"No-Fault" Containment Of Promethean Humanity Is The Reset's Biggest Challenge

strategic-culture |  With the specter of a New Great Depression hovering over most of the planet, realpolitik perspectives for a radical change of the political economy framework we live in are not exactly encouraging.

Western ruling elites will be deploying myriad tactics to perpetuate the passivity of populations barely emerging from de facto house arrest, including a massive disciplinary – in a Foucault sense – drive by states and business/finance circles.

In his latest book, La Desaparicion de los Rituales, Byung-Chul Han shows how total communication, especially in a time of pandemic, now coincides with total vigilance: “Domination impersonates freedom. Big Data generates a domineering knowledge that allows the possibility of intervening in the human psyche, and manipulating it. Considering it this way, the data-ist imperative of transparency is not a continuation of the Enlightenment, but its ending.”

This revamping of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish coincides with reports about the demise of the neoliberal era being vastly overstated. Instead of a simplistic plunge into populist nationalism, what is on the horizon points mostly to a Neoliberalism Restoration – massively spun as a novelty, and incorporating some Keynesian elements: after all, in the post-Lockdown era, to “save” the markets and private initiative the state must not only intervene but also facilitate a possible ecological transition.

The bottom line: we may be facing a mere cosmetic approach, in which the deep structural crisis of zombie capitalism – barely moving under unpopular “reforms” and infinite debt – still is not addressed.

Meanwhile, what is going to happen to assorted fascisms? Eric Hobsbawm showed us in Age of Extremes how the key to the fascist right was always mass mobilization: “Fascists were the revolutionaries of the counter-revolution”.

We may be heading further than mere, crude neofascism. Call it Hybrid Neofascism. Their political stars bow to global market imperatives while switching political competition to the cultural arena.

That’s what true “illiberalism” is all about: the mix between neoliberalism – unrestricted capital mobility, Central Bank diktats – and political authoritarianism. Here’s where we find Trump, Modi and Bolsonaro.

Pachamama Banished - Catholic Fascists Proclaim "Bolivia Belongs to Christ!!!"

The rich oligarch leader of Bolivia's right-wing coup, Luis Fernando Camacho, was the leader of an explicitly fascist paramilitary group.

Here are some clips from a promotional historical documentary it published:https://t.co/gFMyfjsi2p pic.twitter.com/XXNQfhD7ii

— The Grayzone (@GrayzoneProject) November 12, 2019

thegrayzone |  Bolivian coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho is a far-right multi-millionaire who arose from fascist movements in the Santa Cruz region, where the US has encouraged separatism. He has courted support from Colombia, Brazil, and the Venezuelan opposition.

When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential palace in the hours after President Evo Morales’s sudden November 10 resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and Indigenous leader had put forward. 

 

With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to the burned palace.” 

“Pachamama will never return to the palace,” he said, referring to the Andean Mother Earth spirit. “Bolivia belongs to Christ.”

With or Without Compact Fusion - Mankind IS ALREADY WILL GET Permanently Off-World

energy.gov | NNSA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) joined forces to address a unique challenge: developing a power source able to support deep space travel and outlast existing fuel sources. NNSA came through with the technical expertise required to achieve this goal.

“The relationship between NNSA and NASA is a ‘win-win’ partnership,” said Patrick Cahalane, NNSA’s Principal Deputy Associate Administrator for Safety, Infrastructure and Operations. “NASA gets a prototype demonstration for a kilowatt-range fission power source, and NNSA gets a benchmark-quality experiment that provides new nuclear data in support of our Nuclear Criticality Safety Program.”

The experiment, nicknamed KRUSTY (Kilowatt Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY), was part of NASA’s larger Kilopower project. KRUSTY was designed to test a prototype fission reactor coupled to a Stirling engine. Stirling technology is efficient, doesn’t require significant maintenance, and does not degrade in performance over time.

Scientists from NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Nevada National Security Site partnered with NASA to develop and test the KRUSTY design at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC).

Researchers designed and performed initial testing of the KRUSTY reactor design using a surrogate, or non-fissile, reactor core and resistive heating elements. Experts from NNSA’s Y-12 National Security Complex manufactured the uranium reactor core, which was delivered to the NCERC in the fall of 2017. 

You Don't Have To Go Home, But You Gotta Get The Hell Up Out Of Here!!!

scmp |  Having obtained a dual bachelor’s degree from a US university and climbed to a senior software engineer’s position within two and a half years of working for an American company, Owen Wang was forced to dramatically scale back his salary expectations when he decided to come home to China.

