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A German business group said on Friday that any attempts by the United States to stop Europe from buying Russian gas in the form of additional sanctions against Moscow would be an attack on European sovereignty, reports Reuters. 

“If the U.S. decided to sanction the use of Russian gas, that would be an attack on German and European sovereignty,” said Wolfgang Buechele, chairman of the German Committee on East European Economic Relations (GCEEER?) at a new year news conference. 

The United States has threatened sanctions against European firms involved with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which would carry gas straight to Germany under the Baltic Sea. The project is being spearheaded by Russian state gas giant Gazprom, and has been driving a wedge between Germany and its allies over economic harm to Ukraine, which would be deprived of lucrative gas transit fees it currently charges. 

“I believe the Nord Stream 2 project is in the pure interests of not just Germany but also of Europe,” said Buechele of the pipeline, which would branch off into Europe-wide gas transmission networks. 

In July, President Trump slammed Germany at a bilateral breakfast in Brussels for being a “captive of Russia because it is getting so much of its energy from Russia.” 

“The former Chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that is supplying the gas,” Trump continued. 

“Ultimately Germany will have almost 70 percent of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas. So you tell me, is that appropriate?” Trump asked. “It should have never been allowed to happen. So Germany is totally controlled by Russia.” 

Bilateral Breakfast with NATO Secretary General in Brussels, Belgium… pic.twitter.com/l0EP3lzhCM

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 11, 2018

Nord Stream 2 has also divided Germany’s political class. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, bound by friendship to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has senior roles in the Nord Stream 2 holding company as well as at state-owned energy firms Gazprom (GAZP.MM) and Rosneft (ROSN.MM). -Reuters

As Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com noted on Tuesday, “Support for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in Germany is slipping, according to a report from Bloomberg. Some politicians in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition are moving against the pipeline for geopolitical reasons, citing fears that the project would allow Russia a freer hand in Ukraine.” 

Reuters echoed Cunningham’s analysis, reporting on Friday that Merkel’s Christian Democrats are “notably cooler on the project.” 

Buchele, the GCEEER chairman, said that Europe has no alternative to Russian gas, adding that the liquefied natural gas touted by Washington as an alternative was both harmful to the environment and more expensive. 

“We need these resources in the long term,” said Buchele. 

Unfortunately, the Trump administration – accused of colluding with Russia in the 2016 US election, may stick a big fat wrench in the gears. 

via RSS http://bit.ly/2SQL5Z8 Tyler Durden

Authored by Diana Johnstone via The Unz Review,

French Democracy Dead or Alive? Or perhaps one should say, buried or revived?

Because for the mass of ordinary people, far from the political, financial, media centers of power in Paris, democracy is already moribund, and their movement is an effort to save it. Ever since Margaret Thatcher decreed that “there is no alternative”, Western economic policy is made by technocrats for the benefit of financial markets, claiming that such benefits will trickle down to the populace. The trickle has largely dried up, and people are tired of having their needs and wishes totally ignored by an elite who “know best”.

President Emmanuel Macron’s New Year’s Eve address to the nation made it perfectly clear that after one unconvincing stab at throwing a few crumbs to the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protest movement, he has determined to get tough

France is entering a period of turmoil. The situation is very complex, but here are a few points to help grasp what this is all about.

The METHODS

The Yellow Vests gather in conspicuous places where they can be seen: the Champs-Elysées in Paris, main squares in other cities towns, and the numerous traffic circles on the edge of small towns. Unlike traditional demonstrations, the Paris marches were very loose and spontaneous, people just walking around and talking to each other, with no leaders and no speeches.

The absence of leaders is inherent in the movement. All politicians, even friendly ones, are mistrusted and no one is looking for a new leader.

People are organizing their own meetings to develop their lists of grievances and demands.

In the village of Commercy, Lorraine, a half hour drive from Domrémy where Jeanne d’Arc was born, inhabitants gather to read their proclamation. Six of them read in turns, a paragraph each, making it quite clear that they want no leaders, no special spokesperson. They sometimes stumble over a word, they are not used to speaking in public like the TV talking heads. Their “Second appeal of the Gilets Jaunes de Commercy invites others to come to Commercy on January 26-27 for an “assembly of assemblies”.

The DEMANDS

The people who first went out in the streets wearing Yellow Vests last November 17 were ostensibly protesting against a hike in gasoline and diesel taxes that would hit people in rural France the hardest. Obsessed with favoring “world cities”, the French government has taken one measure after another at the expense of small towns and villages and the people who live there. That was just the last straw. The movement rapidly moved on to the basic issue: the right of the people to have a say in measures taken that affect their lives. Democracy, in a word.

For decades, parties of the left and of the right, whatever their campaign speeches, once in office pursue policies dictated by “the markets”. For this reason, people have lost confidence in all parties and all politicians and are demanding new ways to get their wishes heard.

The fuel tax was soon forgotten as the list of demands grew longer. Critics of the movement note that achieving so many demands is quite impossible. It’s no use paying attention to popular demands, because the silly people ask for everything and its opposite.

That objection is answered by what has quickly emerged as the single overriding demand of the movement: the Citizens’ Initiative Referendum (CIR).

The REFERENDUM

This demand illustrates the good sense of the movement. Rather than making a “must” list, the GJ merely ask that the people be allowed to choose, and the referendum is the way to choose. The demand is for a certain number of signatories – perhaps 700,000, perhaps more – to gain the right to call a referendum on an issue of their choice. The right to a CIR exists in Switzerland, Italy and California. The idea horrifies all those whose profession it is to know best. If the people vote, they will vote for all sorts of absurd things, the better-knowers observe with a shudder.

A modest teacher in a junior college in Marseilles, Etienne Chouard, has been developing for decades ideas on how to organize direct democracy, with the referendum at its center. His hour has come with the Yellow Vests. He insists that a referendum must always be held after a long debate and time for reflection, to avoid emotional spur-of-the-moment decisions. Such a referendum requires honest, independent media which are not all owned by special interests. It requires making sure that politicians who make the laws follow the popular will expressed in the referendum. All this suggests the need for a people’s constitutional convention.

The referendum is a bitter point in France, a powerful silent underlying cause of the whole Gilets Jaunes movement. In 2005, President Chirac (unwisely from his point of view) called for a popular referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, certain it would be approved. The political class, with a few exceptions, went into full rhetoric, claiming a prosperous future as a new world power under the new Constitution and warning that otherwise Europe might be plunged back into World Wars I and II. However, ordinary citizens organized an extraordinary movement of popular self-education, as groups met to pour through the daunting legalistic documents, elucidating what they meant and what they implied. On May 29, 2005, with a turnout of 68%, the French voted 55% to reject the Constitution. Only Paris voted heavily in favor.

Three years later, the National Assembly – that is, politicians off all parties – voted to adopt virtually the same text, which in 2009 became the Treaty of Lisbon.

That blow to the clearly expressed popular will produced such disillusion that many backed helplessly away from politics. Now they are coming back.

The VIOLENCE

From the start, the government has reacted with violence, in an apparent desire to provoke responding violence in order to condemn the movement as violent.

An army of police, dressed like robots, have surrounded and blocked groups of peaceful Yellow Vests, drowning them in clouds of teargas and firing flash balls directly at protesters, seriously wounding hundreds (no official figures). A number of people have lost an eye or a hand. The government has nothing to say about this.

On the third Saturday of protest, this army of police was unable to stop – or under orders to allow – a large number of hoodlums or Black Blocs (who knows?) to infiltrate the movement and smash property, vandalize shops, set fire to trash cans and parked cars, providing the world media with images proving that the Yellow Vests are dangerously violent.

