- Women's March Organizer Calls For Jihad Against "Fascists Reigning In The White House"
Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,
The far-left and radical Islam have made strange bedfellows in recent years. You would think that they’d be completely in opposition to each other, given how different their values are, but the far-left is shockingly tolerant of radical Islam. They’ll rail against what they think is an injustice in their own society, like the patriarchy, the wage gap, or rape culture in the West (all of which are provably false). But they’ll turn a blind eye to radical Islam, which is an actual patriarchy that treats women like chattel, routinely executes gays, and punishes women when they’re raped.
No one embodies this cognitive dissonance more than Linda Sarsour. She was one of the lead organizers of the Women’s March earlier this year, and has since become a rising start among the left. But despite her progressive credentials, she also frequently expresses support for sharia law, and has been known to work with convicted terrorists.
She claims to be an advocate for peace, but some of her statements would suggest otherwise. Last weekend she gave a speech at the Islamic Society of North America Convention, and called for “jihad” against the Trump administration.
“I hope that we when we stand up to those who oppress our communities that Allah accepts from us that as a form of jihad. That we are struggling against tyrants and rulers not only abroad in the Middle East or in the other side of the world, but here in these United States of America where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House,” Sarsour said.
“Our number one and top priority is to protect and defend our community, it is not to assimilate and please any other people and authority,” she said. “Our obligation is to our young people, is to our women, to make sure our women are protected in our community.”
“Our top priority and even higher than all those other priorities is to please Allah and only Allah,” Sarsour declared.
You can see the speech for yourself below.
Sarsour is emblematic of a trend that we’re seeing on the left these days. They’re becoming attached at the hip with radical Islam, despite the fact that these ideologies don’t seem to have anything in common.
Though these belief systems are very different, they do have a common enemy. What the left and radical Islam share is a hatred for Western civilization and values (hence her call to refuse any form of assimilation). Perhaps they aren’t such strange bedfellows after all.
- It's Not Just Mexico – Mapping Border Disputes Worldwide
If territorial boundaries are not given by nature, they are usually drawn by humans and have most often evolved over decades of fighting and conflict.
As Statista’s Isabel von Kessel notes, since humans existed on earth, the soil they inhabited has been of huge importance to them and as long as boundaries exist, people have found themselves in dispute over them. Hence, territorial and even maritime boundaries are not necessarily static, they have shifted back and forth to all cardinal directions and likewise, existing countries have been wiped out from the map while new ones have been created.
When it comes to conflict on territory, most countries on the globe are currently involved in territorial disputes and surprisingly few are not. Therefore, this infographic gives an idea of the status quo on a world that still experiences a lot of disputes about territory…
You will find more statistics at Statista
While new conflicts have emerged though, some others have also been settled in recent years, such as the border disputes between Burkina Faso and Niger in 2013, India and Bangladesh in 2015 or Chile and Peru in 2014, to name just a few.
- The US Is Not "One Nation" – And It Never Was
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Patrick Buchanan is an informative and interesting writer. On foreign policy, especially, he's long been one of the most reasonable voices among high-level American pundits.
When it comes to cultural matters, however, Buchanan has long held to a peculiar and empirically questionable version of American history in which the United States was once a mono-culture in which everyone was once happily united by "a common religion," a "common language," and a "common culture."
Now, he's at it again with his most recent column in which he correctly points out that the United States is culturally fractured, and speculates as to whether or not Thomas Jefferson's call to "dissolve political bands" in the Declaration of Independence might be sound advice today.
Buchanan is correct in noting that the US is culturally divided today.
But, he appears to have a selective view of history when he contends there was a time when this was not so. If there ever was such a period, it's unclear as to when exactly it was.
Buchanan can't be referring to the mid-19th century when Northern states and Southern states were becoming increasingly hostile toward each other. Many of these differences flared up over slavery, but larger cultural differences were there too, exemplified by a divide between agrarian and industrialized culture, and the hierarchical South versus the more populist North. The result was a civil war that killed more than 2 percent of the population. It was a literal bloodbath.
Was that version of the United States culturally united?