Currently working in Kansas City – where the average annual senior software engineer’s salary is US$100,000, according to glassdoor.com – the best offer from a Chinese firm he has received so far is a package from a Shenzhen-based start-up worth around 240,000 yuan (US$35,250).

But while he had expected salaries in the southern Chinese city to be lower than those on offer in the US – the per capita income in Kansas City is over four times more than the average in Shenzhen – he had been hoping someone would offer him a pay packet worth around 500,000 yuan a year.

“We’re still negotiating. I guess I will finally accept a compromise if there’s no better choice, but the quality of my life will drop significantly,” said the 27-year-old.

Wang’s plan to return home is not motivated purely by financial considerations – he worries that tighter US immigration policies will make it harder for him to stay and his parents have been hoping that he will be able to come home and visit them more often – but his disappointment is mirrored by many of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who return home from studying and working overseas every year.

A recent survey by a Beijing-based think tank of more than 2,000 Chinese returnees found that about 80 per cent said their salaries were lower than expected, with around 70 per cent saying what they were doing did not match their experience and skills.

China's Exploitation of Africa

caseyresearch |  Justin: Is China exploiting Africa?  

Doug: Of course “exploit” is a loaded word; it implies one-sided, unbalanced dealings, and unfair business—although the word “fair” also has lots of baggage, and politically charged meanings.

But, yes, they’re definitely exploiting Africa. We’re seeing a veritable re-colonization of Africa. Every time I visit Africa I see more and more Chinese. It doesn’t matter which country; they’re everywhere.

It’s important to remember that Africa doesn’t produce anything besides raw materials. There’s close to zero manufacturing, like 1% of the world’s total, in sub-Saharan Africa. And almost all of that is in South Africa. The little there is, is only produced with the help foreigners—Europeans, but increasingly the Chinese.

The Chinese basically see Africans as no more than a cheap labor source. That’s at best. Other than that, they’re viewed as a complete nuisance. Basically an obstacle, a cost, standing in the way of efficient use of the continent itself.

What do the Chinese people think of Africans? They don’t hold them in high regard. Of course, you’ve got to remember that China has viewed itself as the center of the world since Day One. They see all non-Han peoples as barbarians, as inferiors. That was absolutely true when the British sent an ambassador, Macartney, to open relations at the very end of the 18^th C. He was treated with borderline contempt—pretty much the way Europeans and Americans have treated primitive peoples since the days of Columbus. It’s actually the normal human attitude, when an advanced culture encounters a backward culture. The Chinese see their culture as superior to even that of the West, and believe—probably correctly—that they’ll soon be economically and technologically superior as well.

Africa doesn’t even enter the equation. The continent has no civilization, no economy, no technology, no military power. The famed Zimbabwe ruins are just some semi-finished rocks piled on one another—and they’re considered iconic. The Chinese see the place the way the Spanish saw Mexico and Peru in the 16^th C. Of course they won’t say that in public. In fact it’s very non-PC for anyone to make that observation…

Nonetheless, Africa is going to be the epicenter of what’s happening in the world for years to come. It’s gone from being just an empty space on the map in the 19^th C, to a bunch of backwater colonies in the 20^th C, to a bunch of failed states that people are only vaguely aware of today. Soon, however, it will be frontpage news. And this is both because Chinese are moving to Africa in record numbers and Africans are leaving as fast as they can.

Many Africans are now trying to make their way to Europe. Every year scores of thousands of them—all young men by the way—cross the Mediterranean on rafts. When they arrive in Europe, they somehow survive by selling bobbles on the street, dealing dope, or stealing. And figuring out how to game the welfare system. Now, I realize this doesn’t sound very promising. But that’s the way things are headed. It’s a growing trend.

Meanwhile, Profit-Seeking Bankster Parasites Busy Eyeballing What Sustainably Remains....,

eurasiareview |  Indigenous Peoples have ownership, use and management rights over at least a quarter of the world’s land surface according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability.

The 38 million square kilometers (14.6 million square miles) are spread across 87 countries or politically distinct areas and overlap with about 40 percent of all terrestrial protected areas.

The results of the study provides strong evidence that recognizing the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their traditional lands and waters is not only an ethical obligation it is essential to meeting local and global conservation goals. The authors say that more collaborative partnerships between Indigenous Peoples and governments would yield significant benefits for conservation of ecologically valuable landscapes, ecosystems, and genetic diversity for future generations.

“Understanding the extent of lands over which Indigenous Peoples retain traditional connection is critical for several conservation and climate agreements,” said Professor Stephen Garnett from Charles Darwin University in Australia who led the international consortium that developed the maps. “Not until we pulled together the best available published information on Indigenous lands did we really appreciate the extraordinary scale of Indigenous Peoples’ ongoing influence,” he said.