Despite all this provocation, the Gilets Jaunes have remained remarkably calm and determined. But there are bound to be a few people who lose their tempers and try to fight back.

The BOXER

On the 8th Saturday, January 5, a squad of plexiglass-protected police were violently attacking Gilets Jaunes on a bridge over the Seine when a big guy lost his temper, emerged from the crowd and went on the attack. With his fists, he beat down one policeman and caused the others to retreat. This amazing scene was filmed. You could see Yellow Vests trying to hold him back, but Rambo was unstoppable.

It turned out that this was Christophe Dettinger, a French Rom, former light heavyweight boxing champion of France. His nickname is “the Gypsy of Massy”. He got away from the scene, but made a video before turning himself in. “I reacted badly”, he said, when he saw police attacking women and other defenseless people. He urged the movement to go ahead peacefully.

Dettinger faces seven years in prison. Within a day, his defense fund had gathered 116,433 euros. The government shut it down – on what legal pretext I don’t know. Now a petition circulates on his behalf.

The SLANDER

In his New Year’s Eve address, Macron patronizingly scolded his people telling them that “you can’t work less and earn more” – as if they all aspired to spending their lives lounging on a yacht and watching stock prices rise and fall.

Then he issued his declaration of war:

“These days I have seen unthinkable things and heard the unacceptable.” Apparently alluding to the few opposition politicians who dare sympathize with the protesters, he chastised those who pretend to “speak for the people”, but are only the “spokesmen for a hateful mob going after elected representatives, police, journalists, Jews, foreigners and homosexuals. It is simply the negation of France.”

The Gilets Jaunes haven’t been “going after” anybody. The police have been “going after” them. People have indeed spoken up vigorously against camera crews of channels that systematically distort the movement.

Not a word has been heard from the movement against foreigners or homosexuals.

The key word is Jews.

Qui veut noyer son chien l’accuse de la rage. (French proverb).

As the French saying goes, whoever wants to drown his dog claims he has rabies. Today whoever wants to ruin a career, take vengeance on a rival, disgrace an individual or destroy a movement accuses her, him, or it of antisemitism.

So, faced with a rising democratic movement, playing the “antisemitism” card was inevitable. It was almost a sure thing statistically. In almost any random batch of hundreds of thousands of people, you might find one or two who have something negative to say about a Jew. That’ll do it. The media hawks are on the outlook. The slightest incident can be used to suggest that the real motive of the movement is to revive the Holocaust.

This gently ironic little song, performed on one of France’s traffic circles, contrasts the “nice” establishment with the “bad” ordinary folk. It is a huge hit on YouTube. It gives the tone of the movement. Les Gentils et les Méchants.

It didn’t take long for this merry number to be accused of antisemitism. Why? Because it was ironically dedicated to two of the very most virulent critics of the Gilets Jaunes: May ’68 star Daniel Cohn-Bendit and old “new philosopher” Bernard-Henri Lévy. The new generation can’t stand them. But wait, they happen to be Jewish. Aha! Anti-Semitism!

The REPRESSION

Faced with what government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux described as “agitators” and “insurrectionists” who want to “overthrow the government”, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced a new “law to better protect the right to demonstrate”. Its main measure: heavily punish organizers of a demonstration whose time and place have not had official approval.

In fact, the police had already arrested 33-year-old truck driver Eric Drouet for organizing a small candle ceremony in honor of the movement’s casualties. There have been many other arrests, with no information coming out about them. (Incidentally, over the holidays, hoodlums in the banlieues of several cities carried out their ritual burning of parked cars, with no particular publicity or crackdown. Those were cars of working class people who need them to go to work, not the precious cars in the rich section of Paris whose destruction caused such scandal.)

On January 7, Luc Ferry, a “philosopher” and former Minister of Youth, Education and Research, gave a radio interview on the very respectable Radio Classique in which he declared: “The police are not given the means to end this violence. It’s unbearable. Listen, frankly, when you see guys kick a poor policemen when he’s down, that’s enough! Let them use their arms once and for all, basta! […] As I recall, we have the world’s fourth army, capable of putting an end to this garbage.”

Ferry called on Macron to make a coalition with the Republicans in order to push through his “reforms”.

Last month, in a column against the Citizens’ Initiative Referendum, Ferry wrote that “the current disparaging of experts and criticism of elitism is the worst calamity of our times.”

The ANTIFA

Wherever people gather, Antifa groups may pursue their indiscriminate search to root out “fascists”. In Bordeaux last Saturday, Yellow Vests had to fight off an attack by Antifa.

It is now completely clear (as indeed it always has been) that the self-styled “Antifascists” are the watch dogs of the status quo. In their tireless search for “fascists”, the Antifa attack anything that moves. In effect, they protect stagnation. And curiously enough, Antifa violence is tolerated by the same State and the same police who insult, attack and arrest more peaceful demonstrators. In short, the Antifa are the storm troopers of the current system.

The MEDIA

Be skeptical. At least in France, mainstream media are solidly on the side of “order”, meaning Macron, and foreign media tend to echo what national media write and say. Also, as a general rule, when it comes to France, the Anglophone media often get it wrong.

The END

It is not in sight. This may not be a revolution, but it is a revelation of the real nature of “the system”. Power lies with a technocracy in the service of “the Markets”, meaning the power of finance capital. This technocracy aspires to remake human society, our own societies and those all over the planet, in the interests of a certain capitalism. It uses economic sanctions, overwhelming propaganda and military force (NATO) in a “globalization” project that shapes people’s lives without their consent. Macron is the very embodiment of this system. He was chosen by that famous elite to carry through the measures dictated by “the Markets”, enforced by the European Union. He cannot give in. But now that people are awake to what is going on, they won’t stop either. For all the lamented decline in the school system, the French people today are as well-educated and reasonable as any population can be expected to be. If they are incapable of democracy, then democracy is impossible.

To be continued…

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Germany and France are set to forge a pact aligning their defense, diplomatic and economic policies in an unprecedented “twinning” pact “regarded as a prototype for the future of the European Union,” according to The Times‘ Oliver Moody.  

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron will sign the “Aachen treaty” later this month which will govern a coordinated diplomatic front as well as joint actions on peacekeeping missions. 

What’s more – areas on both sides of the Franco-German border will be encouraged to establish “Eurodistricts” in which both countries would merge water, electricity and public transport networks. 

Berlin and Paris will offer cash to incentivise these cross-border areas, which could involve shared hospitals, joint business schemes or environmental projects. Some officials regard these experiments as a petri dish for the integration of the EU. –The Times

No word on whether France will accept half of Germany’s refugees.

Additionally, both countries will lobby for Berlin to receive a permanent seat on the United Nations security council, where France already sits with the United States, China, Russia and Britain. Berlin was elected to the council as a non-permanent member last June. 

France and Germany will also coordinate policy positions ahead of pivotal EU summits in order to make the bloc a “more decisive power on the world stage.” In short – the treaty will solidify the two countries’ commitments to “the values of multilateralism at a time when the global liberal order is under threat,” writes Moody. 

The two countries will hold “regular consultations on all levels before major European meetings, and take care to establish common positions and issue joint statements,” according to the agreement, and will “stand up for a strong and effective common foreign and defence policy, and strengthen and deepen the economic and currency union.”

Both President Macron and Mrs Merkel have expressed frustration at the rise of populism and nationalism, and at Europe’s dithering in the face of problems such as climate change and mass migration.

