“Monster” Irma Is Now The Strongest Atlantic Hurricane On Record As Florida Preps For “Catastrophe”

Update 3: The Irma hits just keep on coming, with the NHC Atlantic Ops twitter page reporting that as of this moment, Irma is now the stronger hurricane in the Atlantic basin outside of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico in NHC records. “Preparations should be rushed to completion in the hurricane warning area,” the NHC said.

Taking things to the next level, literally, meteorologist Eric Holthaus writes that Hurricane Irma is now expected to *exceed* the theoretical maximum intensity for a storm in its environment, or as he puts it “Redefining the rules.”

Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello urged the 3.4 million residents of the U.S. territory to seek refuge in one of 460 hurricane shelters before the storm is expected to hit as early as Tuesday night. “This is something without precedent,” Rossello told a news conference. He will ask U.S. President Donald Trump to declare a federal state of emergency even before the storm passes to allow disbursement of U.S. emergency funds.

Gary Randall, head of the Blue Waters Resort on Antigua’s north coast, said the staff had boarded up windows, stripped trees of coconuts and fronds and secured anything that could become a hazard. “I wasn’t that nervous yesterday, but today I‘m nervous,” Randall said by telephone, adding that he expected the hotel’s beach to be swept away and much of the 108-room property to be flooded.

According to Bloomberg, Irma’s current path – headed straight for Florida – has prompted the state to prepare for the “catastrophic” system.

Unlike Harvey, which caused widespread damage, power outages and flooding and taking almost a fifth of U.S. oil refining capacity offline, Irma is a bigger threat to agriculture, with orange juice futures surging.

Airlines have canceled flights across the Caribbean and are adding planes to evacuate tourists, while cruise-line stocks have tumbled.

A strike on Florida would be the first time since 1964 that the U.S. was hit by back-to-back storms of Category 3 or more and only the second time since 1851, Henson said. Irma is now among the 7 most powerful storms on record to cross the Atlantic.

 

“Our biggest concern is Florida citrus,” said Joel Widenor, co-founder of Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland. “There is big enough fruit on the trees that the fruit could drop off, it could literally get blown off. The bigger issue is tree damage that is a lot harder to recover from.”

Some more facts: Florida is the world’s largest producer of orange juice after Brazil. About two-thirds of the state’s citrus crop is located in the lower two-thirds of the peninsula. Orange juice for November delivery jumped as much as 6.9 percent to $1.4595 a pound on ICE Futures U.S. Tuesday, the biggest intraday gain for the contract since Jan. 28, 2016. Cotton for December delivery jumped by the 3-cent exchange limit, or 4.2 percent, to 74.88 cents a pound. Aggregate trading for both commodities for this time doubled compared with the 100-day average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“There is an increasing chance of seeing some impacts from Irma in the Florida Peninsula and the Florida Keys later this week,” the National Hurricane Center said after Governor Rick Scott declared an emergency.

There is still hope that a direct hit will be avoided: “The expected path has shifted considerably west over the last two days and can still change over the next two,” said Olivier Jakob, founder of energy consultant Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland. “We cannot yet rule out a move further west with a Louisiana risk.”

Irma’s track could shift as it nears Cuba and Florida, according to Bob Henson, a meteorologist with Weather Underground in Boulder, Colorado. One possibility is a turn to the north that would take the storm up the Florida peninsula.

 

“It is four to five days away,” Henson said. “In hurricane-land that is a pretty long time span.”

Beyond the threat to people and property in the Caribbean, the focus for now is on agriculture, Jakob said. Irma is leading traders to be “long orange Juice futures rather than gasoline futures,” he said.

Only three Category 5 hurricanes have hit the contiguous 48 U.S. states, Henson told Bloomberg. The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 that devastated the Florida Keys, Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Andrew that cut across Florida in 1992. Andrew was originally classified as a Category 4 storm only to be upgraded years later after further analysis.

“It is obviously a rare breed,” Henson said. “We are in rare territory.”

* * *

Update 2: While few are willing to admit it yet, according to meteorologist Ryan Maye, Hurricane Irma is still intensifying, with winds up to 155-knots (180 mph) and that extrapolating Saffir-Simpson scale, 158-knots would be Category 6.

* * *

Update: Irma has been upgraded from a Cat 5+ Hurricane to “Potentially Catastrophic” Cat 5++ storm, with winds now near 180 mph gusting to 220 mph, still moving due west at 14 mph.

Here is the latest NHC update:

At 1100 AM AST (1500 UTC), the eye of Hurricane Irma was located near latitude 16.8 North, longitude 58.4 West. Irma is moving toward the west near 14 mph (22 km/h), and this general motion is expected to continue today, followed by a turn toward the west-northwest tonight. On the forecast track, the extremely dangerous core of Irma is forecast to move over portions of the northern Leeward Islands tonight and early Wednesday.

 

Reports from an Air Force Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that the maximum sustained winds are near 180 mph (285 km/h) with higher gusts.  Irma is a an extremely dangerous category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Some fluctuations in intensity are likely during the next day or two, but Irma is forecast to remain a powerful category 4 or 5 hurricane during the next couple of days.

 

Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 60 miles (95 km) from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 160 miles (260 km).

 

The latest minimum central pressure reported by reconnaissance aircraft is 931 mb (27.50 inches).

* * *

Irma has strengthened to an “extremely dangerous” Category 5 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center said in its advisory at 7:45am AST. According to the Hurricane center, NOAA and Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft data indicate Hurricane Irma has intensified into an “extremely dangerous” Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale with maximum winds of 175 mph (280 km/h) with higher gusts.

As of this moment, the hurricane is located 270 miles east of Antigua, moving west at 14 mph. States of emergency were declared in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and all of Florida while people on various Caribbean islands boarded up homes and rushed to find last-minute supplies, forming long lines outside supermarkets and gas stations. This morning the Dominican Republic has issued a Hurricane Watch from Cabo Engano to northern border with Haiti; Tropical Storm Watch from south of Cabo Engao to Isla Saona.

According to meteorologists, Irma is the 17th hurricane in the Atlantic on record to have max winds >= 175 mph. Atlantic max wind record is Allen (1980) at 190 mph.

Ultimately, the question is how strong Irma will be when it inevitably makes landfall on the Eastern Seaboard, somewhere in the vicinity of Miami.

Meanwhile, officials across the northeastern Caribbean canceled airline flights, shuttered schools and urged people to hunker down indoors as Hurricane Irma barreled toward the region, now as an “extremely powerful” Category 5 storm. Irma’s maximum sustained winds increased to near 175 mph early Tuesday.

