Author: admin

Authored by Russell Lamberti via The Mises Institute,

Twenty-five years since the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa, the country remains home to some of the most market-invasive, race-based economic policies in the world.

At the heart of this system are provisions for Affirmative Action (AA) and unique statutory measures for Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). These laws are suffocating the South African economy.

AA and BEE developed in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. Affirmative Action is mandated by the Employment Equity Act of 1998, which mandates companies to alter their workforces until they reflect the racial composition of the local economically active population.

BEE was introduced formally in 2003 as the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act (BBBEE Act). It goes much further than AA, requiring companies in South Africa to structure their corporate ownership, boards, management, staff, procurement, and charity based on racial classification.

The “whiter” a company’s shareholders, board, management, employees and suppliers, the lower its BEE score (yes, there is an actual scorecard). The “blacker” a company, the higher its BEE score. In the mining industry, the BEE Charter (an industry regulation in terms of the B-BBEE Act) requires a 30% BEE shareholding in companies applying for a new mining right.

South Africans are still racially classified for BEE and AA purposes. The most favoured group is those classified as “black/African,” regarded as the most disadvantaged during Apartheid, the unjust system of racially-applied laws that the government began dismantling nearly 30 years ago. The next most favoured groups are “coloureds” (a group descending from Europeans, indigenous Africans, and Indo-Malayans) and “indians” (descendants of Indian settlers). These groups are deemed to have been disadvantaged by Apartheid, but not as much as blacks were. The least favoured group for AA and BEE purposes is “whites,” both Afrikaans- and English-speaking, who descend mainly from European settlers (or are recent European settlers themselves) who arrived in the region predominantly from the mid-17 th Century until the latter half of the 20th Century.

The Pervasiveness of BEE

BEE is designed to influence almost all businesses in South Africa and compels compliance with its race-based criteria. State taxation and repurposed spending accounts directly for about one-third of all sales turnover in the South African economy, so BEE exerts a tremendous direct influence over the business sector. Companies with no or low BEE scores move to the back of the queue for state contracts.

But the influence of BEE goes much further. BEE scores depend on the BEE scores of a firm’s suppliers too. Large firms, especially those in the running for state contracts, routinely require their smaller suppliers to improve their BEE scores, which in turn need their even smaller suppliers to do the same, and so on. The result is a permeation of a high degree of BEE compliance across the entire economy, monitored and administered by an army of HR administration staff.

The statutory BEE requirements for state contracts are supplemented by a moral and ethical culture of “Transformation” in which it is deemed a just imperative to maintain and indeed deepen race-based legislation. This “transformationism” is promoted in all spheres of the state, in the courts, the major universities, and cheered on by large publicly listed firms.

One might expect that as time passes, such legislation would be deemed less necessary and be phased out. In practice, since its statutory inception in 2003, BEE Codes have been made more prescriptive, compelling firms to transact according to ever more racial criteria to maintain their BEE score. The codes have shifted to favour ‘blacker’ firms even more. Some companies’ BEE scores have diminished because the owners are coloured people. When revised codes stipulated lower scores for owners who are not “fully” black, their scores fell, causing them to lose contracts!

BEE has increasingly been jumping the fence into the sphere of anti-trust. After a recent legislative amendment, South Africa’s Competition Commission, the extra-judicial body tasked with policing anti-trust, will now take race even more into account when assessing market dominance, mergers and acquisitions, pricing and so on. Companies with higher BEE scores are likely to be judged more leniently by anti-trust mandarins.

A Pernicious Form of Socialism

BEE is a system that erects new incentives and costs for certain economic transactions. It is intended to achieve a different allocation of labour and resources compared to what would arise in a purely free market, with more emphasis on peoples’ classified race and their political connections and less on the value of their product or service.

Ludwig von Mises argued that,

man acts, which is tantamount to the proposition: Man is eager to substitute a state of affairs that suits him better for a state of affairs that suits him less. In order to achieve this, he must employ suitable means.

Choosing particular ends and means with limited time requires forgoing alternative ends and means. These tradeoffs imply an order of preferences revealed in action. A chosen action always incurs a cost.

BEE uses the power of the state to divert action toward the pursuit of subjectively less valued ends with more costly means than otherwise would have been undertaken. Factors of production are therefore rendered less productive, reducing value (real wealth).

