Month: October 2018

Hot Economic Warfare: Scrambling For Rare-Earth Minerals

Authored by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Just like the gold rushes of California between 1848 and 1855, Canada’s Klonike of 1896 to 1899, and Western Australia’s of the 1890s, the world is experiencing a frenzy to obtain mining rights in pursuit of today’s “gold,” namely rare earth minerals. Used for components of electric vehicle batteries, mobile telephones, flat-screen televisions, flash drives, cameras, precision-guided missiles, industrial magnets, wind turbines, solar panels, and other high-tech items, rare earth minerals have become the type of sought-after commodity that uranium and plutonium were during the onset of the atomic age.

Rare earth minerals do not easily roll off one’s tongue in the same manner as gold, silver, and platinum. For example, yttrium oxide and europium, while sounding unimportant, are what provide the red hue in color televisions.

Nations around the world are scrambling to secure reserves containing rare earth minerals. China, where one-third of the planet’s rare earth minerals are currently found, has severely restricted the export of the minerals to friends and competitors. One of the largest known reserves of rare earths is the Bayan Obo deposit in China’s Inner Mongolia.

China’s export restrictions have sent nations around the world on search missions to secure both known and untapped rare earth deposits. One such mother lode of rare earth minerals has been discovered in the eastern southern Pacific Ocean. The estimates are that the deep ocean region contains twice the amount of rare earths than found in China.

Some of these deposits are in undersea geologically active zones, where deep sea floor vents spew rare earth minerals from expulsions of lava and hot gases. The discovery that the South Pacific region is rich in rare earths has led European nations, including France and Britain, which maintain colonies in the area, re-staking their colonial footprints.

France, for example, is reticent to grant further autonomy or independence to New Caledonia, where an independence referendum is scheduled for November 8, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna. Similarly, Britain has showed a renewed interest in the Pitcairn Islands, where a handful of descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers continue to live.

In 2015, Australia stamped out self-government of Norfolk Island, turning the island into a hybrid municipality of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. New Zealand has vetoed ambitions by two of its elf-governing “associated states” – the Cook Islands and Niue – for full membership in the United Nations. For these colonial powers, it is not what is about what lies above the sea – island resorts – but what lies under the sea within the marine borders of the territories and that is rare earth minerals.

With the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, rare earth reserves have been discovered in Greenland, a “self-governing” territory of Denmark. Moves by the Greenland government to seek independence from Denmark and permit Chinese companies to mine rare earth minerals have met with stiff opposition from Denmark, the United States, and NATO.

Other countries possessing significant deposits of rare earths include India, Russia, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and the United States. These nations, as well as China, all have varying degrees of the necessary political, economic, and military might to protect their rare earth resources.

However, some developing nations, where rare earths have been discovered, are candidates for ruthless exploitation by multinational firms, some under the direction of governments, to secure exclusive mining rights. In fact, Toyota, which has a tight relationship with the Japanese government, bought a rare earth mine in Vietnam to ensure such exclusivity rights.

Japan may not have to worry about Vietnam as its major source of rare earths. Earlier this year, a deposit of some 16 million tons of rare earth mineral oxides was discovered in deep sea mud located 1150 miles southeast of Tokyo. The deposit contained much of the rare earths upon which Japan’s consumer electronics industry is reliant: yttrium, dysprosium, terbium, and europium.

In countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, columbite-tantalite, a mineral used in the manufacture of semi-conductor chips, is such a hot commodity that rival warlords, some acting on behalf of outside players, including Rwanda, Uganda, Israel, Japan, China, and the United States battle one another for control of the mineral’s extraction and export.

The Rwanda Mines, Petroleum, and Gas Board signed a deal in 2017 with a major Japanese rare earth extraction firm for the exploration and mining of rare earths, as well as tungsten, in Rwanda. However, Rwandan President Paul Kagame is known to have backed fellow Tutsi rebels in the DRC, who exploit rare earth mines in South and North Kivu provinces and send the stolen minerals to Rwanda. There have been attempts to curtail the trade in “conflict minerals” in the Great Lakes region of Africa, but they have all come to no avail.

Currently, US and Chinese firms are waging a political and economic influence “war” for access to lithium, cassiterite, and cobalt reserves in the DRC.

Next door to the DRC, in civil war-ravaged Burundi, there was a discovery of exceptionally high-grade “main vein” of rare earth minerals in 2017. Burundi, which was once a German colony, saw Germany’s ThyssenKrupp move in to exploit the mineral resources. ThyssenKrupp also began building a processing plant in Burundi. The German government has come under attack from human rights groups that accuse it of backing the German mining venture, known as the Gakara Project, even though Burundi’s president, President Pierre Nkurunziza, was dubiously elected to a third term in office. German business groups have countered with the argument that if Germany was not mining Burundi’s rare earths, China would be doing so.