Nor can Buchanan possibly be referring to the US of the so-called Gilded Age. After all, during this period, the US was flooded with immigrants from a wide variety of backgrounds,
Historian Jon Grinspan notes:
American life transformed more radically during the 19th century than it ever had before. Between the 1830s and 1900, America's population quintupled … at least 18 million immigrants arrived from Europe, more people than had lived in all of America in 1830.
This hardly led to a period of religious or linguistic unity.
Certainly Catholics of the 19th century in the United States — who were commonly denounced as being non-Christians by the majority Protestants — would be at a loss if asked to describe the way the United States was united by a common religion.
This alleged unity would be news to the Catholics whose schools were being closed by government edict — as happened in Oregon where the state government deliberately outlawed private schools in the hope of eradicating the Catholic education system. This unity was certainly absent for the Catholics who were victims in the Know-Nothing riots in Philadelphia in 1844.
The Mormons may have fared even worse, and fled to the wilds of Utah. Even there they couldn't avoid the iron fist of the federal government. When disagreements flared over polygamy and territorial representation, James Buchanan sent 2,500 troops to Utah in 1857 as part of a shooting war with Mormons to force them into better compliance with federal law.
Nor were the foreign languages of immigrants immediately stamped out as many imagine in their nostalgia. Well into the 20th century, German continued to be a widely-spoken language, with Americans of German descent demanding their own German-language schools and government documents printed in German. Many Germans actively sought to avoid cultural integration with others by demanding more taxpayer-funded German-language-only schools.
According to historian Willi Paul Adams:
[S]ome states mandated English as the exclusive language of instruction in the public schools, while Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1839 were first in allowing German as an official alternative, even requiring it on parental demand. Some public and many private parochial schools taught exclusively in German throughout many decades, mostly in rural areas.
Nor was the German lobby confined to these two states. The original Colorado constitution, for example, mandates that all new laws be distributed in German, Spanish, and English, so as to cater to speakers the three most common languages in the area.
According to the census bureau, there were more than two-million German-speaking foreign-born United States residents in 1920, which means more than 2 percent of the population was speaking German. If the same proportions held up today, there'd be more than six million foreign-born German speakers in the US. Moreover, Germans weren't even the largest foreign language group at the time. There were even more foreign-born speakers of "Slavic languages" including Russian, Czech, and Polish. Taken all together — out of a population of 100 million — there were more than ten million foreign-born Americans with a "mother tongue" other than English in 1920. It is likely that many of these people also knew and spoke English — some of the time. But the reality hardly paints a picture of linguistic and cultural unity as imagined by Buchanan.
And then, of course, there is the Spanish-speaking population. As noted above, the State of Colorado was tri-lingual from the day it became a state. And then there is New Mexico where Spanish speakers prior to statehood comprised at least half the state's population. Not surprisingly, the New Mexico constitution has always stipulated that the Spanish language enjoys special status, and that no citizen of the state may be denied any state services or rights based on being only able to speak Spanish.
Much of this linguistic diversity was a legacy of the Mexican War in which the US annexed vast territories that included many Spanish speakers. Generally forgotten today is the fact that the Mexican border was once located a mere 100 miles south of Denver along the Arkansas River. The special status granted Spanish in the 19th century in these regions was not a result of an influx of new immigrants. It was the result of a linguistic reality imposed on the population of the American Southwest by an American war of conquest.
We might also mention ongoing ethnic tensions caused by the war, such as those caused by the notorious Land Act of 1851 which robbed the Californios of their property. And then there were decades of anti-Mexican policies in southern Texas that disenfranchised the Spanish-speaking minority there. In some cases, this led to outright violent rebellion as with Juan Cortina and his guerrilla fighters.
So, is the cultural disunity in the United States something novel and unprecedented as Buchanan imagines? It's unlikely.
Any theory about unity in American history that just breezes over the American Civil War is questionable at best, and English is likely more widespread today than at any point in the last 150 years thanks to the dominance of American popular culture.
Nevertheless, Buchanan has a point.
