Month: May 2018

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

A prominent UN official warned earlier this week that the next Migrant Crisis to crash into Europe might come from Africa and not the Mideast, and that its second iteration might be much more devastating than the first due to the sheer size of possible populations involved.

The Executive Director of the UN World Food Program made global headlines a few days ago when he warned that terrorists might weaponize food scarcity in Africa in order to trigger a new Migrant Crisis in Europe, one which they hope to exploit in order to infiltrate the continent. These were David Beasley’s exact words to the UK Guardian:

“You are going to face a similar pattern of what took place years ago, except you are going to have more ISIS [Daesh] and extremist groups infiltrating migration. What we are picking up is that they are partnering with the extremist groups like Boko Haram and al-Qaeda to divvy up territory and resources and to continue to infiltrate and destabilize in the hope of creating migration into Europe where they can infiltrate and cause chaos.

If you [the Europeans] think you had a problem resulting from a nation of 20 million people like Syria because of destabilization and conflict resulting in migration, wait until the greater Sahel region of 500 million people is further destabilized. And this is where the European community and international community have got to wake up.”

Liberal-Globalists might salivate at what he said because they see it as an historic opportunity to socio-culturally re-engineer the essence of European society and fulfill their ideological objectives, while EuroRealist patriots might shudder because this scenario represents the end of traditional Western Civilization as the world knows it.

Helping For The Wrong Reasons

It’s still too early to say for certain that this dystopian vision of the future will materialize, but what’s for sure is that there are plenty of systemic risks in Western and Central Africa that make it very possible that something like this could happen in the coming years, though this potential eventuality could be offset by robust security measures in the Mediterranean and a forward-focused US-French-Italianmilitary presence in the region.  It should be cautioned, however, that while there’s a chance that these three countries and others might market the future expansion of their African footprint on this populist basis, there are also many ulterior reasons behind this move other than the publicly stated one, which includes of course securing access to energy deposits (such as Niger’s uranium), monopolizing new markets, and altogether “containing” China.

Sahelian Destabilization

Looking beyond the failed (former) “state” of Libya that NATO destroyed in 2011, there are several other crises waiting to happen in Africa and which could serve as the trigger for a Migrant Crisis 2.0 on the scale that Beasley warned. The first one isn’t country-specific but deals with the continent’s woes in general, and that’s the connected threats of food insecurity and explosive population growth threatening several strategic countries, the most fragile of which is Niger. This landlocked state is predicted by the UN to have the fastest population growth in the world and will grow from around 20 million people today to roughly 200 million by the end of the century if the current trajectory holds. On top of that, Niger also has one of the world’s largest uranium reserves and is unsurprisingly the site of several French bases and even a massive American drone base that’s being built in middle of the desert right now.

Niger is squeezed between Mali and Nigeria, both of which are experiencing profound terrorist destabilization at the moment from Al Qaeda- and Daesh-linked groups, the first of which grew out of a failed Tuareg separatist campaign in the aftermath of the NATO War on Libya while the second broke out shortly thereafter in the Lake Chad basin, and both continue as low-intensity conflicts to this day. The US and its new global partner France are coordinating their military activities across the broad swath of longitudinal space called the Sahel that stretches from the Senegalese Atlantic Ocean coast to the Sudanese Red Sea coast. Paris is leading the so-called G5 Sahel group of states in the western part of this region that are impacted by the Malian and/or Nigerian terrorist insurgencies, but the organization has yet to show any actual military effectiveness as France has struggled to “Lead From Behind” like the US is known for doing in these cases.

The “Arc Of Crisis” And “Chaos Belt”

This “Arc of Crisis” from Mali to Nigeria, which owes its origins to the NATO-led destruction of Libya, dangerously has the very real prospect of expanding into neighboring regions, to say nothing of coming together into an unprecedented “Chaos Belt” that would put Daesh’s 2014 “Syraq” campaign to shame. There are many large and poorly government (or in some cases, outright ungoverned) spaces in this transregional zone, with the most sparsely populated of them being fertile ground for quasi-states to flourish, whether “caliphates” or something else. Burkina Faso is already at risk of boiling over due to the Malian overspill, but this “domino effect” could spread into the neighboring region of Atlantic West Africa if the destabilization of that small landlocked state triggers a recurrence of violence in the northern Ivory Coast. This country is important because it’s part of the West African “quad” of interconnected coastal states together with Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, the latter two of which experienced vicious civil wars in the 1990s.

The regional security environment in some parts of Africa is such that unrest in one state could easily spill over into another, as was seen in Atlantic West Africa immediately after the Cold War as well as the highland nexus between East and Central Africa at that time too. The cascading civil wars in Rwanda and then immediately thereafter in Burundi produced what was called the “Great Lakes Refugee Crisis” and ultimately contributed to the two back-to-back Congo Civil Wars that altogether claimed the lives of over 5 million people through various means. Congo is once again on the brink of descending back into civil war, and the “destabilization” bridge between it and the “Arc of Crisis’” “Chaos Belt” that was described above is Nigerian-neighboring Cameroon and the Central African Republic that sits between them both. The first-mentioned is facing a multi-front Hybrid War against both Boko Haram and Anglophone separatists along the Nigerian border, while the latter is already embroiled in civil war.

