China Stopped The Ant IPO To Quarantine A Western Financialization And Securitization Pandemic

nakedcapitalism |  The Financial Times comment section confirmed this take and criticized the pink paper’s account, which mentioned but didn’t tease out the significance of Ma criticizing the government for being leery of unsecured personal lending:

At the end of October, Mr Ma criticised China’s state-owned banks at a financial summit in Shanghai. He suggested the big lenders had a “pawnshop mentality” and that Ant was playing an important role in extending credit to innovative but collateral-poor companies and individuals.

From the Financial Times’ peanut gallery:

Hater of Simpletons

For those who didn’t know what happened : check the new regulation which limits Ant’s leverage and enhances consumer protection, which also limits Ant’s valuation as a “tech” company. That was the main reason Jack fired at regulators in his speech [at the end of October] – and to be honest, there was no way he didn’t know the regulation long before the listing date and the speech (gov spent months on a policy, if not longer and would consult industry leaders)! If the IPO were not halted, investors would have suffered from major losses, not to mention the high leverage (60x+) and ABS put Ant’s customers at risk. Jack fired the speech to evade regulation and made sure HE made enough money from the listing. Not investors, not Ant users. Being sarcastic is easy. Try to get clear of what REALLY happened.

Now to the substance of the dispute, which led to the halt of the IPO and will require Ant to substantially restructure its business. Ant originates personal and small business loans to parties with little in the way of assets. These loans command higher interest rates than more conventional loans and from what we infer, “higher’ can mean “pretty high”.

As we have written, China hasn’t been shy about using leverage to boost growth, even though as we and others have written, over time, the incremental lending has produced less and less in the way of GDP lift. China has also had multiple mini-financial crises involving its “wealth management products.” These are typically uninsured investments that provide a fixed interest rate for a set period of time, typically five years. They have often provided funding for state-level real estate investments. Nevertheless, even if you allow for Michael Hudson’s view that land should be taxed aggressively to limit real estate rentierism, economists have found that borrowing to make productive investments in businesses, equipment, and buildings adds to growth, while increases in personal borrowing are a brake.

Another reason for China to take a dim view of personal borrowing is that the government prioritizes wage growth and improving living standards as its basis for legitimacy. There’s no reason, as in the US, to use consumer borrowing to mask stagnant worker wages. And the Chinese may even have recognized that overly financialized economies have lower rates of growth than ones at a more modest level of financial “deepening”. The IMF found that Poland was at the optimum level, but argued that more finance might not create a drag if the sector was well-regulated.

Mind you, we aren’t saying that China is a paragon of regulatory virtue. They still allow for stunning amounts of margin lending against stocks. And they’ve also sat pat as ghost cities, too often shoddily built, continue to rise, a textbook case of trading sardines.¹ But they appear to want to avoid having a finance-driven economy, and also appear to have learned from some of our mistakes.

Now to the specifics of why Chinese officials came down on Ant. First, from the Wall Street Journal:

Some of the writing was on the wall earlier. While Ant was gearing up to launch its IPO, regulators had begun taking aim at the company’s fast-growing microloan business, which provides short-term credit to hundreds of millions of individuals and scores of small businesses.

On Sept. 14, China’s banking and insurance regulator issued a private notice to some commercial banks warning them about the risks of making loans in partnership with third-party institutions, according to a copy of the notice seen by The Wall Street Journal. It said banks should not be outsourcing their loan underwriting and risk controls.

When Ant partners with banks to make loans, the lenders provide the funding and bear the risk of defaults, while Ant collects fees for facilitating the transactions.

Two days later, the regulator published a guideline that placed caps on the volume of asset-backed securities that could be issued by microlenders. Two subsidiaries of Ant have bundled many loans into securities and sold them to raise funds for lending operations.

In other words, Chinese officials tried halting Ant’s practice of originating risky individual/small business loans and selling them to banks, both on the bank and Ant ends of the pipeline. That apparently didn’t lead to a change of course at Ant or its allied banks or lead to any change in appetite for its IPO.

The Ruling Elite, Money, And The Illusion Of Progress...,

theamericanconservative  |  “It was part of a strategy to signal that Republicans intended to seriously contest the South for the first time in over a century,” he writes. “[Ronald] Reagan was fetched at the airport in Meridian by his state chairman, Congressman Trent Lott. Lott had been president of the fraternity that stockpiled a cache of weapons used to riot against the federal marshals protecting a black student seeking to enter the University of Mississippi.” Perlstein reports that it was Lott who urged the president: “If Reagan really wanted to win this crowd over, he need only fold a certain two-word phrase into his speech: states’ rights.”

Perlstein was once dismissively dubbed the “gonzo historian” by former New York Times book review editor and rival chronicler of conservatives Sam Tanenhaus. Indeed, Perlstein recalls the notorious Neshoba County Fair “states’ rights” speech and countless other anecdotes in his 1,100-page opus, Reaganland, in downright Thompsonian fashion. It is his fourth installment of mid-century, American conservative history and it is his best, besting the magisterial Nixonland. Perlstein, a hard lefty journo, might indeed take himself too seriously, but at least he usually affords the same treatment to the subjects of his histories.