According to AP, emergency officials warned that the storm could dump up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain, unleash landslides and dangerous flash floods and generate waves of up to 23 feet (7 meters) as the storm drew closer.

“We’re looking at Irma as a very significant event,” Ronald Jackson, executive director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, said by phone. “I can’t recall a tropical cone developing that rapidly into a major hurricane prior to arriving in the central Caribbean.” 

U.S. residents were urged to monitor the storm’s progress in case it should turn northward toward Florida, Georgia or the Carolinas. “This hurricane has the potential to be a major event for the East Coast. It also has the potential to significantly strain FEMA and other governmental resources occurring so quickly on the heels of (Hurricane) Harvey,” Evan Myers, chief operating officer of AccuWeather, said in a statement.

In the Caribbean, the director of Puerto Rico’s power company predicted that storm damage could leave some areas of the U.S. territory without electricity for four to six months. But “some areas will have power (back) in less than a week,” Ricardo Ramos told radio station Notiuno 630 AM.

The power company’s system has deteriorated greatly amid Puerto Rico’s decade-long recession, and the territory experienced an islandwide outage last year. Meanwhile, the governor of the British Virgin Islands urged people on Anegada island to leave if they could, noting that Irma’s eye was expected to pass 35 miles (56 kilometers) from the capital of Road Town.

“This is not an opportunity to go outside and try to have fun with a hurricane,” U.S. Virgin Islands Gov. Kenneth Mapp warned. “It’s not time to get on a surfboard.”

Antigua and Anguilla shuttered schools Monday, and government office closures were expected to follow. On the tiny island of Barbuda, hotel manager Andrea Christian closed the Palm Tree Guest House. She said she was not afraid even though it would be her first time facing a storm of that magnitude.

“We can’t do anything about it,” Christian said by phone, adding that she had stocked up on food and water. “We just have to wait it out.”

Both Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands expected 4 inches to 8 inches (10-20 centimeters) of rain and winds of 40-50 mph with gusts of up to 60 mph. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello activated the National Guard, canceled classes for Tuesday and declared a half-day of work. He also warned of flooding and power outages. “It’s no secret that the infrastructure of the Puerto Rico Power Authority is deteriorated,” Rossello said.

Meteorologist Roberto Garcia warned that Puerto Rico could experience hurricane-like conditions in the next 48 hours should the storm’s path shift. “Any deviation, which is still possible, could bring even more severe conditions to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” Garcia said. The U.S. Virgin Islands said the school year would open Friday instead of Tuesday.

Gov. Kenneth Mapp said most hotels in the U.S. territory were at capacity with some 5,000 tourists. He noted the storm was expected to pass 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of St. Thomas and warned that the island could experience sustained winds as high as 80 mph

“It’s not a lot of distance,” he said, adding: “It could affect us in a tremendous way. I’m not saying that to alarm anyone or scare anyone, but I want the Virgin Islands to be prepared.”

Residents on the U.S. East Coast were urged to monitor the storm’s progress due to the possibility it could turn northward toward Florida, Georgia or the Carolinas. “This hurricane has the potential to be a major event for the East Coast. It also has the potential to significantly strain FEMA and other governmental resources occurring so quickly on the heels of (Hurricane) Harvey,” Evan Myers, chief operating officer of AccuWeather, said in a statement.

In Miami-Dade County, the early scramble was on to stock up on hurricane supplies, reports CBS Miami. People were shopping for gasoline, generators, food, batteries, and everything else they’d need get by were Irma to hit the region hard.

“We are not yet at the height of hurricane season and people have not taken steps to get prepared yet,” Miami-Dade County Emergency Management Director Curt Sommerhoff said Monday. “We are encouraging them to take those steps today.” Miami-Dade officials were to meet Tuesday to assess the danger.

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The Islamic Future Of Europe

Authored by Guy Milliere via The Gatestone Institute,

  • European leaders accepted the transformation of parts of their countries into enemy territories. They see that a demographic disaster is taking place. They know that in two or three decades, Europe will be ruled by Islam.
  • Ten years ago, describing what he called "the last days of Europe," the historian Walter Laqueur said that European civilization was dying and that only old monuments and museums would survive. His diagnosis was too optimistic. Old monuments and museums might well be blown up. Look nowhere else than what the black-hooded supporters of "Antifa" — an "anti-fascist" movement whose actions are totally fascistic — are doing to statues in the United States.

The terrorist attack in Barcelona received the same reaction as all the large-scale terrorist attacks in Europe: tears, prayers, flowers, candles, teddy bears, and protestations that "Islam means peace ". When people gathered to demand tougher measures against the rising influence of Islamism across the continent, they were confronted by an "anti-fascist" rally. Muslims organized a demonstration to defend Islam; they claimed that Muslims living in Spain are the "main victims" of terrorism. The president of the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Societies, Mounir Benjelloun El Andaloussi, spoke of a "conspiracy against Islam" and said that terrorists were "instruments" of Islamophobic hatred. The mayor of Barcelona, ?? Ada Colau, cried in front of the cameras and said that her city would remain an "open city" for all immigrants. The governor of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, used almost the same language. Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, a conservative, was the only one who dared to call jihadist terrorism by its name. Almost all European journalists said Rajoy's words were too harsh.

After the attack in Barcelona, Spain, when people gathered at the site to demand tougher measures against the rising influence of Islamism across the continent, they were confronted by an "anti-fascist" rally. Pictured: "Anti-fascists" beat a man who they claimed is a "right-wing sympathizer" at Las Ramblas, Barcelona, on August 18, 2017. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

Mainstream European newspapers describing the horror once again sought explanations to what they kept calling "inexplicable". The leading Spanish daily newspaper, El Pais, wrote in an editorial that "radicalization" is the bitter fruit of the "exclusion" of certain "communities," and added that the answer was more "social justice". In France, Le Monde suggested that terrorists want to "incite hatred", and stressed that Europeans must avoid "prejudice". In the UK, The Telegraph explained that "killers attack the West because the West is the West; not because of what it does" — but it spoke of "killers", not "terrorists" or "Islamists".

Anti-terrorism specialists, interviewed on television, said that the attacks, carried out across the continent at an ever-faster pace, will become deadlier. They noted that the original plan of the Barcelona jihadists had been to destroy the Sagrada Família Cathedral and kill thousands of people. The specialists parroted that Europeans will just have to learn to live with the threat of widespread carnage. They did not offer any solutions. Once again, many said that terrorists are not really Muslims — and that the attacks "had nothing to do with Islam".