There are very real divides in the US today, especially between the religious and the anti-religious, between the urban residents and suburbanites, and between leftists and conservatives. Recent data even suggests that communities are now segregating themselves along ideological lines.
So what is the answer?
As is so often the case, the answer simply lies in decentralization. As Buchanan seems to suggest, now may be the time to "dissolve the political bands which have connected" Californians with Texans and Vermonters with Indianans.
After all, as Buchanan notes, if unity were put up to a vote, would the confederation we call 'the United States" even survive?
Could the Constitution, as currently interpreted, win the approval of two-thirds of our citizens and three-fourth of our states, if it were not already the supreme law of the land? How would a national referendum on the Constitution turn out, when many Americans are already seeking a new constitutional convention?
The answers to these questions are not obviously "yes."
Buchanan also correctly points out that the US does not qualify as "a nation" – at least not according to the romantic definition he uses. Buchanan quotes the Frenchman Ernest Renan who identifies at least two criteria for status as a nation: "One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the heritage that we have jointly received."
Buchanan suggests this description no longer applies to the US. He's half right. It doesn't apply to the US today. But unless we studiously ignore and gloss over the enduring religious, linguistic, cultural, and ideological differences that have always existed, we must admit it never really applied to the United States at all.
- Artist's Impression Of Failed Socialist States
- Dead Mall Stalking: One Hedge Fund Manager’s Tour Across Middle-America – Part 2
Via AdventuresInCapitalism.com,
Malls are bearing the brunt of changes in retail, but they’re only the canary in the coal mine.
Let’s start with a simple premise; commercial real estate (CRE) will change more in the next decade than it has in the past hundred years. Anyone who thinks they can fully foresee how it will evolve is lying to you. The only certainty is that highly leveraged real estate investors and lenders will be obliterated as current models evolve faster than anticipated.
In the past, retail was retail, warehouse was warehouse and office was office—the same for all other CRE classes. There was some cross-over, but the main commercial real estate components stayed segmented for the most part. Now, with big box stores, the lowest hanging fruit for online shopping to knock off, going to dodo-land, there will be hundreds of millions of feet of well-located space suddenly becoming available. People act as if there are enough Ulta Beauty and Dick’s Sporting Goods to go around. However, you cannot fill all of this space with the few big box retail concepts still expanding—especially as many stalwarts are themselves shrinking.
As a result, a huge game of musical chairs is about to take place. Why pay $20/ft for mid-rise office space, if you can now move into an abandoned Sports Authority for $5/ft. Sure, it doesn’t come with windows, but employees like open plan space and there’s plenty of parking. Besides, with the rental savings, you can offer your staff an in-house fitness facility and cafeteria for free. Does your mega-church need a larger space? There’s probably a former Sears or Kmart that perfectly accommodates you at $3/ft. Have an assisted living facility with an expiring lease? Why not move it to an abandoned JC Penney—the geriatrics will feel right at home, as they’re the only ones still shopping there.
Go onto any real estate website and you will find out that huge plan space is nearly free. No one knows what the hell to do with it and the waves of bankruptcy in big box are just starting. As online evolves, these waves will engulf other segments of retail as well.
Type Macy’s into Loopnet.com and look at how many millions of feet of old Macy’s are available for under $10/ft to purchase. Retail’s problems are about to become everyone’s problems in CRE. When the old Macy’s rents for $2/ft, what happens to everyone else’s rents? EXACTLY!!! What happens if a CRE owner is leveraged at 60% (currently considered conservative) and leasing at $15/ft when the old HHGregg across the street is offered for rent at $3/ft? An office owner can lower his rents a few dollars, but at the new price deck, he cannot cover his interest cost, much less his other operating expenses. What happens to a suddenly emptying mid-rise office building? It has higher operating expenses than the box store due to full-time security and cleaning—maybe it’s a zero—in that future market rents no longer cover the operating expenses of the asset, much less offer a return on investment. I know, crazy—that’s how musical chairs works when demand contracts and the supply stays the same.
What happens to the guys who lent against these assets? Kaplooey!!!