Rather than a conventional denunciation of the medial event in Reagan’s use of “the Southern Strategy,” Perlstein actually does reporting. Perlstein reveals Reagan didn’t really believe in what he was saying. “The way he carried out Trent Lott’s suggestion doused the enthusiasm of a previously energetic crowd,” Perlstein says. “And it was hardly worth it. The backlash was immediate and caustic.”

But what did Reagan actually say? “I still believe the answer to any problem lies with the people,” Reagan told the crowd. “I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level, and I believe we’ve distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment.” And Reagan said: “I believe in states’ rights.” It was considered by his critics as tantamount to Morse code to white supremacists. Perlstein dresses up the story pages before with paragraphs of dispatches on the dominance of racial vigilantism in the region in the years before Reagan’s speech. 

But after his address, in the inferno of an August afternoon in central Mississippi, Reagan won. Though reasonable points about black voter suppression can be raised, in November, Reagan won Neshoba County, he won Mississippi, and he won the United States Electoral College. And he did so against a Deep Southern, Democratic incumbent president, which was previously unthinkable. And the GOP hasn’t relinquished Mississippi since—not even when neighboring Arkansan Bill Clinton and Tennessean Al Gore dominated the Nineties.

Perlstein’s chronicle is about the 40th president but, of course, can’t escape the shadow of the 45th. Perlstein has called Donald Trump an heir to Reagan, only stripped of the sunny optimism. A generation of global leaders, usually liberal, championed democracy, only to see Palestine elect Hamas, Egypt elect the Muslim Brotherhood, Mississippi go to Reagan, Britain secede from Europe, and America annoit Trump.

 

Iron Law Of Oligarchy

wikipedia  |  The iron law of oligarchy is a political theory first developed by the German sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book, Political Parties.^[1] It asserts that rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an "iron law" within any democratic organization as part of the "tactical and technical necessities" of organization.^[1]

Michels's theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Michels observed that since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise.

Using anecdotes from political parties and trade unions struggling to operate democratically to build his argument in 1911, Michels addressed the application of this law to representative democracy, and stated: "Who says organization, says oligarchy."^[1] He went on to state that "Historical evolution mocks all the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy."^[1]8

According to Michels, all organizations eventually come to be run by a "leadership class", who often function as paid administrators, executives, spokespersons or political strategists for the organization. Far from being "servants of the masses", Michels argues this "leadership class," rather than the organization's membership, will inevitably grow to dominate the organization's power structures. By controlling who has access to information, those in power can centralize their power successfully, often with little accountability, due to the apathy, indifference and non-participation most rank-and-file members have in relation to their organization's decision-making processes. Michels argues that democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty, the ability to control information about the organization, and the ability to control what procedures the organization follows when making decisions. All of these mechanisms can be used to strongly influence the outcome of any decisions made 'democratically' by members.^[2]

Michels stated that the official goal of representative democracy of eliminating elite rule was impossible, that representative democracy is a façade legitimizing the rule of a particular elite, and that elite rule, which he refers to as oligarchy, is inevitable.^[1] Later Michels migrated to Italy and joined Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party, as he believed this was the next legitimate step of modern societies. The thesis became popular once more in post-war America with the publication of Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union (1956) and during the red scare brought about by McCarthyism.

Economic And Cultural (Power) Discontents Of The Fallen Professional Classes

benjaminstudebaker  |  Then there are jobs that require a degree but which are less secure and less lucrative than they used to be. Attacks on teachers’ unions, for instance, are gradually eroding the benefits and security which teachers have traditionally enjoyed. As this happens, the distinction in living standard between teachers and ordinary workers becomes blurrier and blurrier. Tenured teachers still have a better situation than most workers, but fewer and fewer teachers are put in position to acquire tenure. Within teaching, then, there is a minority of secure, tenured faculty–who are part of the rump professional class. Then there are teachers who have no realistic path to tenure and have been effectively turned into casual workers. These teachers are part of the fallen professional class. The rump professional class and the fallen professional class have largely the same education, but are nonetheless treated very differently, because the system is not interested in rewarding their merit but in reducing the cost of the education system.

The fallen professionals want to be part of the rump professional class, but can no longer access it materially. They can only access it culturally, by maintaining their familiarity with the language and ideas of the rump professionals. For this reason, the fallen professionals try very hard to continue to be part of the culture of the rump professionals. This enables many rump professionals to make money off their fallen counterparts by selling an ersatz version of the experience of professional class life. This takes the form of podcasts, YouTube videos, and prestige TV shows and films. By consuming this media, the fallen professional continues to feel part of the rump professional class, even as the fallen professional is robbed of the material benefits of being a member.

Because the fallen professionals want to feel superior to the ordinary workers, the rump professionals have a financial incentive to sell ideas which flatter this superiority complex. This has led, in recent years, to the development of a woke industry which invents new terms and grounds for taking offence. By using these terms and taking offence in these ways, the fallen professionals feel they are participating in the culture of the rump professionals and they can distinguish themselves from the ordinary workers, who fail to use the language or to recognise the offensiveness.