Fewer goods produced and available for consumption means a higher cost of living and diminishes living standards compared to what they otherwise would have been.

While BEE lessens overall wealth, BEE beneficiaries can accrue more personal wealth. These privileges incentivise more demand for BEE policies from favoured groups, who in turn reward politicians with votes and patronage.

As BEE policy intensifies, it destroys more wealth. With less wealth created, the amount that the state can extract through taxation from the productive sector diminishes. This loss incentivises the state to raise tax rates even higher, borrow more (raising future taxes), and print more money (taxing wealth via currency debasement) to keep resources flowing into state coffers.

In South Africa, racial state policy in the post-apartheid era has led to a vicious cycle of policy begetting wealth-destruction, leading to political dissatisfaction, generating demands by politically connected groups for more draconian racial policy, and so on.

By reducing overall returns on capital while raising regime uncertainty, BEE increases investment risk and lowers levels of investment.1 Since productivity is a function of the depth and breadth of the capital structure, lower levels of quality capital investment (higher levels of consumption) under a BEE regime lead to further reductions in productivity.

Weak Economic Growth

Essentially, BEE results in capital misallocation and capital consumption and redistributes wealth from voluntarily-determined to politically-determined wealth-possessors. This process reduces the productive capacity of the economy and slows the rate of creation of valued goods and services.

South Africa has been one of the globe’s growth underperformers since it implemented BEE policies in 2004. In the chart below, we compare nominal GDP per capita denominated in dollars (based to 100 in 2005) across various emerging market and commodity-producing countries. South Africa’s GDP per capita grew by 15% in nominal dollar terms since 2005, while the mean of the sample (excluding South Africa) increased by 115% (i.e. more than doubled).

Many factors contribute to the rate of aggregate economic output in a country. South Africa’s glaring underperformance (along with Mexico) compared to similar peer countries implies that it has other restrictions on growth that pertain to the efficiency of markets and the misallocation and misappropriation of resources through political means. BEE’s far reach into the economy, and its scope for resource waste and political corruption make it a prime candidate for explaining a significant portion of South Africa’s weak economic performance.

Conclusion

BEE in South Africa is a form of racial socialism. It forces productive members from all cultural communities to subsidise connected political opportunists. BEE, therefore, leads to a greater emphasis on getting ahead using coercive means and a lower emphasis on getting ahead with voluntary actions. Instead of spending limited time focused on serving the needs of others using resources efficiently, much time and effort is spent securing political favour, jostling for political positions, deemphasising the needs of customers relative to those of compliance officers, and having a lower regard for economising resources and the formation of productive capital.2

The net effect is wealth destruction and perpetuation of chronic, widespread poverty. South Africa’s per capita GDP, at around $6,000 in 2019, has not increased in inflation-adjusted terms in a quarter-century and is down about 10% since the introduction of BEE. Meanwhile, the mean increase in real per capita dollar GDP in our sample since 2004 has been around 70%3. If South Africa had grown in line with the sample mean since 2004, per capita GDP would be nearly double what it is today.

BEE in South Africa is racial economic policy in hyperdrive. It should be a warning to other countries that trying to address historical grievances through racialised socialistic means is a recipe for failure.

Authored by Darius Shahtahmasebi via TheMindUnleashed.com,

Trump is rapidly ramping up troop deployments in preparation for what could be one of the greatest wars of our generation…

The decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria has been somewhat of a nightmare for the Trump administration. Either that, or the story in and of itself has served as a useful distraction from other issues.

At first, the media hit Donald Trump hard for potentially allowing a genocide of the Kurdish allies it had previously backed to defeat ISIS in parts of Syria. Anyone who knows anything about history will know that this isn’t the first time the U.S. has been accused of abandoning its Kurdish allies.

Largely missing from any serious commentary on the issue is the fact that U.S. troops had illegally invaded Syria to begin with, eventually taking over close to one third of Syria’s territory.

Also missing is the fact that U.S. troops stationed in Syria were effectively a barrier between the Assad government and the Kurdish population, preventing any sort of meaningful peace being reached between the two. Turkey’s incursion, it seems, is made up of Sunni radicals who are still hellbent on unseating Assad.