Local vigilantes patrol communities in north east Nigeria to repel attacks by Boko Haram militants

Any serious intensification of the Boko Haram crisis in the Lake Chad region could push Cameroon over the edge and into collapse if the Anglophone separatists take advantage of this, possibly current with a Color Revolution succession crisis following the inevitable passing of elderly President Biya (which could be made all the worse if “Weapons of Mass Migration” continue streaming in from the Central African Republic). Although each nature of conflict across the “Chaos Belt” would differ from Islamist-driven violence in the west to its predominantly ethno-tribal counterpart along the eastern (Central African) edge of this zone, it’s possible to see the bigger picture of just how geographically broad the consequences of uncontrolled Hybrid War destabilization in Mali and the Lake Chad region can become if left unchecked, which isn’t even fully accounting for the unrest from the combination of growing food insecurity, explosive population growth, and dysfunctional resource export-dependent economies.

Poverty Inhibitors And NGO Facilitators

For as intimidating as these somewhat interlinked continental-wide security challenges may seem, both in general and definitely from the EuroRealist patriotic perspective of a native inhabitant wanting to avoid the dystopian Migrant Crisis 2.0 scenario that the Executive Director of the UN World Food Program outlined earlier this week, the cynical argument can be made that they won’t automatically (key word) lead to a massive outflow of millions upon millions of people up north simply because most of these victimized masses are much too poor to pay the smuggling fees that comparatively better-off Syrians were able to afford. The Sahara is so dangerous to cross that these people can’t do so without expert assistance, and while some are still paying to get across in the present day, these are probably the relatively “wealthier” members of society who can afford these costs (which might be footed by their families) and not the average impoverished citizen.

That shouldn’t however be taken to infer that a Liberal-Globalist “workaround” can’t be created in promoting “equal opportunity migration for all” through the Soros-led NGO network modelled off of the existing operations that are ongoing in helping illegal immigrants cross the Mediterranean as well as their Mexican counterparts involved in the so-called “caravan”. These organizations could either directly aid in Saharan crossings or contribute to subsidizing the journey at “discounted prices” in paying off professional smugglers. Either way, they’ll probably play a role in this process or at least attempt to, with the key variable being whether their homelands’ militaries deployed in the region will facilitate this or not. There could also be an interesting (and choreographed) interplay between these two actors whereby an increase in Western NGO smuggling activity is exploited to justify further military measures in Africa or vice-versa, with each of them “feeding” off of the other to result in more Western influence in the area in general.

Concluding Thoughts

When the Executive Director of the UN World Food Program spoke about the nightmare scenario of a Migrant Crisis 2.0 from Africa slamming into Europe’s shores in the coming years, this food-focused technocrat could hardly have known how geopolitically ominous his prediction was given the multitude of interconnected security challenges stretching across West and Central Africa. Close to 500 million people – or put another way, half a billion, which is approximately the size of the EU – could indeed be simultaneously pushed out of their homes by the consequences of state collapse and also be pulled into Europe by NGO facilitation, but the reality is that not every single one of those people will be able to afford the journey.

Even if a “only” quarter of them flee, which is roughly equal to the percentage that left Syria, that’s still more than 125 million people (the combined population of France and Italy), many of whom will probably succeed in at least making it to Africa’s Mediterranean shoreline. The forward deployment of Western military forces in the region, whether publicly marketed to be on an anti-migration basis or otherwise, can only do so much to stem the tide, and a comprehensive policy involving Mediterranean naval units will have to be fully coordinated with the “frontline states” of Spain, France, Italy, Malta, and Greece if Europe is to stave off this civilizational onslaught. In addition, this state of affairs will expectedly be exploited by the Brussels bureaucracy for its own “integrational” advantage.

At this moment, it’s difficult to imagine how else the EU can survive amidst this towering threat, but the bloc’s possible reform into a “decentralized” collection of “Three Seas”-led EuroRealist states might present an alternate solution. Some degree of multilateral coordination is required to confront this existential challenge, but everything could be managed through new sub-regional integrational platforms (even if informal) instead of Brussels, with a future “European military” comprised of the maritime “frontline states’” forces and their hinterland allies (such as Poland and Hungary) taking the lead instead of NATO, though this might in effect end up being the same thing at the end of the day. Nevertheless, the accent is on retaining as much national sovereignty as possible and thwarting the Liberal-Globalists’ plot to take advantage of this situation in order to demolish the nation-state.

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Theresa May could be entirely correct. Britain’s real estate market is severely dysfunctional and needs to be reformed. Homeownership for millennials has collapsed over the past three decades; the investigation reveals that millennials are facing a housing crisis from London to Manchester.

The homeownership rate for millennials aged 25- to 34-year-old has nearly halved in some regions of Britain, showing that the housing affordability crisis extends far beyond the boundaries of London.

According to The Guardian, the report was conducted over a two-year investigation of “intergenerational fairness in Britain,” supervised by think tank Resolution Foundation and directed by former universities minister David Willetts. The team discovered that overpriced homes in Britain had forced millennials into “increasingly cramped and expensive rented properties that leave them with a longer commute and little chance of saving for a home.”

The figures below show how a collapsing homeownership rate for millennials is much more widespread than thought:

“Ownership among 25- to 34-year-olds has plummeted in Greater Manchester from 53% in 1984 to 26% last year. It has fallen from 54% to 25% in south Yorkshire, from 45% to 20% in the West Midlands, from 50% to 28% in Wales and from 55% to 27% in the south-east. In outer London, the proportion has collapsed from 53% to just 16%. Out of 22 regions analysed by the commission, in only one – Strathclyde in Scotland – has home ownership among the young remained stable. It stood at 32% in 1984 and 33% last year, having peaked at 45% in 2002.”

Shockingly, with today’s sub-par economic growth conditions in the region, millennials are expected to be at the same level of homeownership as the previous generation by the age of 45. The Guardian notes that inheritances could speed up the home buying process, but added that “nearly half of young non-homeowners have parents who do not own either.”