Many leaders of Western European countries treat Islamic terrorism as a fact of life that Europeans must get used to — as some kind of aberration unrelated to Islam. They often avoid speaking of "terrorism" at all. After the attack in Barcelona,?? German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a brief reproach about a "revolting" event. She expressed "solidarity" with the Spanish people, and then moved on. French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted a message of condolence and spoke of a "tragic attack."

Throughout Europe, expressions of anger are conscientiously marginalized. Calls for mobilization, or any serious change in immigration policy, come only from politicians scornfully described as "populist."

Even the slightest criticism of Islam immediately arouses almost unanimous indignation. In Western Europe, books on Islam that are widely available are written by people close to the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Tariq Ramadan. Books that are "politically incorrect" also exist, but are sold under the counter as if they are contraband. Islamic bookstores sell brochures calling for violence without even hiding what they do. Dozens of imams, similar to Abdelbaki Es Satty, the suspected mastermind of the attack in Barcelona, continue to preach with impunity; if they are arrested, they are quickly released.

Submission reigns. The discourse everywhere is that despite increasing threats, Europeans must live their lives as normally as possible. But Europeans see what threats exist. They see that life is not even slightly normal. They see policemen and soldiers in the streets, proliferating security checks, strict controls at the entrance of theaters and shops. They see insecurity everywhere. They are told just to ignore the source of the threats, but they know the source. They claim they are not afraid. Thousands in Barcelona shouted, "No tinc por" ("We are not afraid"). In fact, they are scared to death.

Polls show that Europeans are pessimistic, and think the future will be bleak. Polls also show that Europeans no longer have confidence in those who govern them, but feel they are left with no choice.

This shift in their lives has occurred in such a short time, less than half a century. Before then, in Western Europe, only a few thousand Muslims were present — mostly immigrant workers from former European colonies. They were supposed to be in Europe temporarily, so were never asked to integrate.

They soon numbered hundreds of thousands, then millions. Their presence turned permanent. Many became citizens. Asking them to integrate grew unthinkable: most seemed to consider themselves Muslim first.

European leaders gave up defending their own civilization. They slipped into saying that all cultures should be viewed the same way. They appear to have given up.

School curricula were altered. Children were taught that Europe and the West had plundered the Muslim world — not that the Muslims had, in fact, invaded and conquered the Christian Byzantine Empire, North Africa and the Middle East, most of Eastern Europe, Greece, Northern Cyprus, and Spain. Children were taught that Islamic civilization had been splendid and opulent before colonization supposedly came to ravage it.

Welfare states, established in the post-war period, began to create a large underclass of people permanently trapped in dependency, just when the number of Muslims in Europe redoubled.

Social-housing neighborhoods suddenly were Muslim neighborhoods. The rise in mass unemployment — mainly affecting less qualified workers — transformed Muslim neighborhoods into mass-unemployment neighborhoods.

Community organizers came to tell unemployed Muslims that after purportedly looting their countries of origin, Europeans had used Muslim workers to rebuild Europe and were now treating them as useless utensils.

Crime took root. Muslim neighborhoods became high-crime neighborhoods.

Extremist Muslim preachers arrived; they reinforced a hatred of Europe. They said that Muslims must remember who they are; that Islam must take its revenge. They explained to young, imprisoned Muslim criminals that violence could be used for a noble cause: jihad.

Police were ordered not to intervene lest they aggravate the tension. High-crime areas became no-go zones, breeding grounds for the recruitment of Islamic terrorists.

European leaders accepted the transformation of parts of their countries into enemy territories.

Riots took place; leaders made even more concessions. They passed laws restricting freedom of speech.

When Islamic terrorism first hit Europe, its leaders did not know what to do. They still do not know what to do. They are prisoners of a situation they created and cannot control anymore. They appear to feel helpless.

They cannot incriminate Islam: the laws they passed make it illegal to do that. In most European countries, even questioning Islam is branded as "Islamophobia". It leads to heavy fines, if not trials or prison time (as with Lars Hedegaard, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Geert Wilders or George Bensoussan). They cannot re-establish law and order in no-go zones: that would require the intervention of the army and a shift towards martial law. They cannot adopt the solutions proposed by parties they have pushed into opposition at the margins of European political life.

They cannot even close their borders, abolished in 1995 with the Schengen agreement. Re-establishing border controls would be costly and take time.

Europe's leaders seem to have neither the will nor the means to oppose the incoming waves of millions of Muslim migrants from Africa and the Middle East. They know that terrorists are hiding among the migrants, but still do not vet them. Instead, they resort to subterfuges and lies. They create "deradicalization" programs that do not work: the "radicals," it seems, do not want to be "deradicalized."

Europe's leaders try to define "radicalization" as a symptom of "mental illness"; they consider asking psychiatrists to solve the mess. Then, they talk about creating a "European Islam", totally different from the Islam elsewhere on Earth. They take on haughty postures to create the illusion of moral superiority, as Ada Colau and Carles Puigdemont did in Barcelona: they say they have high principles; that Barcelona will remain "open" to immigrants. Angela Merkel refuses to face the consequences of her policy to import countless migrants. She chastises countries in Central Europe that refuse to adopt her policies.

European leaders can see that a demographic disaster is taking place. They know that in two or three decades, Europe will be ruled by Islam. They try to anesthetize non-Muslim populations with dreams about an idyllic future that will never exist. They say that Europe will have to learn to live with terrorism, that there is nothing anyone can do about it.

But there is a lot they can do; they just do not want to — it might cost them Muslim votes.

Winston Churchill told Neville Chamberlain, "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, you will have war." The same is true today.

Ten years ago, describing what he called "the last days of Europe," the historian Walter Laqueur said that European civilization was dying and that only old monuments and museums would survive. His diagnosis was too optimistic. Old monuments and museums might well be blown up. Look nowhere else than what the black-hooded supporters of "Antifa" — an "anti-fascist" movement that is totally fascistic — are doing to statues in the United States.

Barcelona's Sagrada Família Cathedral was spared only thanks to the clumsiness of a terrorist who did not know how to handle explosives. Other places may not be so fortunate.

The death of Europe will almost certainly be violent and painful: no one seems willing to stop it. Voters still could, but they will have to do it now, fast, before it is too late.

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Polish Foreign Minister Demands Germany Pay $1 Trillion In Reparations

Poland has escalated its demands for World War II reparations from Germany from "billions" a month ago, to "about $1 trillion" today as Poland’s foreign minister demanded "serious talks" were needed with Germany.