The rump professionals justify this commercialisation of radicalism on the grounds that it is ostensibly morally committed to resisting racism, patriarchy, fascism, or even capitalism itself. But the main effect of the product is to create cultural barriers between the fallen professionals and the ordinary workers, so the fallen professionals will continue to politically identify with the rump professionals and therefore with the rich. The language is used to label the ordinary worker a deplorable bigot, and the ordinary worker responds by seeking the absolute destruction of these professionals through right nationalist politics. Mortified by the right nationalism of the workers, the rump and fallen professionals lean ever harder into denouncing them as bigots, creating a vicious cycle which pushes the workers further and further to the right.

For some time now, the left has sought to use these fallen professionals as “class traitors”. They are supposed to lead left-wing movements and organise on the ground. But the fallen professionals cannot do this, because they have contempt for the people they are trying to lead. This contempt is nurtured by the cultural content manufactured by the rump professionals.

None of this is anyone’s fault, individually. Because it’s getting harder and harder to be part of the rump professional class, would-be professionals must do everything they can to compete, and that means they have to look for money wherever they can find it. Those who make it must make money off those who do not. Those who do not were fed lies from childhood. They were told that a professional class life was achievable, and they were told it would be wonderful and fulfilling. Their desire to get the recognition and meaning they were promised is a reasonable consequence of the way they were socialised. And how can the ordinary worker react in any other way? The worker cannot have dignity without resisting a professional culture that constantly denigrates workers for lacking elite education.

Have You Been Assigned A Biosecurity Risk Rating By The Elite Parasite Class?

off-guardian  |  COVID 19 is being used to create a global fascist dictatorship. From New Zealand to the the U.S, so called western democracies have adopted and developed the Chinese model of technocracy to create a single biosecurity State.

This globalist corporate State is to be centrally controlled and administered by a distant global governance cartel of appointed bureaucrats. Tasked only to serve the interests of a tiny, disproportionately wealthy group we can call the parasite class.

Every aspect of your life will be monitored and controlled, as we move towards the ultimate surveillance State. Your ability to work, to socialise, to travel, conduct business, access public services and to purchase essential goods and services will be dictated to you, and restricted, by the State, based upon your biosecurity or immunity status.

This transformation process is well underway. You are no longer a human being, you are a biosecurity risk. As such you may be removed to a military controlled quarantine camp as and when the State sees fit. Detention without trial will be the norm. All protest will be outlawed unless the protest suits the agenda of the parasite class.

We have a diminishing window of opportunity to stop this global fascist dictatorship. Violent protest will not work. Not only are they morally indefensible, they are tactically naive.

Violence is the language of the oppressor. The global State holds total dominion over instigation of the use of force. To crack down, in response to a violent uprising, is the fervent hope of the oppressor. It allows the State to exercise more, not less, authoritarian control.

In reality, to stop it, all we need to do is refuse, en masse, to comply. We must do this with our eyes open. It won’t be easy and many of us will face harsh punishment from a desperate tyrant. However, if we don’t stand up now, we are condemning future generations to unimaginable levels of slavery and misery.

In order to foist this upon us, the apparatus behind it has invested billions in propaganda. The fascist technocracy, presently being constructed at an alarming pace, requires our cooperation. Without it, the biosecurity dictatorship cannot gain its desired authority.

As BLM Fades.., The Elites Roll Out Their Little Girl Climate Change Brigade

Autumn Peltier on what she hopes THE WATER WALKER will do for climate change awareness:

"Everyone needs water. We are all one. I hope we can all come together and create awareness for our future, and protect the land and the water." #TIFF20 pic.twitter.com/PxfoT886Nb

— TIFF (@TIFF_NET) September 19, 2020

America Caught In A Police State Pincer Movement

alt-market  |  The establishment supports social justice violence and unrest, and is cracking down hard on any resistance to medical tyranny. The hypocrisy is evident.

But this brings up some questions; such as why they are so keen to allow the BLM riots to continue? As noted at the beginning of this article, I think the strategy is evident – It's a two pronged attempt, a bait and switch: If the Marxists are successful and meet little resistance from the public then they will tear down the current system, and the elitists institutions that fund them like George Soros's Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation will use the opportunity to build an Orwellian collectivist society from the ashes.

On the other hand, as in Germany in the 1930s, the civil unrest caused by hard left groups could also convince the general public that martial law measures are an acceptable solution and make them willing to sacrifice constitutional protections in order to rid themselves of the threat. There have been examples of this recently when federal agents initiated black bagging of protester in Portland using unmarked vans; all I saw from most conservatives was cheering. This would undoubtedly lead to a long term totalitarian structure that, once again, benefits the elites that inhabit every aspect of government including Trump's White House.

In both cases, the power elites get what they want – a police state.

In terms of the pandemic response, a police state is already being established in many nations, and with most Western people's predominantly disarmed there is little chance they will be able to resist the crackdown that will ensue as they try to protest the restrictions. But what about in America?

This is why it does not surprise me that the BLM riots are being encouraged so openly in the US. Look at it this way: If the elites cannot get us to go along with medical tyranny for fear of sparking an armed uprising from conservatives with actual training and ability, then they figure maybe they can trick us into supporting martial law in the name of defeating the political left.