The French government is not only concentrating its rare earth mining activities in its traditional Francophone sphere of influence in Africa – Morocco, Burkina Faso, Niger, Madagascar, Guinea – but further afield, including the pursuit of joint venture mining activities in Kazakhstan.

In the United States, the Pentagon has recognized the military importance of rare earths. The Defense Logistic Agency’s Strategic Materials department is tasked to ensure a continued supply of rare earths to US defense contractors. The US Energy Department tracks rare earth discoveries and mining operations around the world, thanks to a constant infusion of intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. The Trump administration has moved to open US federal wildlife areas, national parks, and other lands to exploration and mining of rare earths to private companies, much to the chagrin of environmentalists and Native American tribal governments.

In a rush to lessen dependence on Chinese exports of rare earths, which have, in any event, been restricted by Beijing, nations and companies around the world have launched a cut-throat competition to gain leverage over the rare earth market. What peaks the interest of gatherers of economic intelligence are references in email, video conferences, phone calls, faxes, and financial documents to such terms as europium, terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, samarium, and other rare earths.

As the world becomes more dependent on high-tech and an “Internet of things,” consisting of computers, mobile phones, appliances, televisions, security systems, automobiles, etc., the economic war for control of rare earth minerals will increase. There is the extreme possibility that economic warfare could turn into shooting wars, as has already been the case in the DRC.

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Bioweapon? Scientists Sound Alarm Over DARPA Plans To Spread Viruses Using Insects 

A team of scientist sounds the alarm in a new Science Policy Forum report about a mysterious US government program that is developing genetically modified viruses that would be dispersed into the environment using insects. The virus-infected or ‘Frankenstein’ insects are being developed as countermeasures against potential natural and engineered threats to the US food supply. The program is operated by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) could be viewed as an attempt to develop an entirely new class of bioweapons that would prompt other nations to seek similar weapons, they cautioned.

The researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the University of Freiburg both in Germany, and the University of Montpellier in France suggest DARPA’s program could likely breach the Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.

Dubbed the “Insect Allies” program, DARPA began modifying insects in 2017, with the plan to produce more resilient crops to help farmers deal with climate change, drought, frost, floods, salinity, and disease, said Gizmodo. The technology at the center of the program is an entirely new method of genetically modifying crops. Instead of modifying seeds in a lab, farmers would send swarms of insects into their crops, where the genetically modified bugs would infect plants with a virus that passes along the new resilience genes, a process known as horizontal genetic alteration. Hence the technology’s name—Horizontal Environmental Genetic Alteration Agents (HEGAA).

For HEGAA to work, Gizmodo explains that DARPA labs develop a virus that is inserted into the chromosome of a target organism. Scientists would use leafhoppers, whiteflies, and aphids genetically altered in the lab using CRISPR, or a variant of a gene-editing system, to carry the virus into crops. Each plant would then be infected by the insect, triggering the intended effects of protecting crops from natural and or human-made threats.

However, the lead author of the report, Richard Guy Reeves from the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, says DARPA’s Insect Allies program is disturbing and an example of dual-use research in which the US government, in addition to aiding farmers’ crops, is also developing a biological weapon.

Insect Allies is reportedly backed by $27 million of funding. According to Gizmodo, there are four academic research teams currently working on the project, including researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute in New York, Pennsylvania State University, Ohio State University and the University of Texas at Austin. DARPA maintains that “all work is conducted inside closed laboratories, greenhouses, or other secured facilities,” and that the insects have built-in lifespans to limit their spread. By 2020 or 2021, DARPA is planning on testing the virus-infected insects on crops inside greenhouses at undisclosed locations.

Reeves said the use of insects as a vehicle for genetic modification is a horrible idea because they cannot be controlled and indicates that traditional overhead sprays to deliver HEGAAs is the safest bet. DARPA says insects are the only practical solution, as overhead spraying of HEGAAs would require increased farming infrastructure — something that is not available to all farmers.

The report specifies how there is currently no global regulatory framework to support this new way of transporting HEGAAs to crops, which if not supervised correctly, could lead to potential mishaps.

The scientists of the report interpret DARPA’s insect program as “an intention to develop a means of delivery of HEGAAs for offensive purposes,” such as conducting biological warfare.

These genetically modified bugs could be implanted with a dangerous plant-killing disease that the Trump adminstration could unleash over farmland in Venezuela, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and or even China, that would decimate the countries’ food supply.

The introduction of this potentially dangerous technology, the scientists argue, would usher in an entirely new class of biological, insect-dispatched weapons that could be considered weapons of mass destruction. Scientists warn that this technology would spur rival nations to develop similar insect programs.

In response to a Gizmodo question, a spokesperson for DARPA said it welcomes academic dialogue about the Insect Allies program, but criticizes the conclusion of the report, saying it is “misleading and peppered with inaccuracies.”

Blake Bextine, DARPA Program Manager for Insect Allies, rejects many of the claims made by Reeves.

“DARPA is not producing biological weapons, and we reject the hypothetical scenario,” Bextine told Gizmodo.