Nearly two-fifths of millennials rent by the age of 30, double the rate for Generation X, and almost four times the rate for baby boomers. It was estimated that millennials spend roughly a quarter of their net income on housing, which is three times more than the pre-war generation.

The Guardian explains how millennials are facing smaller living spaces with longer commutes to their jobs.

“Their living space is also declining. Each person living in the private rented sector now has on average eight square metres less space than they did in 1996. Meanwhile, those who own their own homes enjoy an extra four square metres each. Since younger households are more likely to be private renters than owners, they now have less space on average per household member. Just under one in 10 households headed by millennials in their late 20s now live in overcrowded conditions.

They are facing longer commutes than older generations endured. If current differences continue, millennials will spend almost three full days more commuting in the year they turn 40 than the baby boomers did at the same age.”

Based on existing trends from 2002 to 2012, about half of the oldest millennials would own a home by the age of 45, compared to more than 70 percent of baby boomers at that age.

Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation, said: “The need to renew our intergenerational contract is clear and urgent, but doing so is far from easy. It requires new thinking and tough trade-offs – from how we deal with the fiscal pressures of an aging society in a way that is generationally fair, to how we deliver the housing young people need while respecting the communities everyone values.”

“We need our political leaders to rise to this challenge with an appeal to all generations. We can deliver the health and care older generations deserve without simply asking younger workers to bear all the costs. We can do more to promote education and skills, especially for those who are not on the university route.

We can provide more security for young people, from the jobs they do to the homes they rent. And we can show younger generations that owning a home is a reality, not a distant prospect in 21st-century Britain.”

At the current rate, a majority of millennials in Britain might not be able to afford a home in their lifetime. While this is nothing new, the homeownership rate has been declining for the past 30-years, at what point will the millennials revolt against government and demand inter-generational fairness?

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Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Steemit.com,

“Fuck You, Actually!”

For months leftist analysts have been warning that the increasingly hysterical anti-Russia narratives being aggressively promoted by the western media would eventually be used to target the political left. Those warnings went largely unheeded in the United States where the Russiagate narrative was being ostensibly used to undermine the Trump administration, and the McCarthyite feeding frenzies which have become normalized for American audiences have now metastasized across the pond to the UK.

As a result, the Poms have now quickly found themselves in a political environment where anyone who remembers the Blair government’s lies about Iraq is smeared as a “useful idiot”, a private British citizen can be falsely labeled a Kremlin bot by a mainstream publication without retraction or apology, and a BBC reporter can admonish a veteran military analyst for giving a truthful analysis about the alleged Douma chemical attacks on the grounds that it could hurt the “information war” against Russia.

And now, in what is undeniably a whole new level of Russophobic shrillness, Russia is being blamed for the gains made last year by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.

According to a tweet, The Sunday Times‘ headline read, in all seriousness, “Exposed: Russians tried to swing election for Corbyn”. According to the text in the tweet, the Times has allegedly found evidence that Russian bots have been retweeting publicly available posts supporting Labour and criticizing the Tories. Not creating fake news, not even circulating articles from RT or Sputnik, but retweeting conventional, publicly available political commentary.

This would be the same publisher, by the way, whose expertise on Russian Twitter “disinformation” recently led to a false allegation against an antiwar Finnish grandmother in an article about Kremlin trolls.

The Sunday Times front page featured Corbyn against a red background in very much the same way the BBC superimposed his image in Soviet-looking garb against a red-colored Kremlin skyline last month, with a red Twitter logo plainly intended to evoke Cold War memories of the USSR flag. They’re intentionally calling up old, generational fears of communists to smear a leftist politician as a Kremlin tool. It’s about as subtle as a kick in the throat.

Hey, Sunday Times? How about fuck you, actually? Fuck your brazen attempt to keep the British people from reclaiming what is being stolen from them by an increasingly corporatist neoliberal government. Fuck your shameless “information war” which places the agendas of plutocrats and intelligence agencies above truth and honest discourse. Fuck your relentless propaganda campaign which smears anyone who remembers the lies they were told about Vietnam, Iraq and Libya as a “useful idiot” and arbitrarily labels any discussion of the very real phenomenon of false flag attacks as a “Kremlin talking point”.

This is as fascinating as it is infuriating.

By attacking literally anything which poses an obstacle to the loose alliance of western plutocrats and secretive government agencies, the social engineers who are fueling this Russia hysteria are actually closer than ever before to openly admitting that the west is truly ruled by those plutocrats and agencies.

They are now this close to saying “Russia is our enemy because it stands in opposition to the corporatist Orwellian oligarchy which is your real government.”

This is a really extraordinary time to be alive. The nationless power establishment which looked completely unshakeable a matter of months ago is now flipping out like a meth addict whose stash just got stolen and publicly overextending itself in an amazingly conspicuous way. The mechanics of western imperialism and the deceitful nature of the mass media propaganda machine which holds it all together have never been as exposed as they are today.

Keep pushing against the machine, clear-eyed rebels. Truth is winning. Truth will prevail. The bastards are about to fall.

*  *  *

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In many countries, the institution of marriage is losing its importance.

As Statista’s Martin Armstrong points out, one indicator of this is demonstrated in the below infographic showing Eurostat data on the share of live births outside of marriage in EU countries.

You will find more infographics at Statista

France is at the top with a majority of babies born out of wedlock – 60 percent.

On the other end of the scale, Greece has the lowest rate, where nine out of ten children were born to parents that were already married.

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The New York Times has obtained a list of four-dozen questions that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would like President Trump to answer, after Mueller’s office delivered the questions to Trump’s attorneys (however the Times notes that their source is not someone on Trump’s legal team).

