A Compendium of Various Official Lies, Business Scandals, Small Murders, Frauds, and Other Gross Defects of Our Current Political, Business and Religious Moral Lepers.

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.”- Napoleon Bonaparte, 1815

 

“Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They’ve got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen”. – Huey Long

 

“I fired [General MacArthur] because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. That’s the answer to that. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail “- Harry S Truman

 

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” -Thomas Jefferson.

 

“Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage”

– H.L. Mencken

 

 “For a quarter of a century the CIA has been repeatedly wrong about every major political and economic question entrusted to its analysis.” 

-Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 

The New York Times, 1991.

 

Don’t tell a lie! Some men I’ve known
Commit the most appalling acts,
Because they happen to be prone
To an economy of facts;
And if to lie is bad, no doubt
’Tis even worse to get found out!

 

My children, never, never steal!
To know their offspring is a thief
Will often make a father feel
Annoyed and cause a mother grief;
So never steal, but, when you do,
Be sure there’s no one watching you.

 

The Wicked flourish like the bay,
At Cards or Love they always win,
Good Fortune dogs their steps all day,
They fatten while the Good grow thin.
The Righteous Man has much to bear;

   The Bad becomes a Bullionaire!

 The Voice of the White House  

Washington, D.C.  November 12, 2016: “At first slowly and then with increasing speed, the United States has been drifting into a world controlled, not by the needs and wishes of the masses but the needs and wishes of a handful of very vocal, and politically powerful, minorities. We can see this in the demands, backed by Washington, of uni-sex lavatories. To my mind, this is not a pleasant prospect. Going into a public lavatory and seeing a drag queen squatting on a sink is not something to relish. Yet the public is told they must accept it and then we are told that men may legally marry their poodles or that all public transportation has to have a special section for club-footed dwarves and another for militant minority bull dykes. While some of these postulations are fictive, the concepts are not. A group of liberal elitists have been increasingly successful in jamming their personal feelings on millions of increasingly unhappy Americans and the election of Donald Trump was a culmination of their anger and frustrations.It is fortunate he was elected because, like a boiling tea kettle, if you block the spout and let the steam escape, the lid blows off.”

We came, we partied, he won: Trump victory marks death & demise of US Liberalism

November 11, 2016

by Robert Bridge

RT

The 2016 race to the White House threw a spotlight on the US Liberal, a fiercely insular political species that has become more focused on supporting radical, controversial cultural experiments than serving as watchdogs against government abuse of power.

Since much of the disbelief over Trump pulling an “upset” over Hillary Clinton has turned to reports of anti-Trump protests around the country, it seems like a good to discuss what for me is the most under-reported phenomenon of the 2016 presidential election: The death of the Liberal movement in America.

American Liberalism – and by extension, the Democratic Party – has not really passed away, per se, rather it has transmogrified into something completely strange, alien and, I believe, unsustainable as a political force. Sure, it was fun while the party lasted – legal marijuana, transgender bathrooms, same-sex marriages (I would like to emphasize that I am not necessarily casting judgment on those ideas per se, but rather questioning the logic behind introducing them in such rapid-fire succession). Too much of a good thing, too fast? That was the main reason, I believe, why the wheels finally came off the Democrat’s coast-to-coast road trip.

In the last eight years of the Obama administration, Liberals have become obsessed with cultural over strictly political affairs. Concerned only with maximizing ‘freedom of choice’ for its increasingly hedonistic, self-serving adherents, they’ve done irreparable damage to the Liberal creed. In other words, the constitutionally guaranteed ‘pursuit of happiness’ in the cultural realm is the ultimate goal, and to hell with consideration for what’s happening in the virtual world of politics and geopolitics.

In a nutshell, I believe that willful alienation largely explains why the Democratic Party not only lost the presidential election, not to mention both houses of Congress, but is quickly losing its relevance as a political entity. Unless the Democrats radically clean up their house, and place raw political issues above cultural exploits and experimentation, the party is over for them.

Dear Liberals, I ask you (and admittedly, not at the most opportune time, but let’s face it, it will never be the right time), where were these tears of sorrow when hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the Middle East and Northern Africa were falling victim to Washington’s belligerent foreign policy? Where were the solidarity marches when the people of Libya, who once upon a time had the most advanced medical and education system in Africa, were being crushed by a totally senseless attack by US, British and French forces to take out Muammar Gaddafi in 2011? Where is the outcry against the illegal and unconstitutional attack on Syria, which has provoked a mass exodus of desperate refugees seeking shelter in Europe and beyond? Although you desperately try to ignore it, your Democratic darling Hillary Clinton had a large hand in all of that global mayhem. And while that carnage was occurring, you were feverishly obsessed with utterly inane, hyper-liberal issues.

Calling Bob Dylan

By comparison, consider how Liberals from all walks of life raised up in fierce protest against the Vietnam War, for example. On December 19, 1964, the Student Peace Union helped coordinate the first nationwide protests against the Vietnam War that attracted thousands of demonstrators. In May, 1965, the so-called Vietnam Day Committee (VDC), a loose coalition of left-wing political, university and labor groups conducted a 35 hour long anti-Vietnam War protest at the University of California, Berkeley, which attracted almost 40,000 participants.