“We accept and agree with concerns about potential dual use of technology, an issue that comes up with virtually every new powerful technology. Those concerns are precisely why we structured the Insect Allies program the way we did, as a transparent, university-led, fundamental research effort that benefits from the active participation of regulators and ethicists and proactive communication to policymakers,” said Bextine.

The purpose of Insect Allies program, he states, is to prepare for a new era of emerging threats to US agriculture. Brextine added that DARPA is evaluating the potential environmental impacts of HEGAAs.

“DARPA is extraordinarily sensitive to environmental risks and off-target effects, and has structured the Insect Allies program to identify and mitigate them,” he said. “DARPA has mandated multiple levels of biosafety and biosecurity at each stage of the program.”

If DARPA’s program succeeds, they will have developed gain-of-function treatments that can be delivered to the “right plants” and the “right tissue,” he said. In other words, DARPA wants precision guided biological weapon insects.

Jason Delborne, an Associate Professor at North Carolina State University, an expert in genetic engineering, says the concerns seem “appropriate.”

“The social, ethical, political, and ecological implications of producing HEGAAs are significant and worthy of the same level of attention as exploring the science underpinning the potential technology,” Delborne told Gizmodo.

“The authors argue persuasively that specifying insects as the preferred delivery mechanism for HEGAAs is poorly justified by visions of agricultural applications. The infrastructure and expertise required for spraying agricultural fields—at least in the U.S. context—is well established, and this delivery mechanism would offer greater control over the potential spread of a HEGAA.”

DARPA could be on the cusp of obtaining a new biological weapon that would most certainly be used against Venezuela, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and or even China, to cripple the countries’ food supply and lead to a regime change without firing a signal shot — this the future of warfare.

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We’ve “Ruled Out” Satan: Officials Baffled By Mysterious Flaming Hole In Arkansas

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Experts are still trying to determine the cause of flames that shot out of a hole in the ground in Midway, Arkansas, last month.

The fire in the hole seemingly erupted spontaneously, shooting out flames of up to 12 feet high.

Fire chief Donald Tucker responded to the early morning emergency call on September 17.

He told the Springfield News-Leader what he saw when he got to the scene:

“When I got there, there were flames 8 or 9 feet high shooting out of a hole about 2 feet in diameter. It burned that way for 30 to 45 minutes before it went out.”

Tucker told Motherboard that although news reports have said the flames initially reached 12 feet high, he never saw them get to that level. The fire burned red-orange, at about two feet in diameter, Tucker said.

Why didn’t Tucker take pictures of the fire? “With a fire like that, you don’t know what it is, so you don’t put yourself in danger,” he told Motherboard.

Apparently, the mysterious fire somehow extinguished itself.

Before the fire retreated into the hole, it shrunk to a flame about waist high for a few minutes, Tucker said:

“Then it just went down the hole and went out. For a little bit, there was just a little bit of glow of fire down in the hole.”

Mickey Pendergrass, the county judge in Baxter County, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that officials are still investigating the mysterious Midway hole, but one possible suspect has been cleared:

“As far as the spiritual Satan goes, we’ve ruled that out. He didn’t come up and stick his pitchfork in the ground and blow that hole out.”

Good to know.

The volleyball-sized hole has been there for at least 10 years, according to a man who used to mow the grass on the private property along Arkansas 5.

“It’s kind of like an old groundhog hole, burrow, or armadillo’s,” Pendergrass said. “But it’s been there a long time.”

What caused the fire remains a mystery, however.

So far, the following possible causes of the fire have been ruled out:

  • Meteorite

  • Lighting strike

  • Natural gas

  • Utility-related problem

  • Leaking gasoline or propane tanks

  • The Devil

Could someone have started the fire intentionally? It is possible, Pendergrass said:

“What kind of fuel did they use to make it so clean and no soot and no damage? And what was used to strike the fire to start with? There are just too many questions for it not to have been done on purpose, whether it was for fun or for giggles. Somebody will talk someday and have to brag about it, and then we’ll find out who did it.”

Soil samples were taken from the hole, and officials hope that analysis will provide clues. If gasoline or anything else was put in the hole, or if groundwater contamination caused the fire, the soil should help experts determine that.

It is possible, however, that we will never know what caused the hole to burst into flame.

“I’ve never seen it before. I hope I never see it again,” Tucker said. “What it was, I have no idea.”

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Realtors Warn Metro Denver Housing Market Is “Now Pulling Back In A Big Way”

Home sales in the metro Denver region collapsed in September, forcing sellers to heavily discount asking prices which boosted inventory of properties available for purchase at an unprecedented rate, according to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors (DMAR), as per The Denver Post.

“The housing inventory and home price adjustments are normal and expected,” said Steve Danyliw, chairman of the DMAR Market Trends Committee, in the report. “What’s not normal? Sales of single-family homes priced over $500,000 dropping 33% from August to September. For those sellers, that’s real turbulence.”