Not too long ago, the U.S. announced a portion of troops will remain in Syria to protect the oil fields. While some commentators have made it clear that unless the United States wants to become a globally renowned pirate outfit, it would not be able to exploit these resources as the oil belongs to the Assad government.

However, that didn’t stop the U.S. from occupying these areas with the view of giving control of these resources to the Kurdish elements it had backed to defeat ISIS. People who think that the U.S. invades countries to take their oil are therefore somewhat naïve, as this cannot be the case. The U.S. war machine is not concerned with owning and using natural resources (the U.S. is pumping out oil in record numbers), it is actually concerned with controlling these resources.

The U.S. is now saying that the troops withdrawing from Syria will be stationed in Iraq. Iraq has responded by saying that the U.S. doesn’t have permission to send its troops to its territory. However, the fact that they were even in Syria to begin with seems to suggest that permission is a non-issue for the U.S. military.

It’s not clear whether this is a major policy blunder for the United States under Trump’s leadership or another amazing example of Trump’s brilliantly played 4D chess game (ha!) in which we are too immature to comprehend.

In the meantime, Trump is rapidly ramping up troop deployments in other parts of the world in preparation for what could be one of the greatest wars of our generation, so it would also pay to keep an eye on wartime developments that generally slip past the mainstream media’s radar.

Chicago is ‘officially’ the “Rattiest City” in the U.S., according to pest control service Orkin.

For the fifth consecutive time, the pest control services provider places the Windy City at the top of its most rat-infested cities, with New York and Los Angeles taking second and third place, and San Francisco-Oakland, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia rounding out the top five Rattiest Cities.

The metro regions were ranked by the number of new rodent treatments performed from September 2018-2019.

“Beyond structural damage, there are multiple health issues associated with rodents including food poisoning, rat-bite fever, hantavirus and even the bubonic plague. Rodents can easily spread diseases in a home or commercial site in a short period of time,” Chelle Hartzer, an Orkin entomologist added.

Orkin isn’t the first to notice the city’s rodent problem, either. Last year, Chicago was dubbed the “rat capital of the U.S.” by apartment search service RentHop. It reportedly received more rat complaints than any other city last year – nearly 51,000 total. According to RentHop’s analysis, New York City came in second place, followed by Washington, D.C. and Boston.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

Russia-Turkey deal establishes ‘safe zone’ along Turkish border and there will be joint Russia-Turkey military patrols

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan shake hands during a joint press conference after their talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on October 22, 2019. Photo: Sergei Chirikov / poll / AFP

The negotiations in Sochi were long – over six hours – tense and tough. Two leaders in a room with their interpreters and several senior Turkish ministers close by if advice was needed. The stakes were immense: a road map to pacify northeast Syria, finally.

The press conference afterwards was somewhat awkward – riffing on generalities. But there’s no question that in the end Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan managed the near impossible.

The Russia-Turkey deal establishes a safe zone along the Syrian-Turkish border – something Erdogan had been gunning for since 2014. There will be joint Russia-Turkey military patrols. The Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units), part of the rebranded, US-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces, will need to retreat and even disband, especially in the stretch between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, and they will have to abandon their much-cherished urban areas such as Kobane and Manbij.  The Syrian Arab Army will be back in the whole northeast. And Syrian territorial integrity – a Putin imperative – will be preserved.

This is a Syria-Russia-Turkey win-win-win – and, inevitably, the end of a separatist-controlled Syrian Kurdistan. Significantly, Erdogan’s spokesman Fahrettin Altun stressed Syria’s “territorial integrity” and “political unity.” That kind of rhetoric from Ankara was unheard of until quite recently.

Putin immediately called Syrian President Bashar al Assad to detail the key points of the memorandum of understanding. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov once again stressed Putin’s main goal – Syrian territorial integrity – and the very hard work ahead to form a Syrian Constitutional Committee for the legal path towards a still-elusive political settlement.

Russian military police and Syrian border guards are already arriving to monitor the imperative YPG withdrawal – all the way to a depth of 30 kilometers from the Turkish border. The joint military patrols are tentatively scheduled to start next Tuesday.

On the same day this was happening in Sochi, Assad was visiting the frontline in Idlib – a de facto war zone that the Syrian army, allied with Russian air power, will eventually clear of jihadi militias, many supported by Turkey until literally yesterday. That graphically illustrates how Damascus, slowly but surely, is recovering sovereign territory after eight and a half years of war.