And here is a description of the famous May 1970 student strike at the University of Washington. “[A] national week of student strikes, organized in reaction to the expansion of the Vietnam War in Cambodia, the killings of student protesters at Kent State University, and ‘to reconstitute the University as a center for organizing against the war in Southeast Asia.’ Student activists called for a strike on May 4… and the next day six thousand students attended a strike rally and then marched off campus, charging onto the freeway, blocking traffic for hours as they marched downtown. For the next two weeks, the strike continued and with it several additional freeway marches and some window smashing demonstrations. The campus, the university district, capitol hill, and parts of downtown Seattle felt the effects of this extraordinary mobilization.

Nobody is condoning violence here, but it would be nice to see university students have even half the amount of passion for political issues – aside from when their favored candidate fails to enter the White House – that their academic antecedents demonstrated.

Meanwhile, can anybody name a single anti-war song on the hit charts today? Me neither. That’s rather strange, isn’t it, especially when we consider that US military adventures, which began under the Bush administration with the absolutely unjustified Iraq War 13 years ago, continue today under the sheep’s clothing of the Obama administration with the destruction of Libya and the attempted destruction of Syria.

So exactly what have the Liberals been preoccupied with over the last 8 years of the Obama administration? Perhaps as a convenient way of distracting public attention from what the US military was up to overseas, the Obama administration tossed out some highly controversial smoke grenades, such as allowing men who suddenly “identify” themselves as being female – ‘transgender’ is the PC-accepted nomenclature here – to be legally permitted to use the ladies bathrooms, as well as locker rooms. Hello? Naturally, this incredibly controversial proposal, which aims to protect an infinitesimal segment of the population with total disregard for the absolute majority of women and children (as if suddenly everybody forgot there are sexual predators among us), has, in the words of Time magazine, turned into “America’s latest civil rights fight.”

Imagine that! As US soldiers are getting killed and wounded on overseas battlefields that most Americans could not find on a map, Liberals on the home-front are fighting over the right of a few confused men to use the women’s bathrooms and changing facilities at the local Wal-Mart. On top of that mountain of nuts, Liberals have also taken up cause with a number of other highly controversial, nationally divisive ideas, such as same-sex marriages, LGBT rights and the legalization of marijuana at the very worst of times.

Now, Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton are out on the streets, incensed that a billionaire real estate tycoon threatens to end their eight-year flight from reality. But had the Liberals in the Democratic Party pursued something higher than simply challenging the moral sensibilities of the status quo with an endless array of cultural experiments, perhaps Donald Trump would not be where he is today.

In short, American Liberals, ignoring their past legacy of resistance and protest, have nobody to blame but themselves and their proven preference for ignoring matters of real political urgency in favor of hyper-individualist pursuits and pleasures.

Now it’s up to Trump to undo years of damage.

Move Over Mobile, AI Has Arrived

September 2016

by Reggi Brdford

Forbes

Chatbots, newsfeeds, conversational interfaces, data-mining tools, location-aware technologies, search engines, smart appliances, and self-driving cars. What do all these have in common? They all use a form of artificial intelligence (AI).

After years of talk and hype, AI is being used to help automate tasks, predict outcomes, and in general make our lives and businesses more effective and efficient. We have entered the Age of AL.

The AI space is white-hot. While funding for startups is down across the board, AI remains the exception. More than 200 AI-focused companies raised nearly $1.5 billion in funding in the first half of 2016, according to CB Insights. Equity deals to AI startups increased almost sixfold in four years, to 400 in 2015 from approximately 70 in 2011.

Why now? The extraordinary explosion of data is fueling AI. Accurate and persistent data is the life source for AI. Machine learning algorithms find patterns in enormous piles of digital information and use that data to train, learn, and get smarter. The cloud is helping store and power incredible volumes of data that are feeding these advancing technologies.

Let’s examine just a few ways AI is—or will be—impacting both our consumer and business lives in the near future:

Your social newsfeed: Social platforms across the board are betting on AI and machine learning to enhance user experience. Facebook has been on a mission to curate and personalize newsfeeds so it knows exactly what users want to see. Facebook’s algorithms learn what best to surface, content you’ll be more likely to engage with, comment on, and share. The social media giant is also working on voice and image recognition to surface content that provides you a better, “stickier” experience. Facebook claims to have tripled its AI investments, possibly with an eye to dominating the field. It certainly has the data to do it.

The digital assistant: Your future “digital assistant”—think a next-generation Siri, Alexa, Facebook’s M, Google Assistant, or even Viv—will help connect, organize, and automate nearly every area of your life, from managing your health care and finances to booking your travel and scheduling your calendar.  These conversational interfaces, powered by enormous amounts of data, will unlock powerful AI capabilities that will enhance our lives—automating routine, time-consuming tasks, and predicting ways to better ourselves.

Autonomous vehicles: Once deemed futuristic fantasy, self-driving cars have arrived. Of course, Google has been testing its fleet for many years. Now Uber is testing a fleet of self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. And Ford is working on autonomous cars that don’t have steering wheels, brake pedals, or accelerator pedals. The implications for consumers and the industry are enormous—from major reductions in accidents to lower insurance costs to reshaping the transportation industry yet again. We still have a ways to go, hurdles and regulations yet to conquer, but innovation is further along than most realize. And AI is behind that innovation.

Smarter customer service:  Quickly reacting to, or even predicting, a customer issue is absolutely crucial in today’s modern business.  Machine learning algorithms can sift through massive amounts of data—digital, social, and enterprise—to find patterns and recognize current and potential issues. At Oracle, we continue to apply machine learning capabilities to our social technology to enable real-time, intuitive insights. And that’s helping make our customers smarter about their customers and marketplaces.