Earlier this summer, DMAR Market Trends Committee saw indications the housing market was cooling but was shocked when it completely froze in September:

“The number of single-family homes sold in September, across all price ranges, dropped 30.5% from August and is down 21.4% compared to September 2017. Condo sales fell a dramatic 42.9 % on the month and are down 17.3% year-over-year,” said The Denver Post.

For years, millennial buyers in metro Denver were plagued with the lack of affordability. When home sales dropped in September, the Denver Post notes that very little buyers showed up.

The inventory of condos and homes available for sale at the end of September shot up to 8,807, an increase of 7.04% from August and about 16% move y/y.

The median price of a single-family home in metro Denver declined to 3.8% from August to $428,000 but remains up 6.1% y/y. Condos, which are popular with millennials, continued to show gains, as its median price rose 1.73% to $301,625 last month and is up 12.8 YTD.

Most of the carnage hit the luxury end of the market. Sales of those homes worth more than $1 million collapsed 44.4% between August and September.

Last month, Bank of America rang the proverbial bell on the US real estate market, saying existing home sales have peaked, reflecting declining affordability, greater price reductions and deteriorating housing sentiment. The report was published by BofA chief economist Michelle Meyer, who warned: “the housing market is no longer a tailwind for the economy but rather a headwind.”

“Call your realtor,” the BofA report proclaimed: “We are calling it: existing home sales have peaked.”

Chart 1 shows there is a leading relationship between the trend in affordability and in home sales — a simple regression suggests the lead is about three months. In major cities, affordability continues to be a significant problem for many Americans amid a rising interest rate environment and elevated home prices, existing home sales should remain under pressure for the foreseeable future.

Chart 2 indicates that the share of properties with price discounts is on the rise, suggesting that sellers are unloading into weakening demand. The data from Zillow reveals that 15% of listings have price reductions, the highest since mid-2013 when home sales tumbled last.

The University of Michigan survey reveals a worsening mood in the perception of buying conditions for homes. Respondents noted that home prices have become too high while rates have become restrictive.

While BofA makes clear the housing market is starting to stall, the Federal Reserve is conducting quantitative tightening and rapidly increasing interest rates to get ahead of the next recession. In other words, liquidity is being removed from the system and the cost of borrowing is headed higher – an environment that is not friendly to real estate and could be the key factor explaining the weakness in metro Denver housing and abroad.

 

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India Defies US, Signs $5.4BN Arms Deal With Russia Amid Promises Of Closer Ties

In what amounts to Russia’s latest act of defiance against the US and its Western allies, and a sign that India is slowly moving away from the US sphere of influence, New Delhi has signed a $5.4 billion deal for the delivery of five S-400 weapons systems, one of Russia’s most advanced anti-aircraft weapons, RT reported. The deal risks provoking more sanctions against Russia from the US. The arms deal was finalized at a summit involving Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in New Delhi.

Because of the purchase, India now risks being sanctioned under Washington’s Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which prohibits the purchase of arms from Russia. After his meeting with Modi, Putin said during a joint press conference that Russia would work with India to boost bilateral cooperation in the UN, Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the G20. Putin added that the two countries would coordinate counter-terrorism efforts, and the two leaders also signed a deal on space cooperation, with Modi saying that he hoped Russia would help India send astronauts into space by 2022. 

Russia

The two countries also plan to cooperate on counter-terrorism efforts in Syria, as well as the status of the Iran nuclear deal. Russia has always “stood shoulder-to-shoulder with India in the energy sector and our goals,” Putin said.

The arms deal was signed during a period of increased trade between Russian and India, with total trade exceeding $9 billion last year. That figure is expected to rise as the two countries hope to encourage cross-border investment. By 2030, Putin said, he hopes to increase trade to $30 billion and investments by $15 billion.

“We have set a target of increasing trade turnover to $30 billion…and increasing investments to $15 billion by 2025,” Putin said during a press conference with Modi on Friday. The Russian president is in India on a two-day official visit. Putin said the expansion of trade and investment interactions is a priority for both nations. He noted that “if we move at such pace, we will reach the target ahead of time and will continue expansion.”

Already, trade between Russia and India has increased by 20% so far this year during the period between January and July, with $6 billion in goods exchanged, per RT.

Last month, New Delhi suggested setting up a special economic zone for Russian companies. Earlier, the two countries discussed creating a ‘green corridor’ for the smooth transit of goods.

India’s drift from Washington will likely be seen by the Trump administration as a betrayal, giving the US government little incentive to hold back on the sanctions that are legally mandated by CAATSA. But Russia probably believes this is to their advantage; As Putin pointed out in a speech earlier this week, US sanctions against friends and allies only serve to undermine the dollar. India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. With India onboard, Russia and China will gain a crucial ally in their push to build an alternative to the global dollarized financial system.