Who gets the oil?

For all the cliffhangers in Sochi, there was not a peep about an absolutely key element: who’s in control of Syria’s oilfields, especially after President Trump’s now-notorious tweet stating, “the US has secured the oil.” No one knows which oil. If he meant Syrian oil, that would be against international law. Not to mention Washington has no mandate – from the UN or anyone else – to occupy Syrian territory.

The Arab street is inundated with videos of the not exactly glorious exit by US troops, leaving Syria pelted by rocks and rotten tomatoes all the way to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they were greeted by a stark reminder. “All US forces that withdrew from Syria received approval to enter the Kurdistan region [only] so that they may be transported outside Iraq. There is no permission granted for these forces to stay inside Iraq,” the Iraqi military headquarters in Baghdad said.

The Pentagon said a “residual force” may remain in the Middle Euphrates river valley, side by side with Syrian Democratic Forces militias, near a few oilfields, to make sure the oil does not fall “into the hands of ISIS/Daesh or others.” “Others” actually means the legitimate owner, Damascus. There’s no way the Syrian army will accept that, as it’s now fully engaged in a national drive to recover the country’s sources of food, agriculture and energy. Syria’s northern provinces have a wealth of water, hydropower dams, oil, gas and food.

As it stands, the US retreat is partial at best, also considering that a small garrison remains behind at al-Tanf, on the border with Jordan. Strategically, that does not make sense, because the al-Qaem border between Iran and Iraq is now open and thriving.

Map: Energy Consulting Group

The map above shows the position of US bases in early October, but that’s changing fast. The Syrian Army is already working to recover oilfields around Raqqa, but the strategic US base of Ash Shaddadi still seems to be in place. Until quite recently US troops were in control of Syria’s largest oilfield, al-Omar, in the northeast.

There have been accusations by Russian sources that mercenaries recruited by private US military companies trained jihadi militias such as the Maghawir al-Thawra (“Army of Free Tribes”) to sabotage Syrian oil and gas infrastructure and/or sell Syrian oil and gas to bribe tribal leaders and finance jihadi operations. The Pentagon denies it.

Gas pipeline

As I have argued for years, Syria to a large extent has been a key ‘Pipelineistan’ war – not only in terms of pipelines inside Syria, and the US preventing Damascus from commercializing its own natural resources, but most of all around the fate of the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline which was agreed in a memorandum of understanding signed in 2012.

This pipeline has, over the years, always been a red line, not only for Washington but also for Doha, Riyadh and Ankara.

The situation should dramatically change when the $200 billion-worth of reconstruction in Syria finally takes off after a comprehensive peace deal is in place. It will be fascinating to watch the European Union – after NATO plotted for an “Assad must go” regime change operation for years – wooing Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus with financial offers for their gas.

NATO explicitly supported the Turkish offensive “Operation Peace Spring.” And we haven’t even seen the ultimate geoeconomic irony yet: NATO member, Turkey, purged of its neo-Ottoman dreams, merrily embracing the Gazprom-supported Iran-Iraq-Syria ‘Pipelineistan’ road map.

A new report published by Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC and Coldwell Banker Global Luxury details how “The Great Wealth Transfer” of the 2020s has already begun, which is a period when baby boomer wealth is transferred to their millennial offspring.

The report titled “A Look at Wealth 2019: Millennial Millionaires,” notes how the already 618,000 millennial millionaires are expected to increase in size by 2030. 

About 93% of them (575,000) are already worth between $1 million and $2.5 million. In the next several decades, nearly $68 trillion of wealth is expected to flow from boomers to millennials.

“The difference between the millionaires of the early 1980s and the ones being created today is that many of them stand to inherit even more wealth from their baby boomer parents, who are considered the wealthiest generation in history,” Coldwell Banker researchers said. 

While boomers are very wealthy, it should be noted that the reason behind their vast riches is due partly because of the Federal Reserve’s grand experiment of loosening monetary policy over the last four decades. Lowering interest rates and expanding quantitative easing (more recently), has generated the most significant bond, stock, and real estate bubbles the world has ever seen, these are huge sources of wealth generation for boomers. 

