days later with the nonsensical and mostly symbolic designation of China as a currency manipulator is just sad.
And now this report about sanctions to stoke up more China hatred among Americans of all political persuasions, while honestly bad actors, both within his administration and abroad, are stoking up chaos. And this upcoming speech by Pence that Axios is talking about is a dead giveaway that they are not done yet.
The more I think about it the more Monday was some form of geopolitical coup attempt. The multiple annoyances coming from the Trump administration are one thing. But doing so at the same time the Indian government took the dramatic step to reorganize Kashmir/Jammu using the pretext of recent terrorism and the ongoing riots in Hong Kong to foment a color revolution there is irresponsible.
And that has the fingerprints of someone else.
Look around and you’ll see the level of chaos is rising rapidly but it all has one through-line. The post-WWII established order is, bluntly, freaking out about their inability to control the narratives and maintain control.
My working thesis at this point, and this is conjecture based on my intuitions, not journalism, is that the through-line here revolves around what can best be termed the British Deep State.
British oligarchy has deep roots in India, Israel, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. intelligence and diplomatic corps. It has deep animosity towards Russia, China and Iran, far deeper than the U.S. does.
This is policy that goes back more than one hundred and fifty years. The City of London is the primary domestic obstacle to Brexit.
Hong Kong is a key cog in the West’s ability to control China’s growth, so destabilizing it now makes sense. The Hong Kong dollar is pegged tightly to the U.S. dollar and the arbitrage trade between offshore and onshore yuan is the source of a lot of ‘tail wagging the dog’ in financial markets.
It makes even more sense if China’s new extradition law was aimed at bankers and prop traders guilty of currency manipulation of the offshore Yuan trade than it is about ‘human rights abuses.’
The key to color revolutions is that there is a nugget of animosity towards the government being protested. But someone is always ashamed of the government they live under, as any decent man should (to quote H.L. Mencken). But that nugget is then stoked into something ugly the minute there is a catalyst by outside actors for political and economic gains.
The extradition law is perfect for that.
And it seems to me that this ratcheting up of tensions world wide began the moment President Trump refused to go to war with Iran over shooting down that Global Hawk drone in June.
Because that war was handed to Trump on a silver platter. And he was supposed to react to it just like he reacted to past British intelligence operations in Syria; with bombs and sanctions.
Iran was in some way simply a stalking horse for the real target, China.
Why are we still talking about the Skripals when their story has been debunked completely? The Brits. Why are we still dealing with the aftermath of RussiaGate, an operation that began within British intelligence and coordinated with multiple U.S. departments and NGOs on behalf of Hillary Clinton to oust Donald Trump from power?
You know the answer to that.
And that feeds into what Matthew Ehret was saying the other day at Strategic Culture Foundation about what Trump’s role is in all of this. Ehret’s thesis is that the ‘special relationship’ between the U.S. and the U.K. is faltering, and good riddance.
I’m not sure I agree with that but I do agree that Trump is a wild card here.
It is Trump, in his blundering manner, that is making that happen because he isn’t, for all of his myriad faults, a “British asset.”
According to Ehret:
He [Trump] has reversed a regime change program active since 9/11. He has fought to put America into a cooperative position with Russia. He has undone decades of WTO/City of London free trade. He has called for rebuilding productive industries following through by reviving the protective tariff. To top it off, he has been at war with the British-directed deep state for over three years and survived. Now that [John] Bolton has been outed as an ally of Sir Darroch, there is an open acknowledgement that Trump is gearing up to replace the neocon traitor as we speak.
One can only hope that he’s right about this. Since Trump’s refusal to go to war in June, he has stepped up his attacks on China in ways that tell me Bolton isn’t done just yet and that Trump may not be fully under their control, but he’s also not anywhere close to a free actor.
For now we have to realize that what is happening here is beyond left or right, it’s beyond patriotism. And we should remain extremely vigilant about who are and who are not our friends. Because if you look at events closely you’ll see that those definitions you’ve been spoon-fed are dubious at best.
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- Air Force Set To Deploy Drone Killing Laser Weapon On Military Dune Buggies
Raytheon published a company press release last week that detailed how it “will deploy two prototype high energy laser weapon systems” to the Air Force for a 12-month in-field operation against enemy drones.
The $23 million contract for two of Raytheon’s High Energy Laser Weapons Systems (HELWS) will be used by the Air Force in an unknown warzone overseas, most likely Syria for about one year.
“What we really want to do is figure out how we can deploy these systems in an environment where our warfighters work and train every day,” said Evan Hunt, director of high energy laser and counter-UAS at Raytheon.
The HELWS uses directed energy weapon technology to take down drones instantly. The laser weapon is connected to Raytheon’s Multi-spectral Targeting System, for the most precise and cheapest cost per kill ratio of any system on the modern battlefield.
Both HELWS systems have been mounted onto Polaris MRZR all-terrain vehicles, which are diesel-powered and can endure almost any kind of terrain, will allow fast-moving special forces to defend against enemy quadcopters during covert operations.
“Every day, there’s another story about a rogue drone incident,” Stefan Baur, vice president of Raytheon Electronic Warfare Systems, told The Washington Post.
“These threats aren’t going away, and in many instances, shooting them with a high energy laser weapon system is the most effective and safest way to bring them down.”
The 10-kilowatt lasers allow special forces to combat drones without wasting ammunition, experts have said this is one of the best ways in eliminating remotely operated quadcopter drones operated by ISIS that are generally used for reconnaissance missions, but in some cases, are used as suicide drones against Western forces.
HELWS will also be effective against armed-drone swarms that have become a popular tactic by ISIS in the last five years.
“The fact that it’s a laser weapon allows you to put energy in target at the speed of light. It can be an instantaneous heating event,” said Michael Jirjis, who leads the Air Force’s directed energy experimentation projects, told The Post.
Jirjis said the test will be the first “operational field assessment” of HELWS.
He said this is the first Air Force deployment “for an operational field assessment of lasers for counter UAS and the first time we have the entire AF Enterprise intimately engaged across the acquisition community, test centers, operators, and headquarters.”
The Air Force’s modernization effort to combat small drones used by ISIS is due to recent aerial attacks by quadcopters on American forces.
“Our ground forces have not come under attack from enemy aircraft since the Korean War 65 years ago,” the Air Force said in a 2018 video presentation at an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
These small quadcopters are one of the most significant threats to US troops operating in the Middle East.
ISIS didn’t possess quadcopter technology ten years ago, as this is a rapidly evolving threat that has to be countered or could severely hinder American operations on modern battlefields across the Middle East and Africa.
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