On New Year’s Eve Mrs Merkel declared that Germany would “stand up and fight” for multilateralism and was ready to assume more responsibility in the world. A year ago diplomats from the countries began negotiating an agreement in the spirit of the 1963 Élysée treaty that formally set aside centuries of mutual hostility and set up the Franco-German alliance that has dominated the European project since. The brief document will be signed on January 22 in Aachen, the ancient German spa city near the borders with Belgium and the Netherlands. It is meant to be ratified by the two national parliaments that same day. –The Times

The new pact will advance Macron’s desire to use Franco-German solidarity to become more assertive as a global power, and will lay the groundwork for Franco-German defense acting as a “political steering group” on the security council. The two countries will also exchange diplomats and civil servants on a frequent basis, while ministers from one country will regularly sit in on the other’s cabinet meetings, according to The Times. 

Militarily, the treaty aims to form a “common culture and common deployments” in overseas engagements. 

A possible template for this arrangement is the 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Mali, a former French colony that was partly overrun by rebellious Tuareg tribes and Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda in early 2012.

While France bore the brunt of the fighting, the German armed forces have since supplied one of the largest non-African contingents, and some 370 German troops remain there today. –The Times

In Merkel’s new year’s address, the German chancellor said that hte concept of international cooperation was “coming under pressure,” and that her country must “stand up for and fight more strongly for our convictions,” while taking on “more responsibility for our own interests.” She also talked up a multilateral approach to international affairs, and that Germany would push for “global solutions.” 

Trouble in EU paradise?

Some EU member nations are suspicious of the Aachen treaty, with concerns over the bloc’s two most powerful economies creating “a juggernaut capable of crushing dissent beneath its wheels.” 

Meanwhile, Berlin’s potential permanent UN security council seat will surely rub some in Brussels the wrong way – and has been sharply condemned by parties on both ends of the ideological spectrum. 

Alternative for Germany leader Alexander Gauland, for example, has described the pact as an “erosion of our national sovereignty.” In France, conservative leader Marine le Pen said it was an “unbalanced” decree from Germany. 

Surely this will calm down the Yellow Vest movement. 

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Authored by Steven Guinness,

In film and literature, the majority of stories feature a customary villain, either in a singular or collective sense. Someone or something that we can pour scorn on as the hero flounders in the face of increasingly insurmountable odds.

Whilst the hero invariably wins out in the world of fantasy, in reality the spoils often fall on the side of the miscreants. A discomforting fact is that throughout history a large proportion of these spoils have been claimed through the use of deception and outright conspiracy.

Authors such as Antony Sutton – who penned several books exposing the engineered conflict behind the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism – have presented irrefutable evidence detailing how world events can and are manipulated for the benefit of financial elites using what is known as the Hegelian Dialectic. This is where you create a thesis, pitch it against an antithesis, and use the ensuing conflict to engineer a synthesis that brings about significant but desired changes within society.

As I have written about previously, out of conflict generally comes the consolidation of power that works to the benefit of major global institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements. They, along with the World Bank, the League of Nations, the United Nations and the makings of the European Union, were all conceived as a direct consequence of global conflict.

For globalists, chaos breeds opportunity. Historically, they have required crisis scenarios in order to both advance their goals and position themselves as the solution to instability.

We can find evidence for this from the IMF and it’s current head Christine Lagarde. In February 2010, Lagarde (who at the time was France’s Minister of Finance) was interviewed by The Globe and Mail and asked about the fall-out from the financial crisis of 2008:

I think that out of crisis, there are major difficulties and misery, but there are also opportunities, and now is the time, actually, post-crisis, after we mended the system so that it did not completely collapse, now is the time to give it a good thought, and a collective thought.

A month later, the IMF published a survey – the title of which left nothing to the imagination: ‘Crisis is Opportunity for Deeper, Faster Integration‘. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was replaced by Christine Lagarde as managing director of the IMF in 2011, said:

The crisis shows when the weather is quiet, existing institutions work well enough. But when you have a storm, then weaknesses of this institution appear clearly. And better coordination and stronger coordination in economic policy in my view is absolutely needed.

When you build a single currency, the natural step that follows should be a coordinated economic policy. Beyond monetary policy, Europeans must give themselves the means to manage economic policy.

Yet there exists a common place theory – perpetuated throughout alternative media and by proponents of liberty – that globalists will always seek to curtail attempts by the citizenry to jeopardise the ‘rules based global order‘ established out of the second world war. The belief is that any movement which on the surface rails against the centralisation of power will be sabotaged to the point of it’s inevitable defeat.

To challenge this theory, let’s look at what has become the latest fashionable meme to permeate the British mainstream – ‘Project Fear‘.

First used in the run up to the Scottish independence vote in 2014, ‘Project Fear‘ is a term that grew in prominence during the EU referendum campaign back in 2016. Today, it is wheeled out every time a warning is issued in regards to the potential for a ‘no deal Brexit. When those within the central banking fraternity (namely Bank of England governor Mark Carney and IMF head Christine Lagarde) speak out against no deal, it is interpreted as an attempt to first undermine Brexit, and secondly, seek to have the original referendum result overturned and keep the EU architecture intact.

In other words, we are encouraged to believe that they are striving to preserve the international order and that Brexit is incompatible with that ambition. What is not countenanced is the possibility of globalists using mechanisms such as a resurgence in nationalism to their advantage.

As demonstrated in previous articles, the economic ramifications from the first referendum resulted in a sustained depreciation of sterling that led to a rise in inflation. In response, the Bank of England have raised interest rates twice under the banner of stemming inflationary pressures. These rate hikes were not an isolated act. Elsewhere, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada have also been raising rates, as have countries in emerging markets.

The trend of monetary accommodation has now shifted to monetary tightening, in the face of growing geopolitical and economic instability.

The first indication that this shift was coming occurred at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2014, when Christine Lagarde mapped out what she described as a necessary ‘reset‘ of global monetary policies. This is an area I discussed in detail in my last article, ‘Monetary Policy ‘Reset’: From Rhetoric to Actuality‘.

Consider this: 2008 became a crisis of the global financial system. Interest rates were subsequently cut to near 0% across the West. Stimulus programmes were devised in the form of quantitative easing to re-liquidate markets and keep failing institutions afloat. In the years following, inflation rose above the mandated central bank target of 2%. This was tolerated indefinitely as Central banks continued to inject more money into the system amidst rising inflation. What we witnessed were actions to backstop the system, and to reinforce that backstop with the issuance of cheap money. With the debt bubble re-inflated, the illusion of economic recovery began to gain momentum.

Eleven years later in 2019, what we are being presented with are a series of politically led crises. Inflation has crept above target, which is no longer being tolerated in the same manner as before. Interest rates are rising, stimulus measures are either being cut or reversed. These are actions that unlike in 2018 do not serve to reinforce the financial system. At a time of record levels of consumer and corporate debt, intermixed with the aforementioned rise in nationalism / protectionism, monetary policy continues to tighten. Read communications emanating from the Bank of England and you will see that unlike several years ago, inflation mandates now matter again. This has created the perception of Brexit being the cause of a rise in interest rates.

The plan as far back as 2014 was to eventually reach a point where monetary accommodation could be reversed. The geopolitical conditions over the past three years have created a pathway for this to happen. Brexit has enabled the Bank of England to play their role in tightening policy. Prior to that the BOE had no discernible route in which to do so, not without inviting excess scrutiny and inquisition onto themselves.