Modern economic expansions are driven by boom and bust cycles. The next bust in bonds, stocks, and real estate will create secular deflation that will readjust valuations. This means that Coldwell Banker’s $68 trillion figure could be halved, or maybe to be fair, cut by at least a third in the next economic crisis. If that is the case, this would undoubtedly depress the total amount of potential millennial millionaires in the years ahead.

What’s problematic for boomers is that interest rates heading into 2020 are already low, and monetary policy is becoming less effective than ever before to generate growth in the real economy as recession threats rise. 

On top of that, deglobalization, macroeconomic headwinds, a synchronized global slowdown, interest rates near zero lower bounds if not at or below zero in some countries, and soaring populism, has led many boomers and millennials to ignore how markets are at inflection points that could lead to a new era of depressed expected returns.  

And what happens during the bust cycle when valuations get readjusted? Corporate deleveraging and the end of financial engineering will finally be seen — another shot in the heart to millennials expecting to inherit a sizeable bluechip portfolio from their parents. 

So millennials, who are expecting a great deal of wealth coming their way via a transfer of financial assets from their parents in the next decade, should understand valuations are at extreme levels, and prices could see a mean reversion before these financial assets are transferred to them.  

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Democrats are crying “racism” over a political poster depicting the mayor of San Francisco as a wealthy elitist.

London Breed, San Francisco’s mayor, was shown in a poster with her feet up on a table, counting dollar bills, and smoking marijuana.

This racist campaign billboard against Mayor @LondonBreed is disgusting & has no place in our political discourse.

The candidate for Mayor who placed the billboard, Ellen Zhao, is a Trump supporter, so, while despicable, this racism isn’t surprising. https://t.co/FarOFq4oSv

— Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) October 20, 2019

According to a report by RT, the cartoon, which was made in a cartoonish style, shows the mayor in a red dress sitting with her high heels kicked up on a desk. The woman clutches a stack of greenbacks in her left hand and a joint in the right and appears to be dreaming. A long queue of people with price tags hanging around their necks is drawn in a thought bubble coming from the woman’s head. In the left corner of the poster, a man with a pack of dollar bills is carrying away a toddler. “Stop slavery and human trafficking in SF. Vote Nov.5, 2019 Ellen Zhou for Mayor,” the slogan reads.

While controversial, the ad is not racist. Like all advertising, this ad is meant to upheave some emotions and those surrounding human trafficking certainly do that.  But instead of proving Breed is not in the human trafficking business, they instead immediately scream racism in an attempt to have the poster removed.

But a few rational people have had it with the Democrats avoiding responsibility for destroying entire cities in California, and they made sure to Tweet about it!

I think you dropped this. pic.twitter.com/Wo10wqwPan

— Mark Fabela (@markdfabela) October 20, 2019

There is nothing racist about this. It seems to be very accurate, she just sits around and doesn’t do a damn thing – look at our streets!!! Covered in feces despite the billions we are spending! And she gave herself an A… She needs to go

— JessSF (@JCCali) October 20, 2019

London Breed happens to be an African American. Anyone who disagrees with the Mayor’s policies we can label him/her as racist? #Ellen4mayor2019 focuses on Breed’s issues. Stop using racist to shut ppl up against incompetent politicians.

— Wendy Wong (@WendyWwong) October 21, 2019

Faced with the mild backlash, Zhou refused to back down. She insisted as others have, that there was nothing racist about the poster. Firing back at her critics, the politician said that whoever tries to play a racial card had been “brainwashed.” 

Zhou added that the poster was merely a satirical take on Breed’s policies. “The mayor makes $350,000 a year while people are dying on the streets — they have to pick their dead bodies up. A mayor getting a big fat raise while people are dying,” she said.

When NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio pushed through the controversial “mansion tax” hike on expensive NYC properties (what properties in the city aren’t?), real-estate experts warned that it would hurt he housing market. But their pleas that it could cause the unceremonious end of one of the frothiest property bubbles since the crisis fell on deaf ears.

De Blasio’s decision raised the mansion tax rate – officially known as the ‘transfer tax’ rate – from a 1% flat rate to a tiered system. The  higher mansion tax rates mean higher closing costs for buyers: For example, the transfer tax due on a $5 million property used to be $50,000. Now, it’s more than double that at $112,500.