Modern marketing:  Data-driven predictive algorithms are used for nearly everything in our modern world. Just as they help Netflix to know what content to recommend for your viewing enjoyment, AI and machine learning tools can help marketers to do the same for consumers. Again, massive amounts of data are allowing for smarter marketing, helping personalize content and predict recommendations to build stronger, more loyal business-to-customer relationships.

Next-gen human resources: A field prime to be disrupted by AI is human resources. HR technology spending will increase 46% this year over last year, according to survey results published by the Society for Human Resource Management. Ironically, machines will help make human resource functions feel more human and personalized—from recruitment to employee engagement and education. In the war for talent, AI can help identify and engage potential recruits at scale and with accuracy and speed. AI-based applications can automate the laborious process of scheduling interviews and meetings. They can identify employee strengths and weaknesses to create better, more personalized education and development opportunities. Real-time data feedback loops can aid in better collaboration and communication.  Sifting through continuous data can identify hiring patterns, drive employee engagement, spot trends in sick days and turnover rates, and much more.

Industrial smart machines: Industries like manufacturing, agriculture, and automotive have been using AI-type technologies to better predict issues and maintenance on their mission-critical machines. Smarter industrial machines are making businesses run more efficiently and cost-effectively.  Now we’re seeing smart machines extend from factory floors to our living room floors. Artificial intelligence can help predict when devices need to be fixed, refilled, or upgraded—whether that’s industrial machinery or your home security system. Across the board, machines and applications will continue to get smarter via more data, sensors, and our connected world. Again, AI is at play.

These are only a handful of examples. AI has implications across nearly every consumer activity and within every industry and marketplace.

Take home health care. Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims recently wrote an article about AI and the Internet of Things emphasizing that these exploding technology trends are really about providing services that make people’s lives easier. “No one is going to sell grandma a new smart connected anything, but selling her children ‘peace of mind’ for a monthly fee?” Mims wrote. “That sounds like the next Uber…”

That’s exactly right. AI is fueling a transformation bigger than that brought about by mobile technology. AI is about more than technology—it’s about enhancing our lives in ways we’ve never imagined.

Big bowl of wrong: What good are polls and pollsters when they get you all wrong?

First Brexit. Now the US Presidential election. What will the “global network of pollsters” get wrong next? The far-right in Europe: Le Pen in France or AfD in Germany? What if they do? Does it ever matter?

November 9 , 2016

DW

In all the months leading to the US elections, we were awash with talk about the hazards of letting Donald Trump – President “bad-hair-day” – become Commander-in-Chief. “He’s a sexist,” people would say, “a racist, a moron, a blah-blah… and he’ll start World War III just to settle some petty squabble.” No doubt we’ll find out now that he has “won the White House.”

But to think that his elevation would amount to a little war in itself; not even the pollsters saw that coming.

“We’re talking in the aftermath of a little nuclear bomb having gone off, so the survivors are still staggering around, wondering what went wrong,” says Ben Page, chief executive of British pollsters, Ipsos MORI.

Clearly, a full, considered post-match analysis will have to wait.

But what went wrong exactly? The US voted in a democratic election and got what the majority – at least in terms of electoral votes – wanted. True, it was close. We knew it would be. Or so we were told by the pollsters. But no one, not even they, wanted to believe Trump would win. And that’s what went wrong, horribly wrong.

“It’s similar to Brexit in that there was a surge in turnout,” says Page. “In both Brexit and the Trump victory, you see older working class voters turning out, who haven’t turned out in recent elections.”

This is especially problematic “where politics is unstable.” And for pollsters, that’s when their predictions become a judgement call about which factors and people to include or leave out.

“When somebody tells me they are certain to vote tomorrow but that they don’t usually vote,” says Page, “to have included them in previous general elections would have made my poll wrong. The difficulty in both Brexit and in this [US] election, is that by not including them we’ve made the poll wrong.”

Hidden factors

We often overlook this fact that hidden in election predictions are a number of other nano-predictions. Pollsters don’t only base their predictions on traditional telephone surveys or online questionnaires, but they are constantly having to make decisions about what and who is relevant.

“They have to make decisions about the demographic groups who will vote, so they come up with ‘likely voter screens’ which are based on past voting behavior,” says Mark Kayser of the Hertie School of Governance. “And what I see this year as being really anomalous is the emergence of this white, rural group identity.”

It’s a group, says Kayser, which was always such as large majority in American politics that it didn’t have to vote like a minority. But this time it apparently did.

“There wasn’t this strong sense of a white identity before,” says Kayser. “And that’s probably what Trump fed off, and that was probably a problem for a lot of the likely voter filters that went into polling models in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.”

Even if you include the right groups in your samples, though, there is a risk they will “shy away” from telling you the truth about their voting intentions.

“That’s the ‘shy-Tory’ phenomenon from the UK, that when people go behind the curtain and cast their ballots, they vote for the Conservatives but in public they wouldn’t admit it,” says Kayser, “and people have wondered whether there is such a thing as a ‘shy-Trump’ phenomenon, but it wasn’t in the data.”

It was rather, says Kayser, that the pollsters thought more Hispanics and women would come out to vote for Hillary Clinton, but they didn’t, and so the pollsters got their models wrong.

