this let them eat cake brookings bat's vote is worth millions of you filthy peasants votes....,

brookings |  Elaine C. Kamarck is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at Brookings and the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at Brookings. She is a public sector scholar with wide experience in government, academia and politics.  Kamarck is an expert on government innovation and reform in the United States, OECD countries and developing countries.  In addition, she also focuses her research on the presidential nomination system and American politics and has worked in many American presidential campaigns. Kamarck is the author of "Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates."

yahoo |   What do you think of Trump’s complaint that the system is corrupt and unfair?Trump’s out of his f***ing mind. Every single presidential candidate except for him knows what this system is. It’s not corrupt. It’s the system by which the parties pick their nominee. Parties are protected under the First Amendment’s freedom of assembly. No American is forced to participate.

Parties are institutions. They have an interest in preserving their brand. Coca-Cola doesn’t let Pepsi participate in their brand. Republicans don’t let Democrats participate in their brand. This is a party decision, and parties make these decisions based on their institutional health. Meaning, if you put someone at the top of the ticket that is so unpopular that you lose the House of Representatives, you’re not doing the right thing for your party.

The voters have been included to keep parties from getting really out of touch. In 1968, Democrats did not understand the depths of the antiwar sentiment in their party and cut [Vietnam War opponents] out of their convention. This time, the Republican Party didn’t understand the anger of voters for Trump. But the bottom line is, this is not a public decision — it’s a party decision.

Do you want that on the record, that Trump is out of his f***ing mind?Yes. He’s out of his f***ing mind. He’s an a******. No other candidate has ever run for president so unprepared.

Do you think his arguments will influence the way we choose nominees?The systems will only change if the parties themselves decide to change them. My guess is the system will move in the other direction from where Trump wants it to, with parties taking greater control of the nominations to keep them from being captured by people who sully the brand.

Trump is essentially arguing for direct democracy.Exactly. He is arguing [for] direct democracy. The Congress has considered a national primary many times. Political parties, however, will never be for it. The current system is very open through the primaries and caucuses and to letting new people participate. At the same time, it has an insider piece to it. That’s why the system has persisted for 40-some years.

The general election is a different story because it’s a constitutionally sanctioned thing. The parties are a different thing. Parties have the right to say this person is not a Democrat or a Republican. They are voluntary associations of citizens. They are semipublic organizations. No democracy has ever managed to function without parties. They are crucial for organizing the electorate and helping people govern.

State Power, or something else? (quote starts at 6:00 in:)

I have often thought that our economies should have crashed thru the floor several years back, either because of declining net energy, or the debt burg. Yet, here we are, limping along, with very little blood in the streets...  

"Now many people, particularly the economic experts, believed that by the end of 1938 the Nazi economic policies would fail. We all, myself included, underestimated what could be achieved through state power; through pay freezes, through price freezes, through exchange controls, and

though the use of concentration camps. It lasted longer than one would have thought."* - Johannes Zahn, Economist & Banker since 1931, on the situation of a looming, second German hyperinflation due to loans taken out to rearm Germany.

The Nazis - A Warning From History, Episode 3 Part 2

cities

radiolab |  There's no scientific metric for measuring a city's personality. But step out on the sidewalk, and you can see and feel it. Two physicists explain one tidy mathematical formula that they believe holds the key to what drives a city. Yet math can't explain most of the human-scale details that make urban life unique. So we head out in search of what the numbers miss, and meet a reluctant city dweller, a man who's walked 700 feet below Manhattan, and a once-thriving community that's slipping away.

u.s. elections are rigged and voting goes on just to pacify the peasants...,

antimedia  |  Dr. Ron Paul says the American electoral system is rigged to keep “independent thinkers” from succeeding.

“I see elections as so much of a charade,” the former Texas congressman said during an April 11 appearance on RT America’s “The Fishtank.” “So much deceit goes on.”

                                                            

Paul is no stranger to the twisted rules of the American presidential horse race. He ran for the highest office as a Libertarian in 1988, and in 2008 and 2012 as a Republican.

He arguably came closest to the nomination in 2012, when the GOP amended its party regulations to prevent the former Texas representative from stealing Mitt Romney’s thunder.