Monetary policy is an essential tool in the creation of boom and bust cycles. At each stage of these cycles central banks covertly gain more control over the financial system. In 2008 they went all in and became the custodian of markets. Today they are retreating, which soon will precipitate an economic collapse. How they will benefit from this is through tighter regulations and reformulated policies administered from the global level, and the advancement of the long held plan for the gradual implementation of central bank issued digital currency.

This is why I would contest that the purpose behind ‘project fear‘ is not to prevent a no deal Brexit. When Mark Carney affirms that a consequence of no deal will be further devaluation of the pound and heightened inflation, these are prime conditions for the BOE to continue tightening.

I look upon ‘project fear‘ as the BOE and the IMF telegraphing what is most likely to happen. It is my belief that a second referendum will take place in 2019, perhaps around the time when the Bank for International Settlements are due to hold their annual conference in June. I also think the referendum would give the electorate the option of voting for a ‘hard‘ Brexit.

But as the furore over Brexit grinds on, the venue from which Christine Lagarde launched the IMF’s plans for a ‘reset‘ in 2014 are preparing to gather again in January. The theme for the 2019 World Economic Forum is, ‘Globalization 4.0: Shaping a New Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.’ The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is a subject I wrote about last year where I argued the case for it being mission creep towards a new world order that encompassed virtually all elements of society.

To quote WEF founder Klaus Schwab directly:

Our systems of health, transportation, communication, production, distribution, and energy – just to name a few – will be completely transformed.

Blockchain and distributed ledger technology, both of which are fundamental in the drive towards digital currency, are also part of the 4IR vision.

It was in December 2015 that Schwab first outlined the concept of 4IR in an article posted by Foreign Affairs (which is published by the Council on Foreign Relations). 4IR became the leading theme at Davos in 2016. Three years later and it is once again central to the WEF’s agenda.

It should be noted that whilst Schwab and other globalist figureheads talk of transforming society, they admit that the scale of change brought about through 4IR will cause ‘disruptions‘. It could be argued that these ‘disruptions‘ – most notably on a geopolitical level –  present a timely distraction for the incremental adoption of the main planks of 4IR.

Discussing ‘Globalization 4.0‘, Schwab speaks of a necessity for the ‘international community‘ to band together in order to ‘build a shared future‘. Schwab cites the present day as an ‘era of widespread insecurity and frustration‘, which he subsequently blames for a rise in populism. That is the same populism through which the ‘reset‘ of the financial system is being administered.

As globalists gradually make steps towards their goals, they sometimes become a touch more forthright in their communications. Schwab is no different in this respect:

Clinging to an outdated mindset and tinkering with our existing processes and institutions will not do. Rather, we need to redesign them from the ground up, so that we can capitalize on the new opportunities that await us.

Ready or not, a new world is upon us.

Be in no doubt that globalists are now openly agitating for major reform off the back of intensified geopolitical disorder. From a monetary perspective, I would encourage readers to be wary of the IMF’s impending ‘15th General Review of quotas‘, which they say must be completed by the time of the institution’s annual meetings in October this year. At the 14th general review, finalised nine years ago, the IMF’s quotas (measured in SDR’s) doubled in size in the aftermath of 2008.

Quite what economic conditions will be by the end of 2019 is unknown, but a significant deterioration from where we are now will allow the IMF the opportunity to use the 15th review to strengthen the role of the SDR via an increase in quotas.

The review also presents the IMF with the opportunity to ‘realign‘ quota shares, meaning a likelihood that the Chinese Renminbi will see its allocation increased at the expense of the U.S. dollar.

via RSS http://bit.ly/2SOM3Fq Tyler Durden

Authored by Dmitry Orlov via The Unz Review,

The West is rotting!
Yes, maybe, but what a nice smell…

Old Soviet joke

The word ‘catastrophe‘ has several meanings, but in its original meaning in Greek the word means a “sudden downturn” (in Greek katastrophē ‘overturning, sudden turn,’ from kata- ‘down’ + strophē ‘turning’). As for the word “superpower” it also has several possible definitions, but my preferred one is this one “Superpower is a term used to describe a state with a dominant position, which is characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined-means of economic, military, technological and cultural strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power influence. Traditionally, superpowers are preeminent among the great powers” this one, “an extremely powerful nation, especially one capable of influencing international events and the acts and policies of less powerful nations” or this one “an international governing body able to enforce its will upon the most powerful states“.

I have mentioned the very visible decline of the US and its associated Empire in many of my articles already, so I won’t repeat it here other than to say that the “ability to exert influence and impose its will” is probably the best criteria to measure the magnitude of the fall of the US since Trump came to power (the process was already started by Dubya and Obama, but it sure accelerated with The Donald). But I do want to use a metaphor to revisit the concept of catastrophe.

If you place an object in the middle of a table and then push it right to the edge, you will exert some amount of energy we can call “E1”. Then, if the edge of the table is smooth and you just push the object over the edge, you exercise a much smaller amount of energy we can call “E2”. And, in most cases (if the table is big enough), you will also find that E1 is much bigger than E2 yet E2, coming after E1 took place, triggered a much more dramatic event: instead of smoothly gliding over the table top, the object suddenly falls down and shatters. That sudden fall can also be called a “catastrophe”. This is also something which happens in history, take the example of the Soviet Union.

The fate of all empires…

Some readers might recall how Alexander Solzhenitsyn repeatedly declared in the 1980s that he was sure that the Soviet regime would collapse and that he would return to Russia. He was, of course, vitriolically ridiculed by all the “specialists” and “experts”. After all, why would anybody want to listen to some weird Russian exile with politically suspicious ideas (there were rumors of “monarchism” and “anti-Semitism”) when the Soviet Union was an immense superpower, armed to the teeth with weapons, with an immense security service, with political allies and supporters worldwide? Not only that, but all the “respectable” specialists and experts were unanimous that, while the Soviet regime had various problems, it was very far from collapse. The notion that NATO would soon replace the Soviet military not only in eastern Europe, but even in part of the Soviet Union was absolutely unthinkable. And yet it all happened, very, very fast. I would argue that the Soviet union completely collapsed in the span of less than 4 short years: 1990-1993. How and why this happened is beyond the scope of this article, but what is undeniable is that in 1989 the Soviet Union was still an apparently powerful entity, while by the end of 1993, it was gone (smashed into pieces by the very nomenklatura which used to rule over it). How did almost everybody miss that?

Because ideologically-poisoned analysis leads to intellectual complacence, a failure of imagination and, generally, an almost total inability to even hypothetically look at possible outcomes. This is how almost all the “Soviet specialists” got it wrong (the KGB, by the way, had predicted this outcome and warned the Politburo, but the Soviet gerontocrats were ideologically paralyzed and were both unable, and often unwilling, to take any preventative action). The Kerensky masonic regime in 1917 Russia, the monarchy in Iran or the Apartheid regime in South Africa also collapsed very fast once the self-destruction mechanism was in place and launched.

You can think of that “regime self-destruction mechanism” as our E1 phase in our metaphor above. As for E2, you can think of it as whatever small-push like event which precipitates the quick and final collapse, apparently with great ease and minimum energy spent.

At this point it is important to explain what exactly a “final collapse” looks like. Some people are under the very mistaken assumption that a collapsed society or country looks like a Mad Max world. This is not so. The Ukraine has been a failed state for several years already, but it still exists on the map. People live there, work, most people still have electricity (albeit not 24/7), a government exists, and, at least officially, law and order is maintained. This kind of collapsed society can go on for years, maybe decades, but it is in a state of collapse nonetheless, as it has reached all the 5 Stages of Collapse as defined by Dmitry Orlov in his seminal book “The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors’ Toolkit” where he mentions the following 5 stages of collapse:

• Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost.

• Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost.

• Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost.

• Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost.

• Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in “the goodness of humanity” is lost.

Having personally visited Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s, and seen the Russia of the early 1990s, I can attest that a society can completely collapse while maintaining a lot of the external appearances of a normal still functioning society. Unlike the Titanic, most collapsed regimes don’t fully sink. They remain about half under water, and half above, possibly with an orchestra still playing joyful music. And in the most expensive top deck cabins, a pretty luxurious lifestyle can be maintained by the elites. But for most of the passengers such a collapse results in poverty, insecurity, political instability and a huge loss in welfare. Furthermore, in terms of motion, a half-sunk ship is no ship at all.

Here is the crucial thing: as long as the ship’s PA systems keep announcing great weather and buffet brunches, and as long as most of the passengers remain in their cabins and watch TV instead of looking out of the window, the illusion of normalcy can be maintained for a fairly long while, even after a collapse. During the E1 phase outlined above, most passengers will be kept in total ignorance (lest they riot or protest) and only when E2 strikes (totally unexpectedly for most passengers) does reality eventually destroy the ignorance and illusions of the brainwashed passengers.

Obama was truly the beginning of the end

I have lived in the US from 1986-1991 and from 2002 to today and there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the country has undergone a huge decline over the past decades. In fact, I would argue that the US has been living under E1 condition since at least Dubya and that this process dramatically accelerated under Obama and Trump. I believe that we reached the E2 “edge of the table” moment in 2018 and that from now on even a relatively minor incident can result in a sudden downturn (i.e. a “catastrophe”). Still, I decided to check with the undisputed specialist of this issue and so I emailed Dmitry Orlov and asked him the following question:

In your recent article “The Year the Planet Flipped Over” you paint a devastating picture of the state of the Empire:

It is already safe to declare Trump’s plan to Make America Great Again (MAGA) a failure. Beneath the rosy statistics of US economic growth hides the hideous fact that it is the result of a tax holiday granted to transnational corporations to entice them to repatriate their profits. While this hasn’t helped them (their stocks are currently cratering) it has been a disaster for the US government as well as for the economic system as whole. Tax receipts have shrunk. The budget deficit for 2018 exceeds $779 billion.

Meanwhile, the trade wars which Trump initiated have caused the trade deficit to increase by 17% from the year before. Plans to repatriate industrial production from low-cost countries remain vaporous because the three key elements which China had as it industrialized (cheap energy, cheap labor and low cost of doing business) are altogether missing. Government debt is already beyond reasonable and its expansion is still accelerating, with just the interest payments set to exceed half a trillion a year within a decade.

This trajectory does not bode well for the continued existence of the United States as a going concern. Nobody, either in the United States or beyond, has the power to significantly alter this trajectory. Trump’s thrashing about may have moved things along faster than they otherwise would have, at least in the sense of helping convince the entire world that the US is selfish, feckless, ultimately self-destructive and generally unreliable as a partner. In the end it won’t matter who was president of the US—it never has. Among those the US president has succeeded in hurting most are his European allies. His attacks on Russian energy exports to Europe, on European car manufacturers and on Europe’s trade with Iran have caused a fair amount of damage, both political and economic, without compensating for it with any perceived or actual benefits.

Meanwhile, as the globalist world order, which much of Europe’s population appears ready to declare a failure, begins to unravel, the European Union is rapidly becoming ungovernable, with established political parties unable to form coalitions with ever-more-numerous populist upstarts. It is too early to say that the EU has already failed altogether, but it already seems safe to predict that within a decade it will no longer remain as a serious international factor.

Although the disastrous quality and the ruinous mistakes of Europe’s own leadership deserve a lot of the blame, some of it should rest with the erratic, destructive behavior of their transoceanic Big Brother. The EU has already morphed into a strictly regional affair, unable to project power or entertain any global geopolitical ambitions. Same goes for Washington, which is going to either depart voluntarily (due to lack of funds) or get chased out from much of the world.

The departure from Syria is inevitable whether Trump, under relentless pressure from his bipartisan warmongers, backtracks on this commitment or not. Now that Syria has been armed with Russia’s up-to-date air defense weapons the US no longer maintains air superiority there, and without air superiority the US military is unable to do anything. Afghanistan is next; there, it seems outlandish to think that the Washingtonians will be able to achieve any sort of reasonable accommodation with the Taliban.

Their departure will spell the end of Kabul as a center of corruption where foreigners steal humanitarian aid and other resources. Somewhere along the way the remaining US troops will also be pulled out of Iraq, where the parliament, angered by Trump’s impromptu visit to a US base, recently voted to expel them. And that will put paid to the entire US adventure in the Middle East since 9/11: $4,704,439,588,308 has been squandered, to be precise, or $14,444 for every man, woman and child in the US.

The biggest winners in all of this are, obviously, the people of the entire region, because they will no longer be subjected to indiscriminate US harassment and bombardment, followed by Russia, China and Iran, with Russia solidifying its position as the ultimate arbiter of international security arrangements thanks to its unmatched military capabilities and demonstrated knowhow for coercion to peace. Syria’s fate will be decided by Russia, Iran and Turkey, with the US not even invited to the talks. Afghanistan will fall into the sphere of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. And the biggest losers will be former US regional allies, first and foremost Israel, followed by Saudi Arabia.

My question for you is this: where would you place the US (or the Empire) on your 5 stages of decline and do you believe that the US (or the Empire) can reverse that trend?

Here is Dmitry’s reply:

Collapse, at each stage, is a historical process that takes time to run its course as the system adapts to changing circumstances, compensates for its weaknesses and finds ways to continue functioning at some level. But what changes rather suddenly is faith or, to put it in more businesslike terms, sentiment. A large segment of the population or an entire political class within a country or the entire world can function based on a certain set of assumptions for much longer than the situation warrants but then over a very short period of time switch to a different set of assumptions. All that sustains the status quo beyond that point is institutional inertia. It imposes limits on how fast systems can change without collapsing entirely. Beyond that point, people will tolerate the older practices only until replacements for them can be found.

Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost.

Internationally, the major change in sentiment in the world has to do with the role of the US dollar (and, to a lesser extent, the Euro and the Yen—the other two reserve currencies of the three-legged globalist central banker stool). The world is transitioning to the use of local currencies, currency swaps and commodities markets backed by gold. The catalyst for this change of sentiment was provided by the US administration itself which sawed through its own perch by its use of unilateral sanctions. By using its control over dollar-based transactions to block international transactions it doesn’t happen to like it forced other countries to start looking for alternatives. Now a growing list of countries sees throwing off the shackles of the US dollar as a strategic goal. Russia and China use the ruble and the yuan for their expanding trade; Iran sells oil to India for rupees. Saudi Arabia has started to accept the yuan for its oil.

This change has many knock-on effects. If the dollar is no longer needed to conduct international trade, other nations no longer have hold large quantities of it in reserve. Consequently, there is no longer a need to buy up large quantities of US Treasury notes. Therefore, it becomes unnecessary to run large trade surpluses with the US, essentially conducting trade at a loss. Further, the attractiveness of the US as an export market drops and the cost of imports to the US rises, thereby driving up cost inflation. A vicious spiral ensues in which the ability of the US government to borrow internationally to finance the gaping chasm of its various deficits becomes impaired. Sovereign default of the US government and national bankruptcy then follow.