There are at least 370 million people who define themselves as Indigenous, are descended from populations who inhabited a country before the time of conquest or colonization, and who retain at least some of their own social, economic, cultural and political practices. The proportion of countries with indigenous people is highest in Africa and lowest in Europe-West Asia.

Drones For Mapping And Exploring The Deep Blue Sea

sciencefriday |  Giant jellyfish and mussels. Pallid shrimp, fish, and sea cucumbers. Never-before-seen octopus species. All these and more dwell in the deep sea, 200 meters (over 650 feet) and deeper beneath the ocean surface. It’s the largest habitat on Earth, but it’s also one of the least understood. 

As mining companies eye the mineral resources of the deep sea—from oil and gas, to metal deposits—marine biologists like London’s Natural History Museum’s Diva Amon are working to discover and describe as much of the deep sea as they can. Amon has been on dozens of expeditions to sea, where she’s helped characterize ecosystems and discover new species all over the world. And she says we still don’t know enough about deep sea ecology to know how to protect these species, the ones we’ve found and the ones we haven’t yet, from mining. 

[This is not your ordinary pine cone.]

But accessing the deep ocean is expensive; it can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 a day to run a research ship. So roboticists and artificial intelligence designers are developing underwater drones to map and sniff out the secrets of the deep with the help of sophisticated chemical sensors. These robotic explorers could someday hunt down sunken ships or planes, hydrothermal vents, and biological spectacles such as rare species or a whale fall, at a cost significantly cheaper than today. Nine teams of roboticists designing these underwater crafts are now in a race to win the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE.

[The science behind Kilauea’s 30-year eruption.]

In this segment, Amon and XPRIZE’s Jyotika Virmani join Ira to talk about the future of deep ocean exploration—and what we might find there. And Martin Brooke, team leader of Blue Devil Ocean Engineering at Duke University, will discuss his team’s plan for mapping the deep ocean: aerial drones that drop sonar-sounding pods into the seas, then reel them up and move them to the next target.

US strategy to ‘dethrone’ Putin for oil pipelines?

medium |  A US Army document concedes the real interests driving US military strategy toward Russia: dominating oil pipeline routes, accessing the vast natural resources of Central Asia, and enforcing the expansion of American capitalism worldwide.

The Russians are coming. They hacked our elections. They are lurking behind numerous alternative political movements and news outlets. Such is the overwhelming chorus from traditional reporting on Russia, which sees the United States as being under threat from fanatical Russian expansionism — expansionism which has gone so far as to interfere dramatically in the 2016 Presidential elections.

Russia is certainly an authoritarian regime with its own regional imperial ambitions. President Vladimir Putin and his cronies are responsible for massive deaths and human rights violations against populations at home and abroad (the latter in war theaters like Syria and elsewhere). Putin has strengthened a system of oligarchical state-dominated predatory capitalism which has widened extreme inequality and concentrated elite wealth. And we will no doubt learn more about what shenanigans Russia did, or did not, get up to in relation to US elections. 

For the most part, these are not especially dangerous things to report on from the comfort of the West. Somewhat lacking from conventional reporting, on the other hand, is serious reflection on whether US policies toward Russia have contributed directly to the deterioration of US-Russia relations.

While the bulk of the Western pundit class are busy bravely obsessing over the innumerable evils of Putin, it turns out that the upper echelons of the US military are asking some uncomfortable questions about how we got to where we are.

A study by the US Army’s Command and General Staff College Press of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth reveals that US strategy toward Russia has been heavily motivated by the goal of dominating Central Asian oil and gas resources, and associated pipeline routes.

The remarkable document, prepared by the US Army’s Culture, Regional Expertise and Language Management Office (CRELMO), concedes that expansionist NATO policies played a key role in provoking Russian militarism. It also contemplates how current US and Russian antagonisms could spark a global nuclear conflict between the two superpowers.

China's Impending Oil Peak

medium |  A new scientific study led by the China University of Petroleum in Beijing, funded by the Chinese government, concludes that China is about to experience a peak in its total oil production as early as next year.

Without finding an alternative source of “new abundant energy resources”, the study warns, the 2018 peak in China’s combined conventional and unconventional oil will undermine continuing economic growth and “challenge the sustainable development of Chinese society.”

This also has major implications for the prospect of a 2018 oil squeeze — as China scales its domestic oil peak, rising demand will impact world oil markets in a way most forecasters aren’t anticipating, contributing to a potential supply squeeze. That could happen in 2018 proper, or in the early years that follow.