The only solution is to refuse to support either option. We must repel the establishment of medical tyranny and stand against any overstep of state and federal governments against the constitution when it comes to protests. Riots and looting can be dealt with, and dealt with within the confines of the Bill of Rights. Also, once again I would point out that in almost every place where armed citizens organize and take up security measures in their communities the protests remain peaceful, or they don't happen at all.

There is no legitimate excuse for a police state. There is always another way. Anyone that tells you different has an agenda of their own.

DAYYUM! There Go Those Virus Reparations Lawsuits - Er, Uh, You See What Happened Wuz...,

washingtontimes |  Meanwhile, a number of suspicious actions and a paper trail suggest that the virus escaped from one of the labs, though China is clamping down on the ability to pursue those leads.

 “The most logical place to investigate the virus origin has been completely sealed off from outside inquiry by the CCP,” said the document, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

The party has taken draconian steps to control information about the virus since January.

“A gag order to both places was issued on Jan. 1, 2020, and a major general from the PLA who is China’s top military microbiologist essentially took over the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] since mid-January.”

Labs face scrutiny

Both of the labs under scrutiny in the report have conducted extensive research on bat coronaviruses, including those that have close molecular similarities to SARS-Cov-2, the full designation of the new pathogen.

Among the most significant circumstantial evidence identified in the report are the activities of Shi Zhengli, a leader in bat coronavirus research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s only high-security, level four research laboratory.

Ms. Shi has been involved in bioengineering bat coronaviruses, and a medical doctor named Wu Xiaohua launched an online campaign to expose Ms. Shi’s work. Dr. Wu said she believes the coronavirus at the root of the pandemic is one of 50 viruses in a database Ms. Shi manages.

The document also points to a 2015 academic report in Nature Medicine by Ms. Shi and 14 other scientists who said that while researching the potential for bat coronaviruses to infect humans, “we built a chimeric virus encoding a novel, zoonotic [animal-origin] spike protein … that was isolated from Chinese horseshoe bats.”

The scientists said the “hybrid virus” allowed researchers to study the ability of the virus to “cause disease.”

Dr. Wu stated in an internet posting that Ms. Shi used laboratory animals to test the human-infecting virus, and one of those animals may have been the origin of the pandemic.

Dr. Wu also asserted that the institute’s virus-carrying animals had been sold as pets, dead laboratory animals were not properly disposed of, and lab workers were known to boil and eat laboratory-used eggs.

“Wu’s charges of WIV management negligence are specific and have not been convincingly rebutted by WIV,” the analysis said.

Ms. Shi has worked closely with several U.S. virologists, and some American scientists have defended her and the institute from critics who point to her work with bat viruses as a needed focus of an investigation, the analysis says. Ms. Shi, in response to Dr. Wu’s assertions, said in March on her social media account: “I promise with my life that the virus has nothing to do with the lab.”

Mitch, Go Head On And Ninja Turtle SCHLAP The Taste Out Of Andrew Cuomo's Mouth

CTH  |  The biggest of all the bigger financial issues around the economic shut-down will ultimately come down to a battle this spring/summer over a massive bailout for state governments to replace their missing revenue.  States like California, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut & New York have been struggling with financial issues for years.

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”  ~ Rahm Emanuel

Long before the Wuhan Virus those states were near financial collapse.  The only thing keeping them afloat was as expanding economy, and new revenue as a result of President Trump’s economic policies (making bigger pies).

The economic shut-down in those specific states makes their preexisting financial trouble exponentially worse.

Not only will CA, NJ, IL, CT and New York demand a bailout, a very massive bailout to cover their revenue shortfall, but they will almost certainly use the wuhan virus as an excuse to cover and bail-out preexisting budget deficits.  Governor Andrew Cuomo hinted toward his intention weeks ago.  He sees this as an opportunity to get federal money.

So when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell throws a bucket of ice water in the face of blue state governors who were anticipating to “make money” by forcing the country to subsidize their overindulgent spending habits, obviously Cuomo is apoplectic.

For several decades, and particularly since 2008, the issue of unfunded liabilities has been a growing problem for the Blue State governors.  One reason Obamacare was created was to address this issue on the union and healthcare side. However, the underlying over-spending by state legislators/governors was never addressed.

The solution of allowing states to declare bankruptcy has been a part of that discussion for years. However, every Blue state governor knows if they declare bankruptcy they will never sell another bond again…. which means no investment… which means they will implode.

If the laws changed allowing states to declare bankruptcy, internally the blue states would collapse… there would be a massive exodus… people would flee the rust and collapse…. housing values would plummet overnight in Blue states…. business would leave… unemployment would skyrocket…. it would be statewide chaos.

The ultimate result would be smaller populations within the Blue state misery zones.

If You Don't Follow MSM You Are Uninformed - If You Do Follow MSM You Are Misinformed

off-guardian |  We have been given a very clear narrative about the declared coronavirus pandemic. The UK State has passed legislation, in the form of the Coronavirus Act, to compel people to self isolate and practice social distancing in order to delay the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (SC2). We are told this “lockdown”, a common prison term, is essential. We are also told that SC2 has been clearly identified to be the virus which causes the COVID 19 syndrome.