Rule 40(b) of “The Rules of the Republican Party” was changed so the Republican National Committee could “limit the visibility and power of libertarian-minded Texas Rep. Ron Paul at the convention and thus present a unified front behind Mitt Romney, the presumptive nominee,” 

according to David Byler, an elections analyst at RealClearPolitics. The rule requires that, in order to win the nomination, a candidate must have the support of a majority of delegates from eight states.

Although recent wins have tipped Sen. Ted Cruz past the cut off, the rule as written came close to helping Trump take the nomination. Paul warned that the GOP’s machinations to block Donald Trump are a sign of a corrupt, undemocratic system.

to protect Granny Goodness, democrats wage war on their own core Citizens United argument...,

theintercept |  FOR YEARS, THE Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United was depicted by Democrats as the root of all political evil. But now, the core argument embraced by the Court’s conservatives to justify their ruling has taken center stage in the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — because Clinton supporters, to defend the huge amount of corporate cash on which their candidate is relying, frequently invoke that very same reasoning.

The crux of the Citizens United ruling was that a legal ban on independent corporate campaign expenditures constituted a limit on political speech without sufficient justification, and thus violated the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. A primary argument of the Obama Justice Department and Democrats generally in order to uphold that campaign finance law was that corporate expenditures are so corrupting of the political process that limits are justified even if they infringe free speech. In rejecting that view, this was the key argument of Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the five-judge conservative majority (emphasis added):

For the reasons explained above, we now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

Does that sound familiar? It should. That key argument of the right-wing justices in Citizens United has now become the key argument of the Clinton campaign and its media supporters to justify her personal and political receipt of millions upon millions of dollars in corporate money: “Expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” — at least when the candidate in question is Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, the Clinton argument actually goes well beyond the Court’s conservatives: In Citizens United, the right-wing justices merely denied the corrupting effect of independent expenditures (i.e., ones not coordinated with the campaign). But Clinton supporters in 2016 are denying the corrupting effect of direct campaign donations by large banks and corporations and, even worse, huge speaking fees paid to an individual politician shortly before and after that person holds massive political power.

Another critical aspect of the right-wing majority argument in Citizens United was that actual corruption requires proof of a “quid pro quo” arrangement: meaning that the politician is paid to vote a certain way (which is, basically, bribery). Prior precedent, said the Citizens United majority, “was limited to quid pro quo corruption,” quoting a prior case as holding that “the hallmark of corruption is the financial quid pro quo: dollars for political favors.”

Does that sound familiar? It should. That, too, has become a core Clinton-supporting argument: Look, if you can’t prove that Hillary changed her vote in exchange for Goldman Sachs speaking fees or JPMorgan Chase donations (and just by the way, Elizabeth Warren believes she can prove that), then you can’t prove that these donations are corrupting. After all, argue Clinton supporters (echoing the Citizens United majority), “the hallmark of corruption is the financial quid pro quo: dollars for political favors.”

close to half of all superPAC money comes from just 50 donors...,

WaPo |  A small core of super-rich individuals is responsible for the record sums cascading into the coffers of super PACs for the 2016 elections, a dynamic that harks back to the financing of presidential campaigns in the Gilded Age.

Close to half the money — 41 percent — raised by the groups by the end of February came from just 50 mega-donors and their relatives, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign finance reports. Thirty-six of those are Republican supporters who have invested millions in trying to shape the GOP nomination contest — accounting for more than 70 percent of the money from the top 50.

In all, donors this cycle have given more than $607 million to 2,300 super PACs, which can accept unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations. That means super PAC money is on track to surpass the $828 million that the Center for Responsive Politics found was raised by such groups for the 2012 elections.

The staggering amounts reflect how super PACs have become fundraising powerhouses just six years after they came on the scene. The concentration of fundraising power carries echoes of the end of the 19th century, when wealthy interests spent millions to help put former Ohio governor William McKinley in the White House.

not just manufacturing, the global slowdown is monetary

alhambrapartners |  The Wall Street Journal reported a few days ago (h/t ZeroHedge) on the status of the ongoing disruption in domestic production of long haul trucks and vehicles. In what can only be confirmation of the state of US manufacturing, the huge drop in orders for new trucks matches shippers’ perceptions of the actual economic flow in goods. While economists want that to be an isolated circumstance of only manufacturing, goods activities account for a significant proportion of services as well. And it is getting bad:

Orders for new big rigs plunged and inventories of unsold trucks soared to their highest levels since just before the financial crisis, as uncertainty about future demand and a weak market for freight transportation weighed on truck manufacturers.