What does it matter?

You could argue it doesn’t matter what the polls say. What matters is the result. And I’d agree – up to a point. But there’s also a case to suggest that polls can prejudice elections.

“Polls play a big role in the media,” says Nico Siegel, a German pollster at Infratest dimap. “But the price you pay in a liberal democracy, in a market economy, is that you have suppliers on the polling side and people in the media who don’t see polls so scientifically.”

Say there are strong indications for one candidate, or an outcome in a referendum. If a media organization pushes it hard enough, even if only because it makes the better story, it may mobilize people on the other side of the divide. For good or bad.

Plus, ours being market economies, as Siegel points out, you get what you pay for, just as you do at the shops. Polls are more accurate the larger the sample of people you include. But including one hundred people is cheaper than one hundred thousand.

“Polls of a thousand or two thousand people will not predict the outcome of an election,” says Siegel, “they reflect a general mood. Predictions can only really be made on the day based on exit polls.”

Confirmation bias

So considering all this while, reading how Clinton would weather the FBI’s new email investigation due to her lead in early voting, or about the damage done to Trump by the locker-room tape, were we wasting our time? When some of the final polls kept Clinton ahead by 7 percent, was that just a collective heads in the sand to protect us against the oncoming desert storm?

“I wonder whether we’re all in this bubble of reinforcement, particularly with social media, and journalists interacting with their readers in a constant fashion, and interacting with each other,” says Page.

If he is right, which he probably is, this will lead us further and further into a world of “confirmation bias.”

“It’s a challenge for pollsters because we can only learn by past events and when the whole structure of politics changes,” says Page, “polls find it hard to pick that up.”

Both Brexit and Trump are seen as lurches to the right, possibly even the far right. There are a good number of people who wish they had seen that coming… in the polls. And it’s got some worried about two of the next big elections in Europe – France and Germany in 2017. France, for one, could get its first female president where the US just missed out – Marine Le Pen of the National Front.

So how do we improve the polls if social media is part of the problem? Will big data help? Probably not.

“In countries where classical polls – on the phone or online – don’t work well anymore, there should be a combination of polls and some kind of big data or social media analysis,” says Siegel. “But even with big data, you’re right, it would be wrong to say you could predict an election 10 or even three days before the ballot.”

You can’t predict the unpredictable. Not where humans are concerned.

Michigan Voters Say Trump Could See Their Problems ‘Right Off the Bat’

November 12, 2016

by Abby Goodnough

New York Times

WARREN, Mich. — This state was one of the biggest upsets in last week’s jolting election, going narrowly to Donald J. Trump and giving the Republican Party its first victory in a presidential race here since 1988.

In Macomb County, just north of Detroit, where the term “Reagan Democrats” was coined after white autoworkers abandoned the party for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, Mr. Trump captured 53.6 percent of the vote, compared with 47.6 percent statewide, according to preliminary results. Many of his supporters here were blue-collar Obama voters who saw modern-day Republicans as out of touch with their interests until Mr. Trump, with his brash outsider message, came along.

Chris Vitale, a longtime Chrysler employee and United Auto Workers member, supported Barack Obama twice, as did his union and his county. But on Tuesday, Mr. Vitale rejected the U.A.W.’s choice, Hillary Clinton, and voted with gusto for Mr. Trump.

“The Republicans that generally get run are anti-manufacturing, anti-Midwest,” said Mr. Vitale, 44, of St. Clair Shores, explaining why he rejected Mitt Romney in 2012 and Senator John McCain in 2008. “Mr. Trump understood our problems right off the bat, without being told by anyone.”

Macomb County’s autoworkers were hardly alone in gravitating toward Mr. Trump. Patricia Meadows, a retired waitress, voted for Mr. Obama in 2012 because she liked him, she said, and was hopeful about his health care law. But this time around, Ms. Meadows had no use for Mrs. Clinton or any candidate who had spent time in the nation’s capital. Mr. Trump was the lesser of two evils because he was “not so political,” she said.

“I think everybody in Washington needs a kick in the rear,” Ms. Meadows, 68, said on Thursday as she ate fried fish at a diner in Warren, a weathered city at the county’s southern end. “And I think Washington needs to be done with the Clintons.”

She added, however, that she hoped Mr. Trump would not “do away with the health care” — Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act — as he had promised on the campaign trail. Her daughter had obtained subsidized insurance coverage through the law for $50 a month.

“I think he was bluffing,” Ms. Meadows said with a frown.

Mayor James R. Fouts of Warren said Trump supporters here were especially motivated by Mr. Trump’s promise to overturn or overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement, which they blame for the loss of American manufacturing jobs to Mexico. All year, Mr. Trump has attacked Ford Motor Company in particular for planning to move all of its small car production to Mexico

Noting that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont also criticized free trade agreements when he ran against Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primary race, Mr. Fouts said that some who normally vote Democrat in Macomb County had initially supported Mr. Sanders and migrated to Mr. Trump only after Mrs. Clinton became the Democratic nominee.

“There were a significant number of Sanders people who made the transition to Trump,” said Mr. Fouts, whose office is nonpartisan. “Bernie might have won here; Joe Biden might have won. But Hillary was never going to be the candidate to convince people around here that she was going to make a difference in their lives.”

Mr. Fouts voted for Mr. Obama twice. But this time he rejected both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump for a third-party candidate — which one, he would not say.