America currently has more feet of retail space per capita than any other country. For that matter, America has more feet of office and other CRE types per capita as well. A decade of low interest rates has made this problem substantially worse. Think of the two malls that I spoke about in the last piece—they weren’t done in by the internet, they were done in by a tripling of retail space in a cities that are barely growing. These cities simply ran out of shoppers for all of this space. Now the mall is empty—heck the strip retail is only partly filled in. The next step is that rents will drop—dramatically. The owners of each asset, the mall and the strip center will go bust. Neither has a cap structure that is designed for dramatically lower rents. Neither has an org structure designed for carving up this space for the sorts of eclectic tenants that will eventually absorb it over the next few decades.
CRE has had it so good for the past 35 years, that most owners have never seen a down cycle. Sure, Dallas had too much supply in the early ‘90’s. Silicon Valley over-expanded in the early ‘00’s. It took a few years for it to be absorbed. Anyone who had capital during the bust made a fortune. This time may really be different. There’s too much supply. Short of blowing it up, it will be with us for years into the future. Without dramatic economic or population growth, some of it may NEVER be absorbed.
As an investor, this is all interesting to understand, but you don’t fully comprehend it until you have visited a few dozen of these facilities and seen how owners are trying to cope with the problem. In Miami, space is constricted. In Texas, there’s more CRE than I’ve ever seen. They keep putting it up—even if there isn’t demand currently. For three decades, they’ve always been able to fill it over time. For the first time ever, they can’t seem to fill it—in fact, demand is now declining. It is now obvious; there will be a whole lot of pain for CRE owners and lenders. Of course, someone’s pain can be someone’s gain.
To be continued…
- Rachel Maddow Caught In Latest Fake News Scandal; Proof Her "Forged NSA Document" Segment Was A Hoax
She thought she had it. The smoking gun that would prove someone in Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election. But, when a forged NSA document sent to Rachel Maddow turned out to be just more bad information from more anonymous sources, it left the crusading MSNBC host feeling a bit “triggered.” As such, she opened her show last night with the following segment:
“Somebody, for some reason, appears to be shopping a fairly convincing fake NSA document that purports to directly implicate somebody from the Trump campaign in working with the Russians in their attack in the election.”
“This is news, because: why is someone shopping a forged document of this kind to news organizations covering the Trump-Russia affair?”
Not surprisingly, Maddow uses the discovery to imply that someone within the Trump administration is intentionally planting fake information in an attempt to discredit her show. She goes on to imply that similar efforts may have caused the recent firing of 3 ‘journalists’ at CNN who simply couldn’t be bothered with verifying the anonymous tip they received.
Here are more details of Maddow’s show from the Daily Caller:
On June 7, an unidentified person sent documents to an online tip line for Maddow’s show, she said.
That was two days after The Intercept published legitimate NSA documents that were stolen by Reality Winner, a contractor for the agency.
And that’s where Maddow’s faux-outrage breaks down.
You see, if it’s clear that Maddow received her forgery after the intercept published their documents then there’s really no ‘there’ there. Pretty much anyone with an internet connection could have simply taken the Reality Winner documents from The Intercept website and used them create a forgery to send to Maddow.
Of course, Maddow knew that her whole story was bullshit unless she could convince her viewers that the forgery she received was created before The Intercept published it for the world to see. If she could prove that, then she could insist the forged document must have come from someone on the ‘inside.’
So, she decided to get ‘technical’ and take a look at the “metadata” on the document she received. As it turns out, the “creation date” on the document she received was roughly 3.5 hours before The Intercept published their Reality Winner story. See, it’s all laid out right here on this lovely timeline graphic. Checkmate, Mr. Trump!
Except, not. Ironically, by stretching the truth in an attempt to prove that her story was in any way relevant, Maddow unwittingly proved exactly the opposite.
As The Intercept has subsequently pointed out, the “creation date” on the document received by Maddow (see the timeline above) perfectly matches, to the exact second, the “creation date” on The Intercept’s Reality Winner document.
Why? Because that is the exact time in which The Intercept created their document and published it to their cloud server.
All of which simply proves that Maddow’s source didn’t have a sneak peak at the Reality Winner documents…they actually used The Intercept document as their source for creating their forgery.