There are various scenarios that follow from here — China could: shift to reducing its massive demand for energy, a tall order in itself given population growth projections and rising consumption; accelerate a renewable energy transition; or militarise the South China Sea for more deepwater oil and gas.

Right now, China appears to be incoherently pursuing all three strategies, with varying rates of success. But one thing is clear — China’s decisions on how it addresses its coming post-peak future will impact regional and global political and energy security for the foreseeable future.

Fossil fuelled-growth

The study was published on 19 September by Springer’s peer-reviewed Petroleum Science journal, which is supported by China’s three major oil corporations, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China Petroleum Corporation (Sinopec), and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

Since 1978, China has experienced an average annual economic growth rate of 9.8%, and is now the world’s second largest economy after the United States.

The new study points out, however, that this economic growth has been enabled by “high energy consumption.”

In the same period of meteoric economic growth, China’s total energy consumption has grown on average by 5.8% annually, mostly from fossil fuels. In 2014, oil, gas and coal accounted for fully 90% of China’s total energy consumption, with the remainder supplied from renewable energy sources.

After 2018, however, China’s oil production is predicted to begin declining, and the widening supply-demand gap could endanger both China’s energy security and continued economic growth.

Is MBS Tryna Drain the Broke Bush-Bandar-CIA Swamp?

theautomaticearth |  Trying to figure out what on earth is happening in the Middle East appears to have gotten a lot harder. Perhaps (because) it’s become more dangerous too. There are so many players, and connections between players, involved now that even making one of those schematic representations would never get it right. Too many unknown unknowns.

A short and incomplete list of the actors: Sunni, Shiite, Saudi Arabia, US, Russia, Turkey, ISIS, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Kurds, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Hamas, Qatar, Israel, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Houthis, perhaps even Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan. I know I know, add your favorites. So what have we got, or what do we know we’ve got? We seem to have the US lining up with Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia against Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah. Broadly. But that’s just a -pun intended- crude start.

Putin has been getting closer to the Saudis because of the OPEC production cuts, trying to jack up the price of oil. Which ironically has now been achieved on the heels of the arrests of 11 princes and scores of other wealthy and powerful in the kingdom. But Putin also recently signed a $30 billion oil -infrastructure- deal with Iran. And he’s been cuddling up to Israel as well.

In fact, Putin may well be the most powerful force in the Middle East today. Well played?! He prevented the demise of Assad in Syria, which however you look at it at least saved the country from becoming another Iraq and Libya style failed state. If there’s one thing you can say about the Middle East/North Africa it’s that the US succeeded in creating chaos there to such an extent that it has zero control left over any of it. Well played?!

One thing seems obvious: the House of Saud needs money. The cash flowing out to the princes is simply not available anymore. The oil price is a major factor in that. Miraculously, the weekend crackdown on dozens of princes et al, managed to do what all the OPEC meetings could not for the price of oil: push it up. But the shrinkage of foreign reserves shows a long term problem, not some momentary blip

Another sign that money has become a real problem in Riyadh is the ever-postponed IPO of Saudi Aramco, the flagship oil company supposedly worth $2 trillion. Trump this week called on the Saudi’s to list it in New York, but despite the upsurge in oil prices you still have to wonder which part of that $2 trillion is real, and which is just fantasy.  

But yeah, I know, there’s a million different stocks you can ask the same question about. Then again, seeing the wealth of some of the kingdom’s richest parties confiscated overnight can’t be a buy buy buy signal, can it? Looks like the IPO delay tells us something. 

And then you have the 15,000 princes and princesses who all live off of the Kingdom’s supposed riches (‘only 2,000’ profit directly). All of them live in -relative- wealth. Some more than others, but there’s no hunger in the royal family. Thing is, overall population growth outdoes even that in the royal family. Which means, since the country produces nothing except for oil, that there are 1000s upon 1000s of young people with nothing to do but spend money that’s no longer there. Cue mayhem.

Trump Ain't Read Twilight In The Desert....,

energyskeptic |  In the past several years, the gap between demand and supply, once considerable, has steadily narrowed, and today is almost negligible. The consequences of an actual shortfall of supply would be immense. If consumption begins to exceed production by even a small amount, the price of a barrel of oil could soar to triple-digit levels. This, in turn, could bring on a global recession, a result of exorbitant prices for transport fuels and for products that rely on petrochemicals — which is to say, almost every product on the market. 

The impact on the American way of life would be profound: cars cannot be propelled by roof-borne windmills. The suburban and exurban lifestyles, hinged to two-car families and constant trips to work, school and Wal-Mart, might become unaffordable or, if gas rationing is imposed, impossible. Carpools would be the least imposing of many inconveniences; the cost of home heating would soar — assuming, of course, that climate-controlled habitats do not become just a fond memory.