The last time the county backed a Republican presidential candidate was in 2004.

Mr. Trump may also have energized a segment of Macomb County voters who had not bothered to participate in the 2012 election. Voter turnout in the county was 4 percent higher this year, according to preliminary results, with 67 percent of registered voters casting ballots. On the other hand, some of the state’s most heavily Democratic counties, including Wayne, home to Detroit, and Genesee, home to Flint, saw less turnout than four years ago.

Amanda Rogers, a bartender in Warren, sat out the 2012 election but hustled to the polls to vote for Mr. Trump. Her boyfriend and her brother voted for the first time in their lives, she said. Ms. Rogers, 34, was motivated in part by what she saw as Mrs. Clinton’s lenient stance on immigration.

“We are drowning right now,” she said. “Our vets are homeless. There’s one out of every five American children starving right now. And Clinton wants to open the floodgates and let everybody else in.”

Ms. Rogers, who said she had “loved Bill Clinton as a president” and found Mr. Obama “all right,” added: “There’s people who’ve been here 12 years who don’t even care to learn the language but want to reap all the benefits of this country: food stamps, free health care, Section 8 housing, welfare checks. People are sick of that, especially in Macomb County.”

Muslims from places like Yemen and Bangladesh are the most visible immigrants here. Just south of Macomb County is Hamtramck, which in one generation went from overwhelmingly Polish Catholic to majority Muslim. In Macomb, the City of Sterling Heights, home to a large Ford plant, is facing a federal lawsuit after rejecting a proposed mosque last year.

Mr. Trump held a rally last Sunday in Sterling Heights, where he elicited boos against Mrs. Clinton when he said she wanted “virtually unlimited immigration from the most dangerous regions of the world,” and would “import generations of terrorism, extremism and radicalism into your schools and your communities.”

Macomb County, though still largely white, is becoming more diverse: 82.3 percent of its 865,000 residents were white in 2015, according to the Census Bureau, down from 85.4 percent in 2010. The black population grew to 11.4 percent, from 8.6 percent. About 10 percent of the population is foreign born.

Many here also complain that poverty and crime are growing. As Macomb helped assure Mr. Trump’s victory on Election Day, it also played a major role in the defeat of a local ballot initiative that would have taxed its residents, and those of four neighboring counties, to build a public transportation system connecting Detroit and its suburbs.

Jason Powrozek, 18, a high school senior from New Baltimore, on the more affluent north side of the county, said he had voted against the transportation measure because “I just felt it would speed up the transport of drugs up here from the inner city.” A first-time voter, he had volunteered for at the county Republican headquarters and went to New York for the Trump campaign’s election night party.

“He tells it like it is,” Jason said of Mr. Trump. “He speaks what people don’t want to say because it’s politically incorrect.”

Mr. Trump also spoke on Halloween at Macomb Community College.

Frank Pitcher, 49, who lives in Sterling Heights and has worked at its Ford plant for 23 years, went to the Trump rally there and said he was surprised at how many of his co-workers he saw.

“I took some pictures with people there and posted on my Facebook because I wasn’t going to hide how I was voting,” he said. “I’m not ashamed of where I stand.”

Brittany Greeson contributed reporting.

So this is how the US ‘revolution’ will unfold

November 12, 2016

by Dan Glazebrook

RT

In late 2012, Peter Turchin, a professor at the University of Connecticut made a startling claim, based on an analysis of revolutionary upheavals across history.

He found there are three social conditions in place shortly before all major outbreaks of social violence: an increase in the elite population; a decrease in the living standards of the masses; and huge levels of government indebtedness.

The statistical model his team developed suggested that, on this basis, a major wave of social upheaval and revolutionary violence is set to take place in the US in 2020. His model had no way to predict who would lead the charge; but this week’s election gives an indication of how it is likely to unfold.

Let’s take the first condition, which Turchin calls “elite overproduction,” defined as “an increased number of aspirants for the limited supply of elite positions.” The US has clearly been heading in this direction for some time, with the number of billionaires increasing more than tenfold from 1987 (41 billionaires) to 2012 (425 billionaires). But the ruling class split between, for example, industrialists and financiers, has apparently reached fever pitch with Trump vs. Clinton.

As Turchin explains, “increased intra-elite competition leads to the formation of rival patronage networks vying for state rewards. As a result, elites become riven by increasing rivalry and factionalism.” Indeed, based on analysis of thousands of incidents of civil violence across world history, Turchin concluded that “the most reliable predictor of state collapse and high political instability was elite overproduction.”

The second condition, popular immiseration, is also well advanced. 46 million US citizens live in poverty (defined as receiving an income less than is required to cover their basic needs), while over 12 million US households are now considered food insecure. While this figure has been coming down consistently since 2011 (when it reached over 15 million), it remains above its pre-recession (per-2007) levels.

Trump’s policies are likely to sharply reverse this decrease. Trump’s second promise in his ‘contract with voters’ is a “hiring freeze on all federal employees,” amounting to a new onslaught on public sector jobs. This is in addition to what seems to be a promise to end the direct funding of state education (to, in his words, “redirect education dollars to…parents”), and to end all federal funding to so-called ‘sanctuary cities’, that is cities which do not order the state harassment of immigrants or force employers to reveal the nationalities of their workers. These cities are some of the most populated in the country, including NYC, LA, Dallas, Minneapolis and over two dozen others.