Relations between Berlin and Warsaw have been on edge recently over issues including Germany’s push to share responsibility for refugees across Europe – which Poland has rejected – to the European Commission’s infringement procedure against PiS plans to have more control over the judiciary. Last month the EU sued Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, forcing them to accept refugees even as the rest of Europe turns a blind eye to the 100 thousand refugees that have made landfall in recent months in Italy.

But, as The Independent now reports, the rhetoric is heating up.

Poland’s foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski told local radio station RMF that “serious talks” were needed with Germany to "find a way to deal with the fact that German-Polish relations are overshadowed by the German aggression of 1939 and unresolved post-war issues."

 

He said Poland’s material losses were about $1 trillion, or higher.

 

Polish defense minister Antoni Macierewicz also accused European critics of trying to “erase” the fate of the Poles at German hands during the war “from the historical memory of Europe”.

 

The country’s right-wing government has dismissed a 1953 resolution by Poland’s former communist government which dropped any claim to reparations from Germany, and are instead claiming that Germany is “shirking” its moral responsibility.

Around six million Polish citizens, including about three million Jews, were killed during the war and much of Warsaw was destroyed.

Interstingly, an independent Ibris poll found that 51 per cent of Polish people objected to repatriation claims against Germany, while 24 per cent were in favour. Critics of the government say they are talking about reparations to divert attention from their nationalistic agenda.

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Brickbat: Illinois Justice

lottery ticketsFor almost three years, the state of Illinois seized Ruth Soukup’s pension payments. Soukup was a clerk at a gas station that closed owing money to the Illinois lottery. State records showed that Soukup was neither the owner of nor an officer of the store. But officials say the way some of the lottery paperwork was filled out indicated Soukup was a part-owner or officer, so they tried to collect from her. The state stopped taking Soukup’s money only after local media picked up the story.

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The Saker Warns “Make No Mistake, The Latest US Thuggery Is A Sign Of Weakness, Not Strength”

Via The Saker,

For a while already the Russian diplomats have been openly saying that their American counterparts are ?????????????????? or “non-agreement capable”.  This all began under Obama, when Kerry flew to meet with Lavrov and declared ‘A’, then flew back to Washington, DC and declared ‘B’.  Then there were the cases in Syria when the US agreed to a deal only to break that very same deal in less than 24 hours.  That’s when the Russians openly began to say that their US colleagues are rank amateurs who lack even the basic professionalism to get anything done.

Now the US has slipped even lower: the Russians speak of US “hellish buffoonery” and “stupid thuggery”.

Wow!

For the normally hyper-diplomatic Russians, this kind of language is absolutely unheard of, this has never ever happened before.  You could say that the Russians are naive, but they believe that their diplomats should always be, well, diplomatic, and that public expressions of disgust is just not something a diplomat does.  Even more telling is rather than call the Americans “evil” or “devious”, they openly express their total contempt for them, calling them stupid, incompetent, uneducated and their actions unlawful (read Maria Zakharova’s statement to that effect on Facebook).

So let me explain what is happening here how the Russians interpreted the latest US thuggery concerning the Russian Consulate in San Francisco and the Russian diplomatic annexes in Washington and New York.

First, the Russians fully expected the Americans to retaliate after the Russian expulsion of US diplomatic personnel in Russia.  That, by itself, is not the problem.  The Russians understand that Trump is a cornered and weak President, that he has to show how “tough” he is.  Sure, they smile, but they think that this is ‘fair game’.  The Russians also know that, as a country, the USA cannot accept the biggest reduction in US diplomatic personnel in history without reacting.  Again, they don’t necessarily like it, but they think that this is ‘fair game’.

You know what really triggered the Russians off?  The fact that the Americans gave them only 2 days to vacate the premises they would seize and that they organized some kind of bizarre search operation.  Let me immediately explain that this is not a case of ruffled feathers by the Russians, not at all.  But here is how they would think about it:

“Why would they give us only 2 days?  Do they really think that we cannot clear the premises from anything sensitive in 60 minutes if needed?  Or are they actually trying to inconvenience our personnel?  If so, do they really think that we are going to break out in hysterics?  Do the Americans really think that they will find something?  What?  Papers proving that Trump is our agent? Maybe a hidden nuclear device?  Or the computers we used to hack in every server in the USA?” 

To a Russian, these questions can only have one answer: of course not. So what is going on here?  And then there is the only possible explanation left:

“We beat them is Syria, we are beat them in the Ukraine, they lost Afghanistan, they lost Iraq, their Navy apparently does not know how to use a radar, their soldiers are terrified to fight somebody capable of resistance, they failed to impress not only China, but even the North Koreans who are openly laughing at them.  Hezbollah laughs at them.  Even Venezuela refuses to be scared!  The Iranians openly threaten them with consequences if they back out of the deal they signed. Even Pakistan is openly expressing its disgust with the USA.  Ditto for Turkey.  Heck – the Americans are losing on all fronts and the very best they can do is try to feel good about illegally harassing our diplomatic personnel! Pathetic, lame, losers!”

And they are 100% correct.

The latest US thuggery against Russian diplomats is as stupid as it is senseless.  I think that US diplomats of the era of James Baker must be absolutely mortified to see the kind of idiocy their successors are now engaging in.

This is also the end of Rex Tillerson.  The poor man now has only two options left: resign (that would be the honorable thing to do) or stay and become another castrated eunuch unable to even deal with the likes of Nikki Haley, nevermind the North Koreans!

A “spokesperson” for the White House declared that Trump personally ordered the latest thuggery.  Okay, that means one of two thing: either Trump is so weak that he cannot even fire a lying spokesperson or that he has now fallen so low as to order the “thug life” behavior of the State Department.  Either way, it is a disgrace.

This is also really scary. 

The combination of, on one hand, spineless subservience to the Neocons with intellectual mediocrity, a gross lack of professionalism and the kind of petty thuggery normally associated with street gangs and, on the other hand, nuclear weapons is very scary.  In the mean time, the other nuclear armed crazies have just declared that they have a thermonuclear device which they apparently tested yesterday just to show their contempt for Trump and his general minions.  I don’t think that they have a hydrogen bomb. I don’t think that they have a real ICBM.  I don’t even think that they have real (usable) nuclear warheads.  But what if I am wrong?  What if they did get a lot of what they claim to have today – such as rocket engines – from the Ukies?

In one corner, the Outstanding Leader, Brilliant Comrade, Young Master and Great Successor, Kim Jong-un and on the other, The Donald, Grab them by the xxxxx and Make ‘Merica Great, the Grand Covfefe Donald Trump.  Both armed with nukes.