But will such a situation really come to pass? That depends on Saudi Arabia. To know the answer, you need to know whether the Saudis, who possess 22 percent of the world’s oil reserves, can increase their country’s output beyond its current limit of 10.5 million barrels a day, and even beyond the 12.5-million-barrel target it has set for 2009. (World consumption is about 84 million barrels a day.) Saudi Arabia is the sole oil superpower. No other producer possesses reserves close to its 263 billion barrels, which is almost twice as much as the runner-up, Iran, with 133 billion barrels.

But the truth about Saudi oil is hard to figure out. Oil reservoirs cannot be inventoried like wood in a wilderness: the oil is underground, unseen by geologists and engineers, who can, at best, make highly educated guesses about how much is underfoot and how much can be extracted in the future. And there is a further obstacle: the Saudis will not let outsiders audit their confidential data on reserves and production. Oil is an industry in which not only is the product hidden from sight but so is reliable information about it. And because we do not know when a supply-demand shortfall might arrive, we do not know when to begin preparing for it, so as to soften its impact; the economic blow may come as a sledgehammer from the darkness.

For 31 years, Matthew Simmons has prospered as the head of his own firm, Simmons & Company International, which advises energy companies on mergers and acquisitions. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a graduate of the Harvard Business School and an unpaid adviser on energy policy to the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, he would be a card-carrying member of the global oil nomenclatura, if cards were issued for such things. Yet he is one of the principal reasons the oil world is beginning to ask hard questions of itself.

Two years ago, Simmons went to Saudi Arabia on a government tour for business executives. The group was presented with the usual dog-and-pony show, but instead of being impressed, as most visitors tend to be, with the size and expertise of the Saudi oil industry, Simmons became perplexed. As he recalls in his somewhat heretical new book, ”Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,” a senior manager at Aramco told the visitors that ”fuzzy logic” would be used to estimate the amount of oil that could be recovered. Simmons had never heard of fuzzy logic. What could be fuzzy about an oil reservoir? He suspected that Aramco, despite its promises of endless supplies, might in fact not know how much oil remained to be recovered.

Simmons returned home with an itch to scratch. Saudi Arabia was one of the charter members of OPEC, founded in 1960 in Baghdad to coordinate the policies of oil producers. Like every OPEC country, Saudi Arabia provides only general numbers about its output and reserves; it does not release details about how much oil is extracted from each reservoir and what methods are used to extract that oil, and it does not permit audits by outsiders. The condition of Saudi fields, and those of other OPEC nations, is a closely guarded secret. That’s largely because OPEC quotas, which were first imposed in 1983 to limit the output of member countries, were based on overall reserves; the higher an OPEC member’s reserves, the higher its quota. It is widely believed that most, if not all, OPEC members exaggerated the sizes of their reserves in order to have the largest possible quota — and thus the largest possible revenue stream.

I've Decided To Be Godfather...,

bloomberg |  Prince Mohammed seems to be playing the equally ruthless roles of autocrat and reformer. The millennial has been outspoken about his bold plans to modernize Saudi society and wean the kingdom from fossil fuel. Now, Prince Mohammed has locked up globe-trotting tycoons and other dynastic rivals, sending shock waves across the desert and around the world. Since Saudi Arabia’s founding in 1932 by his grandfather, Abdulaziz Al Saud, successive kings have sought consensus among the family’s thousands of princes, balancing religious, princely, and tribal factions to maintain stability in the world’s largest oil supplier. Decisions were made at a glacial pace, often capped with generous payouts for anyone left unhappy. Prince Mohammed has smashed that conservative status quo in an act, he no doubt believes, of creative destruction.

This is a man of dead-certain belief in himself, who told this magazine in a long, autobiographical interview in April 2016 that his childhood experiences among princes and potentates were more valuable and formative than Steve Jobs’s, Mark Zuckerberg’s, and Bill Gates’s. So, he wondered aloud, “if I work according to their methods, what will I create?” Now we know his disruptive potential.

The prince’s unprecedented arrest of a who’s who of Saudi society is a first stab at fulfilling his vow to hold the corrupt accountable. “I confirm to you, no one will survive in a corruption case—whoever he is, even if he’s a prince or a minister,” Prince Mohammed said in a televised interview in May. The vow has now become a Twitter sensation among Saudis under the age of 30, who make up 70 percent of the population, the demographic bulge the prince has made his base. They’re still plenty skeptical of Prince Mohammed and his father the king, who recently visited Moscow with 1,500 retainers, his own carpets, and a golden escalator for his Boeing 747.