Now, we could be wrong here…but, if the Trump administration wanted to dupe Rachel Maddow we suspect they could have gotten their hands on clean copies of the Reality Winner docs without having to lift them from The Intercept’s website.
So, what seems more likely to have happened here is that Maddow’s staff could easily tell the “NSA document” was a forgery from the start and simply ignored it at first. Afterall, she received the document on June 7th and is just now deciding to talk about it a month later? Unlikely.
But, when 3 journalists from CNN lost their jobs for publishing fake news, Maddow saw an opportunity to launch a whole new narrative attacking the Trump administration by alleging that they’re planting fake intelligence reports with the media. Never let a good crisis go to waste…as they say.
Edward Snowden summarized the situation the best in a series of tweets:
Maddow’s lawyerly defense of why her implication was wrong is disappointing. Such caution should come prior to raising alarm on national TV.
When the media’s credibility is under attack, rushing stories out before checking facts and contacting the subject is hard to comprehend.
That said, journalism is hard and mistakes happen. When they do, as in this Maddow case, apologies should be frank and unequivocal.
When we start getting economical with facts, we lose. This important story was mangled by needlessly injected an unsupportable conspiracy.
Each time the media gets a prominent story wrong right now, I wince. More than egg on a famous face, it risks a generation’s trust in news.
If our most famous journalists are so proud they can’t admit to what is now an obvious error, how can they hope to hold the public trust?
Most folks can’t read three different papers every day. If we don’t set the highest standard, many give up and say the truth is unknowable.
That is the twilight of an age.
When the media’s credibility is under attack, rushing stories out before checking facts and contacting the subject is hard to comprehend.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2017
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When we start getting economical with facts, we lose. This important story was mangled by needlessly injected an unsupportable conspiracy.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2017
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If our most famous journalists are so proud they can’t admit to what is now an obvious error, how can they hope to hold the public trust?
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2017
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That is the twilight of an age.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2017
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Still, we do feel badly for the liberal ‘journalists’ of the world…all the embarrassing fake news stories of late means that they may have to actually start doing their jobs rather than just blindly running stories from ‘anonymous sources.’
- How Google Rigs Search And Hurts Consumers
Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
I’m sure all of you heard about the $2.7 billion fine imposed by the EU on Google as a result of its anti-competitive behavior, but not many of you probably know exactly what the search giant did to earn it. To shine some light on the topic, let’s take a look at a few excerpts from a recent article written by Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer Gary Reback.
Below are some choice excerpts from the piece, You Should Be Outraged at Google’s Anti-Competitive Behavior:
Before 2007, if a user searched for a product on Google, other sites listing prices for that product would appear among the general search results, ranked in the order of their quality to users. These “comparison shopping sites” were designed to identify merchants with the lowest prices. The more accurate and comprehensive their results, the higher they were ranked and the more traffic they generated.
But the more successful that comparison shopping sites became, the more they threatened Google’s business plan. Google makes money by selling ads placed next to its free search results, and merchants could not be expected to bid for ad placement if the listings in comparison shopping sites on the same search undercut their prices.
To address this, Google developed a cunning plan, the first phase of which was documented in a report by the FTC. Portions of the report were published by the Wall Street Journal more than two years ago.
Quoting internal Google documents and emails, the report shows that the company created a list of rival comparison shopping sites that it would artificially lower in the general search results, even though tests showed that Google users “liked the quality of the [rival] sites” and gave negative feedback on the proposed changes.
Google reworked its search algorithm at least four times, the documents show, and altered its established rating criteria before the proposed changes received “slightly positive” user feedback. Internal Google documents predicted that the proposed changes would reduce rivals’ user traffic up to 20 percent and subsequently reported producing the desired results once the changes were implemented.
At the same time, Google started putting the results from its own comparison shopping service at the top of search results. After these changes, the only source of low-price information readily available on Google’s search platform came from Google’s own comparison shopping service, known at the time as Google Product Search, which listed the lowest prices for products in its database at no charge to merchants.