The US may still look mighty, but its dire fiscal predicament coupled with its denial of the inevitability of bankruptcy, makes it into something of a Blanche DuBois from the Tennessee Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire.” She was “always dependent on the kindness of strangers” but was tragically unable to tell the difference between kindness and desire. In this case, the desire is for national advantage and security, and to minimize risk by getting rid of an unreliable trading partner.

How quickly or slowly this comes to pass is difficult to guess at and impossible to calculate. It is possible to think of the financial system in terms of a physical analogue, with masses of funds traveling at some velocity having a certain inertia (p = mv) and with forces acting on that mass to accelerate it along a different trajectory (F = ma). It is also possible to think of it in terms of hordes of stampeding animals who can change course abruptly when panicked. The recent abrupt moves in the financial markets, where trillions of dollars of notional, purely speculative value have been wiped out within weeks, are more in line with the latter model.

Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost.

Within the US there is really no other alternative than the market. There are a few rustic enclaves, mostly religious communities, that can feed themselves, but that’s a rarity. For everyone else there is no choice but to be a consumer. Consumers who are broke are called “bums,” but they are still consumers. To the extent that the US has a culture, it is a commercial culture in which the goodness of a person is based on the goodly sums of money in their possession. Such a culture can die by becoming irrelevant (when everyone is dead broke) but by then most of the carriers of this culture are likely to be dead too. Alternatively, it can be replaced by a more humane culture that isn’t entirely based on the cult of Mammon—perhaps, dare I think, through a return to a pre-Protestant, pre-Catholic Christian ethic that values people’s souls above objects of value?

Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost.

All is very murky at the moment, but I would venture to guess that most people in the US are too distracted, too stressed and too preoccupied with their own vices and obsessions to pay much attention to the political realm. Of the ones they do pay attention, a fair number of them seem clued in to the fact that the US is not a democracy at all but an elites-only sandbox in which transnational corporate and oligarchic interests build and knock down each others’ sandcastles.

The extreme political polarization, where two virtually identical pro-capitalist, pro-war parties pretend to wage battle by virtue-signaling may be a symptom of the extremely decrepit state of the entire political arrangement: people are made to watch the billowing smoke and to listen to the deafening noise in the hopes that they won’t notice that the wheels are no longer turning.

The fact that what amounts to palace intrigue—the fracas between the White House, the two houses of Congress and a ghoulish grand inquisitor named Mueller—has taken center stage is uncannily reminiscent of various earlier political collapses, such as the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire or of the fall and the consequent beheading of Louis XVI. The fact that Trump, like the Ottoman worthies, stocks his harem with East European women, lends an eerie touch. That said, most people in the US seem blind to the nature of their overlords in a way that the French, with their Gilettes Jaunesmovement (just as an example) are definitely not.

Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost.

I have been saying for some years now that within the US social collapse has largely run its course, although whether people actually believe that is an entire matter entirely. Defining “your people” is rather difficult. The symbols are still there—the flag, the Statue of Liberty and a predilection for iced drinks and heaping plates of greasy fried foods—but the melting pot seems to have suffered a meltdown and melted all the way to China. At present half the households within the US speak a language other than English at home, and a fair share of the rest speak dialects of English that are not mutually intelligible with the standard North American English dialect of broadcast television and university lecturers.

Throughout its history as a British colony and as a nation the US has been dominated by the Anglo ethnos. The designation “ethnos” is not an ethnic label. It is not strictly based on genealogy, language, culture, habitat, form of government or any other single factor or group of factors. These may all be important to one extent or another, but the viability of an ethnos is based solely on its cohesion and the mutual inclusivity and common purpose of its members. The Anglo ethnos reached its zenith in the wake of World War II, during which many social groups were intermixed in the military and their more intelligent members.

Fantastic potential was unleashed when privilege—the curse of the Anglo ethnos since its inception—was temporarily replaced with merit and the more talented demobilized men, of whatever extraction, were given a chance at education and social advancement by the GI Bill. Speaking a new sort of American English based on the Ohio dialect as a Lingua Franca, these Yanks—male, racist, sexist and chauvinistic and, at least in their own minds, victorious—were ready to remake the entire world in their own image.

They proceeded to flood the entire world with oil (US oil production was in full flush then) and with machines that burned it. Such passionate acts of ethnogenesis are rare but not unusual: the Romans who conquered the entire Mediterranean basin, the barbarians who then sacked Rome, the Mongols who later conquered most of Eurasia and the Germans who for a very brief moment possessed an outsized Lebensraum are other examples.

And now it is time to ask: what remains of this proud conquering Anglo ethnos today? We hear shrill feminist cries about “toxic masculinity” and minorities of every stripe railing against “whitesplaining” and in response we hear a few whimpers but mostly silence. Those proud, conquering, virile Yanks who met and fraternized with the Red Army at the River Elbe on April 25, 1945—where are they? Haven’t they devolved into a sad little subethnos of effeminate, porn-addicted overgrown boys who shave their pubic hair and need written permission to have sex without fear of being charged with rape?

Will the Anglo ethnos persist as a relict, similar to how the English have managed to hold onto their royals (who are technically no longer even aristocrats since they now practice exogamy with commoners)? Or will it get wiped out in a wave of depression, mental illness and opiate abuse, its glorious history of rapine, plunder and genocide erased and the statues of its war heros/criminals knocked down? Only time will tell.

Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in “the goodness of humanity” is lost.

The term “culture” means many things to many people, but it is more productive to observe cultures than to argue about them. Cultures are expressed through people’s stereotypical behaviors that are readily observable in public. These are not the negative stereotypes often used to identify and reject outsiders but the positive stereotypes—cultural standards of behavior, really—that serve as requirements for social adequacy and inclusion. We can readily assess the viability of a culture by observing the stereotypical behaviors of its members.

• Do people exist as a single continuous, inclusive sovereign realm or as a set of exclusive, potentially warring enclaves segregated by income, ethnicity, education level, political affiliation and so on? Do you see a lot of walls, gates, checkpoints, security cameras and “no trespassing” signs? Is the law of the land enforced uniformly or are there good neighborhoods, bad neighborhoods and no-go zones where even the police fear to tread?

• Do random people thrown together in public spontaneously enter into conversation with each other and are comfortable with being crowded together, or are they aloof and fearful, and prefer to hide their face in the little glowing rectangle of their smartphone, jealously guarding their personal space and ready to regard any encroachment on it as an assault?

• Do people remain good-natured and tolerant toward each other even when hard-pressed or do they hide behind a façade of tense, superficial politeness and fly into a rage at the slightest provocation? Is conversation soft in tone, gracious and respectful or is it loud, shrill, rude and polluted with foul language? Do people dress well out of respect for each other, or to show off, or are they all just déclassé slobs—even the ones with money?

• Observe how their children behave: are they fearful of strangers and trapped in a tiny world of their own or are they open to the world and ready to treat any stranger as a surrogate brother or sister, aunt or uncle, grandmother or grandfather without requiring any special introduction? Do the adults studiously ignore each others’ children or do they spontaneously act as a single family?

• If there is a wreck on the road, do they spontaneously rush to each others’ rescue and pull people out before the wreck explodes, or do they, in the immortal words of Frank Zappa, “get on the phone and call up some flakes” who “rush on over and wreck it some more”?

• If there is a flood or a fire, do the neighbors take in the people who are rendered homeless, or do they allow them to wait for the authorities to show up and bus them to some makeshift government shelter?

