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Authored by Andrew Salmon via The Asia Times,

Does research reflect global middle class angst, a uniquely Korean malaise – or mere talk?

From afar, South Koreans might appear to be blessed among East Asians.

Citizens of a prosperous democracy that has birthed a hero-to-zero national success story, world-beating corporate brands, a futuristic infrastructure and the glitzy K-pop universe that is beloved across the region, they boast enviable looks, lifestyles and quality of life.

Up close, things look different. According to a recent survey of 5,000 persons, 75% of 19-34 year old natives of the world’s 11th richest nation want out.

The shock finding, reported in the popular Hankyoreh newspaper on December 29, was revealed at Korea Women’s Development Institute’s 119th Gender Equality Policy Forum, in a presentation titled “Diagnosis of Gender Conflicts from a Youth Standpoint and Suggested Policy Responses for an Inclusive State: A Gender Analysis of Fairness Perceptions.”

The survey found that 79.1% of young women and 72.1% of young men want to leave Korea, that 83.1% of young women and 78.4% of young men consider Korea “hell” and that 29.8% of young women and 34.1% of young men consider themselves “losers.”

Beyond gender differences, the survey suggests massive popular dissatisfaction with local life.

But does it demand that Seoul’s elite sit down and seriously ponder the Korean Dream? Or does it merely reflect superficial talk among youth who live decent lives and have no real intention of leaving?

‘Hell Joseon’

A catchphrase has become current among young Koreans in recent years to describe their country: “Hell Joseon” – “Joseon” being the name of a long-dead Korean kingdom. That phrase is being superseded by a new term, “Tal-Jo” – a pormanteau comprising “leave” and “Joseon,” which, vernacularly, might be best be translated as “Escape Hell.”

“As a joke, we call Korea ‘Hell Joseon,’ but there is another term called ‘Tal-Jo’ which we use a lot more than ‘Hell Joseon’ nowadays,” Park Ji-na, a 20-something Seoul undergraduate, told Asia Times. “Me and my friends just use this in conversation as joke, but if I had a good opportunity to go abroad and work, I would.”

Some say it is far from unique to Korea. “I think there is a middle class crisis in all wealthy countries,” Pae Hee-kyung, who runs an educational institute near Seoul, told Asia Times.

Across the developed, post-industrial world, middle classes are under perceived siege from falling living standards, evaporating opportunities and rising wealth inequality. These trends have arisen against the backdrop of a globalizing world that distributes capital and jobs away from customary centers of investment, manufacturing and related prosperities.

Some pundits posit that these issues explain Brexit in the UK, the election of Donald Trump in the US and the protests of young Hong Kongers.

Are South Koreans different?

For Korea, the transition from poverty to prosperity and the rise of the bourgeoisie has been shockingly fast: The country morphed from little-known agricultural backwater to global industrial powerhouse in just three decades. While Koreans from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s could anticipate decent jobs and rising standards of living as growth rates surged, this is no longer the case.

“Here, if you look at your father’s generation, they had less in material terms but they had hopes that, every year, they would be paid more, that they could buy an apartment, and that the price would go up and they would feel a sense of achievement and wealth,” Daniel Tudor, author of Korea: The Impossible Country, told Asia Times.

That is no longer the case for two reasons.

Firstly, the South Korean economy has matured and growth has slowed from the high double digits to the low single digits. Secondly, the national growth locomotives – family-run conglomerates, such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG – have gone global and off-shored. With South Korea’s population now at a national high of 51 million persons, there are insufficient full-time, white-collar positions to absorb a highly educated populace.

Yet Korea’s unemployment statistics are hardly calamitous. According to World Bank data, between 1995 and 2017, unemployment only rose above 4% for three years – 1999, 2000 and 2001 ( in the wake of the Asia financial crisis). It stood at over 4% for the first eight months of 2019, but fell to 3.6% in November, according to data provider CEIC.  The youth unemployment rate in South Korea averaged 7.19% from 1982 until 2019, according to Statistics Korea, but despite hitting a high of 11.7% in April this year, had dropped to 7.1% in October.

A related issue is property. Koreans have traditionally not invested in securities or financial products, preferring to sink their savings into homes – a trend exacerbated by the low-interest-rate era. The result: soaring house prices. Combine this with half the national population – some 24 million persons – living in and around the Seoul metropolitan area, and it is easy to understand why young Koreans think they will never be able to afford a home.

And there is one area where young Koreans sense a distinctly local injustice. In this neo-Confucian, fast-growth economy, education provides the key to success. The college entrance system, despite methodological criticisms, was widely assessed as being fair. Now, questions hang over that.

In recent years, the children of two prominent figures – Choi Soon-sil, the confidante of jailed ex-President Park Geun-hye, and Cho Kuk, a short-lived justice minister under the current Moon Jae-in administration – have been revealed to have enjoyed privileged access to top colleges. The cases have emerged from both sides of the political spectrum, suggesting a broad culture of elite entitlement.

Many feel a resultant bitterness.

Such privileged people “have a lot of money and are using that money to go to universities and their lives are very ensured,” said Park. “But however hard we work, we don’t even know if we will be able to buy a house – I don’t know how we can live in the future!”

Real concern or youth talk?

Clearly, the study’s findings reflect the talk of youth. How should they be analyzed?

According to the World Bank’s GINI co-efficient data, South Korea is a reasonable 31.6, compared with Japan at 32.1, the UK at 33.2 and the US at 41.5 – the higher the number, the graver the inequality – but author Tudor believes that Korea’s fast-track development trajectory has engendered acute sensitivities.