Google’s conduct certainly hurt its rivals, particularly after a second round of search-listing demotions documented by the European Union. Many companies have been forced to lay off all of their employees and even shut down operations.
In 2012, Google took the extraordinary step to kill Google Product Search, replacing it with Google Shopping. This new service did not display the lowest price (or even a low price) in the general search results; rather, it displayed ads at the top of the search results page in response to the user’s search term. The ads were carefully placed by Google’s algorithms to minimize price competition among merchants, by, for example, showing ads next to each other that featured different product models at different price points.
Google Shopping also permitted merchants to purchase ads on a separate shopping page. Merchants — no longer promoted in search results for having lower prices — now must pay for better placement. Not surprisingly, they have raised prices to cover these costs.
Google’s competitors argued in a study, which I submitted to the European Commission a few years ago, that the prices in Google Shopping ads for specified products on search results pages were among the highest in Google’s database. Google’s displayed prices for everyday products, such as watches, anti-wrinkle cream and wireless routers, were roughly 50 percent higher — sometimes more — than those on rival sites. A subsequent study by a consumer protection group found similar results. A study by the Financial Times also documented the higher prices.
The Post’s editorial board claimed that the online availability of large merchant sites might restrain Google’s power over consumers. But those sites haven’t stopped Google from executing its plan so far. There is no denying that Google eliminated services showing the lowest prices, free to merchants, and replaced them with high-priced ads.
Some people like to blame all of the world’s problems on government.
Others blame business for everything that ever goes wrong.
I don’t fall into either of these categories. I think the greatest threat to humanity, freedom and our overall happiness comes down to concentrations of power.
Too much concentration of power within business or government ultimately leads to tyranny and oppression, and the best solution is for all of us to fight against concentrations of power in all its manifestations. Personally, I think Google has far too much power in a service as important to modern life as search, and it seems executives there are doing what always happens with concentrated power — abusing their position.
- Canadians Brace For A "Perfect Storm" Brewing In Housing Market
We’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing Canada’s housing market over the past several months as Chinese money laundering operations have sprouted up bubbles all over the place. Here’s a modest sampling of our recent work:
- All Hell Breaks Loose In Toronto’s House Price Bubble
- Canada’s Housing Bubble Explodes As Its Biggest Alternative Mortgage Lender Crashes Most In History
- Canada Housing Regulator Warns Of “Strong Evidence Of Housing-Market Problems”
- The Toronto Housing Market Is About To Collapse By This Measure
But, as the Globe and Mail notes today, there could very well be a “perfect storm” brewing in several Canadian housing markets as the result of extreme pricing bubbles, over-indebted consumers, a major tightening of mortgage rules and the prospect of rising rates.
On the regulatory front, Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), is considering new rules that would require lenders to effectively “stress-test” borrowers to confirm they would be in compliance with credit metrics even if rates were to rise 200 bps. From a practical standpoint, such a move would immediately remove roughly 20% of the average Canadian’s home buying power.
Canada’s banking regulator (OSFI) is proposing that anyone who gets a mortgage at a bank or bank-funded lender prove they can afford a rate that is at least 200-basis-points higher than their actual rate.
A similar debt-ratio “stress test” is already in place for folks getting a default insured mortgage, as well as most variable-rate and short-term borrowers.
If OSFI’s change goes through as planned, otherwise credit-worthy borrowers would qualify for roughly 18 per cent less mortgage, other things equal. This one change would have more of an impact to mortgage shoppers than any Bank of Canada rate hike in history.
Of course, with mortgage rates at multi-decade lows, they likely only have one direction to go. Moreover, as rates rise, it will only serve to amplify the impacts of the proposed OSFI regulations noted above.
If you believe the Bank of Canada’s hints and bond market probabilities, there’s a real chance we’ll see higher floating rates as soon as next week’s rate meeting, or at its meeting in September. (Albeit, Thursday’s OSFI news could limit the BoC’s rate hike plans.)
As for fixed mortgage rates, they’ve already shot up on the back of a 50-basis-point surge in bond yields since June 6. RBC, Canada’s de facto leader in setting mortgage rates, hiked most of its advertised fixed rates by 20 basis points on Thursday morning. Most other lenders have done the same and it may be only the first of multiple moves.