Scary, scary shit.  Really scary.

But even more scary and depressing is that the stronger man of the two is beyond any doubt Kim Jong-un.

All I see in the White House are vacancy signs.

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German Food Chain Faces Backlash After Airbrushing Crosses From Churches On Food Packaging

Europe’s war on religion has reached an absurd milestone.

According to the Telegraph, customers of budget supermarket Lidl have expressed outrage after the company airbrushed Christian symbols from packaging of its "Eridanous"-branded Greek-food line, which featured images of the Anastasis Church in Santorini, Greece, in order to remain "religiously neutral," as the company claimed.

“The German chain's Greek food range features images of the famous Anastasis Church in Santorini, Greece, complete with its world-renowned blue dome roof."

Shoppers have taken to the company’s Facebook page to express their "disappointment" that the cross was photoshopped. One user, Daniel Novak, wrote: "I'm highly disappointed in a company that is bending over to cater to specific people. Why are you hiding from the history?”

"We are all to learn from history, removing it with Photoshop will cause the same mistakes of the past to be done over and over again."

One user demanded to know who the company thought it would be offending with the crosses.

“Steve West added: ‘Why have you taken the crosses off the top of Greek churches in your advertising?

 

‘Is there somebody you will think takes offence? There is. Me, Greeks and many others. I definitely won't be using you again if you don't reverse this policy.’”

Another asked why the company felt compelled to erase reality.

“And Daisy Matthews wrote: ‘Why are you erasing the reality from a photo?’

 

If there were products from Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, or Muslim countries with their symbols depicted on there I wouldn't have a problem buying them.”

Still others said they felt discriminated against as Christians, and doubted that the company would treat an image of a mosque the same way.

“‘As a Christian I feel really hurt, discriminated against, upset and disappointed that you have done this, if it is the case I won't be shopping at your store anymore.’

 

The 'Eridanous' range features Greek delicacies such as olive oil, Moussaka, yogurt and gyros.”

In fact, customers have also pointed out that some of the packaging for Halal meats sold at Lidl appear to feature buildings with minarets, a piece of Islamic religious architecture. According to the Telegraph, the row has spread across Europe, with shoppers in Belgium and Germany criticizing the policy.

The company quickly apologized, but it did little to quiet customers’ anger.

"We have been selling our highly popular Eridanous own-label range in Lidl stores across Europe for over 10 years now, and in that time the design of the packaging has been through a number of updates.

 

"We are extremely sorry for any offence caused by the most recent artwork and would like to reassure our customers that this is not an intentional statement. In light of this we will ensure that all feedback is taken into consideration when redesigning future packaging."

But the Belgian arm of European TV and radio station RTL, which originally picked up the story after a reader who noticed the packaging wrote in, said it had been given a different statement.

Ironically, the company said it airbrushed the cross because it didn’t want to “exclude” customers of different faiths.

“‘We are avoiding the use of religious symbols because we do not wish to exclude any religious beliefs,’ it quoted a spokesman as saying.

 

‘We are a company that respects diversity and this is what explains the design of this packaging.’”

 

"Our intention has never been to shock," said the supermarket's spokesman.

 

"We avoid the use of religious symbols on our packaging to maintain neutrality in all religions.

 

‘If it has been perceived differently, we apologize to those who may have been shocked.’”

Lidl’s experience is one that’s becoming increasingly common in the modern PC-dominated culture: Companies offending large groups of customers while actively trying to do the opposite.
 

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Undercover In North Korea: “All Paths Lead To Catastrophe”

Authored by Jon Schwartz via The Intercept,

The most alarming aspect of North Korea’s latest nuclear test, and the larger standoff with the U.S., is how little is known about how North Korea truly functions. For 70 years it’s been sealed off from the rest of the world to a degree hard to comprehend, especially at a time when people in Buenos Aires need just one click to share cat videos shot in Kuala Lumpur. Few outsiders have had intimate contact with North Korean society, and even fewer are in a position to talk about it.

One of the extremely rare exceptions is novelist and journalist Suki Kim. Kim, who was born in South Korea and moved to the U.S. at age 13, spent much of 2011 teaching English to children of North Korea’s elite at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.

Kim had visited North Korea several times before and had written about her experiences for Harper’s Magazine and the New York Review of Books. Incredibly, however, neither Kim’s North Korean minders nor the Christian missionaries who founded and run PUST realized that she was there undercover to engage in some of history’s riskiest investigative journalism.

Although all of PUST’s staff was kept under constant surveillance, Kim kept notes and documents on hidden USB sticks and her camera’s SIM card. If her notes had been discovered, she almost certainly would have been accused of espionage and faced imprisonment in the country’s terrifying labor camps. In fact, of the three Americans currently detained in North Korea, two were teachers at PUST. Moreover, the Pentagon has in fact used a Christian NGO as a front for genuine spying on North Korea.

But Kim was never caught, and she returned to the U.S. to write her extraordinary 2014 book, “Without You, There Is No Us.” The title comes from the lyrics of an old North Korean song; the “you” is Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un’s father.

Kim’s book is particularly important for anyone who wants to understand what happens next with North Korea. Her experience made her extremely pessimistic about every aspect of the country, including the regime’s willingness to renounce its nuclear weapons program. North Korea functions, she believes, as a true cult, with all of the country’s pre-cult existence now passed out of human memory.

Most ominously, her students, all young men in their late teens or early 20s, were firmly embedded in the cult. With the Kim family autocracy now on its third generation, you’d expect the people who actually run North Korea to have abandoned whatever ideology they started with and degenerated into standard human corruption. But PUST’s enrollees, their children, did not go skiing in Gstaad on school breaks; they didn’t even appear to be able to travel anywhere within North Korea. Instead they studied the North Korea ideology of “juche,” or worked on collective farms.

Unsurprisingly, then, Kim’s students were shockingly ignorant of the outside world. They didn’t recognize pictures of the Taj Mahal or Egyptian pyramids. One had heard that everyone on earth spoke Korean because it was recognized as the world’s most superior language. Another believed that the Korean dish naengmyeon was seen as the best food on earth. And all of Kim’s pupils were soaked in a culture of lying, telling her preposterous falsehoods so often that she writes, “I could not help but think that they – my beloved students – were insane.” Nonetheless, they were still recognizably human and charmingly innocent and for their part, came to adore their teachers.

Overall, “Without You, There Is No Us” is simply excruciatingly sad. All of Korea has been the plaything of Japan, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China, and like most Korean families, Kim has close relatives who ended up in North Korea when the country was separated and have never been seen again.