It’s easy to brush this off as more rich people crying over unsubstantial sums, in reality, many of the people who are buying homes in the $2 million to $3 million range in NYC are (by the city’s standards) middle class. They don’t always have an extra $50,000 just sitting around. That, and this tax arrived not long after President Trump and the Congressional Republicans decided to punish their blue-state opponents by capping SALT deductions in their 2017 tax plan.

And now, Bloomberg warns that prices in some of the city’s trendiest neighborhoods are in free fall.

In Tribeca, prices for used homes plunged 28% YoY, the largest drop of any neighborhood in the city. The latest median sales price  on record was $2.25 million in Q3, according to property listings website StreetEasy. Values in both Greenwich Village and Chelsea also dropped by 15%. Meanwhile, the Upper West Side and the area that includes Soho were each down 14%.

For a more in-depth look at how the NYC housing market has changed, check out this Bloomberg piece, which features an interactive map allowing users to compare different neighborhoods. A quick scan of the data for TriBeCa, one of the city’s most established neighborhoods, compared with Astoria, Queens’s most up-and-coming-neighborhood, reveals a stunning divide.

While prices climbed for Astoria homes in Q3, prices fell for homes in TriBeCa. And while sales slowed in TriBeCa (only slightly), they effectively ground to a halt on TriBeCa.

While the NYC housing market is collapsing, and certain other tony areas like Greenwich, CT and municipalities out east in the Hamptons, are also struggling, Goldman analysts pointed out that sales prices in other nearby counties are holding up OK.

Meanwhile, as we’ve mentioned before, the share of listings in Manhattan (presumably including new condos and existing homes) that are seeing their current for-sale listing price on Zillow being lowered is expanding at an increasingly rapid rate.                        

Just as the inventory of homes being listed for sale is also climbing.

It doesn’t take a PhD in economics to understand what happens when listings – i.e. supply – expand while demand, both domestic and foreign (thanks again, Mr. President) – drops off.

Authored by James Durso, op-ed via The Hill,

Last week the National Basketball Association was brought to heel by China over a tweet by Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, supporting democracy protestors in Hong Kong. Chinese retribution was quick as all 11 of the NBA’s official Chinese partners suspended ties, and appearances and endorsement deals were cancelled — just as the Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets arrived in Shanghai for two exhibition games.

Americans were feted to the sight of Houston’s James Harden and LeBron James of Los Angeles reciting their lines like kidnapping victims in a ransom video.

Harden’s “We apologize. You know, we love China” was forgettable enough, and Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr helpfully informed us “The world is a complex place and there’s more gray than black-and-white” when asked about the NBA kowtowing to the Chinese government. But @KingJames wrote his epitaph with, “So just be careful what we tweet and what we say and what we do. Even though yes, we do have freedom of speech, it can be a lot of negative that comes with it” — which is probably what the Chinese government tells the Chinese people.

If LeBron James were some Vice President of GM, no one would care what he said or did, but he’s a woke celebrity and an activist for labor rights and social justice who forgot when you attack others for their failings, real or imagined, you raise the bar for yourself.

The Hong Kong protestors — the real activists — registered their disappointment, some by burning #23 jerseys and commenting “LeBron James stands for money. Period.”

Wesley Snipes said, “Always bet on black” but the NBA proves the most powerful color is green.

How much green? 

According to NBC News, last year 800 million Chinese watched an NBA game, “the league is estimated to be worth about $5 billion in China… and the NBA just signed a new partnership agreement with an internet company in the country for $1.5 billion.” China is 10 percent of the league’s revenue — and that could climb to 20 percent by 2030.

Mr. James gets by on $35 million from the LA Lakers, and $32 million from Nike (part of an alleged $1 billion lifetime deal), but the post-NBA money will come from his SpringHill Entertainment which is collaborating with Warner Brothers on “Space Jam 2” that James will produce and star in. The movie will make a lot of money in China — if Beijing’s censors allow it in — which is probably what occupied his mind on that long flight back from China.

And Nike’s shoe sales in China doubled in the last five years, and the company has 110 factories and over 145,000 workers in China. After all, those $110 #23 jerseys don’t stitch themselves.

In fact, who does stitch them?