Mueller has sought to question Trump for months over his business dealings, his relationships, and his communications with former staffers who have become embroiled in the probe. Trump, meanwhile, has at times expressed a desire to be interviewed by Mueller in the hopes of ending the investigation more quickly. The President’s lawyers eventually negotiated for Mueller to present a list of questions, which can be read below. 

Mr. Trump’s lawyers gave Mr. Mueller several pages of written explanations about the president’s role in the matters the special counsel is investigating. Concerned about putting the president in legal jeopardy, his lead lawyer, John Dowd, was trying to convince Mr. Mueller he did not need to interview Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Mueller was apparently unsatisfied. He told Mr. Dowd in early March that he needed to question the president directly to determine whether he had criminal intent when he fired Mr. Comey, the people said.

But Mr. Dowd held firm, and investigators for Mr. Mueller agreed days later to share during a meeting with Mr. Dowd the questions they wanted to ask Mr. Trump. –NYT

Here are the questions Mueller wants to ask Trump: https://t.co/SlQ3LloALL pic.twitter.com/rLMYTmRJZ7

— Amy Fiscus (@amyfiscus) May 1, 2018

Several questions focus on communications between Trump or members of his staff and Russia, while others focus on the infamous Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, which was organized by Fusion GPS associate Rob Goldstone. 

Further questions pertain to:

• Russian hacking during the 2016 election

• Why Trump praised Wikileaks during the election and called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails 

• Questions about Jeff Sessions, Michael Cohen, Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus and others

• Trump’s decisions to fire his former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn as well as former FBI Director James Comey

Trump’s explanation for why he fired each individual has appeared to change at times, stoking speculation that the president may have obstructed justice.

In a similar vein, Mueller planned to inquire about Trump’s reported efforts to fire the special counsel.

“What discussions did you have regarding terminating the special counsel, and what did you do when that consideration was reported in January 2018?” the question states, according to The Times.

Trump reportedly sought to fire Mueller on two occasions, but was talked out of it in both instances. –The Hill

Read the New York Times‘ analysis of the questions below:

 

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Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

US-Russia enmity is here to stay. Cold War II is a fact of life for the foreseeable future. The only questions are where, when, and how it might turn hot. That didn’t happen in Syria this past Friday the Thirteenth, for reasons yet to be explained. But the danger is by no means gone.

Rather, the threat of a major war will continue to intensify as President Donald Trump continues to stack his team with GOP retards who diametrically oppose his oft-repeated desire to improve ties with Moscow. Whether or not his desire is genuine is irrelevant. With each new appointment to the National Security Council and the State Department the Russophobic critical mass grows.

Personnel is policy. The door to rapprochement is being nailed ever more firmly shut

“FISAgate” and the Christopher Steele “dirty dossier,” on top of bogus claims of Russian election meddling, have done their job. It would be remiss not to mention the major role played by British special services. The dossier itself, authored by a “retired” MI6 agent. The British diplomat (or another spook?) who passed it on to a top GOP Trump critic, and thence to then-FBI Director James Comey. The likelihood that GCHQ spied on Trump and his team. The Salisbury chemical provocation. The Douma chemical provocation.

Never forget that however culpable the likes of Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan, and others are, they had a lot of help from their “Five Eyes” pals abroad.

There was foreign interference, alright, in what we still quaintly call “our democracy.” But it was British, not Russian.

The fact that the House Intelligence Committee wrapped up its investigation having found no evidence of Russian collusion makes no difference. Neither does the fact that Robert Mueller’s probe won’t turn up any evidence either, since it doesn’t exist. If Mueller nails Trump – and he well might – it won’t be because of anything to do with Russia, it will be a “process crime” like perjury or obstruction trumped up during the investigation (cf., Flynn, Papadopoulos) or related to something in Trump’s business and personal life (a supposed election law violation for a payoff to Stormy Daniels, corners cut in a sharp-elbowed New York real estate deal).

Again, the specifics hardly matter. If Trump’s head rolls, the new President Mike Pence – Vice President Nikki Haley Administration will be even more anti-Russian. To quote America’s schoolmarmish Metternich of Turtle Bay: “Russia will never be our friend, we’ll slap them when needed.” Surely Russia would never be crazy enough to slap back!

For Republicans, the factual vacuum at the heart of “Russiagate” only means that the narrative of Trump’s canoodling with the Kremlin just flips on a partisan basis to a Democratic conspiracy. The DNC paid Steele for Russian dirt! Hillary gave Putin our stocks of fissile material under the Uranium One deal! The variable (Democrat vs. Republican) changes, the constant (Russia is bad) doesn’t. GOP NeverTrumpers and Trump supporters alike smugly chortle that “Mitt Romney was right” when Barack Obama mocked him for suggesting in 2012 that Russia was America’s greatest geopolitical foe. (Note that putting “Mitt Romney” and “was right” in the same sentence violates basic grammar of the English language.)

To say that Russia is an adversary for “geopolitical” reasons is obvious to many people whose views matter in Washington. Russia is the closest approximation of the “Heartland” of Halford Mackinder’s “World Island”: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World.” The United States is master of Mackiner’s “Outlying Islands” (Western Hemisphere and Australia) and “Offshore Islands” (British Isles and the Pacific “First Island Chain”).

So there you have it! According the expert graduates of geopolitical Mackinder-garten, Washington must confront Moscow over every square inch of Eastern Europe and the Middle East! Otherwise the Russians will consolidate the “Heartland” – and then it’s curtains for America! Never mind the Mexican border, our frontline “self-defense” really lies in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and on Russia’s Baltic and Black Sea littoral. (Ditto US naval dominance in the South China Sea and East China Sea.) Anything less than perpetual, full-spectrum, unipolar global domination by Washington would be a dereliction of duty!