At the time of writing SC2 is said to have infected 60,733 people with 7,097 people supposedly dying of COVID 19 in the UK. This case fatality ration (CFR) of 11.7% is seemingly one of the worst in the world. Furthermore, with just 135 people recovered, the recovery rate in the UK is inexplicably low.

Some reading this may baulk at use of words like “seemingly” and “alleged” in reference to these statistics. The mainstream media (MSM) have been leading the charge to cast anyone who questions the State’s coronavirus narrative as putting lives at risk. The claim being that questioning what we are told by the State, its officials and the MSM undermines the lockdown. The lockdown is, we are told, essential to save lives.

It is possible both to support the precautionary principle and question the lockdown. Questioning the scientific and statistical evidence base, supposedly justifying the complete removal of our civil liberties, does not mean those doing so care nothing for their fellow citizens. On the contrary, many of us are extremely concerned about the impact of the lockdown on everyone. It is desperately sad to see people blindly support their own house arrest while attacking anyone who questions the necessity for it.

The knee jerk reaction, assuming any questioning of the lockdown demonstrates a cavalier, uncaring disregard is puerile. Grown adults shouldn’t simply believe everything they are told like mindless idiots. Critical thinking and asking questions is never “bad” under any circumstances whatsoever.

Only the State, with the unwavering support of its MSM propaganda operation, enforces unanimity of thought. If a system cannot withstand questioning it suggests it is built upon shaky foundation

is and probably not worth maintaining. Yet perhaps it is what we are not told that is more telling.

Among the many things we are not told is how many lives the lockdown will ruin and end prematurely. Are these lives irrelevant? 

We are not told the evidence for the existence of a virus called SARS-CoV-2 is highly questionable and the tests for it unreliable; we are not told that the numbers of deaths reportedly caused by COVID 19 is statistically vague, seemingly deliberately so; we are not told that these deaths are well within the normal range of excess winter mortality and we are not told that in previous years excess winter deaths have been higher than they are now. 

We didn’t need to destroy the economy in response to those, far worse, periods of loss so why do we need to do so for this?

Quiet As It's Kept The Kochtopus Is A Reservoir Of Managerial Intellect And Unified Cultural Vision

state.gov |  Last year, I announced that I would give a series of speeches on China, and this is part of that. It’s the context in which state and local government officials ought to think about the way they lead with respect to our relationship. It’s important. China matters.

It’s been part of my mission at the State Department to mobilize all parts of the United States Government. I was out in Silicon Valley a couple weeks ago to talk to America’s leading tech companies about this very set of issues.

And I need your help, too.

What China does in Topeka and Sacramento reverberates in Washington, in Beijing, and far beyond. Competition with China is happening. It’s happening in your state.

In fact, I would be surprised if most of you in the audience have not been lobbied by the Chinese Communist Party directly.

Chinese Communist Party friendship organizations like the one that I referenced earlier are in Richmond; Minneapolis; Portland; Jupiter, Florida; and many other cities around the country.

But sometimes China’s activities aren’t quite that public, and I want to talk about some of that today. 

Let me read you an excerpt of a letter from a Chinese diplomat. It was China’s Consul General in New York sent a letter last month to the speaker of one of your state legislatures.

Here’s what the letter said in part. It said, quote, “As we all know, Taiwan is part of China… avoid engaging in any official contact with Taiwan, including sending congratulatory messages to the electeds, introducing bills and proclamations for the election, sending officials and representatives to attend the inauguration ceremony, and inviting officials in Taiwan to visit the United States.” End of quote from the letter.

Think about that. You had a diplomat from China assigned here to the United States, a representative of the Chinese Communist Party in New York City, sending an official letter urging that an American elected official shouldn’t exercise his right to freedom of speech.

Let that sink in for just a minute.

And this isn’t a one-off event. It’s happening all across the country.

Chinese consulates in New York, in Illinois, in Texas, and two in California, bound by the diplomatic responsibilities and rights of the Vienna Convention, are very politically active at the state level, as is the embassy right here in Washington, D.C.

Maybe some of you have heard about the time when the Chinese consulate paid the UC-San Diego students to protest the Dalai Lama.

Or last August, when former governor Phil Bryant of Mississippi received a letter from a diplomat in the consul’s office in Houston, threatening to cancel a Chinese investment if the governor chose to travel to Taiwan. Phil went anyway.

Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC): Making Maps of Strategic Silence

How Savage Will the Han Elite Be to Reinstate Their Damaged Controlocracy?

project-syndicate |  In his 2016 book The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century, Norwegian political scientist Stein Ringen describes contemporary China as a “controlocracy,” arguing that its system of government has been transformed into a new regime radically harder and more ideological than what came before. China’s “controlocracy” now bears primary responsibility for the coronavirus epidemic that is sweeping across that country and the world.