Nike doesn’t say. But according to the Citizen Power Institute (CPI), much of China’s apparel production is done by up to 1 million of China’s Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic groups detained in so-called re-education camps or vocational training centers, intended to cleanse them of their ethnic and religious  identity and make them loyal to the Communist Party of China.

The camps and centers are in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which produces 84 percent of China’s cotton crop (Nike says the #23 jerseys are 100 percent recycled polyester), and most are run by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a paramilitary organization that reports directly to the Communist Party of China and is tasked to help maintain political stability in Xinjiang. One of the ways it is doing so is by detention of large numbers of Uighurs in “re-education camps” which complements the Chinese government’s goal of vertical integration of the  garment manufacturing sector.

The XPCC operates through a network of joint-ventures and front companies that produce the finished goods. One of the XPCC’s joint-venture partners is Hong Kong-based Esquel Group, which produces clothing for Nike.

XPCC hasn’t just assembled an efficient garment production operation. According to CPI, XPCC’s “inmates serve as a key labor force in every link of China’s cotton value chain, from cotton field reclamation to planting, harvesting, processing, and garment production.”

If the NBA would crack a history book, it might learn that “cotton field reclamation to planting, harvesting” was the cause of the “War Between the States.”

Do the NBA and its players understand this? You bet.

Just understand all that “Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere” for what it is — marketing — and that the league confines its posturing and tweeting only where there are no financial consequences.

And there probably won’t be any financial penalties for the NBA, Nike, or LeBron and the other players, according to marketing experts who say “this will pass.”

But one thing it has done is take the sharp edges off the ability of the league and the players to gratuitously comment on political and social issues du jour, knowing the rejoinder may be “why aren’t you speaking out about Uighur slaves in cotton fields?”

LeBron James always wanted to be “More Than an Athlete” but is this what he had in mind?

A whistleblower with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), responsible for conducting an independent investigation into the alleged chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma on April 7, 2018, has presented WikiLeaks with a body of evidence suggesting the chemical weapons watchdog agency manipulated and suppressed evidence. 

A prior official OPCW report of the investigation issued last March found “reasonable grounds” for believing a toxic chemical was used against civilians, likely chlorine. Long prior to any independent investigators reaching the site, however, Washington had launched major tomahawk airstrikes against Damascus in retribution for “Assad gassing his own people”. 

WikiLeks release: A statement from the panel tasked with investigating evidence from a OPCW whistleblower regarding the Douma alleged chemical attack in Syria, April 7, 2018. casts doubts on the accuracy of the OPCW final report. https://t.co/0y1MRStibG

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 23, 2019

WikiLeaks published documents based on evidence presented by the internal OPCW whistleblower to an expert review panel on Wednesday. “The panel was presented with evidence that casts doubt on the integrity of the OPCW,” WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson wrote.

An official WikiLeaks press release said as follows:

Kristinn Hrafnsson took part in the panel to review the testimony and documents from the OPCW whistleblower. He says: “The panel was presented with evidence that casts doubt on the integrity of the OPCW. Although the whistleblower was not ready to step forward and/or present documents to the public, WikiLeaks believes it is now of utmost interest for the public to see everything that was collected by the Fact Finding Mission on Douma and all scientific reports written in relation to the investigation.”

“Based on the whistleblower’s extensive presentation, including internal emails, text exchanges and suppressed draft reports, we are unanimous in expressing our alarm over unacceptable practices in the investigation of the alleged chemical attack in Douma,” the experts pointed out.

Panel sees evidence of “unacceptable practices” in OPCW during investigation into the alleged chemical attack in #Douma, Syria on April 7, 2018.https://t.co/ndK4sRzVES pic.twitter.com/CH2RVgBGd9

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 23, 2019

“We became convinced by the testimony that key information about chemical analyses, toxicology consultations, ballistics studies, and witness testimonies was suppressed, ostensibly to favor a preordained conclusion.”

The testimony further revealed “disquieting efforts to exclude some inspectors from the investigation whilst thwarting their attempts to raise legitimate concerns, highlight irregular practices or even to express their differing observations and assessments.”

The new information was enough to convince José Bustani, former director-general of the OPCW to conclude there is now “convincing evidence” of irregularities.

According to a summary of the latest controversy to cast doubt on the dominant mainstream narrative related to Douma, Middle East analysis site Al-Bab noted Bustain harbored prior doubts:

Bustani was quoted as saying he had long held doubts about the alleged attack in Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus. “I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best.”