Of course we shouldn’t overlook the fact that perpetual war (or at least perpetual projection of power to the far corners of the earth at the risk of war) is a breathtakingly profitable business – “doing well by doing good.” If Russia (and China) didn’t exist our mandarin class would have to invent them.

At least, we are told, that unlike the first Cold War this second one is not about ideology, like the struggled between “capitalism” (use of the term itself was a bow to anarcho–socialist vocabulary) and communism. As summarized by Susan B. Glasser of Politico:

‘…the new Cold War is not like the original Cold War because it lacks an ideological dimension. … the current tension between the United States and Russia is a Seinfeldian fight about nothing: Putin has no ideological goal beyond the elevation of the Russian state, ruled by him and his clan; he is not seeking adherents in the West, and therefore has brought about no great contest between two systems. … After all, Putin does not preach worldwide revolution, which was a key doctrinal element of Soviet communism.’

Ah, but the new Cold War is ideological but with two critical differences from the old one.

First, in the original Cold War the ruling cliques in Washington and Moscow basically believed in the same ideology. While ordinary Americans thought about communism as a murderous, godless machine of oppression (think of the Knights of Columbus’ campaign to insert “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance), many if not most of the irreligious intellectuals making policy firmly believed that material progress, in a mildly socialist form, was the duty of government – it was only the communists’ methods they found objectionable. As described by Professor Daniel J. Mahoney of Assumption College:

‘So many intellectuals were disarmed before the challenge of communism and could not see it for the radical evil that it was. For many, it was simply a more brutal means for achieving the desired ends of industrial modernity and social equality—“the New Deal in a hurry,” in Harry Hopkins’s notorious formulation. That explains in part the divide between ordinary Americans, who … hated communism for its atheism as well as for its brutality, and elite opinion, which tended toward anti-anti-communism and refused to believe in the guilt of one of its own.’

Second, while Glasser is right that “Putin does not preach worldwide revolution,” western governments do. Just as members of the old Soviet nomenklatura depended on Marxism-Leninism both as a working methodology and as a justification for their prerogatives and privileges, denizens of the entrenched duopoly of Democrat liberal interventionists and Republican neoconservatives rely upon an ideological imperative of “democracy promotion” for global empire and endless wars.

Perhaps the fullest expression of this was from a 1996 article by neoconservative ideologists William Kristol and Robert Kagan, misleadingly titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” in which they called for the US to establish and maintain indefinitely “benevolent global hegemony” – American world domination. As scrutinized by this analyst the following year, Kristol and Kagan laid down virtually all of the elements that have guided US foreign policy and its media aspect during the ensuing years. It is no accident that these same GOP neoconservatives were enthusiastic supporters of Bill Clinton’s Balkan interventions of 1990s, under the guidance of people like then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who once opined regarding the sanctions-related deaths of a half million Iraqi children that “the price is worth it.” In the US establishment, there is little dissent on either side of the partisan aisle with Albright’s sincere conviction that a militant United States has a special wisdom: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future…”

So if some country doesn’t agree with the “indispensable” opinion of officials in Washington, they should prepare at least to get sanctioned, if not bombed, occupied, targeted by terrorists, or set up for a “color revolution” regime change, with the media cheering it on. Hence the succession of humanitarian, therapeutic wars of aggression in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, plus regime change operations in many, many other places.

After all, extremism is no vice in eliminating opposition to the inexorable forward march of “liberal democracy” against its benighted opponents: nationalists, neo-fascists, xenophobes, racists, anti-Semites, champions of neo-Marxism, protectionists, forces of illiberalism, conspiracy-mongers, fringe websites that spread “fake news,” and other insects of their ilk. [From the “Renew Democracy Manifesto,” paragraph 8. Somehow it’s a bit reminiscent of another famous “Manifesto”…]

It’s easy to see why a revived, national, non-communist Russia is the main enemy for the ideologists of this faux “America.” The promise of putting America first, which is why the real America elected Donald Trump, terrified them.

Unfortunately, the ersatz America has taken firm hold of the key levers of power. Worse, Trump handed those levers to them.

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A new employment tax proposed by the Seattle City Council would charge roughly $500 per employee based in the city. And though it would only apply to the city’s largest companies, many of them are complaining to the press – some with good reason – about how the tax would discourage employment and ultimately damage the city’s economy.

The tax would only apply to businesses earning $20 million in revenue within the city limits – a group that includes roughly 585 companies, about 3% of the total number operating in the city, according to CNNMoney.

Businesses would be required to pay 26 cents per man hour per employee worked within the city limits, excluding vacation pay and sick time.

To what we imagine would be the delight of the Trump administration, Amazon would bear the brunt of the new tax. The e-commerce giant would be forced to contribute some $20 million annually on behalf of its nearly 45,000 employees in Seattle. Of course, Amazon will have a difficult time arguing that it can’t afford the tax after it smashed expectations in its latest quarterly earnings report. And with the city facing an unemployment rate of 3.8%, even lower than the nationwide rate of 4.1%.

The city says it would use the money to build affordable housing and also provide emergency shelter services to at-risk and homeless individuals.

But Amazon told CNNMoney that it has a better plan to help the homeless.

Amazon, which declined to comment on the proposal, notes that it already contributes economically in many ways to Seattle. For example, it will provide a permanent location for a shelter in one of its new office buildings by 2020. It would be run by the nonprofit Mary’s Place, which already had temporary use of two vacant Amazon buildings to shelter the homeless since 2016.

Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment.

Prosperous big businesses can in turn generate a lot of economic activity and revenue for their host city. And they may donate goods, services or money to critical social causes.