Korea is now, Kim says, irrevocably ruptured:

It occurred to me that it was all futile, the fantasy of Korean unity, the five thousand years of Korean identity, because the unified nation was broken, irreparably, in 1945 when a group of politicians drew a random line across the map, separating families who would die without ever meeting again, with all their sorrow and anger and regret unrequited, their bodies turning to earth, becoming part of this land … behind the children of the elite who were now my children for a brief time, these lovely, lying children, I saw very clearly that there was no redemption here.

The Intercept spoke recently to Kim about her time in North Korea and the insight it gives her on the current crisis.

Suki Kim’s North Korean visa.

Photo: Suki Kim

JON SCHWARZ: I found your book just overwhelmingly sorrowful. As an American, I can’t imagine being somewhere that’s been brutalized by not just one powerful country, but two or three or four. Then the government of North Korea and, to a lesser degree, the government of South Korea used that suffering to consolidate their own power. And then maybe saddest of all was to see these young men, your students, who were clearly still people, but inside a terrible system and on a path to doing terrible things to everybody else in North Korea.

SUKI KIM: Right, because there’s no other way of being in that country. We don’t have any other country like that. People so easily compare North Korea to Cuba or East Germany or even China. But none of them have been like North Korea – this amount of isolation, this amount of control. It encompasses every aspect of dictatorship-slash-cult.

What I was thinking about when I was living there is it’s almost too late to undo this. The young men I was living with had never known any other way.

The whole thing begins with the division of Korea in 1945. People think it began with the Korean War, but the Korean War only happened because of the 1945 division [of Korea by the U.S. and Soviet Union at the end of World War II]. What we’re seeing is Korea stuck in between.

JS: Essentially no Americans know what happened between 1945 and the start of the Korean War. And few Americans know what happened during the war. [Syngman Rhee, the U.S.-installed ultra right-wing South Korean dictator, massacred tens of thousands of South Koreans before North Korea invaded in 1950. Rhee’s government executed another 100,000 South Koreans in the war’s early months. Then the barbaric U.S. air war against North Korea killed perhaps one-fifth of its population.]

SK: This “mystery of North Korea” that people talk about all the time – people should be asking why Korea is divided and why there are American soldiers in South Korea. These questions are not being asked at all. Once you look at how this whole thing began, it makes some sense why North Korea uses this hatred of the United States as a tool to justify and uphold the Great Leader myth. Great Leader has always been the savior and the rescuer who was protecting them from the imperialist American attack. That story is why North Korea has built their whole foundation not only on the juche philosophy but hatred of the United States.

North Korean girls outside Kumsusan Palace where Kim il-sung is embalmed.

Photo: Suki Kim

JS: Based on your experience, how do you perceive the nuclear issue with North Korea?

SK: Nothing will change because it’s an unworkable problem. It’s very dishonest to think this can be solved. North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons. Never.

The only way North Korea can be dealt with is if this regime is not the way it is. No agreements are ever honored because North Korea just doesn’t do that. It’s a land of lies. So why keep making agreements with someone who’s never going to honor those agreements?

And ultimately what all the countries surrounding North Korea want is a regime change. What they’re doing is pretending to have an agreement saying they do not want a regime change, but pursuing regime change anyway.

Despite it all you have to constantly do engagement efforts, throwing information in there. That’s the only option. There’s no other way North Korea will change. Nothing will ever change without the outside pouring some resources in there.

JS: What is the motivation of the people who actually call the shots in North Korea to hold onto the nuclear weapons?

SK: They don’t have anything else. There’s literally nothing else they can rely on. The fact they’re a nuclear power is the only reason anyone would be negotiating with them at this point. It’s their survival.

Regime change is what they fear. That’s what the whole country is built on.

JS: Even with a different kind of regime, it’s hard to argue that it would be rational for them to give up their nuclear weapons, after seeing what happened to Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi.

SK: This is a very simple equation. There is no reason for them to give up nuclear weapons. Nothing will make them give them up.

JS: I’ve always believed that North Korea would never engage in a nuclear first strike just out of self-preservation. But your description of your students did honestly give me pause. It made me think the risk of miscalculation on their part is higher than I realized.

SK: It was paradoxical. They could be very smart, yet could be completely deluded about everything. I don’t see why that would be different in the people who run the country. The ones that foreigners get to meet, like diplomats, are sophisticated and can talk to you on your level. But at the same time they also have this other side where they have really been raised to think differently, their reality is skewed. North Korea is the center of the universe, the rest of the world kind of doesn’t exist. They’ve been living this way for 70 years, in a complete cult.

My students did not know what the internet was, in 2011. Computer majors, from the best schools in Pyongyang. The system really is that brutal, for everyone.

JS: Even their powerful parents seemed to have very little ability to make any decisions involving their children. They couldn’t have their children come home, they couldn’t come out and visit.

SK: You would expect that exceptions were always being made [for children of elites], but that just wasn’t true. They couldn’t call home. There was no way of communicating with their parents at all. There are literally no exceptions made. There is no power or agency.

I also found it shocking that they had not been anywhere within their own country. You would think that of all these elite kids, at least some would have seen the famous mountains [of North Korea]. None of them had.

That absoluteness is why North Korea is the way it is.

JS: What would you recommend if you could create the North Korea policy for the U.S. and other countries?

SK: It’s a problem that no one has been able to solve.

It’s not a system that they can moderate. The Great Leader can’t be moderated. You can’t be a little bit less god. The Great Leader system has to break.

But it’s impossible to imagine. I find it to be a completely bleak problem. People have been deprived of any tools that they need, education, information, intellectual volition to think for themselves.

[Military] intervention is not going to work because it’s a nuclear power. I guess it has to happen in pouring information into North Korea in whatever capacity.

But then the population are abused victims of a cult ideology. Even if the Great Leader is gone, another form of dictatorship will take its place.

Every path is a catastrophe. This is why even defectors, when they flee, usually turn into devout fundamentalist Christians. I’d love to offer up solutions, but everything leads to a dead end.

One thing that gave me a small bit of hope is the fact that Kim Jong-un is more reckless than the previous leader [his father Kim Jong-il]. To get your uncle and brother killed within a few years of rising to power, that doesn’t really bode well for a guy who’s only there because of his family name. His own bloodline is the only thing keeping him in that position. You shouldn’t be killing your own family members, that’s self-sabotage.