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Surge In New York City Taxi Driver Suicides Has The City Talking

With taxicab drivers in New York City, the story has been the same for the last couple of years: many are dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts after Uber and Lyft have decimated their industry, rendered their medallions relatively worthless and made it difficult for them to pay bills. It’s a story that we have been following in depth over the last couple of years, reporting on an increasing number of drivers who have committed suicide as a result of their livelihood being pulled out from underneath them.

The New York Times followed up on this epidemic recently, profiling cabdrivers like Nicanor Ochisor, who had to be dragged to the doctor by his wife due to his depression in March of this year. But this wasn’t enough – he turned out to be one of six cabdrivers who committed suicide over the course of the last year. These men feel overwhelmed and often watch their prospects for retirement dissolve right in front of them. Undoubtedly, it can be difficult and lonely behind the wheel of a taxi, especially with the industry under fire.

But now, New York City is trying to step in, placing a cap on Uber and Lyft drivers, as well as urging taxi drivers to seek out help when necessary. New York City is now considering a set of bills that would establish a health fund for taxi drivers, also creating “driver assistance centers” for counseling and financial advice.

One of the bills is set to offer relief to medallion owners who have a significant amount of debt. A council speaker stated that the city was considering a partial bailout or hardship fund for medallion owners who drive their own taxis.

Corey Johnson, the Council speaker, told the NY Times: “For the smaller individual medallion owners, what can we do to help them get out from under this crushing debt? We’re trying to figure out a way to do that.”

The rise in suicides and the publicity that they have gotten have forced drivers to speak out about the stresses of their industry with their families. The Times caught up with one driver, Lal Singh, who said that after three years of driving a taxi, he had considered suicide.

He told the Times: “When I hear that somebody did suicide, I was thinking about me. I’m going to be one of them one day.” Singh owes about $6200 per month on the medallion he bought in 2000 and spends his day driving the length of Manhattan, top to bottom, looking for passengers.

“When you have nothing to do, we are suffering. What are you living for?” he continued.

Another driver, Muhammad Anil, who owes more than $500,000 on his medallion, had to have a talk with his children and reassure them that he was OK after they saw the headlines about the suicides.

The drivers that are most vulnerable are people between the ages of 45 and 64, according to Barbara Stanley, psychology professor at Columbia University. She noted that people with past depression issues may be more vulnerable to this stressful environment than others.

Some drivers, like 70 year old Harbans Singh, say they don’t want help from the taxi and limousine commission. He works 12 hour shifts to help pay off his medallion debt. “I don’t trust the T.L.C.,” he said.

Financial assistance is the number one type of assistance sought out by drivers. The city says they find themselves in a difficult position because a buyout of medallion owners could cost billions. The alternative ridesharing apps like Lyft have considered putting together a $100 million hardship fund for drivers. The catch? They want the city to drop the cap on the number of drivers they can have.

Unsurprisingly, cab drivers would rather see Uber and Lyft restricted.

Nicolae Hent, a friend of Nicanor Ochisor’s, went to the doctor back in 2005 after he battled with his own anxiety issues. He now takes two anti-depressants and plays tennis regularly to cope. Hent is 62, owes about $130,000 on his medallion and is leading the charge to get the city to assist cab drivers.

He told the Times, “I’m not going to kill myself. I won’t kill nobody. But I’ll fight until I die.”

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Is Saudi Arabia The Middle East’s Next Failed State?

Authored by Daniel Lazare via ConsortiumNews.com,

Reports are growing that Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s hyperactive crown prince, is losing his grip. His economic reform program has stalled since his father, King Salman, nixed plans to privatize 5 percent of Saudi Aramco. The Saudi war in Yemen, which the prince launched in March 2015, is more of a quagmire than ever while the kingdom’s sword rattling with Iran is making the region increasingly jumpy.

Heavy gunfire in Riyadh last April sparked rumors that MBS, as he’s known, had been killed in a palace coup. In May, an exiled Saudi prince urged top members of the royal family to oust him and put an end to his “irrational, erratic, and stupid” rule. Recently, Bruce Riedel, an ex-CIA analyst who heads up the Brookings Institution’s Intelligence Project, reported that the prince is so afraid for his life that he’s taken to spending nights on his yacht in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.  

A statue of Ibn Khaldun in Tunis, Tunisia. (Kassus / Wikimedia)

Channeling Ibn Khaldun

What does it all mean? The person to ask is Ibn Khaldun, the famous Tunisian historian, geographer, and social theorist. You might have trouble getting him on the phone, though, since he died in 1406. But he’s still the single best guide to the deepening Saudi crisis.  

If you do somehow channel him, the message might be grim. In a nutshell, it’s that if MBS goes, he’ll likely take the Al-Saud with him, and that the people waiting in the wings will not be the “moderates” beloved of Washington, but ISIS and al-Qaida. A modern state bristling with shopping malls, superhighways, and high-tech weaponry thus will succumb to a ragtag militia riding Toyota pickups and waving AK-47s.