“I don’t think Korea is particularly unequal – it is quite middle class compared to other wealthy countries – but if you go back one or two generations, things were very equal: everyone had nothing.” he said. “When everyone has nothing you don’t feel poor, but now, even if you have quite a decent standard of living, you look at others around and you may feel, ‘Oh my god!’”

Pae, the educator, opines that the current young are not as badly served by their systems as they believe.

“In the Korean education system, there are lots of chances for scholarships; Korean higher education is a lot cheaper than abroad; and there are plenty of chances of working holidays – so there are lots of opportunities,” she said. “But millennials want to get out of this cycle.”

Another issue is a very notable national tendency to raise emotive voices.

“Since I have been living in Korea, people complain all the time,” said Tudor. “The president is terrible – whoever he or she is – and the economy is terrible or on the brink of a crisis – however good it may be.”

Even Park, the student, admits that she and her friends are not actually planning moves.

“I and my friends talk about leaving Korea, but in order for us to get jobs abroad we should at least have a doctor’s degree, or have certain qualifications like nurse or UX designer,” she said. “Me and my friends, who study liberal arts or business, though we say ‘Tal Jo’ – we can’t.”

When Apple stock closed last year at an all time high after doubling from its January 2019 lows, there were many confused looks among the trader community: after all any attempts to justify the move through the company’s future earnings – which haven’t budged in the past year – would only provoke laughter.

Instead, there were two other explanations being suggested: the company’s record stock buybacks, which helped to drastically expand AAPL’s PE multiple, and the looming “paradigm shift” that is 5G and Apple’s launch of 5G-compatible phones.

Well, for those who bet the farm on the latter, there may be a slight problem, because while 5G has yet to be made available in most countries, one nation has already had a 5G offering for 8 months: South Korea, and early adopters here have been anything but excited about the “5G revolution.”

when 5G services were launched there in April, Jang Dong-gil was among the first wave of South Koreans to sign up. Now eight months in, Jang, a 30-year-old tech company worker, has a chilling review for the next-generation technology: 5G hasn’t lived up to the hype.

“I don’t feel the difference,” Jang, who has been using a 5G-enabled Samsung handset, told the WSJ. In fact, on many days he switches off his 5G service altogether because his connection often drops as his phone pingpongs between 5G and the existing 4G LTE network.

With the rest of the world eagerly awaiting its own 5G rollout, all eyes were on South Korea,  which for most of 2019 was home to the vast majority of the world’s 5G users, offering the broadest lessons in what the next-generation network has to offer. Yet where any hope that Apple’s will merely jump to a $2 billion (or higher) valuation could crash and burn is that although it is still early in the global rollout, 5G service in South Korea has proved more of a future promise than a technological breakthrough.

Of course, it’s not just phones: 5G launched during the past year promising to help power a future of autonomous “everything”: from cars, to virtual reality and telesurgery, thanks to its theoretical speeds of up to 100 times faster than today’s 4G networks. In fact, the next-generation network’s potential has been at the forefront of the technological war between the US and China, setting off a technological arms race – and associated trade war – between Beijing and Washington, which has pressured allies to avoid adopting equipment made by China’s Huawei over national-security and other concerns.

For better or worse, it is now seen – if only symbolically – that the company, and the nation, behind the infrastructure that allows global adoption of 5G will be the world’s next technological superpower. As such, many countries are scrambling to deploy the superfast network, hoping homegrown companies can enjoy an early advantage providing new, popular services like those from Uber, Instagram and Netflix that flourished during the 4G era. Currently, few, if any, 5G apps have emerged that would justify an upgrade by consumers.

And while 5G is now operational in Korea (we hope we don’t have to clarify that we are talking about the South version), larger countries are now also beginning the transition. In the U.S., 5G services have been rolled out in select cities—though adoption remains modest, requiring consumers to buy a new phone and, in some cases, subscribe to a top-tier, unlimited data plan.

In China, the rollout is far more aggressive: the government has prioritized expanding access to 5G since its launch in November, and by the end of 2020, China’s 5G subscribers are estimated to hit 120 million, said Chris Lane, an analyst at Bernstein Research. But initial 5G showcases have been limited to tests such as remote telesurgery procedures or streaming a dance performance in a remote village.

Predictably, South Korea is much further along and is expected to end 2019 with more than 4.5 million subscribers among its population of 51 million, according to telecom analysts polled by the WSJ.

In April, the country’s top three carriers – KT Corp, SK Telecom and LG Uplus – launched 5G service on the same day Verizon Communications debuted in two U.S. cities. From the very start, about half of South Korea’s population could have access to 5G service after buying a network-enabled device.

On their 5G phones, South Korean users – who have traditionally had access to all the latest and greatest cell phone technology first – can live-stream sports with a 360-degree view of the action, watching from any angle and in slow motion. Visitors to a Seoul park can summon a giant cat on their phone’s screen as they take in the scenery using augmented reality. Another app lets people gather in virtual-reality rooms to watch baseball games or concerts together.

However, such 5G “flourishes” are still merely attention-grabbing gimmicks which have yet to draw a large audience: “There’s no killer 5G app,” said Woody Oh, a Seoul-based analyst at Strategy Analytics.

“As far as adoption goes, we’re still at the very start,” said Julian Gorman, head of Asia-Pacific for GSMA, a trade association for mobile carriers. We’re eight months into a cycle that’s going to be many years in length,” he said.