In concert with his avowed intention to lower taxes on the wealthy, including slashing business tax from 35 to 15 percent; to smash hard fought workers’ rights (under the mantra of ‘deregulation’); and to scrap what little access to healthcare was made available to the poor through Obamacare – not to mention his threat to start a trade war with China – poverty looks set to skyrocket. It is not hard to see how social unrest will follow.

As for the third condition – government indebtedness – it is hard to see how the massive tax breaks Trump has proposed can lead to anything else.

Turchin writes that “As all these trends intensify, the end result is state fiscal crisis and bankruptcy and consequent loss of military control; elite movements of regional and national rebellion; and a combination of elite-mobilized and popular uprisings that manifest the breakdown of central authority.”

But Trump is also preparing for that. Exempt from his public spending cuts, of course, are police and military budgets, both of which he promises to increase. And when questioned on the issue of police brutality last year, Trump said he wanted to see the police be given more powers. In other words, the tacit impunity which currently exists for police violence looks set to be legalized. And history shows that there is nothing like police impunity to spark a riot.

Meanwhile, as his policies fail to deliver the land of milk and honey he has promised, the demonization of scapegoats will continue. Having already vowed to round up and deport two million immigrants, and to ban Muslims from entering the US, it is already clear who these scapegoats will be. However, as well as migrants, popular anger will also be directed toward whatever namby-pamby liberals have blocked him from waging his promised war against them: be it Congressmen, judges, trade unions, pressure groups, or whoever. A combination of increased executive powers plus the use of his newly mobilized mass constituency will be directed toward purging these ‘enemies within’.

“My model suggests that the next [peak in violence] will be worse than the one in 1970” says Turchin, “because demographic variables such as wages, standards of living and a number of measures of intra-elite confrontation are all much worse this time”. All that remains to be seen is – who will win.

CIA wholly-owned or friendly firms

November 12, 2016

by Harry von Johnston, PhD

A

AALC, see Afro-American Labor Center

Acrus Technology

ADEP, see Popular Democratic Action

Advertising Center, Inc.

Aero Service Corp. of Philadelphia

Aero Systems, Inc.

Aero Systems Pvt. Ltd

AFME, see American Friends of the Middle East

“African Report”

African-American Institute

Afro-American Labor Center (AALC) of

Agencia Orbe Latinoamericano

Agency for International Development (AID)

Agribusiness Development, Inc.

AIFLD, see American Institute for Free Labor Development

Air America

Air Asia Co., Ltd.

Air Proprietary Company

All Ceylon Youth Council Movement

Alliance for Anti-totalitarian Education

America Fore Insurance Group

American Association of the Middle East

American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, Inc.

American Committee for the Liberation of the People of Russia

American Committee for the International Commission of Jurists

American Economic Foundation

American Federation for Fundemental Research

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)

American Foundation for the Middle East

American Friends of the Middle East

American Friends of the Russian Freedom

American Friends Service Committee

American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees

American Fund For Free Jurists

American Historical Society

American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)

American Machine & Foundry

American Mutual Insurance Company

American Newspaper Guild

Association American Oriental Society

American Political Science Association

American Research Center in Egypt, Inc.

American Society of African Culture

American Institute of Cairo

American University – Special Operations Research Office

Ames Research Center

M.D. Anderson Foundation

ANSA (Italian Wire Service)

Antell, Wright & Nagel

Anti-Communist Christian Front

Anti-Communist Liberation Movement

Anti-Totalitarian Board of Solidarity with the People of Vietnam

Anti-Totalitarian Youth movement

Appalachian Fund

Arabian-American Oil Company

Area Tourist Association

Arrow Air

Ashland Oil and Refining Company

Asia Foundation

Association of American Geographers

Association of Computing Machinery

Association of Friends of Venezuela

Association of Preparatory Students

Assoziation ungarischer Studenten in Nordamerika

Atomics, Physics & Science Fund, Inc.

A.T.T.

Atwater Research Program in North Africa

 

B

Bank of Lisle

Bankers Trust Company

Basic Resources

Beacon Fund

Berliner Verein

Berliner Verein zur Forderung der Bildungshilfe in Entwicklungslandern

Berliner Verein zur Forderung der Publizistik in Entwicklungslandern

Berico Technologies.

Blackwater

Blythe & Company, Inc.

Boni, Watkins, Jason & Company

Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD)

Broad and High Foundation

1. Frederick Brown Foundation

Burgerkomitee fur AuBenpolitik

Bulgarisches Nationales Zentrum

Burndy Corporation

Butte Pipe Line Company

 

C

Cahill, Gordon, Reindel & Ohl

Cahill & Wilinski

CALANAIS

California Shipbuilding Corporation

Caribean Marine Area Corporation

(Caramar) James Carlisle Trust

Caspian Pipeline Consortium

Catherwood Foundation

CBS Television Network

(CRESS) Center for Strategic Studies

Center for Strategic and International Studies

Center of Studies and Social Action

(CEAS) CEOSL, see Ecuadorean Confederation of Free Trade Union Organizations

Chesapeake Foundation

Cipher Exchange Corporation

Civil Air Transport (CAT)

Clothing and Textiles Workers Union COG, see Guayana Workers Confederation

CloudShield

Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Company

Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)

Columbian Financial Development Company

Combate

“EL Commercio” Com. Suisse d’Aide aux Patrgrols

Committee for Free Albania

Committee for Liberty of Peoples

Communications Workers of America (CWA)

Confederation for an Independent Poland

Conference of the Atlantic

Community Congress for Cultural Freedom

Continental Press

Continental Shelf Explorations, Inc.,

Cooperative League of America

Coordinating Committee of Free Trade Unionists of Ecuador

Coordinating Secretariat of National Unions of Students (cosec), see International Student Conference (ISC)

Cosden Petroleum Corporation

Combat Military Ordinances Ltd.

Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs, Inc.

Cox, Langford, Stoddard & Cutler

CRC, see Cuban Revolutionary Council

CROCLE, see Regional Confederation of Ecuadorian

Coastal Trade Unions Cross, Murphy and Smith

Crossroads of Africa

Crusade for Freedom

CSU, see Uruguayan Labor Conference

CTM, see Mexican Worker Confederation

Cuban Portland Cement Company

Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC, Cuban Exile)

Cummings and Seller

Curtis Publishing Company

CUT, see Uruguayan Confederation of Workers

 

D

Daddario & Burns

Dane Aviation Supply

Danet

Debevoise, Plimpton, Lyons & Gates (West)

Deutscher Kunstlerbund

Dominion Rubber Company

Double Chek Corporation

DRE, see Revolutionary Student Directorate in Exile

 

E

Eagleton Institute of Politics – Princeton University East Asian Institute

Eagan, McAllister Associates, Inc

EAI Corporation

East-West Center

Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Action

Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Front

Ecuadorean Confederation of Free Trade Union Organizations (CEOSL)

Ecuadorean Federation of Telecommunications Workers (FENETEL)

Editors Press Service

Edsel Fund

Electric Storage Battery Company

El Gheden Mining Corporation

End Kadhmir Dispute Committee

Ensayos

ERC International, Inc.

Enstnischer Nationalrat

Enstnischer Weltzentralrat

Estrella Company

Europe Assembly of Captive Nations

Exeter Banking Company

 

F

Farfield Foundation, Inc.

Federal League for Ruralist Action (Ruralistas)

Federation for a Democratic Germany in Free Europe

Fed. Inte. des Journalistes de Tourisme

FENETEL, see Ecuadorean Federation of Telecommunications Workers

First Florida Resource Corporation

Food, Drink and Plantation Workers Union

Ford Foundation

Foreign News Service

Foreign Press Association B.C.

Forest Products, Ltd.

Fortune

“Forum” (Wein)

Foundation for International and Social Behavior

Foundation for Student Affairs

Franklin Broadcasting Company

Free Africa Organization of Colored People

Free Europe Committee, Inc.

Free Europe Exile Relations

Free Europe Press Division

Freie Universitat (FU)

Frente Departmental de Compensinos de Puno

FSS International

Fund for International, Social and Economic Development

 

G

Gambia National Youth Council

Geological Society of America

Georgia Council on Human Relations

Gibraltar Steamship Corporation

Global International Airways

Glore, Forgan & Company

Goldstein, Judd & Gurfein

Gotham Foundation

Government Affairs Institute

W.R. Grace and Company

Granary Fund

Grey Advertising Agency

Guyana Workers Confederation (COG)

Gulf Oil Corporation

 

H

Andrew Hamilton Fund

HBGary

Heights Fund

Joshua Hendy Iron Works

Hicks & Associates

Hierax

Hill and Knowlton

Himalayan Convention

Histadrut – The Federation of Labor in Israel

Hiwar

Hoblitzelle Foundation

Hodson Corporation

Hogan & Hartson Holmes Foundation, Inc.

Hoover Institute on War, Revolution and Peace

Hutchins Advertising Company of Canada

Huyck Corporation

 

I

IBAD, see Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action

Independence Foundation

Independent Research Service

Industrial Research Service

Information Security International Inc.,.,

Institut zur Erforschung der USSR e.V.

Institute Battelle Memorial

Institute of Historical Review

Institute of International Education

Institute of International Labor Research Education

Institute of Political Education

Institute of Public Administration

International-American Center of Economic and Social Studies

International-American Federation of Journalists

International-American Federation of Working Newspapermen (IFWN)

International-American Labor College

International-American Police Academy, see International Police Academy

International-American Regional Labor Organization (ORIT)

Intercontinental Finance Corporation

Intercontinental Research Corporation

Intermountain Aviation

International Armament Corporation (INTERARMCO) International Air Tours of     Nigeria

International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)

International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (IFCTU)

International Cooperation Administration (ICA)

International Development Foundation, Inc.

International Fact Finding Institute

International Federation of Christian Trade Unions IFCTU, see World Confederation of Labor

International Federation of Journalists

International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers (IFPCW)

International Federation of Plantation, Agriculture and Allied Workers (IFPAAW)

International Federation of Women Lawyers (IFWL)

International Geographical Union

International Journalists Conference

International Labor Research Institute

International Police Services School

International Press Institute

International Rescue Committee

International Secretatiate of the Pax Romana

International Student Conference (ISC)

International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT)

International Trade Services

International Trade Secretariats

International Trading and Investment Guaranty Corp., Ltd.,

International Transport Workers Federation (ITF)

International Union Officials Trade Organizations

International Union of Young Christian Democrats

International Youth Center

Internationale Federation der Mittel- und Osteuropas

Internationale Organization zur Erforschung kommunistischer Nethoden

Internationaler Bund freier Journalisten

Internationales Hilfskomitee

 

J

Japan Cultural Forum

 

K

KAMI

Kentfield Fund J.M.