But the co-sponsors of the bill note that a major cause of homelessness is the higher cost of housing that results when more workers move to a city for jobs that pay more than long-time residents have been earning. And the demand to build affordable housing doesn’t keep pace.

But city council members have apparently been ignoring pleas from Safeway, which operates 21 grocery stores in the city. The company said that if the tax is passed, it will be faced with a dilemma: Either raise prices or consider closing stores, according to Q13 Fox.

The tax would threaten stores that are in many cases the only resources in under-served neighborhoods – something that would turn those neighborhoods into food deserts.

It’s been billed as a tax on the rich, only levied on business with revenue of $20 million or more annually. But Safeway contends that the tax would end up hurting the city’s poorest families.

Currently, there are 19 Safeway stores and two Alberstons in the Seattle city limits. Albertsons is the parent company of Safeway.

In two communities, Rainier Beach and Othello, it is the only mainstream store in the area.

Chelle Jackson, the store director at the Safeway in Rainier Beach, told Fox that her store would likely be forced to close if the tax doesn’t spare grocery stores.

“I grew up about five blocks up the street from here,” said Jackson. “It’s the only store that’s survived the generations around here.”

[…]

“It’s not about our company being in bad shape, it’s about losing stores in communities in Seattle who need them,” said Osborne.

The problem is that while Safeway stores earn more than $20 million a year, their margins are razor-thin, so the tax would have a disproportionate impact.

On paper, Osborne confirms Safeway’s Seattle stores bring more than over $20 million in revenue each year. But after expenses, Safeway says its Seattle locations end up with a small profit.

“The margins grocers operate within, they’re very, very small, almost razor thin,” said Osborne.

If grocers aren’t exempted, and Safeway decides not to close stores, Osborne said the other option Safeway has is to raise prices. Jackson said that would be devastating to her customers.

“It would mean they couldn’t get all the things they want on their shopping list, or they would have to cut back, and it might mean that kids don’t get to take lunch to school,” said Jackson.

Safeway has offered to let the city council review its stores’ financials, but apparently the offer hasn’t been accepted.

Safeway said if the council wants proof, they’ll gladly share their slim margins behind closed doors.

“We’re happy to share those numbers so the council members can see how close we are in some communities to it not being worthwhile in some communities to operate,” said Osborne. “We want them to believe us.”

Safeway wants to make it clear they believe building affordable housing and addressing the homeless crisis is an important cause they support, but in their opinion this tax isn’t the way to go.

“What we’re trying to point out is that we are addressing an affordability crisis, but we can’t address that by making food less affordable,” said Osborne.

Of course, many alternatives to the progressive employment tax have been offered by firms who (correctly) point out that the city council’s plan would do little to improve housing affordability and instead lead to a range of adverse consequences for workers and companies. Firms could be forced to cut pay or raise prices, which would hurt Seattle residents among every rung of the economic spectrum.

But then again, this is the same legislative body that crushed the poor and minority workers in particular by adopting a $15 minimum wage in the city.

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Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing.

Played out on the national stage and eagerly broadcast to a captive audience by media sponsors, this farcical exercise in political theater can, at times, seem riveting, life-changing and suspenseful, even for those who know better. 

Week after week, the script changes—Donald Trump’s Tweets, Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, Michael Cohen’s legal troubles, porn star Stormy Daniels’ lawsuit over an alleged past affair with Trump, Michelle Wolf’s tasteless stand-up routine at the White House correspondents’ dinner, North and South Korea’s détente, the ongoing staff shakeups within the Trump administration—with each new script following on the heels of the last, never any let-up, never any relief from the constant melodrama.

The players come and go, the protagonists and antagonists trade places, and the audience members are forgiving to a fault, quick to forget past mistakes and move on to the next spectacle. 

All the while, a different kind of drama is unfolding in the dark backstage, hidden from view by the heavy curtain, the elaborate stage sets, colored lights and parading actors.

Such that it is, the realm of political theater with all of its drama, vitriol and scripted theatrics is what passes for “transparent” government today, with elected officials, entrusted to act in the best interests of their constituents, routinely performing for their audiences and playing up to the cameras, while doing very little to move the country forward.

Yet behind the footlights, those who really run the show are putting into place policies which erode our freedoms and undermine our attempts at contributing to the workings of our government, leaving us none the wiser and bereft of any opportunity to voice our discontent or engage in any kind of discourse until it’s too late.

None of the dangers posed by the government and its henchmen have dissipated.

They have merely disappeared from our televised news streams.

In the interest of liberty and truth, here’s an A-to-Z primer to spell out the grim realities of life in the American Police State that no one is talking about anymore.

A is for the AMERICAN POLICE STATE. A police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

B is for our battered BILL OF RIGHTS.

C is for CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE, which allows government agents to seize and keep private property whether or not any crime has actually taken place.

D is for DRONES equipped with lasers, tasers and scanning devices, all aimed at “we the people.”

E is for ELECTRONIC CONCENTRATION CAMP, a.k.a., the surveillance state.

F is for FUSION CENTERS that serve as a clearinghouse for information shared between state, local and federal agencies.

G is for GRENADE LAUNCHERS, part of the more than $18 billion worth of battlefield-appropriate military weapons, vehicles and equipment distributed to domestic police departments across the country.

H is for HOLLOW-POINT BULLETS, which have been stockpiled by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

I is for the INTERNET OF THINGS, a “connected” industry that propels us closer to a future where a person’s biometrics can be used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.

J is for JAILING FOR PROFIT, a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep their privately run prisons full by jailing large numbers of Americans for inane crimes.

K is for KENTUCKY V. KING, a Supreme Court ruling that gives police the green light to break into homes, without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home as long as they think they have a reason to do so.