Or perhaps 5G is merely an extremely conveient service in search of a spark, and only Apple can provide it. After all, 3G networks, which enabled data transfers among device users and launched in 2001, didn’t fully kick off until Apple’s first iPhone came out in 2007. It took years for its successor, 4G, to bring in ride-sharing platforms like Uber and Grab Holdings since it launched in 2011.

Where does 5G come in? For now, 5G’s main visible benefit lies in transferring large amounts of data extremely quickly, such as downloading movies faster and streaming high-resolution content seamlessly. That could be handy – after all, some 70% of data traffic carried from mobile devices to an operator comes from video content, compared with less than 25% five years ago. That figure is expected to rise further with 5G.

Yet is it truly revolutionary that one will be able to download a pirated version of the latest Star Wars movie on their cell phone in seconds instead of minutes? Indeed, telecom experts say 5G’s advantages are hard for consumers to experience with smartphones. Instead, the bigger leap will be felt with self-driving cars or smart cities, they say.

For current users, though, a key challenge is simply staying connected to 5G.

Take Yun Seung-yeol, a 27-year-old architectural designer in South Korea, who was given a big enticement to sign up for the new service: he got subsidies from his telecom provider to shave about two-thirds off the roughly $1,000 price tag for a 5G-enabled Galaxy Note 10 device.

He said he notices a difference on the superfast network only when downloading files or images on his phone. Besides that it’s a nuisance. Yun, who has an hour-long commute to his Seoul office, said he has turned off the 5G feature on his device for the past month because he kept losing connection when he left Seoul for his home in a neighboring city. He is considering switching back to a 4G data plan if the situation doesn’t improve.

“For now, I’m not recommending anyone to use 5G,” Yun said, uttering the scariest words for anyone who bought AAPL stock near its all time highs on expectations that the stock will continue to soar in 2020 just because of the relentless 5G hype…

Authored by Daniel Lazare via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

In order to understand the great impeachment charade, it’s important to keep three facts about the strange bird known as the United States uppermost in mind.

The first is that the US is the ultimate law-based society, one whose structure derives entirely from a single four-thousand-word document created in 1787.

The second is that while Americans think of the Constitution as the greatest plan of government known to man, it’s actually the opposite: a grotesque pre-modern relic that grows more unrepresentative and unresponsive with each passing year. A pro-rural Electoral College that has overridden the popular vote in two of the last five presidential elections; a lopsided Senate that allows the majority in ten urban states to be outvoted four-to-one by the minority in the other forty; lifetime Supreme Court justices who can veto any law at variance with an ancient constitution that only they understand – it’s a broken-down old rattletrap in need of a top-to-bottom overhaul. Yet it’s so thoroughly frozen that structural reform is all but unthinkable.

The third thing to keep in mind is that as the constitutional system grows more and more undemocratic, the two-party system that grew out of it in the nineteenth century grows more undemocratic as well. The result is a bipartisan race to the right. Sometimes, the Republicans seem to be in the lead as Trump imprisons thousands of immigrants fleeing murderous conditions in Central America that the US war on drugs helped create. Other times it’s the Democrats as they beat the drums for imperialist war against Russia.

Take all these factors – xenophobia, mindless obeisance to ancient law, a president imposed against the popular will, etc. – mix thoroughly, place in a super-hot oven due to a growing imperial crisis, and impeachment is what pops out. The process itself is very old, a by-product of fourteenth-century Anglo-Norman law. (Impeachment derives from the Old French empeechier, meaning to ensnare or entrap.) The British abandoned it in the late eighteenth century when Edmund Burke wasted seven years impeaching an Indian colonial governor named Warren Hastings on grounds of corruption. (The House of Lords finally acquitted him in 1795). But then the Americans took it up and now, two centuries later, are immersed in the same brainless exercise.

The results were all too evident in mid-December when one Democrat after another took to the House floor to denounced Donald Trump for violating the ancient constitution by withholding lethal military aid from the neo-Nazis of the Ukraine’s Azov Battalion.

“We used to stand up to Putin and Russia – I know the party of Ronald Reagan used to,” declared Adam Schiff, the Democratic point man on impeachment, his voice quivering with emotion. The fight to defend the Ukraine is “about more than Ukraine. It’s about us. It’s about our national security. Their fight is our fight. Their defense is our defense…. And when the President sacrifices our interests, our national security for his election, he is sacrificing our country for his personal gain.”

This was the Democratic line in a nutshell. In order to safeguard the ancient republic at home, the US must pay foreign satraps to defend its imperial interests abroad.

Since no patriotic American could possibly disagree, any and all problems must stem from meddling by the evil dictator Vladimir Putin and his traitorous puppet in the Oval Office. Americans must therefore fulfill the ancient law by impeaching him just as the “founding fathers” would have wanted. Only then will peace and freedom return to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

It’s all quite ridiculous, but what’s even more bonkers is that millions of Americans think it’s true. Trump is meanwhile in his element. Now that Democrats have voted to impeach him in the House, he’d like nothing more than a lengthy trial in the Senate because (a) acquittal in the upper house is a certainty and (b) it will allow the Republican majority to put the torturers to the rack by subpoenaing everyone from Joe and Hunter Biden to Adam Schiff himself and declaring them in contempt of Congress if they refuse to testify. Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has described an all-out Senate war as “mutual assured destruction,” and he’s right since, once unleashed, the ancient constitutional machinery will grind everything to dust in its path.