Over the past eight years, the central leadership of the Communist Party of China has taken steps to bolster President Xi Jinping’s personal authority, as well as expanding the CPC’s own powers, at the expense of ministries and local and provincial governments. The central authorities have also waged a sustained crackdown on dissent, which has been felt across all domains of Chinese social and political life.

Under the controlocracy, websites have been shut down; lawyers, activists, and writers have been arrested; and a general chill has descended upon online expression and media reporting. Equally important, the system Xi has installed since 2012 is also driving the direction of new technologies in China. Cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI) are all being deployed to strengthen the central government’s control over society. 

The first coronavirus case appeared in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, on December 1, 2019, and, as early as the middle of the month, the Chinese authorities had evidence that the virus could be transmitted between humans. Nonetheless, the government did not officially acknowledge the epidemic on national television until January 20. During those seven weeks, Wuhan police punished eight health workers for attempting to sound the alarm on social media. They were accused of “spreading rumors” and disrupting “social order.”

Meanwhile, the Hubei regional government continued to conceal the real number of coronavirus cases until after local officials had met with the central government in mid-January. In the event, overbearing censorship and bureaucratic obfuscation had squandered any opportunity to get the virus under control before it had spread across Wuhan, a city of 11 million people. By January 23, when the government finally announced a quarantine on Wuhan residents, around five million people had already left the city, triggering the epidemic that is now spreading across China and the rest of the world.

Xi Jinping and Han Elite Governance Have Epically Failed

chinafile |  The cause of all of this lies with The Axlerod [that is, Xi Jinping] and the cabal that surrounds him. It began with the imposition of stern bans on the reporting of factual information that served to embolden deception at every level of government, although it only struck its true stride when bureaucrats throughout the system shrugged off responsibility for the unfolding situation while continuing to seek the approbation of their superiors. They all blithely stood by as the crucial window of opportunity to deal with the outbreak of the infection snapped shut in their faces.

Ours is a system in which The Ultimate Arbiter [an imperial-era term used by state media to describe Xi Jinping] monopolizes power. It results in what I call “organizational discombobulation” that, in turn, has served to enable a dangerous “systemic impotence” at every level. A political culture has thereby been nurtured that, in terms of the real public good, is ethically bankrupt, for it is one that strains to vouchsafe its privatized Party-State, or what they call their “Mountains and Rivers” while abandoning the people over which it holds sway to suffer the vicissitudes of a cruel fate. It is a system that turns every natural disaster into an even greater man-made catastrophe. The coronavirus epidemic has revealed the rotten core of Chinese governance; the fragile and vacuous heart of the jittering edifice of state has thereby shown up as never before.

This viral outbreak, which has been exacerbated into a national calamity by the power-holders, is more perilous perhaps than total war itself, for everything is being caught up by the struggle—the nation’s ethical fabric, its politics, our society, as well as the economy. Let me say that again—it is even more perilous than total war, for it lays the nation open to a kind of devastation that even foreign invaders in the past had failed to visit upon us. The ancients put it well, “Only thieves nurtured at home can truly despoil a homeland.” Although the Americans may well be trying to undermine our economy, here at home The Axlerod is himself beating them to it! Please note: just as the epidemic was reaching a critical moment, He made a big deal about being “Personally This” and “Personally That“ [when meeting Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO on 29 January, Xi made a point of saying that he was “personally commanding” the response to the outbreak, a statement that was widely derided online]. Empty words that only serve to highlight the hypocrisy. Such claims served merely to elicit nationwide outrage and sow desolation in the hearts of the people.  

It is true: the level of popular fury is volcanic and a people thus enraged may, in the end, also cast aside their fear. Herein I offer my understanding of these developments in the broader context of the global system. Being mindful also of the cyclical nature of the political zeitgeist, and with a steady eye on what has been happening here in China since 2018 [when Xi Jinping was granted limitless tenure and Xu published his famous broadside aimed at the Party-State], I have formulated my thoughts under nine headings. Compatriots: they are respectfully offered here for your consideration.

Intelligence Community and Its Captive Media Oligopoly ARE the Enemy of the People

Globe |  A central pillar of President Trump’s politics is a sustained assault on the free press. Journalists are not classified as fellow Americans, but rather “the enemy of the people.” This relentless assault on the free press has dangerous consequences. We asked editorial boards from around the country – liberal and conservative, large and small – to join us today to address this fundamental threat in their own words. 

There was once broad, bipartisan, intergenerational agreement in the United States that the press played this important role. Yet that view is no longer shared by many Americans. “The news media is the enemy of the American people,” is a sentiment endorsed by 48 percent of Republicans surveyed this month by Ipsos polling firm. That poll is not an outlier. One published this week found 51 percent of Republicans considered the press “the enemy of the people rather than an important part of democracy.”  

“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors,” Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote in 1971. Would that it were still the case. Lies are antithetical to an informed citizenry, responsible for self-governance. The greatness of America is dependent on the role of a free press to speak the truth to the powerful. To label the press “the enemy of the people” is as un-American as it is dangerous to the civic compact we have shared for more than two centuries.