No one imagined the crown prince would go so far. The takedown, set up by his father, King Salman, through a new anticorruption commission that Prince Mohammed chairs, rounded up his most visible potential adversary, Prince Miteb bin Abdullah. A favored son of the late King Abdullah, who died in 2015, Miteb, 65, commanded the Saudi National Guard, which, until his arrest, had been the last military branch not under Prince Mohammed’s control.

What's That Africom Cover Story Again? (REDUX Originally Posted 1/26/13)

antiwar | But Patrick Meehan, chairman of the US Congressional committee that drew up the report, said “While I recognize there is little evidence at this moment to suggest Boko Haram is planning attacks against the [US] homeland, lack of evidence does not mean it cannot happen.”

Washington’s interest in Africa goes back at least to 2007, when the Pentagon’s AFRICOM was formed, long before rebels in Libya or militants in Mali were a threats to exaggerate.

The dominant way of thinking in Washington is that the US should be involved in every corner of the planet, and the pressure to always “do something” is intense.

But as Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations recently commented with regards to the intervention in Mali, “Some things that happen on the other 94% of the earth that isn’t the US, has nothing to do with the US, nor requires a US response.”

Africa in 2040 (REDUX Originally Posted 2/20/08)

Paul Chefurka's grim assessment of what's in store for Africa. Please read and bookmark this paper.

There is a darkness moving on the face of the land. We catch glimpses of it in newscasts from far-off places that few of us have ever seen. We hear hints of it on the radio, read snippets about it in newspapers and magazines. The stories are always fragmentary, lacking context or connection. They speak of things like inflation in Zimbabwe, war in Chad, electricity problems in Johannesburg, famine in Malawi, pipeline fires in Nigeria, political violence in Kenya, cholera in Congo. Each snapshot of grief heaves briefly into view, then fades back into obscurity. With every fresh story we are left asking ourselves, "Is there something bigger going on here, some unseen thread connecting these dots? Or is this just more of the same from a continent that has known more than its share of misery?"

This paper is my attempt to connect those dots, to tease some order out of the chaos of the news reports. I will use some very simple numerical techniques to fill in the missing lines, and in the end a picture will emerge. I can tell you in advance that the picture is fearsome beyond imagining, and you may well be tempted to avert your gaze. I would advise you instead to screw up your courage and take a good look. It is crucial to our future as a civilized race.

I expect the collapse to turn Africa into the next arena for a quick game of "Disaster Capitalism." Large trans-national entities will make offers of "significant assistance" to particular countries in return for untrammeled access to their resource base. The vultures will be lining the banks of the Zambezi waiting for the feast, no doubt about it.

"I know there's rumors in Ghana `All Bush is coming to do is try to convince you to put a big military base here,' Bush said at a news conference with Kufuor. "That's baloney. As they say in Texas, that's bull."

Instead, he said the new command — unique to the Pentagon's structure — was aimed at more effectively reorganizing U.S. military efforts in Africa to strengthen African nations' peacekeeping, trafficking and anti-terror efforts.

"The whole purpose of Africom is to help African leaders deal with African problems," Bush said.

Bush sought to dispel the notion about militarization of Africa even before giving reporters a chance to ask him about it. Kufuour said he was satisfied with Bush's explanation, and thanked him for announcing it "so that the relationship between us and the United States will grow stronger."

For now, the administration has decided to continue operating Africom out of existing U.S. bases on the continent with a headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. War-wrecked Liberia is the only African nation that has publicly offered to host a headquarters. Bush said before the trip that "if" a headquarters for Africom is ever established on the continent, he would "seriously consider" Liberia as the host.

Pit of Despair Because of Africans or Because of White Imperialism Bee Dee?

local10  |  President Donald Trump told U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson's widow Tuesday that "he knew what he signed up for ... but when it happens, it hurts anyway," when he died serving in northwestern Africa, according to U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Florida.  

"Yeah, he said that," Wilson said. "So insensitive. He should have not have said that. He shouldn't have said it."  

The president called about 4:45 p.m. and spoke to Johnson's pregnant widow, Myeshia Johnson, for about five minutes. She is a mother to Johnson's surviving 2-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter. The conversation happened before Johnson's remains arrived at Miami International Airport on a commercial Delta Airlines flight.  

"The president's conversations with the families of American heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice are private," a top advisor later told Local 10 News.  

Wilson watched as the widow, who is expecting their third baby in January, leaned over the U.S. flag that was draping Johnson's casket. Her pregnant belly was shaking against the casket as she sobbed uncontrollably. Their daughter stood next to her stoically. Their toddler waited in the arms of a relative. 

There was silence. 