American politics will grow only more farcical. If Putin looms larger and larger on the world stage; if “the moment has come,” as the Times Literary Supplement recently announced, “for even the most hardened skeptics to admit that he is one of the most successful world leaders of our era”; if the US at the same time staggers from one imperial disaster to another even while descending into civil war – then it’s not because the Russian leader is particularly clever, but because the US is locked in an ancient mindset that is increasingly divorced from reality. It’s lost in a constitutional labyrinth of its own making, and impeachment is leading it deeper and deeper into the maze.

The White House National Security Council is sharply downsizing ‘in a bid to improve efficiency’ by consolidating positions and cutting staff, according to the Washington Times  – which adds that a secondary, unspoken objective (i.e. the entire reason) for the cuts is to address nonstop leaks that have plagued the Trump administration for nearly three years.

Leaks of President Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders and other damaging disclosures likely originated with anti-Trump officials in the White House who stayed over from the Obama administration, according to several current and former White House officials. –Washington Times

The reform is being led by National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien, who told the Times that 40-45 NSC staff officials had been sent back to their home-agencies, and more are likely to be moved out.

“We remain on track to meeting the right-sizing goal Ambassador O’Brien outlined in October, and in fact may exceed that target by drawing down even more positions,” said NSC spokesman John Ullyot.

Under Obama, the NSC ballooned to as many as 450 people – and officials wielded ‘enormous power’ according to the report, directly telephoning commanders in Afghanistan and other locations in the Middle East to give them direct orders in violation of the military’s strict chain of command.

Meanwhile, the so-called second-hand ‘whistleblower’ at the heart of President Trump’s impeachment was widely reported to be a NSC staffer on detail from the CIA, Eric Ciaramella, who took umbrage with Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to investigate former VP Joe Biden – who Ciaramella worked with.

After O’Brien is done, less than 120 policy officials will remain after the next several months.

The downsizing will be carried out by consolidating positions and returning officials to agencies and departments such as the CIA, the State and Defense departments and the military.

Mr. O’Brien noted that the NSC had a policymaking staff of 12 in 1962 when President Kennedy faced down the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis. During the 2000s and the George W. Bush administration, the number of NSC staff members increased sharply to support the three-front conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terrorism.

However, it was during the Obama administration that the NSC was transformed into a major policymaking agency seeking to duplicate the functions of the State and Defense departments within the White House. –Washington Times

“The NSC staff became bloated during the prior administration,” said O’Brien. “The NSC is a coordinating body. I am trying to get us back to a lean and efficient staff that can get the job done, can coordinate with our interagency partners, and make sure the president receives the best advice he needs to make the decisions necessary to keep the American people safe.”

“I just don’t think that we need the numbers of people that it expanded to under the last administration to do this job right,” he added.

Obama-era NSC officials are suspected of leaking classified details of President Trump’s phone conversations with foreign counterparts.

After Mr. Trump’s election in November 2016 and continuing through the spring of 2017, a series of unauthorized disclosures to news outlets appeared to come from within the White House. Several of the leaks involved publication of sensitive transcripts of the president’s conversations with foreign leaders.

Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said this year that he sent the Justice Department eight criminal referrals related to the leaks, including those related to Mr. Trump’s conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia.

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon said efforts to weed out the Obama holdovers was a priority early in the administration.

“The NSC had gotten so big there were over 450 billets,” said Mr. Bannon, adding that he and others tried to remove the Obama detailees from the White House.

“We wanted them out,” he said. “And I think we would have avoided a lot of the problems we got today if they had been sent back to their agencies.”-Washington Times

In addition to Ciaramella, Lt. Col. Alexander Vimdman (likely Ciaramella’s source) testified against President Trump during the House Impeachment investigations – telling the Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee that he was “concerned” by what he heard on Trump’s call with Zelensky.

NSC official Tim Morrison, meanwhile, testified that Vindman was suspected of leaking sensitive information to the press, a claim Vindman denied.

Read the rest of the report here.

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic prepper blog,

As the Second Amendment conflict heats up across the United States, here’s another “crazy conspiracy theory” that has turned out to be true.

The United Nations is hiring in New York. What positions are they trying to fill?

English-speaking DISARMAMENT, DEMOBILIZATION, AND REINTEGRATION OFFICERS.

This job was posted the day after Christmas. So for all the folks who have been saying “nobody is trying to take your guns” you might want to read this job listing and reconsider your opinion.

Is this in response to the Virginia crisis?

You may recall that citizens of Virginia have become outraged recently by new laws that are likely to pass this month, effectively banning all semi-automatic weapons. Sanctuary counties, cities, and municipalities now cover all but the most urban parts of the state. These sanctuaries have vowed to support the Second Amendment and are refusing to enforce unconstitutional gun laws.

In response, a member of the state congress suggested that Governor Northam could call up the National Guard to disarm residents of Virginia despite the wishes of local governments. In response to that, at least one county has formed a militia and others are expected to spring up. The state’s Attorney General says that these sanctuaries carry no legal weight.

Despite the AG’s opinion and threats from the state government, Virginians appear to have no plans to give up their guns or register them. Many members of law enforcement entities and the National Guard have said that they will not act on unconstitutional orders.

One has to wonder if this is why the UN is hiring “disarmament officers?”

What is the job description?

Here are the responsibilities for the new hires, as per the United Nations job listing.