Why Do Peasants Stay Inside The Cattle Pen Of Permitted Discourse?

caitlinjohnstone  |  Plutocrat-owned news media outlets lie constantly. When I say this I don’t mean that everything they say is false; many of the events reported by mass media are for the most part factual. Whenever it’s convenient for the loose alliance of western plutocrats, the political establishment those plutocrats own and operate, and the secretive government agencies with which they are allied, the plutocratic media tell the truth to the extent that it advances plutocratic agendas. But only telling the truth when it suits one’s agendas is the same as lying constantly.

A good liar doesn’t simply say the opposite of what’s true all the time; nobody does that. A good liar tells the truth enough of the time to gain a reputation as an honest and trustworthy source of information, and then, when the truth poses an obstacle to their agendas, they put the slightest spin possible on it to nullify that obstacle. They tell half-truths, they omit key pieces of information, and, with really important maneuvers like manufacturing consent for a strategic military destabilization in the Middle East or new cold war escalations against a nuclear superpower, they shift accountability for factual reporting from themselves onto secretive military and intelligence agencies. In this way they keep full control of the narrative and still ensure that the public supports agendas which do not serve the public interest.

This is evidenced by the fact that the public has continued collaborating with a system which kills the ecosystem we depend on for survival and allows people to die of poverty while spending trillions of dollars in needless wars overseas and an ever-expanding Orwellian surveillance network. Everyone besides the most powerful and their lackeys is aware on some level that the current system is not working for them, and yet the overwhelming majority of people keep playing into it by supporting mainstream parties that are fully owned and operated by wealthy oligarchs, and then shrugging and sighing when things keep getting worse.

This is because their consent has been successfully manufactured. Due to the fact that the governed will always vastly outnumber their government, any government necessarily depends upon the consent of the governed. The entire American populace could theoretically wake up tomorrow morning and decide they want to literally eat everyone on Capitol Hill, and there’s not actually anything anyone could do to stop them. The only thing holding existing power structures in place is the fact that the public consents to it, and, in a system which does not serve the interests of the public, the only thing holding that consent in place is the ability of those in power to manufacture it.

So if there’s ever any doubt that international network of ruling elites would pour billions of dollars into controlling public narratives, remember that their power (and potentially their very lives) fully depends on their ability to manufacture the consent of the governed. Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. If they lose control of the narrative, they lose everything.

Top Secret Clown Bidnis And The "Intelligence Community"

kunstler |  “For more than a decade, Russia has meddled in elections around the world, supported brutal dictators and invaded sovereign nations — all to the detriment of United States interests.”

— The New York Times

 

The Resistance sure got a case of the vapors this week over Mr. Trump’s failure to throttle America’s arch-enemy, the murderous thug V. Putin of Russia, onstage in Helsinki, as any genuine Marvel Comix hero is expected to do when facing consummate evil. Instead, the Golden Golem of Greatness voiced some doubts about the veracity of our “intelligence community” — as the shape-shifting Moloch of black ops likes to call itself, as if it were a kindly service organization in Mr. Rogers neighborhood, collecting dimes for victims of childhood cancer.

If I may be frank, the US Intel community looks like a much bigger threat to American life and values than anything Mr. Putin is doing, for instance his alleged “meddling” in US elections. This word, meddling, absolutely pervades the captive Resistance news outlets these days. It has a thrilling vagueness about it, intimating all kinds of dark deeds without specifying anything, as consorting with Satan once did in our history. The reason: the only specific acts associated with this meddling include the disclosure of incriminating emails among the Democratic National Committee leadership, and a tiny gang of Facebook trolls making sport of profoundly idiotic and dysfunctional American electoral politics.

The brief against Russia also contains vague accusations of “aggression.” It is hard to discern what is meant by that — though it apparently warms the heart of American war hawks and their paymasters in the warfare industries. They allege that Russia “stole” Crimea from Ukraine. Consider: Crimea had been a province of Russia since the 1700s. Ukraine itself was a province of the USSR when Nikita Khrushchev put Crimea under Ukraine’s administrative control in 1956, a relationship which became obviously problematic after the breakup of the soviet mega-state in 1990 — and became even more of a problem when the US State Department and our CIA stage-managed a coup against the Russia-leaning Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Crimea is the site of Russia’s only warm water naval bases. Do you suppose that even an experience American CIA analyst might understand that Russia would under no circumstances give up those assets? Please, grow up.

Status Update On The CIA Democrats

First Posting on this March 13, 2018.

WSWS |  The Democratic Party has made a strategic decision to bypass candidates from its progressive wing and recruit former members of the military and intelligence agencies to compete with Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. The shift away from liberal politicians to center-right government agents and military personnel is part of a broader plan to rebuild the party so it better serves the interests of its core constituents, Wall Street, big business, and the foreign policy establishment. Democrat leaders want to eliminate left-leaning candidates who think the party should promote issues that are important to working people and replace them with career bureaucrats who will be more responsive to the needs of business. The ultimate objective of this organization-remake is to create a center-right superparty comprised almost entirely of trusted allies from the national security state who can be depended on to implement the regressive policies required by their wealthy contributors. 

The busiest primary day of the US congressional election season saw incumbent Democrats and Republicans winning renomination easily, while in contests for open congressional seats the Democratic Party continued its push to select first-time candidates drawn from the national-security apparatus.