It is possible to quote statistics or to provide anecdotal evidence to assess the state and the viability of a culture, but your own eyes and other senses can provide all the evidence you need to make that determination for yourself and to decide how much faith to put in “the goodness of humanity” that is evident in the people around you.

Dmity concluded his reply by summarizing his view like this:

Cultural and social collapse are very far along. Financial collapse is waiting for a trigger. Commercial collapse will happen in stages some of which—food deserts, for instance—have already happened in many places. Political collapse will only become visible once the political class gives up. It’s not as simple as saying which stage we are at. They are all happening in parallel, to one extent or another.

My own (totally subjective) opinion is that the US has already reached stages 1 through 4, and that there are signs that stage 5 has begun; mainly in big cities as US small towns and rural areas (Trump’s power base, by the way) are still struggling to maintain the norms and behaviors one could observe in the US of the 1980s. When I have visitors from Europe they always comment how friendly and welcoming US Americans are (true, I live in small-town in East-Central Florida, not in Miami…). These are the communities which voted for Trump because they said “we want our country back”. Alas, instead of giving them their country back, Trump gifted it to the Neocons…

Conclusion: connecting the dots; or not

Frankly, the dots are all over the place; it is really hard to miss them. However, for the doubleplusgoodthinking“ideological drone” they remain largely invisible, and this is not due to any eyesight problem, but due to that drone’s total inability to connect the dots. These are the kind of folks who danced on the deck of the Titanic while it was sinking. For them, when the inevitable catastrophe comes, it will be a total, mind-blowing, surprise. But, until that moment, they will keep on denying the obvious, no matter how obvious that obvious has become.

Don’t expect these two losers to fix anything, they will only make things worse…

In the meantime, the US ruling elites are locked into an ugly internal struggle which only further weakens the US. What is so telling is that the Democrats are still stuck with their same clueless, incompetent and infinitely arrogant leadership, in spite of the fact that everybody knows that the Democratic Party is in deep crisis and that new faces are desperately needed. But no, they are still completely stuck in their old ways and the same gang of gerontocrats continues to rule the party apparatus.

That is another surefire sign of degeneracy: when a regime can only produce incompetent, often old, leaders who are completely out of touch with reality and who blame their own failures on internal (“deplorables”) and external (“the Russians”) factors. Again, think of the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, the Apartheid regime in South Africa under F. W. de Klerk, or the Kerensky regime in 1917 Russia.

As for the Republicans, they are basically a subsidiary of the Israeli Likud Party. Just take a look at the long list of losers the Likud produced at home, and you will get a sense of what they can do in its US colony.

Eventually the US will rebound; I have no doubts about that at all. This is a big country with millions of immensely talented people, immense natural resources and no credible threat to it’s territory. But that can only happen after a real regime change (as opposed to a change in Presidential Administration) which, itself, is only going to happen after an “E2 catastrophe” collapse.

Until then, we will all be waiting for Godot.

via RSS http://bit.ly/2THCisx Tyler Durden

After Motherboard gave a bounty hunter a phone number and a few hundred bucks, their contact responded with a screenshot of Google Maps, containing a highlighted circle indicating the phone’s exact location.

Motherboard then released a report on Tuesday, showing how T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling their customers’ location data, and some of that data was ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and unauthorized people, letting them track virtually any phone in the US.

In a swift response to the report, several senators requested the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate, and demanded greater oversight and regulation of the telecommunications industry.

On Thursday, AT&T released a statement indicating that it is halting the sale of all location data to so-called location aggregators, firms that sit in the supply chain between the telcos and clients.

“In light of recent reports about the misuse of location services, we have decided to eliminate all location aggregation services – even those with clear consumer benefits,” AT&T said in a statement. “We are immediately eliminating the remaining services and will be done in March.”

Some companies use the location data service for legitimate purposes, such as roadside assistance to find stranded customers, or financial companies to detect fraud. But, according to AT&T’s statement Thursday, “all location aggregation services” will be cut off.

In Motherboard’s report, the smartphone they located was using the T-Mobile network. For Motherboard’s staff to receive the location, the data traveled through a complex system of companies, starting with T-Mobile, before going to a location aggregator called Zumigo. Zumigo then sold it to a firm called Microbilt, which provides access to a variety of industries, including bounty hunters. The bounty hunter then sold it to a source, and that source finally sold it to Motherboard.

After the release of Motherboard’s investigation, T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeted that his company is also going to cut off all location aggregators. Verizon said in a statement Thursday that it, too, will eliminate the service. Sprint has so far not released any comments on the issue. 

The announcement from major telcos reflects a significant victory for privacy advocates who have sounded the alarm that corporate America has mishandled consumers’ data, often to sell it off for an economic gain.

“Carriers are always responsible for who ends up with their customers’ data – it’s not enough to lay the blame for misuse on downstream companies,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) in a statement. “The time for taking these companies at their word is long past. Congress needs to pass strong legislation to protect Americans’ privacy and finally hold corporations accountable when they put your safety at risk by letting stalkers and criminals track your phone on the dark web.”

Other critics said consumers have an “absolute right” to the privacy of their data.

“I’m extraordinarily troubled by reports of this system of repackaging and reselling location data to unregulated third-party services for potentially nefarious purposes,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) said in a statement. “If true, this practice represents a legitimate threat to our personal and national security.”

Harris demanded that the FCC immediately open an investigation.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted Thursday, “The FCC needs to immediately investigate reports of this system of repackaging and reselling location data to unregulated third party services and take the necessary steps to protect Americans’ privacy.”

In another tweet, Rosenworcel added: “It shouldn’t be that you pay a few hundred dollars to a bounty hunter and then they can tell you in real time where a phone is within a few hundred meters. That’s not right. This entire ecosystem needs oversight.”

via RSS http://bit.ly/2RkHOVn Tyler Durden

Via Priceonomics.com,

A decade ago, it likely seemed unthinkable that our refrigerators could tell us when we were running low on milk, our doorbells could record our visitors, and our audio speaker system could also “accidentally” order toys online. And yet, here we are in the era of the “Internet of Things”, sometimes abbreviated as IoT, where these sorts of devices have exploded in popularity and are literally everywhere.

The Internet of Things typically refers to adding network connectivity to everyday objects or devices that previously were not internet-enabled. As Tony Fadell, founder IoT trailblazing company Nest commented, a hallmark of the Internet of Things space is to work on “unloved” and sometimes “utilitarian” devices (think smoke detectors, doorbells, and other sensors) and add never-before-possible functionality via network connectivity.

And while consumer IoT has received a lot of attention with the prevalence of smart speakers, televisions, and household appliances, the Internet of Things has also arrived at the enterprise as companies are using the internet to track expensive assets and optimize logistics and manufacturing.

The growth of Internet of Things in terms of number of devices, revenue generated, and data produced has been stunning, but most predictions expect that growth to accelerate. The number of connected devices is expected to grow to 50 billion in 2020 (from 8.7 billion in 2012) and the annual revenue from IoT sales is forecast to hit $1.6 trillion by 2025 (from just $200 billion today).

But perhaps most notable of all, the amount of data produced by Internet of Things is expected to reach 4.4 zettabytes by 2020, from just 0.1 zettabytes in 2013.

*  *  *

Before diving into the data, it’s worth spending a moment clarifying what we consider to be an Internet of Things device, and what isn’t. In this report, we adopt the definition that IoT devices are ones that were traditionally not connected to the internet (“dumb” devices), but are now network connected, enabling a new set of applications. 