Ibn Khaldun, a member of an upper-class Spanish-Muslim family that fled to North Africa after the fall of Seville in 1248, was one of the most remarkable personalities of the late Middle Ages on either side of the Christian-Muslim divide. He wrote The Muqaddimah, a book-length prologue to his six-volume world history, which British historian Arnold Toynbee praised “as undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place.” The anthropologist Ernest Gellner described Khaldun as a forerunner of modern sociology. The Muqaddimah, a strange blend of faith, fatalism, and science, is best known for its musings on the subject of the urban-nomadic conflict and the process by which dynasties rise and decay.

As Ibn Khaldun put it:

[T]he life of a dynasty does not as a rule extend beyond three generations. The first generation retains the desert qualities, desert toughness, and desert strategy. … They are sharp and greatly feared.  People submit to them. … [T]he second generation changes from the desert attitude to sedentary culture, from privation to luxury and plenty, from a state in which everybody shared in the glory to one in which one man claims all the glory for himself while the others are too lazy to strive for glory. …  The third generation … has completely forgotten the period of desert life and toughness, as if it never existed…. Luxury reaches its peak among them, because they are so much given to a life of prosperity and ease.

Decadence leads to collapse as fierce nomadic fundamentalists gather in the desert and prepare to mete out punishment to the city dwellers for their religious laxity. “[A] new purge of the faith is required,” summed up Friedrich Engels, who evidently read Ibn Khaldun, “a new Mahdi [i.e., redeemer] arises, and the game starts again from the beginning.”

It’s a recurrent cycle that has held true for a remarkable number of Muslim dynasties from the seventh century on.

Evidence of Instability

The big question now is whether the pattern will hold true for the Saudis.  

The answer so far is that it will. Events are proceeding on course. Ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Saudi state, by allying himself with Wahhabism, the local version of Islamic ultra-fundamentalism, embodied Ibn Khaldun’s concept of a ruthless desert warrior who uses religion to mobilize his fellow tribesman and battle his way to the throne in 1932. Once Saud took power, he proved to be a tough and cagey politician who put down rebellion and expertly played Britain and America off against one another to solidify his throne.

But the half-dozen sons who followed were different. The first, Saud, was a heavy spender who brought the kingdom to the brink of bankruptcy. The second, Faisal was an autocrat who was so out of his depth that he believed Zionism somehow begat communism. Khalid, who took power in 1975, was an absentee monarch who was gripped by paralysis when hundreds of rebels took over Mecca’s Grand Mosque in November 1979 and had to be rescued by French commandos flown in specially for the occasion. Fahd, who succeeded to the throne in 1982, was obese, diabetic, and a heavy smoker who ultimately fell victim to a massive stroke.  Abdullah, his successor, also was sickly and obese, while Salman, who assumed the throne in 2015 at age 79, has suffered at least one stroke and is said to exhibit “mild dementia.”

A video of the king landing in Moscow in 2017 shows a doddering old man who can barely descend a staircase.

Muhammad bin Salman and Ash Carter in 2016. (Air Force Tech. Sgt. Brigitte N. Brantley / Department of Defense)

The upshot is a group study in decrepitude. MBS, who all but took over the throne in 2015, meanwhile personifies all the foolishness and decadence that Ibn Khaldun attributed to the third generation. He’s more energetic than his father. But as one would expect of someone who has spent his entire life cosseted amid fantastic wealth, he’s headstrong, impractical, and immature. Appointed minister of defense by his father at the ripe old age of 29, he declared war on Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s neighbor to the south, two months later and then disappeared on a luxury vacation in the Maldives where a frantic Ashton Carter, Barack Obama’s secretary of defense, was unable to reach him for days.

A year later, MBS unveiled Vision 2030 a grandiose development plan aimed at bringing Saudi Arabia into the 21st century by diversifying the economy, loosening the grip of the ultra-intolerant Wahhabiyya,and putting an end to the country’s dual addiction to oil revenue and cheap foreign labor. In a country in which young men routinely wait years for a comfortable government sinecure to open up, the goal was to rejigger the incentives to encourage them to take private-sector jobs instead.  

It hasn’t worked. In a rare moment of candor, a pro-government newspaper recently reported that thousands of employers are evading government hiring quotas by paying Saudi workers not to show up. “Employers say young Saudi men and women are lazy and are not interested in working,” it said, “and accuse Saudi youth of preferring to stay at home rather than to take a low-paying job that does not befit the social status of a Saudi job seeker.”

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (lawepw / Wikimedia)

Some 800,000 foreign workers have left the country while capital is fleeing in the wake of last November’s mass roundup in which hundreds of princes and businessmen were herded into the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton and forced to turn over billions in assets. Foreign direct investment has plummeted from $7.5 billion to $1.4 billion since 2016 while a series of super-splashy development projects are in jeopardy now that Saudi Aramco privatization, which MBS was counting on as a revenue source, is on hold.  