All of which leads the Globe & Mail to ask ‘what should Canadian consumers do now?’
Well, luckily for our northern neighbors, we would point out that the U.S. had a similar housing bubble issue a few years back…here’s a hint on what you should do next…
- Dilbert Creator Suggests Novel Solution To The North Korea Situation
Via Dilber Creator Scott Adams' blog,
I have some spare time this morning so I thought I would solve the North Korean nuclear threat problem.
The current frame on how all sides are approaching the problem is a win-lose setup. Either North Korea wins – and develops nukes that can reach the mainland USA – or the United States wins, and North Korea abandons its nuclear plans, loses face, loses leverage, and loses security. Our current framing of the situation doesn’t have a path to success.
So how do you fix that situation?
First we must acknowledge that a win-lose model has no chance of success in this specific case because North Korea responds to threats by working harder to build nukes. That’s no good. You need some form of a win-win setup to make any kind of deal. That’s what I’m about to suggest. And by winning, I mean both sides get what they need, even if it isn’t exactly what they said they want.
What the U.S. wants is a nuclear-free North Korea. That would be our win.
What North Korea wants is an ironclad national defense, prestige, prosperity, and maybe even reunification of the Koreas on their terms. So let me describe a way to get there.
The main principle to keep in mind is that you can almost always reach a deal when two parties want different things.
If we frame the situation as North Korea wanting nuclear weapons, and the U.S. not wanting them to have those nukes, no deal can be reached. There is no way for North Korea to simultaneously have nukes while having no nukes.
So you need to reframe the situation. The following deal structure does that.
Proposed North Korean Peace Deal
China, Russia, and U.S. sign a military security agreement to protect
BOTH
North Korea and South Korea from attack
BY ANYONE
for 100 years, in return for North Korea suspending its ICBM and nuclear weapons programs and allowing inspectors to confirm they are sticking to the deal.
* * *
At the end of a hundred years, North Korea and South Korea agree to unify under one rule. No other details on how that happens will be in the agreement. North Korea will be free to tell its people that the Kim dynasty negotiated to be the rulers of the unified country in a hundred years. South Korea will be free to announce that unification is a goal with no details attached. We will all be dead in 100 years, so we can agree to anything today. (That’s the key to making this work – all players will be dead before the end of it.)
The U.S. withdraws military assets from South Korea.
South Korea and North Korea reduce their non-nuclear military assets that point at each other.
Over the course of the 100-year deal, there could be a number of confidence-building steps in the agreement. For example, in ten years you might have a robust tourist arrangement. In twenty years, perhaps you can do business across borders. In fifty years, perhaps a unified currency (by then digital).
A hundred years is plenty of time for the Kim family to make their fortunes and move to Switzerland, or wherever, before unification is an issue. The deal might require some sort of International amnesty agreement for any North Korean leaders looking to get out of the country before unification.
Under this proposed deal structure all sides get what they want.
North Korea’s leader can tell his people that their nuclear program was a big success because it resulted in the United States withdrawing forces, and it led to an eventual Korean unification on his terms. There is no opposition press in North Korea to dispute that framing. This looks like total victory to North Korea. That’s a win.
For the United States, a credible deal to get rid of North Korean nukes is a win. China and Russia would look like the adults in the room. They win too.
South Korea wins too, obviously.
And this deal would probably result in Nobel Peace Prizes for the leaders of all countries involved.
Students of history will recall that Great Britain agreed to lease Hong Kong from China for 99 years to avoid any risk of China taking Hong Kong militarily. The long lease period allowed both countries to agree to a deal that could not have been reached for a shorter time period. And it gave everyone time to plan for the peaceful transfer. No two situations are alike, but you can see how a hundred-year deal makes it easy to agree to difficult things today. We’ll all be dead before any of it matters. And if you work toward a common goal for a hundred years, the odds are good that it can happen. One way or another.
This is the sort of deal that would have been impossible in prior years. But the Trump administration understands the structure of dealmaking. This solution is available for the taking.
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