L is for LICENSE PLATE READERS, which enable law enforcement and private agencies to track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their occupants, all across the country.

M is for MAIN CORE, a database of names and information to be used by the government in times of national emergency or under martial law to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security.

N is for NO-KNOCK RAIDS, of which more than 80,000 are carried out every year.

O is for OVERCRIMINALIZATION, which renders every American a criminal.

P is for PATHOCRACY: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.”

Q is for QUALIFIED IMMUNITY, which allows officers to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing.

R is for ROADSIDE STRIP SEARCHES and BLOOD DRAWS.

S is for the SURVEILLANCE STATE.

T is for TASERS, which have been used by police as weapons of compliance more often and with less restraint—even against women and children—and in some instances, even causing death. 

U is for UNARMED CITIZENS SHOT BY POLICE.

V is for VIPR SQUADS, which carry out “soft target” security inspections whenever and wherever the government deems appropriate, at random times and places, and without needing the justification of a particular threat.

W is for WHOLE-BODY SCANNERS, which are being used not only to “see” through your clothes but to spy on you within the privacy of your home.

X is for X-KEYSCORE, one of the many spying programs carried out by the National Security Agency that targets every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone.

Y is for YOU-NESS. Facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. 

Z is for ZERO TOLERANCE in which young people are increasingly viewed as suspects and treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike, often for engaging in little more than childish behavior.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the reality we must come to terms with is that in the post-9/11 America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age.

You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Or the American police state.

Whatever label you want to put on it, the end result is the same: tyranny.

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Following the imposition of taxes on foreign investors and empty houses, Vancouver real estate has lost its crown as the craziest housing market in Canada – ceding its position to the resort town of Whistler – around two hours north.

Benchmark property prices in Whistler have surpassed Vancouver for the first time – with the average townhouse in Whistler selling for C$1 million vs. Vancouver’s C$835,000, and detached homes selling for a premium of 4% over Vancouver’s at C$1.67 million. The housing crunch in Whistler is so bad that businesses have taken to buying multi-million-dollar properties to house employees who can’t otherwise afford to live in the popular vacation destination.

“It’s an absolute gong show,” said Russell Kling, a former hedge fund manager turned developer, whose Pangea Pod Hotel is set to open this summer aimed at delivering more affordable tourist accommodation. Whistler was the most expensive place in Canada to spend New Year’s Eve — C$745 for a double room compared to C$414 in second-place Quebec City.

“People told us, ‘Your biggest issue will be accommodation — if your staff can’t find accommodation, it doesn’t matter how much you pay them,’” recounts Kling, whose co-founder is his wife, Jelena. “So we took that risk off the table and purchased a home.”

The seven-bedroom residence cost “close to a couple million dollars” and will house the hotel’s general manager and a handful of key employees. The Klings even looked at buying a second staff property. “But so much of this stuff now — forget about buying, I wouldn’t want to put my worst enemy there,” he said. –Bloomberg

While the explosion in real estate prices is mind-boggling already, the rental market is even crazier – with one recent listing for two girls to share a double room (and we presume, the one bed) at C$780 per month, each.

Many renters spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing. Mayor Wilhelm-Morden, incensed by landlords raking in cash from illegal short-term rentals, has imposed a C$1,000-a-day fine for violators, saying Whistler won’t tolerate “employees shoved out the back door” to make way for tourists. –Bloomberg

And it’s not just the price of housing and rentals that’s exploded in Whistler – visiting is now prohibitively expensive as well, with overnight rates during peak winter season topping anywhere else in the nation. It’s become so bad in Whistler that a take-home income of $2,180 per month is barely enough to get by. As Bloomberg reports: 

Phil Bonham, a 31-year-old ski patroller, has been living out of a 1984 Dodge camper van for four years, unable to afford the surging cost of housing.

Styrofoam cutouts are wedged into his windows to keep out the chill during cold snaps, when temperatures can plummet to minus 25 degrees Celsius (-15 Fahrenheit). He doesn’t bother with the propane-fired refrigerator in the tiny kitchen between the driver’s seat and bed — nothing thaws anyway in winter, and he eats fruits and vegetables immediately before they freeze.

The small wood-burning stove in the back corner is the “hippie killer,” a reference to stoves like this that have been known to asphyxiate people in their sleep as they try to stay warm. The winter before last, he found himself lying under the van during a snow storm rebuilding pieces of the engine — “a bit of a low point,” as he describes it. But that’s what a take-home wage of about C$2,800 ($2,180) a month after taxes buys in Whistler. –Bloomberg

“I only expected to do it for a season,” Bonham said in a Bloomberg interview in a parking lot near the ski slopes, where he identified at least seven other vehicles being used as full-time residences. “Without getting a second job or a girlfriend, there’s no way I could afford a room to myself. And I make a decent wage in comparison to many other jobs in Whistler.”

While Whistler has a permanent population of less than 12,000 residents, there are over 1,300 applicants waiting to either rent or buy homes at below-market rates in a lottery of resident-only housing managed by the Whistler Housing Authority – which aims to provide housing for at least 75% of the town’s employees. Officials in December said that target “will be very challenging to continue to meet.” 

Putting even more upward pressure on the Whistler real estate market is its transition from a skiing mecca into a four-season destination for all sorts of outdoor activities, including golf, hiking and mountain biking. 

“We’re as busy now in the summer as in the winter,” said Mark Lamming, owner of Whistler bakery, Purebread.

In order to try and explain the run up in housing costs, Mayor Nancy Wilhelm-Morden has assembled a task force to try and determine how young families can afford to live in the area – finding that “Suites that once housed local tenants are being replaced by lavish, sparsely used vacation chalets. Online home-share websites have made it easier for owners to illegally rent properties intended for residents to higher-paying tourists.”