While granting women permission to drive, MBS has imprisoned women’s rights advocates, threatened a dissident cleric and five Shiite activists with the death penalty, and cracked down on satirical postings on social media.  He preaches austerity and hard work, yet plunked down $500 million for his yacht, $450 million for a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, and $300 million for a French chateau. The hypocrisy is so thick that it’s almost as if he wants to be overthrown.  

Fundamental Enemies

As for the lean and hungry fundamentalists whom Ibn Khaldun said would administer the final blow, there’s no doubt who fits that bill: ISIS and al- Qaida. Both are fierce, warlike, and pious, both inveigh against a Saudi regime drowning in corruption, and both would like nothing more than to parade about with the crown prince’s head on a pike.  

In May, al-Qaida denounced Saudi religious reforms as “heretical” and urged clerics to rise up against a “moderate, open Islam, which all onlookers know is American Islam.”

In July, Islamic State took credit for an attack on a Saudi security checkpoint that claimed the life of a security officer and a foreign resident.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2004

In August, ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi accused Saudi Arabia of “trying to secularize its inhabitants and ultimately destroy Islam.”  

These are fighting words. Both groups meanwhile enjoy extensive support inside the kingdom. Prior to the attack on the World Trade Center, wealthy Saudis, including members of the royal family, helped fund al-Qaida to the tune of $30 million a year, according to Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan’s 2011 best seller, The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden.

In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confided in a diplomatic memo that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” More than three thousand Saudis have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join up with al-Qaida, ISIS and other Islamist forces. Once they return home, such jihadis might constitute a fifth column threatening the royal family as well. A crumbling royal family could fall like a ripe date into their outstretched palm.

Could Saudi Arabia become the Middle East’s next failed state? 

Washington is filled with so-called Middle East experts contributing to one disaster after another. Could it be that the best Mideast hand worth listening to is a North African scholar who died more than six centuries ago?

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Deadly Chinese Drones Now Lurk Above Mideast Battlefields

Across the Middle East, countries banned from purchasing armed drones from the US due to a weapons embargo are increasingly gravitating towards Chinese defense manufacturers, according to a new report from the Associated Press, sales that “are helping expand Chinese influence across a region vital to American security interests.”

“The Chinese product now doesn’t lack technology, it only lacks market share,” said Song Zhongping, a Chinese military strategist and former lecturer at the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force University of Engineering. “And the United States restricting its arms exports is precisely what gives China a great opportunity.”

The sales are supporting China’s expansion across a region home to many strategic US military bases, as well as, future routes for Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. 

“It’s a hedging strategy and the Chinese will look to benefit from that,” said Douglas Barrie, an aviation specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The AP notes that Chinese drones are more frequently conducting aerial operations in the skies above Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Nigeria, Yemen, Iraq, and the UAE thanks to booming sales, with more than 30 China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics’s Cai Hong 4 (Rainbow 4, or CH-4) medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles worth $700 million being sold to countries since 2014.

Chinese arms exports have expanded 38% from 2008 to 2012 and from 2013 to 2017, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data.

Earlier this year, a spy satellite passing above southern Saudi Arabia snapped a pictured of US surveillance drones and Chinese-manufactured armed drones, parked side by side at an airfield.

According to the Center for the Study of the Drone at New York’s Bard College, both drones were being used in the war in Yemen, has emerged as a “sort of a testing ground for drones,” said Dan Gettinger, the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone.

The CH-4 is the largest Chinese export. It is a replica of General Atomics’ Predator and Reaper drones, and in a global economy where emerging market currencies are getting crushed, the Chinese drone is the most appealing because of the low price.

A CASC executive spoke on condition of anonymity to AP, said US drones like Boeing’s Stingray, introduced earlier this year for the US Navy, still hold a technological advantage.

China recently transferred a Wing Loong II, an armed unmanned aerial vehicle roughly equivalent to the American MQ-9 Reaper to the UAE.

“In recent years, all types of drones have proven their value and importance through a high degree of use in warfare, and the military has noticed,” said the top CASC executive. “Many countries are now speeding up the development for these weapons systems, including China.”

Since 2013, President Xi Jinping has ramped up the development of fifth-generation jet fighters, new aircraft carriers, laser guns, space weapons, hypersonics, and the militarization of the South China Sea. It has even transferred some of this exotic technology to its close allies like Pakistan.

China still lags behind the US in total weapon exports, but it is catching up. The rapid growth of China’s share of the global drone market shows that countries are willing to buy cheaper defense products than overpriced weapons from the US. This is sure to upset America’s military-industrial complex, who are already looking for a fight with China judging by the rhetoric coming from the White House.

And as American exceptionalism is slowly dying, China is catching up… and the world wants more Chinese drones. 

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Cybersecurity Expert John McAfee Issues Warning About Those Cell Phone “Presidential Alerts”

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

With the push of a button and at the direction of President Donald Trump, a “Presidential Alert” was sent to all cellphones across America at 2:18 p.m. ET yesterday.

The message was the first test of what many are calling the “Presidential Alert” system, a new way to notify Americans across the country of national emergencies.