Local politicians, police officers and firefighters lined up to honor Johnson for his service and for the efforts and discipline that got the former Walmart employee to defy all odds and become a 25-year-old member of the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. 

Johnson, who participated in a mentorship program Wilson founded in 1993, died during a mission fighting alongside Green Berets. Islamic militants ambushed them on Oct. 4 with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. The team reportedly didn't have overhead armed air cover and was in unarmored pickup trucks. Reuters reported the lack of planning upset the French.  

Trump didn't discuss any of the details of the ambush or say that the Pentagon was conducting an investigation. Instead, he focused on questions about whether or not he had offered his condolences to the families of the fallen. 

U.S. - Venezuela - Russia - Oil

reuters |  Venezuela’s unraveling socialist government is increasingly turning to ally Russia for the cash and credit it needs to survive – and offering prized state-owned oil assets in return, sources familiar with the negotiations told Reuters. 

As Caracas struggles to contain an economic meltdown and violent street protests, Moscow is using its position as Venezuela’s lender of last resort to gain more control over the OPEC nation’s crude reserves, the largest in the world. 

Venezuela's state-owned oil firm, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), has been secretly negotiating since at least early this year with Russia's biggest state-owned oil company, Rosneft (ROSN.MM) - offering ownership interests in up to nine of Venezuela's most productive petroleum projects, according to a top Venezuelan government official and two industry sources familiar with the talks. 

Moscow has substantial leverage in the negotiations: Cash from Russia and Rosneft has been crucial in helping the financially strapped government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro avoid a sovereign debt default or a political coup. 

Rosneft delivered Venezuela’s state-owned firm more than $1 billion in April alone in exchange for a promise of oil shipments later. On at least two occasions, the Venezuelan government has used Russian cash to avoid imminent defaults on payments to bondholders, a high-level PDVSA official told Reuters. 

Rosneft has also positioned itself as a middleman in sales of Venezuelan oil to customers worldwide. Much of it ends up at refineries in the United States – despite U.S. sanctions against Russia – because it is sold through intermediaries such as oil trading firms, according to internal PDVSA trade reports seen by Reuters and a source at the firm. 

PDVSA and the government of Venezuela did not respond to requests for comment.

The Russian government declined to comment and referred questions to the foreign ministry and the ministries of finance and defense, which did not respond to questions from Reuters. Rosneft declined to comment.

Genie Energy and Oil in the Golan Heights

lewrockwell |  QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong I live in Israel and today I listened to your podcast with Macrovoices. At some point you mentioned that there is more oil in Golan heights than in Saudi Arabia -and this oil belongs to genie energy. Is it true? How can it be that nobody knew nothing about this in Israel? Are you sure 100 % about this information? I will be happy to know more about this.

ANSWER: Yes. This is one of the best kept secrets. You can imagine that if this went into production, then the disputed Syrian land issue occupied by Israel would come to the forefront. This is why it gets no play but this is one reason Obama was working to overthrow the Syrian government. They would not have political people on the Strategic Advisory Board if they did not need political strings pulled.

Politically, you have the Pipe Line from Qatar being one major issue that was to compete with Russia in selling gas to Europe, which is why Putin is involved. He is not involved in Egypt, Israel, or even Afghanistan. This is the reason why Putin has an interest in Syria and the mainstream media of course championed Obama claiming he was defending children. Then we have Genie Oil and strategic oil reserves within occupied Syria. Just look at the people who are are heavy hitters on the Strategic Advisory Board of Genie Oil!  Not bad for a company nobody has heard of and the glaring issue is why do you need heavy hitters like this just to pump oil? Location! Location! Location! The mainstream media is not going to report on this issue. They even have Rupert Murdoch on their Strategic Advisory Board. This is hush hush in the mainstream media.

Bankster Parasites Need You to Pretend They're Benevolent Stewards of a Global World Order

medium |  In her speech to the 2016 Conservative Party conference, British Prime Minister Theresa May pointedly said:

“…if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means.”

May is currently leading her government to implement a nationally divisive break of the United Kingdom from the European Union. Nationalist sentiment here serves political expediency and despite the fact that a British Prime Minister turned her back on centuries of Enlightenment values of the sort that made Britain the place where the Industrial Revolution began and appeared to embrace rhetoric that pays lip service to that most vile of all antisemitic texts, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion my focus is not on politics or Brexit.

May has gone from defending the EU as Home Secretary to bashing it as British Prime Minister charged with delivering Brexit so where she really stands from a principled point of view is something that I will leave for you, the reader, to decide.