Within delegated authority, the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Officer will be responsible for the following duties:

 

• Acts as a Focal Point for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) components for two to three missions, responsible for planning, support to implementation and evaluation;

• Participates in DPO and Integrated Task Force planning meetings for the establishment of a new peacekeeping mission with a potential DDR component;

• Provides technical assistance to peace negotiations;

• Participates in technical assessment missions;

• Advises, develops and reviews (as appropriate) initial DDR functional strategy and concept of operations for further development into a full programme by the DDR component and the National DDR Commission;

• Drafts and reviews DDR inputs to SG report, code cables, and talking points;

• Develops initial result-based framework and budget for new DDR components in new mission;

• Liaises with UNDP and donor community to raise voluntary contributions for DDR programmes;

• Presents and/or defends new and subsequent DDR budgetary requirements in the ACABQ and the 5th Committee of the General Assembly;

• Develops staffing structure and terms of reference for a DDR component, including terms of integration with other UN agencies, funds and programmes;

• Provides technical clearance for applicants to DDR units in new and ongoing missions;

• Provides Headquarters support in planning the civilian and military logistics support for DDR;

• Continually reviews DDR programme strategy and implementation through relevant documents, reports and code cables;

• Conducts field missions to assess implementation of established DDR programmes;

• Identifies potential problems and issues to be addressed and suggests remedies to DDR units in the field;

• Liaises with Member States, UN actors and other DDR interested partners to represent the mission’s DDR component at the Headquarters level;

• Establishes and maintains an outreach network with CSOs and IGOs active in the area of DDR.

• Supports the doctrine development work in the area of DDR in the department, with the Inter-Agency Working Group (IAWG) on DDR and other relevant national and international actors working on DDR issues;

• Contributes to Department-level or Policy Committee-level policy development work on DDR and related issues;

• Maintains and further develops the Integrated DDR Standards – a set of inter-agency policies, guidelines and procedures on DDR;

• On behalf of the Chief of the DDR Section, co-chairs the IAWG on DDR, contributes to bringing coherence to the interaction of the UN system and its partners on DDR;

• Supervises the Associate Expert (Junior Professional Officer) in the development and maintenance of the web-based United Nations DDR Resource Centre;

• Liaises with others (UN, regional organisations and Member States) providing DDR.

• Other duties as required. (source)

Also notable is the required language fluency – English – and the desired experience.

Seven years of relevant experience in disarmament affairs, political analysis or in national military or paramilitary service, preferably related to the design, implementation or review of DDR. (source)

Employees would answer to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

As per the UN, here are some specifics about this job description. Of special note:

Disarmament is the collection, documentation, control and disposal of small arms, ammunition, explosives and light and heavy weapons of combatants and often also of the civilian population. Disarmament also includes the development of responsible arms management programmes. (source)

As well, the UN especially wants women to apply for this job, citing gender equality. But is it possible they think that a gun owner might have more ethical difficulty firing on a woman trying to take their weapons than a man?

The US is no longer part of the UN Arms Trade Treaty.

You may recall back in 2013, the United Nations convinced then-Secretary of State John Kerry to sign a treaty that “unequivocally bans arms transfers that are in violation of a U.N. arms embargo or that exporters have reason to know will be used to commit genocide and other grievous war crimes.”

In 2013, the US signed the UN Arms Trade Treaty but that signature was never ratified. Last April, President Trump officially withdrew from the international gun control treaty.

However noble that may sound, anti-gun control activists were concerned this would lead to the UN being able to disarm Americans on US soil.

So why is the UN looking for English-speaking disarmament experts?

Don’t be silly, “no one is coming to take your guns.”

How many times has someone told you not to worry – that nobody is coming to take your guns away? That all they want is “common-sense gun laws?”

In light of the current political climate and this job listing, I’d say that is an outright a lie.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into the Dec. 29 crash of a Tesla Model S in Southern California that killed two people, reported Bloomberg.

NHTSA’s Communications Director Sean Rushton wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the crash and didn’t say if the Model S was on Autopilot during the incident. 

A speeding black Tesla ran a red light and plowed into a Honda Civic Sunday, instantly killing two occupants in that car. 

The Los Angeles Police Department, at the time of the accident, said two occupants in the Tesla suffered non-life threatening injuries. 

NHTSA’s inquiry into the crash will be headed by the agency’s Special Crash Investigations unit. It has already investigated 13 Tesla crashes where Autopilot was suspected of malfunctioning. 

Earlier last month, NHTSA announced that it would open an investigation into a crash in Connecticut where a Tesla hit a parked police cruiser while on Autopilot. 

NHTSA criticized Autopilot’s lack of safeguards after it probed a 2018 crash in Sept. 

Tesla and NHTSA have advised drivers that their hands must be on the steering wheel at all times while engaging Autopilot. Still, some drivers disobey the rules and take their hands off the steering wheel as it’s their belief the vehicle is fully autonomous. 

IRRELEVANT:
Tesla claims sleeping at the wheel Autopilot videos are faked
RELEVANT:
Reaction time in an accident encouraged by Elon Musk’s illegal off-label hands-free promotion on @60Minutes @NHTSAgov reported $TSLA to @FTC for ‘misleading’ statements.$TSLAQ
August 2019 pic.twitter.com/DaOSpq7eW3

— KillingMyCareer (@MelaynaLokosky) September 13, 2019

Only in China 🇨🇳, don’t try this at home guys. Tesla owner in China, Sleeping on the backseat while the passengers is filming.