For example, even though smartphone phones and computers are Internet-enabled, we don’t consider them as IoT devices because they “traditionally” have been so. At the other end of the extreme, an internet-enabled toaster oven would be considered an Internet of Things device in this report because that appliance hasn’t typically been connected to a network.

With that definition in mind, just how fast is the IoT market growing? With any market forecast, there are a number of competing statistics and predictions, but all of them indicate the growth has been blazing fast and may even accelerate.

According to the NCTA, the trade association for broadband and television providers, the installed base of connected devices is expected to grow to over 50 billion by 2020, an increase of almost 500% from 2012.

Nearly every market forecast shows the industry growing to a trillion dollar plus industry in the next decade. One of the more conservative estimates from market research firm IoT Analytics pegs it growing to a $1.6 trillion industry by 2025.

If $1.6 trillion in revenue by 2025 seems like an aggressive estimate, keep in mind that by that year, McKinsey estimates the market to reach $6.1 trillion, IDC estimates $7.1 trillion and Cisco estimates $14.4 trillion.

How can a market grow from relatively small to a multi-trillion dollar industry within a decade? Given that the ambition of Internet of Things is to replace every asset in the economy with a networked-replacement, the industry is targeting a very large market.

Consumer Vs. Enterprise Landscape

Not only is IoT a very large market, but it targets both consumer and enterprise devices and applications. While consumer IoT devices often get most of the attention in the popular press, enterprise IoT has the potential to transform the operations of nearly every industry in the economy.

On the consumer side, what are the most popular IoT devices? A report by market research firm  Walker Sands shows the ownership rate of various connected devices among U.S. households in 2017. While not strictly part of the “Internet of Things,” smartphones and tablets are included in the chart below for reference.

Though no nowhere near as popular as smartphones and tablets, the most popular IoT devices of streaming device, home automation, and smart speaker are found in over 20% of homes in the United States. 

Part of what makes predicting the size of the IoT market difficult is that some of the categories are growing at tremendous rates. Take smart speakers, for example, a category that barely existed a few years ago may sell 56 million units in 2018, eight times more than their 2016 sales, as tech giants Amazon, Google and Apple have jumped into what has become a huge category.

Smart speakers may stand out as an exceptionally fast growing category, but it’s not alone. Televisions for example, have gone from “dumb” screen monitors to ones that can play internet video via direct capability or through a streaming device in less than a decade. There is strong reason to believe that in the future, nearly all consumer devices that could be connected to the internet, will.

In the enterprise, the promise of greater efficiency gains from IoT, is part of what is underlying the predictions of why IoT could be a multi-trillion dollar industry in the next decade. Thirty years ago, understanding where your assets where, what they were doing, and what was wrong was them would have been cost prohibitive. Today, given the proliferation of low cost sensors and internet connectivity, this kind of knowledge is commonplace.

There are three main use cases for the Internet of Things in the enterprise:

• Monitoring and Diagnostics: Improved machine availability with real-time monitoring and diagnostics.

• Predictive Maintenance: Get notifications and diagnose alarms and anomalies in real-time to accelerate issue response without affecting production.

• Industrial Security: Find the source of security problems before equipment fails and avoid the costly downtime associated with breaches.

Beyond individual companies embracing the Internet of Things, we’re also seeing large scale industrial projects with IoT at their core. Research firm IoT Analytics, compiled a list of 1,600 known industrial IoT projects and categorized them according to these segments:

The largest category of industrial IoT is Smart City, which often involves projects involving traffic monitoring, parking management, and other applications that give governments analytics into the workings of their cities. Rounding out the top three industrial IoT use cases are Connect Industry (IoT devices in non-factory environments like a mining operation) and Connect Buildings (typically using monitoring to make building energy use more efficient).

The Data Cometh

Whether it’s for the consumer, enterprise or industrial, IoT devices by their very nature produce an enormous amount of data. As would be expected given the steep expected growth of the IoT market, the amount of data that will be generated by the Internet of Things will be truly enormous.

According to IDC, the data generated from IoT devices is currently growing from 0.1 zettabytes in 2013 to 4.4 zettabytes in 2020:

By this estimate, data generated by IoT devices in increasing nearly 50 times in just seven years, posing some spectacular challenges for the companies tasked with being stewards for this data.

IoT executive Steve Wilkes highlights the three main problems companies face in light of this IoT data explosion:

• Data Integration: Using this newly created IoT data in concert with other enterprise data sources like log files, message cues, and transactional data.

• Managing Data: Currently, there isn’t enough storage in the entire world to meet the future expected data storage needs from IoT devices. Creating a data management process to decide what data to store and how to access it for analysis will pose major decisions for these companies.

• Data Security: IoT devices captures highly personal data from consumers and highly proprietary data from enterprises. As the last decade of high profile hacks has demonstrated–where there is data, there is bound to be people trying to steal that data.

Conclusion

By all accounts, the growth of IoT has been exponential. The market is expected to grow from a couple of hundred billion dollars to over a trillion dollars in under a decade. A category like smart speakers, which was a small niche a few years ago, is now a ubiquitous presence in homes across the world. And as companies invest in capital improvements, those assets are increasingly equipped with internet capability to monitoring, maintenance and optimization purposes.

The Internet of Things revolution is here and it’s only getting bigger. And that means one enormous by-product from all these connected devices: data. The companies that create and deploy IoT devices will increasingly find themselves pondering not just how to use IoT devices but what to do with the data and how to secure it from threats.

via RSS http://bit.ly/2RHNFU5 Tyler Durden

Tony Castro Ulloa, the grandson of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, recently posted photos of his private life on a private Instagram account showing frequent trips around the world, driving luxury cars, sailing on superyachts, and dining at expensive restaurants.

The photos, posted several months ago, have sparked outrage on social media after Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald published them. 

The decadent lifestyle of Tony Castro is not sitting well with many Cubans on the island or exiled in South Florida, who say most Cubans live on an average salary of $30 a month and rationed food. 

“All the animals are equal, but some are more equal than others,” Pedro Pérez wrote on his Facebook page, the Miami Herald reported.  The quote is from George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” which is banned in Cuba. 

Castro family members barely show their faces in public, except Antonio Castro and now his son Tony. 

Antonio is an orthopedic surgeon, and his son is a model, which has led some people on social media to think the lavish pictures are from photo shoots. 

In 2015, Antonio was photographed near a Greek resort island of Mykonos, aboard a superyacht in Bodrum, Turkey, where he rented five luxury suites in one of the most expensive hotels, according to media reports.

The Miami Herald said Tony is a big traveler. His photos on Instagram show him in Mexico, Spain, Panama, and various places in Cuba. His girlfriend accompanied him on the trips.

The first public displays of Tony was in  2016 as Chanel was preparing for a fashion show along Havana’s famous Prado Boulevard. 

The 1959 Cuban Revolution was led by Tony’ grandfather dictator Fidel Castro who went on to rule the country for five decades until his death in 2016. 

By 1962, Fidel implemented a ration food system that most Cuban families still rely on today for their food intake.

Last month, Cuba’s second-in-command, President Miguel Díaz-Canel, said “the impact of the embargo, which has strengthened under the Trump administration,” has triggered a nationwide shortage of bread, eggs, and other essential goods. 

While many Cubans are experiencing a food shortage across the communist country, it sure seems that Tony’s lavish lifestyle, exposed by American media outlets, might not settle well in the empty stomachs of Cubans. 

 

via RSS http://bit.ly/2FmlZ1d Tyler Durden