Here’s what it looked like, in case you were one of the few who didn’t get the alert, or you don’t have a cell phone:

A 2015 law called the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Modernization Act limits the scope of what can be considered a valid emergency alert:

Except to the extent necessary for testing the public alert and warning system, the public alert and warning system shall not be used to transmit a message that does not relate to a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster or threat to public safety.

The idea for this system was sponsored by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) and signed into law by then-President Barack Obama.

Despite the wording of the message, this is not a presidential alert system, explains Law & Crime:

It is a Wireless Emergency Alert system set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to allow government officials to swiftly send information to the American public in a time of crisis, specifically terror attacks, natural disasters, or other public safety threats.

The alert everyone got this week was not sent by Trump, despite the misleading title. It was sent by FEMA as a test of the system. In the future, the president will have the ability to send messages, as will other officials from federal, state, tribal, and local governments.

On its surface, the system appears to be a harmless way to reach US citizens in the event of an emergency.

It’s no secret that we are all being watched by the government in various ways – there seems to be no way to fully escape Big Brother’s prying eyes these days.

People are so used to being spied on now that many are shrugging off the possibility that the system is more invasive than it appears.

Cybersecurity expert John McAfee is not one of them.

In a Tweet, he explained that the alert system is just one more way the government is invading our privacy:

People responded with questions…

Speaking of McAfee, he recently announced he will be running for president in 2020 as a Libertarian. In a Tweet posted yesterday, he introduced his campaign manager:

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Mall Vacancies Hit 7 Year High As Rents Plunge

The epidemic of falling rents at shopping malls across the United States has been well duly documented here over the past year. In June, we wrote about an abandoned Macy’s that had been turned into a homeless shelter. Just days ago we followed up on the trend of malls falling victim to the “Amazon effect” in areas like Detroit. Today, we note the latest confirmation that the trend of dying malls across the entire U.S. isn’t stopping anytime soon. 

According to a WSJ report, the average rent for malls in the third-quarter fell 0.3% to $43.25 a square foot. This is down from $43.36 in the second quarter and is the first time this number has fallen sequentially since 2011, according to research firm Reis, Inc.

At the same time, vacancy rates are on the ascent, rising to 9.1% in the third quarter from 8.6% in the second quarter. This is the highest they’ve been since the third quarter of 2011, when these rates hit 9.4%. Barbara Denham, senior economist with Reis, told the Journal: “The retail sector is still correcting”. It sure is, Barb.

For instance, here are some photos we included in a recent article about one of the hardest hit areas, Detroit: 

The depleted food court at Laurel Park Place on Sept. 25, 2018 (Source/ Detroit Free Press)

There are numerous vacant storefronts inside Eastland Center mall in Harper Woods on Sept. 21, 2018 (Source/ Detroit Free Press)

A vacant storefront in Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights on Sept. 23, 2018 (Source/ Detroit Free Press)

Shopping mall data stands in stark contrast to the rest of the US economy which, as one look at Trump’s twitter account, is widely heralded as “outperforming” (amazing what $1.5 trillion in fiscal stimulus 9 years into an expansion will do). Solid job growth numbers and a good economic outlook have ensured that the Fed’s ultimate goal of people spending money that they don’t have continues; the only difference is that that fascinating creature known as the US consumer simply isn’t racking up this debt at shopping malls anymore, and is opting for online spending like Amazon instead.

At the same time, consumer confidence was at an 18 year high last month and the stock market is also at all-time highs.

Many retail brands are also benefiting from the booming economy and continue to buy back their own stock using debt post “strong” earnings numbers.

The rise in vacancy rates was attributed mostly to closings by Bon-Ton Stores – which filed for Chapter 11 earlier this year – and zombie retailer Sears, which somehow has continued to dodge bankruptcy but is closing stores at an accelerated rate. To make matters worse, Reis told the Journal that a “number of owner-occupied Sears stores were excluded from the numbers, since they don’t have leases.”

That means the real numbers are even worse.

And as the exodus from malls accelerates, many stores are reevaluating their brick and mortar strategy and instead investing in their online businesses. In Q2, e-commerce sales accounted for 9.6% of total retail sales after adjusting for seasonal variations, from 9.5%, in Q1. 

Back in January, we wrote an article why people should anticipate a “death spiral” for shopping malls. We noted then that shopping malls have faced a tidal wave of store closures and have been forced to backfill empty square footage with everything from libraries to doctors offices (see: America’s Desperate Mall Owners Turn To Grocers, Doctors & High Schools To Fill Empty Space).

Alexander Goldfarb, a senior analyst at Sandler O’Neill + Partners LP, told the Journal: “Any mall that is worried about a Sears orMacy’s closing has bigger issues.” Goldfarb, defending malls, noted that not all shopping malls are under pressure and that malls in more affluent areas still draw higher end shoppers and continue to attract tenants. “New uses like restaurants and theaters” can still bring in customers. 

Homeless shelters are also an option.

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