This isn’t what Autopilot is for!#Tesla #TeslaChina #AP #China #特斯拉 #中国 pic.twitter.com/Gl560YTtBL

— Jason Man (@JayinShanghai) April 3, 2019

#F1
This driver was caught sleeping with his Testa on Autopilot

What will happen to F1 when autonomous car arrive? pic.twitter.com/4HOWcnQjS0

— ivanF1 (@ivanF1) May 25, 2016

U.S. Senator Ed Markey recently said Tesla should suspend Autopilot to its customers until new safety mechanisms are put in place to avoid future crashes.

Submitted by Erico Matias Tavares  of Sinclair & Co.

While a decade is just an arbitrary measure of time, people often attribute certain emotional and cultural characteristics to it, such as the “roaring 20s” of the 20th century.

The 20s of the 21st century are promising to mark a defining period in world History, particularly for the West, as vital trends that have been developing for years are expected to accelerate and reach a tipping point. “Roaring” might not be the best description by the end of it.

Consider that at the very start of the decade the UK will no longer be part of the EU, itself a monumental change with deep social, economic and geopolitical consequences. The US and other major economies will face even more profound developments this decade.

The dominant context behind all this is what British historian C. Northcote Parkinson defined in the early 1960s as the great dynamo of History – the passing of the baton of global preeminence between East and West since historical records began.

Nobody knows what will happen 6 months from now, much less a decade, but recognizing the ascendancy of the East as a whole – and the evident decline of the West – can help pinpoint important trends and cycles that are likely to materialize in the near future. That ascendancy has started decades ago and will solidify in the short years ahead.

This is a humble “back of the envelope” attempt by the author to read some through important tea leaves, colored (as a disclaimer from the outset) by his rather pessimistic view of the prospects of his native West and by his admiration of the resilience of the East:

1. The productivity of debt in most major economies is already below 1, meaning that it takes several dollars in new debt to create a dollar of GDP. This is particularly the case with government debt, and consequently in order to sustain even meager economic growth debt loads as percentage of GDP will continue to growing strongly, following Japan’s path;
2. This in turn means that interest rates can never be normalized, otherwise such debt loads would become immediately unsustainable. Financial repression will thus continue, likely even be expanded. Central banks will continue to monetize debts at unprecedented levels and even take on the role of steering industrial policy, a good example being the “green economy”;
3. These actions by central banks have enabled Eurozone banks over the last decade to become liquid but not necessarily solvent, a situation exacerbated by negative interest rates and the flaws of and structural imbalances generated by the Euro. A quick look at the share price of Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, clearly shows this;
4. Birth rates across the West will continue to fall further given a confluence of social and economic problems. Many Eastern countries are are wrestling with this problem, but the way Western elites are dealing with it are transforming its cyclical nature into a structural one, with deep generational consequences;
5. Related to that, the pension crisis will come to the forefront, with more Baby Boomers retiring (where possible) into pension plans that for the most part are underfunded, in many cases severely, despite record high asset prices;
6. Modern agriculture has been very successful in delivering calories, basically by converting copious amounts of fossil fuels into food, but rather less so in delivering nutrients. This is because it exhausts top soil and organic matter, critical to produce nutrient-dense foods. As such the health crisis will become worse as a depleted nutrition acts as a catalyst to major diseases;
7. All these factors will add more pressure for governments to take action, meaning that all those contingent liabilities will finally start materializing in budgets over the course of the decade – with a vengeance;
8. This situation is particularly serious in the US, where it is very possible that the government will lose control of its budget deficit at some point (if it hasn’t already), especially given zero political will and capability to address this. One look at the Congressional Budget Office decadal projections should raise alarm, especially as no recession is expected, but no party seems to care;
9. Mass migration into the Western world will continue unabated driven by massive demographic imbalances between developed and developing countries, and Western elites seeking to maintain control by “dividing and conquering” their societies and absorbing the spoils into supranational compacts that they control;
10. Another thing which is unlikely to change is the US’ foreign entanglements. Like with immigration and the budget deficit, no party has the will to do anything about it. Three dynamics make highly likely the emergence of a new, bigger conflict where the US will once again become involved this decade: (i) the military being spread all over the planet, raising the chances of some fire exchange with someone, even by accident, (ii) enormous military spending, already larger than several major countries combined, that keeps on growing, and (iii) America’s enemies becoming more entrenched and determined in their quest to develop capabilities to seriously challenge its dominance (like Iran developing medium-range nukes this decade, along with others);
11. Automation, the replacement of humans with machines, will accelerate and start replacing enough jobs to generate even more income inequality between workers and capital owners, already a sensitive topic thanks to the monetary and fiscal policy imbalances of the last decade;
12. It is therefore inevitable that populism will continue to increase, both on the right and the left of the political spectrum. The hollowing out of the moderate center, tied to a neo-liberal model that is seriously sputtering, will prompt a major political and social polarization in many Western societies not seen since the 1930s;
13. The trend towards globalization will be impaired, despite the best efforts of supranational organizations like the UN to maintain the status quo. Major exporting economies like Germany will be disproportionately impacted, creating more tensions inside an already frail EU;
14. The political landscape will massively change in the US. The fragmentation of political views and aspirations already means that a two party-system is incapable of dealing with differing objectives inside their respective electorates. However, the emergence of new parties is severely limited by lack of access to funding necessary to win at the federal level, which means that democracy will suffer;
15. This loss of democracy is even more likely given the profound demographic change taking place in the US, where immigrants tend to vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. As a result Texas and other states will likely swing Blue by the end of the decade, meaning that Republicans will be locked out of power for a generation+. Once again California led the way for the rest of the country, with an entrenched Democrat super-majority there. As democracy recedes, societal and ethnic conflict will gradually become mainstream;
16. What this really means is the beginning of the end for the great American experiment this decade, as its traditional institutions – including its Constitution – can no longer properly function under such conditions. This is hugely consequential for the world in terms of prosperity and freedoms;
17. One feature of diverse societies is that they are inherently unstable, meaning there’s a far greater need for a government to mediate the interests and conflicts between different groups. Politicians will increasingly tighten their grip on society, aided by technology that will become even more intrusive. Silicon Valley and Washington DC will thus become even more intertwined;
18. Societal fragmentation will not be limited to the US, far from it. French President François Hollande warned in 2016 (after he left office, of course) that his country would eventually break apart. This may become a de facto reality in the 2020s as multiple societal, demographic and economic factors converge in French society. In fact the new decade was inaugurated with dozens of cars set on fire in Paris. These factors will also impact other European countries in similar ways, including Sweden, Belgium, even Germany;
19. The EU will become increasingly authoritarian to prevent more BREXITs and keep that political project going. Any dissent of its main guiding policies, from the environment to immigration, is already being stamped out under the guise of “hate speech”. It will only get worse from here. A draconian social credit system similar to what China is developing might be in place by the end of the decade. It seems inevitable that the political make-up of the EU and several of its members will be radically different by the end of the decade compared to today;
20. BREXIT might have been a fantastic idea given all that is happening in the EU, but the timing will prove to be off. First, we are close to a global recession, which absent very vigorous central bank action might become serious, thus curtailing any initial enthusiasm. Second, Boris Johnson will be pursuing free trade deals when the globalization tide is turning against him. Third, because in order to ensure the City of London’s preeminent access to global capital markets he will have to offer a bargaining chip, and that is what’s left of British industry – meaning the working class seats the Conservatives were able to impressively flip from Labour on the back of BREXIT. Perhaps the UK as well might not escape the coming fragmentation;
21. Working and middle classes across the West, including the UK and especially the US (if one looks objectively at the results of three years of “America First” policies under Donald Trump), will finally realize that they have no real political representation. The real political fault line is not between right and left, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, but rather globalism versus nationalism. There is no money in the latter, beyond extracting taxes to pay for that burgeoning government (that will inevitably oppress them) and elite pet projects, like solving “climate change” and the “migrant crisis”;
22. The West thrived when its working and middle classes thrived. These are the people who consume, who largely maintain the national traditions, who fight their wars. Financially and demographically they are in a very tough spot, with birth rates far below replacement levels and life expectancy plunging due to drugs and health problems. Half of Americans can’t cut a $400 check for an emergency. As things stand this rot will likely accelerate as the decade progresses;
23. All this does not mean that it will be smooth sailing for the East, far from it, as those economies still depend a great deal on Western markets. Still, they have a highly motivated, educated and productive workforce, comparatively low debt levels (ex-Japan), high savings and very little contingent liabilities. They are also very safe to live in. Attracting top talent from the US and Europe, in addition to their own, should not be too difficult, further cementing their competitiveness. In a sense these economies are merely reverting to the global place they used to occupy before that baton swung to the West;
24. Russia is an interesting case as it was always between East and West, given its vast cultural, ethnic and geographical components. Thanks to incredible short-sightedness and (frankly speaking) stupidity from the NeoCons in Washington DC it will now embrace its Eastern future. The 2020s will consolidate the emergence of Eurasia as a super economic block towards the end of the century, independent from any US interference;
25. That sets up different scenarios for the coming fracturing of the EU by mid-century, if not sooner. Eastern European countries should gradually gravitate towards Eurasia, including Germany – the worst case scenario for US hegemony. The center West of Europe will become more culturally and demographically aligned with Africa, and so might pursue its future there. And Portugal and Spain, if they had any sense, should seek close ties with their cultural peers in Latin America and Africa;
26. Africa could be the one bright spot in the middle of all the turmoil elsewhere, especially given that it has a lot of development potential and a vast supply of all sorts of natural resources. China (i.e. the East) is spending vast sums to unlock this potential and is now the continent’s largest trading partner. Unfortunately, the constraints holding Africa back are all too familiar: corruption, loss of their most enterprising people to mass migration, weak institutions incapable of addressing the aspirations of its very young populations and increasing social and ethnic conflicts, exacerbated by a resurgence of political Islam – another quintessential Eastern ideology that gains force whenever the West declines. This decade will indicate which way it will eventually go the rest of the century;
27. Energy prices should remain very volatile, as demand is pressured by a weakening of the economic cycle and supply by a coming peak in US crude oil production this decade. The explosive situation across the Middle East, from Libya to Pakistan, will add much greater uncertainty as the decade unfolds. The West faced serious oil shocks in the 1970s as the US could no longer ramp up its production to counter supply embargoes from the Middle East; it is vulnerable to a repeat of that by the end of the decade. Sustained crude oil price rallies above $100/bbl would very likely put a nail in the coffin of the financial house of cards concocted by Western central banks;
28. Commodities markets in general should perform better on a relative basis this decade, especially when compared to US stock markets, which have been on an absolute tear since the end of the financial crisis in 2009. The longest bull market in the context of the weakest capital expenditures cycle since WW2 suggests that significant productive capacity might be taken offline at some point this decade. Mean reversion is a real thing in capital markets;
29. Aging farming populations worldwide, quite severe in some cases, will finally put significant pressure on food supplies by mid-decade, if not sooner. And the young, so far, are not replacing them. As a result, record food supplies globally at the start of the decade may turn into food deficits by the end, especially given strong population growth projections (including in the West via mass migration);
30. And the US dollar? Its cycles typically last around a decade, and if that is the case we might be nearing the end of is bull run, certainly this decade. Adding to this cyclical outlook is the fundamental deterioration of the US fiscal position outlined above. That deficit will have to be financed somehow, and some pretty juicy yields might have to be offered especially if the dollar starts weakening. While it may still remain the world’s reserve currency given lack of competitors, cryptocurrencies might increasingly offer an alternative. StableCoins, a variant, in particular offer governments a monetary alternative to generate growth within the constraints of the Euro, for instance;
31. Gold should remain part of any investor’s portfolio (in physical form), although nobody can say for sure whether prices will be higher in dollar terms by the end of the decade. Trillions of dollars in debt issued in the last decade will become due and together with weak economic growth the risk of a deflationary shock remains significant;
32. The wildcard in predicting financial outcomes is as Western societies profoundly change so will the rules of the investment game. It’s not inconceivable that capital controls will be in place before the end of the decade. The more Europe and the US sink into deep fiscal and economic issues, the bigger that wildcard will be;
33. Investors’ focus will gradually shift from speculation to wealth preservation, given the dearth of fairly valued opportunities at the start of the decade and a far more uncertain global environment.