JS: Looking at history, it seems to me that normally what you’d expect is that eventually the royal family will get too nuts, the grandson will be too crazy, and the military and whatever economic powers there are going to decide, well, we don’t need this guy anymore. So we’re going to get rid of this guy and then the military will run things. But that’s seems impossible in North Korea: You must have this family in charge, the military couldn’t say, oh by the way, the country’s now being run by some general.

SK: They already built the brand, Great Leader is the most powerful brand. That’s why the assassination of [Kim Jong-un’s older half-brother and the original heir to the Kim dynasty] Kim Jong-nam was really a stupid thing to do. Basically that assassination proved that this royal bloodline can be murdered. And that leaves room open for that possibility. Because there are other bloodline figures for them to put in his place. He’s not the only one. So to kill [Jong-nam] set the precedent that this can happen.

A North Korean woman holds a sign that reads “The Sun of the 21st Century” in honor of Kim Jong-il’s 60th birthday at Pyongyang’s Sunan International Airport.

Photo: Suki Kim

JS: One small thing I found particularly appalling was the buddy system with your students, where everyone had a buddy and spent all their time with their buddy and seemed like the closest of friends – and then your buddy was switched and you never spent time with your old buddy again.

SK: The buddy system is just to keep up the system of surveillance. It doesn’t matter that these are 19-year-old boys making friends. That’s how much humanity is not acknowledged or valued. There’s a North Korean song which compares each citizen to a bullet in this great weapon for the Great Leader. And that’s the way they live.

JS: I was also struck by your description of the degeneration of language in North Korea. [Kim writes that “Each time I visited the DPRK, I was shocked anew by their bastardization of the Korean language. Curses had taken root not only in their conversation and speeches but in their written language. They were everywhere – in poems, newspapers, in official Workers’ Party speeches, even in the lyrics of songs. … It was like finding the words fuck and shit in a presidential speech or on the front page of the New York Times.”]

SK: Yes, I think the language does reflect the society. Of course, the whole system is built around the risk of an impending war. So that violence has changed the Korean language. Plus these guys are thugs, Kim Jong-un and all the rest of them, that’s their taste and it’s become the taste of the country.

JS: Authoritarians universally seem to have terrible taste.

SK: It’s interesting to be analyzing North Korea in this period of time in America because there are a lot of similarities. Look at Trump’s nonstop tweeting about “fake news” and how great he is. That’s very familiar, that’s what North Korea does. It’s just endless propaganda. All these buildings with all these slogans shouting at you all the time, constantly talking about how the enemies are lying all the time.

Those catchy one-liners, how many words are there in a tweet? It’s very similar to those [North Korean] slogans.

This country right now, where you’re no longer able to tell what’s true or what’s a lie, starting from the top, that’s North Korea’s biggest problem. America should really look at that, there’s a lesson.

JS: Well, I felt bad after I read your book and I feel even worse now.

SK: To be honest, I wonder if tragedies have a time limit – not to fix them, but to make them less horrifying. And I feel like it’s just too late. If you wipe out humanity to this level, and have three generations of it … when you see the humanity of North Koreans is when the horror becomes that much greater. You see how humanity can be so distorted and manipulated and violated. You face the devastation of what’s truly at stake.

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Bitcoin: Now Accepted As Down Payment For UK Houses

A UK co-living company has announced that it will begin accepting down payments made in bitcoin, according to CoinTelegraph, making it that much easier for traders hooked on effortless, outstanding returns to speculate in another bubble-prone market: UK housing.

Co-living pioneer The Collective announced the decision on Tuesday, saying it’s the first developer that will accept payments in cryptocurrency. The company added that it’s exploring how to accept rental payments in bitcoin, which it hopes to implement later in the year. It said that its decision to accept bitcoin was related to demand from international clients.

The company has pledged to perform a “spot conversion” of users’ deposits – a fancy way of saying it intends to hedge its position – so that it bears any financial risk while holding the deposit.

“The Collective's online booking form for its Old Oak living scheme, an ambitious co-living development with 550 rooms, will be accepting Bitcoin as a deposit on the flats.

 

The standard deposit is £500, which equates to about 0.148 at time of publishing. Additionally, with the volatile nature of Bitcoin seemingly holding back its ability to be utilized as a currency, The Collective has pledged “spot conversion,” which means it will bear any financial risk while holding the deposit, returning it at the original value when the tenancy finishes.”

The Collective’s chief executive and founder Reza Merchant said the decision was a bold move for the UK property market.

“The rise and adoption of cryptocurrency globally, particularly Bitcoin, is a fascinating development in how people store value and transact for goods and services worldwide.

 

With many savers and investors now choosing and becoming more comfortable with cryptocurrency, people will expect to be able to use it to pay for life’s essentials, including housing deposits and rent.”

It’s a major step indeed. Housing prices in London have risen 65% since 2011, compared with bitcoin’s more-than 300% climb since the beginning of the year. But we imagine some less risk-averse bitcoin investors might be attracted to the deal, reasoning that it’s a smart way to lock in their investment returns.

But London property values might not be as invincible as the world thinks.

UK’s Land Registry data for three London boroughs shows transaction volumes in London are at all-time lows. Back in December asking prices in London dropped 4.3%, with inner London down 6%. More exclusive areas dropped by as much as 10%.

Between 2006 and 2016, average home prices in the capital grew from £257,000 to £474,000 or by a very substantial 84.4%. These large gains were 'built' on the back of the very large appreciation in prices between 1996 and 2006.

Despite this, the Collective’s head of technology, Jon Taylor, told CoinTelegraph that their company is proudly breaking down barriers to bitcoin’s legitimacy.

“One of the biggest barriers to the popularity of Bitcoin is making it more consumer-friendly, and we believe this will become established as an easy and convenient way to pay deposits.”

According to CoinTelegraph, private property owners in the US have occasionally priced their property in bitcoin in the hopes of attracting buyers, as well as accumulating the valuable digital currency. A well-regarded Miami trader recently placed his house for sale in Bitcoin after first trying to entice the seller to pay him in bitcoin back in 2014.

With the economic threat of Brexit looming in the not-too-distant future, some say the UK housing market is headed for a leveling off if not an outright drop. But who knows, maybe we will see one last leg higher as the crypto traders look to cash in their winnings before the next Mt Gox kills the market.
 

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Australia’s Dystopian Future: A Nation Of High-Rise Renters

Authored by James Fernyhough via TheNewDaily.com,

Young Australians are increasingly likely to live most of their lives in high-density rented accommodation – and that’s not necessarily such a bad thing.

That was one of the more controversial findings of a major study into the housing market released in recent days.

The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) concluded that capital city home ownership would continue to be unaffordable for at least the next four decades.