Kaplan Fund, Inc.

Kennedy & Sinclaire, Inc.

Kenya Federation of Labour

Khmer Airlines

Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Komittee fur internationale Beziehungen

Komittee fur Selbstbestimmung

Komittee fur die Unabhangigkeit des Kaukasus

Korean C.I.A.

Korean Freedom and Cultural Foundation, Inc.

 

L

Labor Committee for Democratic Action

Lawyer’s Constitutional Defense Committee

League for Industrial Democracy

League for International Social and Cooperative Development

Ligue de la Liberte

Litton Industrial Company

London American

 

M

Manhattan Coffee Company

Marconi Telegraph-Cable Company

Maritime Support Unit

Martin Marietta Company

Marshall Foundation Center for International Studies (MIT-CIS)

Mathieson Chemical Corporation

McCann-Erikson, Inc.

Megadyne Electronics

Charles E. Merrill Trust

Merex

Mexican Workers Confederation (CTM)

Miner & Associates

Mineral Carriers, Ltd.

Mobil Oil Company

Molden-Verlag

Monroe Fund

Moore-McCormack Lines, Inc.

Moral Majority

Moral Rearmament

Movement

Mount Pleasant Trust

Movement for Integrated University Action

Robert Mullen Company

 

N

Narodno Trudouoj Sojus (NTS)

National Academy of Sciences

National Research Council

National Board for Defense of Sovereignty and Continental Solidarity

National Council of Churches

National Defense Front

National Educational Films, Inc.

National Education Association

National Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers of Ecuador

National Feminist Movement for the Defense of Uruguay

National Student Press Council of India

National Students Association (NSA)

National Union of Journalists of Ecuador

Newsweek

New York Times

Norman Fund

North American Rockwell Corporation

North American Uranium, Inc.

Norwich Pharmaceutical Company

 

O

Oceanic Cargo

Oil Workers International Union

Operations and Policy Research, Inc.

Organix. Ukrainischer Nationalisten (OUN)

ORIT, see International-American Regional Labor Organization

Overseas New Agency

 

P

Pacifica Foundation

Pacific Life Insurance

Paderewski Foundation

Pan-American Foundation

Pan Aviation

Pappas Charitable Trust

Parvus

Jere Patterson & Associates

Pax Romana

Peace and Freedom

Penobscot Land & Investment Company

Plant Protection, Inc.

Plenary of Democratic Civil Organizations of Uruguay

Pope & Ballard

Popular Democratic Action (ADEP)

Press Institute of India

Price Fund

Public Service International (PSI)

Publisher’s Council

 

R

Rabb Charitable Foundation

Radio Free Asia

RadioFree Europe

Radio Liberation

Radio Liberty Committee, Inc.

Radio Swan

Rand Corporation

Regional Confederation of Ecuadorean Coastal Trade Unions (CROCLE)

Research Foundation for Foreign Affairs

Retail Clerk’s International Association

Reveal

Revolutionary Democratic Front (RFD, Cuban exile)

Reynolds Metal Company

Rubicon Foundation

Rumanisches Nationalkomitee

Russian and East European Institute

Russian Institute

Russian Research Center

 

S

Safir

Science Applications International Corporation

St. Lucia Airways

Saman

San Jacinto Foundation

San Miguel Fund

SBONR

Sentinels of Liberty

Sith & Company

Social Christian Movement of Ecuador

Sociedade Anomima de Radio Retransmissao (RARETSA)

Society for Defense of Freedom in Asia

SODECO (Sakhalin Oil Development Cooperation Co)

SODIMAC Southern Air Transport

Standard Electronics, Inc.

Standish Ayer & McKay, Inc.

Sterling Chemical Co.

Strauss Fund

Student Movement for Democratic Action

Sur International

Sylvania Electric Products, Inc.

Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Outside of Russia

Systems Development Corporation

 

T

Tarantel Press

Tetra Tech International

Thai-Pacific Services Company

Tibet Convention

Tower Fund

Transmaritania

Twentieth Century Fund

 

U

Unabhangiger Forschugsdienst

Ungarischer Nationalrat

U.S. News and World Report

United States Youth Council

U.S.-Russian Commercial Energy Working Group

United Ukrainian American Relief Committee

Universal Service Corporation

Untersuchungsausschub freiheitlicher Juristen (UfJ)

Uruguayan Committee for Free Detention of Peoples

Uruguayan Confederation of Workers (CUT)

Uruguayan Labor Confederation (CSU)

 

V

Vangard Service Company

Varec

Varicon, Inc

 

W

Wainwright and Matthews Joseph Walter & Sons

Warden Trust

Washington Post

Erwim Wasey, Ruthrauff & Ryan, Inc.

Wexton Advertising Agency

Whitten Trust

Williford-Telford Corporation

World Assembly of Youth (WAY)

World Confederation of Labor

Wynnewood Fund

 

Y

York Research Corporation

 

Z

Zenith Technical Enterprises, Ltd

Zenith Technical Enterprises University

Zen Nihon Gakusei Jichikai Sorengo (Zangakuren)

Zentrale for Studien und Dokumentation

Zweites deutschen Fernsehen (ZDF)