Summing up, this decade will very likely be remembered for the end of the world order that had been in place since WW2.

Yes, there is a positive drift on societies across the world emanating from relentless technological progress, but it is highly unlikely that this will do anything to stop the profound demographic, financial and cultural changes that have accelerated this past decade. 

Adam Smith noted that a nation can take a lot of ruin. For decades Westerners have been doing their best to figure out how much. Not only that, but a progressive cultural revolution starting in the 1960s has upended all Western traditional values and morals, and so the present generations are ill-prepared to cope with the massive challenges that lie ahead.

If there is a silver lining in all this is that young people are starting to acknowledge the failure and dead-end of the current economic, moral and governance models, and are gradually returning to tradition, family life and communities. Localism, as opposed to globalism, will gain traction.

Building resilience should be the motto of the coming decade.

And with that, wish you a very hopeful, positive and healthy 2020.

California is poised to lose multiple congressional seats after the 2020 census for the first time in the state’s history, thanks to an exodus of more than 200,000 people between 2018 and 2019, according to the Los Angeles Times. Top destinations include Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Colorado.

“It’s got a lot to do with dispersion from California to the rest of the west,” said senior Brookings fellow, William Frey. “Arizona, Texas and Colorado are all big destinations for California migrants, and they all are gaining seats.”

About 203,000 people left California in that period, a result of the state’s shifting migration patterns and economic strains that are making it harder to afford living here. New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Louisiana also saw large losses to other states.

California’s potential loss in reapportionment, which will be determined by next year’s census count, would drop the state’s number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives from 53 to 52, said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. –LA Times

According to a relocation survey by Texas Realtors, 63,175 Californians moved to Texas in 2017, while almost 41,000 Texans moved to the Golden State. And while California may lose a seat in the House, Texas is likely to gain three seats after the 2020 census. Arizona, Colorado and Oregon may gain one seat apiece.

A state’s population includes all residents – citizens and non-citizens, along with overseas federal employees and their dependents from whatever state they claim as home, according to the US Census Bureau.

That said, if illegal immigrants fail to participate or fail to give honest household figures, California could lose multiple seats according to state redistricting analyst Paul Mitchell,

“If, as many fear, non-citizen populations and the state’s heavily Latino population either fails to participate or participates without providing full household counts, then California could lose more than one seat,” said Mitchell.

The House of Representatives, meanwhile, is limited to 435 members thanks to a 1929 federal law which lawmakers and the president could change if they wanted to.

Exactly where California would lose a seat in the House depends on which communities are larger or smaller compared to census numbers from 2010. The state’s Citizens Redistricting Commission, whose members will be selected in coming months, will hold public hearings in 2021 to determine how to redraw congressional maps.

Paul Mitchell, one of the state’s leading analysts of the redistricting process, said that two places could dominate the discussion: the communities sitting at the intersection of Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties and the suburbs to the east of San Francisco. –LA Times

The most obvious political impact is that incumbent House members would need to run against each other or leave office. The Times notes that in 2012, “Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Northridge) defeated former Rep. Howard Berman in a bitter contest brought on by the new lines drawn in Los Angeles County.”

Losing a House seat would be a “massive rewrite of the Central Valley congressional districts,” said Mitchell.

California’s future numerical strength in Congress hinges in part on making sure that members of historically undercounted groups are included in the census count. In California, 72% of the population belongs to one of these groups, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

State census workers, community organizations and local politicians started outreach efforts as early as April to ensure an accurate tally in next year’s count. In addition to reapportionment, nearly $800 billion in federal tax dollars and political redistricting are at stake. –LA Times

Officials say Los Angeles county will be the hardest to accurately tally because of its high concentrations of renters, homeless people, and immigrants who may not participate due to language barriers or fear of being targeted by federal immigration authorities.

Meanwhile, the US growth rate has declined steadily over the past decade – with California leading the charge according to Frey, with about 400,000 people under the age of 18.

“This is a symptom of an aging population,” Frey said, adding “and in states like California, an out-migration of younger families with children.”