On the ballot Tuesday were the nominations for 85 congressional seats—one-fifth of the US House of Representatives—together with five state governorships and five US Senate seats.

Of the five Senate seats, only one is thought competitive, in Montana, where incumbent two-term Democrat Jon Tester will face Republican State Auditor Matt Rosendale, who has the support of the national party, President Trump and most ultra-right groups. Trump carried Montana by a sizeable margin in 2016.

Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi won renomination and faces only a token Democratic opponent, while three Democratic incumbents, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Diane Feinstein of California, won their primaries Tuesday and are expected to win reelection easily.

Among the five governorships where nominations were decided Tuesday, Republicans are heavily favored in Alabama and South Dakota and Democrats in California and New Mexico, with only Iowa considered a somewhat competitive race. Republican Kim Reynolds, the lieutenant governor who succeeded Terry Branstad after Trump appointed him US ambassador to China, will face millionaire businessman Fred Hubbell, who defeated a Bernie Sanders-backed candidate, nurses’ union leader Cathy Glasson, to win the Democratic nomination.

The most significant results on Tuesday came in the congressional contests, particularly in the 20 or so seats that are either open due to a retirement or closely contested, based on past results.

Perhaps most revealing was the outcome in New Jersey, where the Democratic Party is seriously contesting all five Republican-held seats. The five Democratic candidates selected in Tuesday’s primary include four whose background lies in the national-security apparatus and a fifth, State Senator Jeff Van Drew, who is a fiscal and cultural conservative. Van Drew opposed gay marriage in the state legislature and has good relations with the National Rifle Association.

Hillary Clinton's Transformative Impact on Society: Africans Sold at Libyan Slave Markets

usatoday |  'We came, we saw, he died,' she joked. But overthrowing Gadhafi was a humanitarian and strategic debacle that now limits our options on North Korea. 

Black Africans are being sold in open-air slave markets,  and it’s Hillary Clinton’s fault. But you won’t hear much about that from the news media or the foreign-policy pundits, so let me explain.

Footage from Libya, released recently by CNN, showed young men from sub-Saharan Africa being auctioned off as farm workers in slave markets.

And how did we get to this point? As the BBC reported back in May, “Libya has been beset by chaos since NATO-backed forces overthrew long-serving ruler Col. Moammar Gadhafi in October 2011.”

And who was behind that overthrow? None other than then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Under President George W. Bush in 2003, the United States negotiated an agreement with Libyan strongman Gadhafi. The deal: He would give up his weapons of mass destruction peacefully, and we wouldn’t try to depose him.

That seemed a good deal at the time, but the Obama administration didn’t stick to it. Instead, in an operation spearheaded by Clinton, the United States went ahead and toppled him anyway.

The overthrow turned out to be a debacle. Libya exploded into chaos and civil war, and refugees flooded Europe, destabilizing governments there. But at the time, Clinton thought it was a great triumph — "We came, we saw, he died,” she joked about Gadhafi’s overthrow — and adviser Sidney Blumenthal encouraged her to tout her "successful strategy" as evidence of her fitness for the highest office in the land.

It’s surprising the extent to which Clinton has gotten a pass for this debacle, which represents a humanitarian and strategic failure of the first order. (And, of course, the damage is still compounding: How likely is North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons after seeing the worthlessness of U.S. promises to Gadhafi?)

Never Too Young To Master Personal Attacks And Voter Manipulation

Guardian |  Niall Ferguson, the conservative British historian and political commentator, has resigned from a key position on a US university free speech programme after leaked emails revealed that he urged a group of Republican students to conduct “opposition research” on a leftwing student.

Ferguson had been serving in a senior leadership role on the Cardinal Conversations, a Stanford University programme that has given a platform to contentious speakers including Charles Murray, the controversial social scientist who has claimed that black and Latino genetics are linked to intellectual inferiority.

The leaked emails, which first appeared in the Stanford Daily newspaper, revealed that, following a backlash against Murray’s appearance, the Sunday Times columnist urged conservative students to conduct “some opposition research on Mr O” – a reference to a leftwing activist student at Stanford, Michael Ocon.

After the emails were published last Thursday, Ferguson said he regretted his actions but explained that he had been “deeply concerned” that Stanford’s student steering committee was in danger of “being taken over by elements that were fundamentally hostile to free speech”.

In one email sent to various conservative students, including John Rice-Cameron, the president of Stanford College Republicans and the son of Susan Rice, a former national security adviser to Barack Obama, Ferguson confides: “Now we turn to the more subtle game of grinding them down on the committee. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

“Unite against the [social justice warriors],” he instructed students in another email, urging them “to bury whatever past differences they may have for the common good”.

Rice-Cameron replies: “Slowly, we will continue to crush the left’s will to resist, as they will crack under pressure.”

Murray spoke on 22 February after students had complained to the university’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, and expressed their disapproval at his inclusion in the debate series.

“Murray’s history of racism and using pseudo-science to further racist ideas is deeply disturbing,” read the letter from Students for a Sustainable Stanford.