Progressive Combatant in the Deep State's Peak Oil War?

lewrockwell |  And for those naive enough to question this basic assessment of the state’s interests in Syria, ask yourself: if the US and its owned media clique slavishly calls Assad a butcher and promoted chaos in his country for purely humanitarian reasons, why aren’t they doing the same in countries like Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, and Chad? Those countries are ruled by brutal dictators too. Yet your vacuous media guardians, those valiant watchdogs of the truth, do not tell you every day how much of a butcher they are or how we should overthrow their regimes.

The answer is clear: the financial interests that own these media puppets do not prioritize those nations’ resources, strategic locations, or financial structures. So you don’t hear every night how they’re run by butchers. Instead, you see a congresswoman like Gabbard castigated and demonized for daring to question their lying interventionist narrative.

Is that too cynical to consider? Why not hang around your local city commission for a while and see how much power jockeying, clique politics, lying and back-stabbing goes on to decide who will get the contract to build a new 2 million dollar road.

And you think humans, given access to the greatest monopoly of military leverage in the US government, will magically just act in pure humanitarian interest when trillions of dollars are at stake?

I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Aleppo.

Gabbard has criticized Assad’s role in the conflict. But she has also been vocal in denouncing the US’s one party policy of arming terrorists in Syria. She even introduced a bill in Congress to stop arming terrorists. Our government aided and weaponized ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists, the same group that attacked us on 9-11, for the pathetic, pitiful lust for power and money available in Syrian regime change.

Yet today, you’ll see headlines like these plastered all over the hegemonic leftist media: POLITICO: Gabbard won’t disclose who’s paying for secret trip to Syria

 

DAILY BEAST: Tulsi Gabbard’s Fascist Escorts to Syria The Democratic congresswoman used affiliates of a violent, anti-Semitic political party to take tea with Assad.

DAILY KOS: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has turned into a stooge for Syria’s dictator. Who will primary her?

Remember, these are the same outlets who slavishly lined up to dine with the pro-Syrian coup Clinton campaign, as Wikileaks revealed. These are the same outlets who allowed their key reporters to submit their pre-published content for approval by Clinton operatives.

These reporters are of the same state-religious clique that threatened Tulsi Gabbard’s career when she refused to bow the knee to Hillary Clinton in the primary. They want power. They love the state denomination of establishment leftism which allows them to use Syrian migrants’ fleeing desperation as a photo-op to bludgeon their rival state sect embodied in Trump.

The leftist media outlets incessantly questioning Gabbard’s call for peace and an end to US-backed terrorism in Syria don’t care if our intervention has destroyed cities and murdered and raped thousands. They only care about the social status points they get in social circles where being seen outraged at airport arrival lines is more important than stopping mass murder for profit and power.

Peña Nieto is no Putin

telesurtv |  Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex has been ransacked by President Enrique Peña Nieto, other government officials, and the country's oligarchy, and now that it’s bankrupt they have turned it into a Ponzi scheme, prominent economist, researcher, analyst and author James Cypher told teleSUR.

“The Mexican State was levitated by rivers of gold received through the high levels of oil profits but this gold was used so that the oligarchy and their buddies could evade taxes ... almost,” Cypher said. “Public treasury was emptied out years ago — apart from the oil revenues, So, although Pemex has been a huge business, authorities were forced to seek loans everywhere to the oil company afloat.”

Currently, Pemex owes so much money and has been granted so many loans that it struggles to obtain credits, he said, adding that on Thursday the company sold bonds worth over US$250 million, increasing their debt in order to pay off loans.

“In other words, Pemex financing has become a Ponzi scheme,” said Cypher.

The Mexican State has always been in charge and barks out all the orders regarding all issues related to the country, but their achievements or profits always end up in the pockets of government officials.

“The State is an instrument used only for the benefit of the Mexican oligarchy first, and then for U.S. businesspeople and a few more — for example Canadians matter plenty in the mining sector,” Cypher explained.

The U.S. expert and analyst, who currently works for the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, said that contrary to what teleSUR's article on Pemex says regarding partial privatization of Pemex, Peña Nieto's intentions are to completely sell off the company to private enterprises.

The Mexican president’s plans for Pemex contemplate that the company continue operating but it will only carry out support activities that are not profitable.

“We have not had time to analyze how far Pemex will be stripped down but undoubtedly all profitable areas of the company will be taken over by the Mexican oligarchy first, and the rest to the giant oil companies from Houston, Texas,” he noted.

Cypher went on to say that it is almost certain that Hillary Clinton and her advisors participated in one way or another in creating the policies for privatization Peña Nieto has been pushing forward since he took office in 2013.

The renowned economist agreed with leftist Mexican party Morena saying, “Of course! The current Mexican government is going to take their usual share.”