It was grim news for many young Australians, particularly those who have bought into the Aussie dream of owning their own house and backyard in a spacious suburb.

But the study argued that a lower level of home ownership, and/or a greater level of high-density living, need not be a bad thing.

In fact, examples from overseas – and even some in Australia – suggest it could be a positive. But this would require a massive shift in policy and, more importantly, attitude.

What clearly emerged from the report is that there is no one culprit behind the property price explosion; rather, the picture is of a tangled mess of convergent causes, most of which will not go away.

CEDA blamed all the usual suspects, including foreign investment, negative gearing, capital gains tax rules, interest rates, increasing urban population, limited land supply, restrictive planning rules, and the tendency of stamp duty to discourage retirees from downsizing.

Professor Rodney Maddock, CEDA’s research and policy committee chairman, said the research showed that “barring any major economic jolts, demand pressures are likely to continue over the next 40 years and supply constraints will continue”.

In other words, if you’re holding out for the “bubble” to burst before you make your move, you may be waiting a long time.

Many of the partial solutions were equally as predictable: replace stamp duty with a land tax; raise capital gains tax on investment properties; loosen planning restrictions; and improve infrastructure to more remote suburbs.

While all of these would help the situation, none would comprehensively reverse the astonishing increase in property prices over recent decades.

The result of all this is that more and more people will be forced to rent – which, indeed, has already been happening.

In 1982, the report showed, just over 40 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds were renters. Now it’s closer to 65 per cent. The proportion of renters has increased in every age group over that time period, excluding the over-65s.

Predicting this trend will continue, CEDA recommended improving tenancy laws to “provide adequate protection and certainty to long-term renters”.

It pointed to countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, where “long-term contracts exist within the private rental market, and termination is only possible in limited circumstances”.

The case of Germany is an interesting one. Only ­52 per cent of Germans own their own home, compared with 67 per cent of Australians. Given Germany is a developed country with a high standard of living, this shows home ownership is not a prerequisite for wellbeing.

At the end of the report, CEDA presents a utopian, and occasionally dystopian, vision of high-density living. It takes the example of an existing high-density development in Sydney’s northern beaches, called ‘The Village’.

A particularly irksome passage talks about a “hierarchy of spaces to create an intuitive sense of public and private space, without excluding non-residents from the residential parts of the site”.

While this vision may be off-putting, the fact is this sort of development is the most logical answer to the problems raised by the report. It makes economical and sustainable use of space, and in so doing solves many of the problems we are currently facing.

However, embracing such an ‘un-Australian’ style of accommodation would clearly require a fundamental shift in attitude.

But if we don’t make this shift, many younger Australians may find their quality of life greatly diminished, as more and more of their pay goes towards servicing massive mortgages, paying inflated rents, and simply getting to and from work.

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Hawaii Considers A “Universal Basic Income” As Robots Seen Stealing Jobs, There’s Just One Catch…

Forget social security, medicaid and WIC, today’s progressives have moved well beyond discussing such entitlement relics of the past and nowadays dedicate their efforts to the concept of a “Universal Basic Income” for all…call it the New ‘New Deal’.  You know, because having to work for that “car in every garage and chicken in every pot” is just considered cruel and unusual punishment by today’s standards.

Of course, it should come as little surprise that the progressive state of Hawaii, which depends on easily automatable jobs tied to the tourism industry, is among the first to pursue a Universal Basic Income for its residents.  And while the idea of passing out free money to everyone seems like a genius plan, if we understand it correctly, as CBS points out, there is just one catch…figuring out who will pay for it.

Driverless trucks. Factory robots. Delivery drones. Virtual personal assistants.

 

As technological innovations increasingly edge into the workplace, many people fear that robots and machines are destined to take jobs that human beings have held for decades–a trend that is already happening in stores and factories around the country. For many affected workers, retraining might be out of reach —unavailable, unaffordable or inadequate.

 

Over the past two decades, automation has reduced the need for workers, especially in such blue-collar sectors as manufacturing, warehousing and mining. Many of the jobs that remain demand higher education or advanced technological skills. It helps explain why just 55 percent of Americans with no more than a high school diploma are employed, down from 60 percent just before the Great Recession.

 

Hawaii state lawmakers have voted to explore the idea of a universal basic income in light of research suggesting that a majority of waiter, cook and building cleaning jobs — vital to Hawaii’s tourism-dependent economy — will eventually be replaced by machines. The crucial question of who would pay for the program has yet to be determined. But support for the idea has taken root.

 

“Our economy is changing far more rapidly than anybody’s expected,” said state Rep. Chris Lee, who introduced legislation to consider a guaranteed universal income.

 

Lee said he felt it’s important “to be sure that everybody will benefit from the technological revolution that we’re seeing to make sure no one’s left behind.”

But taking billions from hard working Americans to “spread the wealth around” has never been all that difficult before so presumably this too should prove to be a relatively minor issue.

UBI

 

In all seriousness, where does Representative Lee and CBS figure Hawaii will get the funding for their guaranteed income plan?  Well, as it turns out, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes made a very generous $10mm donation to support programs just like this…the only problem, of course, is that Hawaii would need about 1,000 times that amount to fund Chris Lee’s plan for just one year.

For now, philanthropic organizations founded by technology entrepreneurs have begun putting money into pilot programs to provide basic income. The Economic Security Project, co-led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and others, committed $10 million over two years to basic income projects.

 

Tom Yamachika, president of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii, a nonprofit dedicated to limited taxes and fairness, has estimated that if all Hawaii residents were given $10,000 annually, it would cost about $10 billion a year, which he says Hawaii can’t afford given its $20 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.

That said, it’s difficult to argue with Karl Widerquist’s argument that Hawaiians deserve a “beach dividend” for their heroic efforts in being born and continuing the difficult task of breathing day in and day out.

Karl Widerquist, co-founder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, an informal group that promotes the idea of a basic income, suggests that Hawaii could collect a property tax from hotels, businesses and residents that could be redistributed to residents.

 

“If people in Alaska deserve an oil dividend, why don’t the people of Hawaii deserve a beach dividend?” he asked.

And while we have little doubt that Widerquist has fully thought through his suggestion that Hawaii just raise an incremental $10 billion every year via a tax on hotel stays…we thought we’d run the math just to make sure his plan holds water.  As it turns out, roughly 3 million families visit Hawaii for a little R&R every year which means each family would only have to pony up an extra $3,400 per hotel stay to cover Hawaii’s Universal Basic Income plan.  Seem more than reasonable, right?

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