Further complicating matters is Whistler’s bevy of restrictive zoning laws prevent builders from easily alleviating the crunch.

Much of the supply-side woes are also self-imposed. Canada’s first resort municipality, Whistler was purpose-built in the 1980s in the image of a pedestrian-free Swiss alpine village, and restrictive zoning and land-use rules to prevent over-development also choke supply. Meanwhile, a byzantine web of rules dictate how residences can be used in the broader community. –Bloomberg

One in three Whistler businesses could not find enough staff last year, according to the housing authority. In order to try and mitigate the problem, the town council has committed to an additional 1,000 new resident beds over the next five y4ears – however one local developer says that’s less than half of what’s needed. 

[I]n a letter to council dated Oct. 31, local developer Steve Bayly questioned the accuracy of the RMOW assessment.

“In my view, 1,000 beds fall short of the current need. Most concerning is that 850 of the beds are predicted to come from in-fill (300) and private sector development (550) where Whistler has had little success in the past,” Bayly wrote.

Further, with 2,500 new employees gained in the last five years and more growth projected, the RMOW’s target of 1,000 beds, even if fully realized, may fall well short of future need.

“In my view, total additional employee beds needed to run the resort at build out may be as high as 2,500 new beds and that is before such things as future leakage and gentrification,” Bayly wrote. –Pique

Vancouver

Two miles to the South of Whistler, Vancouver’s market has softened – with residential home sales totaling 2,517 in March – a 29.7 decrease from March 2016, and 23% below the 10-year March sales average.

There were 6,542 home sales on the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in Metro Vancouver during the first quarter of 2018, a 13.1 per cent decrease from the 7,527 sales over the same period last year. This represents the region’s lowest first-quarter sales total since 2013. –RE Board of Greater Vancouver

“We saw less demand from buyers and fewer homes listed for sale in our region in the first quarter of the year,” Phil Moore, REBGV president said. “High prices, new tax announcements, rising interest rates, and stricter mortgage requirements are among the factors affecting home buyer and seller activity today.”

That said, Vancouver experienced its lowest first-quarter new listings total since 2013, which may continue to put upward pressure on prices. 

“Even with lower demand, upward pressure on prices will continue as long as the supply of homes for sale remains low,” Moore said. “Last month was the quietest March for new home listings since 2009 and the total inventory, particularly in the condo and townhome segments, of homes for sale remains well below historical norms.”

Maybe staff-strapped Whistler businesses can chip in for a few tour buses to cart employees back and forth two hours each way from the “far more affordable” Vancouver? 

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Authored by Erik Sandberg via Medium.com,

Some of the most vocal critics of the ethics of the U.S. governmental and surveillance agencies have been the ones who worked and built their tracking programs. The problem many of these individuals feel  –  like Bill Binney, a former technical director at the NSA  –  is that the spying mechanisms and frameworks have been abused by successive American governments following the travesty that was 9/11.

The sheer amount of data that was being fed in to the National Security Agency in the lead-up to 9/11 is also a moot point in that the event was an entirely avoidable catastrophe. Programs originally designed and implemented to protect U.S. citizens are now being used against its population.

Listen to the full interview in our weekly Newsvoice Think podcast.

Speaking to Bill Binney, we wanted to find out a bit more about how the National Security Agency functions and in what ways it violates the U.S. constitution. He told Newsvoice Think that it’s now practically impossible for any member of the public to communicate safely, privately or in a fashion that doesn’t end up in an NSA repository unit.

Bill Binney on the Fairview surveillance program

“The Fairview surveillance program has been used to spy on the Donald Trump administration, even before he took office. Now they’re starting to talk about this program simply because the politicians are getting hit with it. The poor suckers and thousands of citizens that have been jailed via this program. They don’t count. They’re the Department of Just-Us.”

Bill Binney on protecting ourselves against spying…

With Telegram hitting the news early in 2018, the focus on encrypted messaging apps and their primary function was much debated. In Iran, the government there blamed Pavel Durov’s product and banned it for inciting and encouraging revolution in a country already nervous and encircled by U.S. bases in the Middle East. The argument on encrypted messaging apps rages on with many in the U.K., such as Amber Rudd and even the Prime Minister calling on access in unique cases such as terrorist activity. Bill Binney, however, was sceptical on whether there is any way that the public can protect themselves from intrusion on their metadata.

Bill Binney on the relationship between the press and the CIA…

Censorship isn’t secluded to just Iran, though. With journalists across the globe still being jailed or in extreme cases, as witnessed recently in Slovakia, killed for their investigative work and reporting. Binney describes that the CIA have been involved and have colluded with the press since the ’50s and that the former director of the CIA, William J. Casey once said: “We’ll know when our propaganda campaign has succeeded; when everything and everyone in the country believes is false.”

Bill Binney on Mike Pompeo and the intelligence communities…

While Russia’s influence on the 2016 U.S. elections continues to hark debate, Bill Binney found himself at the centre of the furore late in 2017. At the behest of Donald Trump, he was summoned by the then CIA director Mike Pompeo who wanted his thoughts on Russian ‘hacking’.

“The intelligence community was not telling them the truth. They’re trying to drum up a new cold war. Look what they said in public testimony about spying, look what they said about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: Nobody’s been telling the truth about these major issues.

Then they go off and kill hundreds of thousands of people based on a lie so they can go and build these military industrial complexes.”

*  *  *

With Newsvoice, you can be a part of the media. Our mission is to democratize the news, and move the power over to our readers. Get involved by downloading the app, or visit us at Newsvoice.com.

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