WikiLeaks is calling on OPCW insiders to supply leaked documents relating to the Douma chemical weapons investigation in Syria. https://t.co/mhCaZySijz

— Brian Whitaker (@Brian_Whit) October 24, 2019

Some dissenting officials as well as countries like Russia have accused the international chemical watchdog body, which operations in coordination with the UN, of being politically compromised when it comes to Syria. 

Via MassPrivateI blog,

Forget the Bilderberg Group meetings and how the world’s power elite meet in secret to help shape governments. Because Rise Up’s Money 20/20 events puts them to shame.

October 27-30, Rise Up’s second annual and highly influential “Money 2020 USA” event will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Money 20/20 USA 2019’s agenda focuses mainly on creating a global digital banking system and will also focus on AI, biometrics and digital ID.

But one panel discussion in particular caught my eye.

The discussion titled “Building Fusion Centers And Combatting Evolving Threats” by Anil Markose, Senior VP for Booz Allan Hamilton, is designed to promote Homeland Security’s Fusion Centers and the spread of biometrics to track people of interest.

As you will see, using Money 20/20 USA as a platform to help spread the use of biometrics has far-reaching consequences.

According to an article in Find Biometrics, “last year’s Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas drew a crowd of over 2000 professionals from 53 countries.”

Money 20/20 USA 2018’s agenda focused on AI, biometrics and digital ID more than 50 times. A talk by CLEAR CEO Caryn Seidman Becker called “CLEAR-ing a Frictionless Future With Biometrics” promoted the spread of facial recognition.

Why would Money 20/20 USA 2018 let CLEAR, a company who’s CEO said that “no’s are really yes’s” and when a potential customer says no to facial recognition “it is just time to pivot.” Be allowed to promote facial recognition?

CLEAR CEO Caryn Seidman Becker’s discussion “CLEAR-ing a Frictionless Future With Biometrics” with Anheuser-Busch’s Global Director of Innovation and the Seattle Seahawks GM of CenturyLink Field is a disturbing example of corporate involvement in the spread of biometrics.

Clearly, using Money 20/20 USA to expand biometrics is a smart business decision (pun intended).

The feds, bankers, and major corporations have also realized that Money 20/20 USA can be used to help spread AI, biometrics and digital ID across the globe.

Below is an example of some of this years 300 guest speakers,

• Amazon

• Google

• Microsoft

• Facebook

• Walmart

• Home Depot

• Ebay

• Equifax

• IDEMIA

• FacePhi

• Find Biometrics

• Citibank

• J.P. Morgan Chase

• Goldman Sachs

• Charles Swab Consulting

• Discover Global Network

• Mastercard

• Visa

• American Express

• PayPal

• Western Union

• Wells Fargo

• TD Bank

• Bank of the West

• MUFG Union Bank

• Texas Dept. of Banking

• The U.S. Secret Service

• The Federal Reserve Bank of New York

• and the Chairman of the FDIC

Find Biometrics claims that one of this year’s most anticipated panel sessions is about using biometrics.

At this month’s Money20/20 USA event, for example, one of the most anticipated panel sessions will tackle Invisible Authentication: How UIX-Focused Biometrics Can Make Passwords Disappear. Slated for October 29th, the panel will feature BioConnect CEO Rob Douglas, Onfido CEO Husayn Kassai, IDEMIA SVP Matt Thompson, and Acuity Market Intelligence Principal Analyst Maxine Most; and it will be hosted by FindBiometrics Digital Content VP Susan Stover.

The list of companies attending this year’s Money 20/20 USA event makes the Bilderberg Group meetings look like child’s play.

Corporations like CLEAR, FacePhi, IDEMIA and Booz Allan Hamilton all make their money off of monitoring everyone. So it is no surprise that representatives from these companies use Money 20/20 events to help them spread biometrics everywhere.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not so much, members of the mass media (Bloomberg, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and NBC) are also speaking at the event. Even Comcast and Netflix have sent someone to speak at the event.

Why are members of America’s mass-media involved with an event that seems focused on creating a global digital banking system and spreading biometrics across the globe?

With so many influential people pushing to expand biometric tracking, is it any wonder that America is beginning to resemble China?