About 67,000 Class 8 trucks are sitting unsold on dealer lots, after sales in March dropped 37% from a year earlier to 16,000 vehicles, according to ACT Research. Class 8 trucks are the type most commonly used on long-haul routes. Inventories haven’t been this high since early 2007, said Kenny Vieth, president of ACT.

It leaves no doubt that “something” is very wrong now in manufacturing and normal economic flow.

“Fleets are being very cautious in the current uncertain economic environment,” wrote Don Ake, a vice president with FTR Transportation Intelligence, which reported similar order numbers for March. “Freight has slowed due to the manufacturing recession, so they have sufficient trucks to meet current demand.”

Some of this reduction in 2016, as the Journal reports, is due to companies over-ordering in 2014 and 2015 based on the narrative that the economy was actually healing, or at worse would stay in its “new normal.” It raises the issue as to whether these conditions and the manufacturing recession they reflect are cyclical or structural; or both.

As I wrote yesterday, the contraction in goods and the US economy’s basis for them may or may not be heading toward recession. It is clear, however, that whatever the ultimate cycle reality there are deeper imbalances that run back several years, likely traced to decades of financialization that is now overturning, and thus really supersedes cyclical discussion. What we see in the US is not limited to the US, however; it is a global phenomenon, which can only mean one possible explanation.

the steady collapse of the steel economy

aljazeera |  Steel is found everywhere from bridges to sinks, but the global steel industry is going through the worst downturn in 50 years.

An unbalanced supply and demand equation has left even China, the world's largest producer and consumer of steel, calling for global cooperation to try and tackle the industry's problems.

But while China is calling for cooperation, many blame China's steel mills for flooding the market with cheap supply.

Over in the UK, Tata Steel, an Indian company, put its entire business up for sale, blaming cheap Chinese imports for its decision.

The UK boasts the world's oldest steel industry and Port Talbot in south Wales is home to Britain's largest steel plant.

With the UK steel industry on the verge of collapse, we see how tens of thousands of jobs are at risk with the imminent closure, or at least significant downsizing, of the Port Talbot steelworks, which has already been on the decline for decades. 

Although many blame the cheap steel making its way from China, others are also say the UK government has not offered the steel industry enough protection to help it stay competitive.

Steelmakers in China are also suffering. When China outlined its latest five year plan it said that job cuts in the steel sector were likely.

In China, we see how job losses in the steel industry have become more commonplace. With the economy growing at its slowest pace in 25 years and steel mills producing at overcapacity with the lack of demand for raw materials, China has been exporting steel at low prices. Economists say, however, this is only a short-term solution and companies will need to restructure to be efficient.

curiously satisfying to see this trash taking itself out...,

zerohedge |  We now introduce you to someone who may be one of these rich kids' dad. Or rather was, because Gang Yuan, a 42-year-old mining tycoon is no longer alive. His corpse was found chopped into 100 pieces in his Vancouver home. 

According to a civil lawsuit, Yuan came to Canada in 2007 with permanent resident status and made his money by investing in real estate and Saskatchewan farmland, in the process becoming the owner of a at least one abandoned multimillion-dollar Vancouver home... and much more.

As The Province reports, Yuan has been linked to a government corruption scandal in southwestern China. He is also a shining example of how most of the billions in hot money flooding Vancouver real estate funds are sourced: illegally. This story helps to shed some light on the origina of at least a modest amount of that money.

The scandal led to a 19-year jail term for Yunnan province official Lin Yunye.  Yunye was jailed last November for selling $234 million in state mining assets to a number of businessmen from whom he accepted tens of millions in bribes - including gold bars, luxury watches and rhinoceros horns.

The full details follows:

Yunnan, where Yunye was deputy director of land and resources, is a province of lush, bamboo-covered mountains. It is also known as China’s gem-trading hub because of its border with Myanmar, a failed state with bounties of ruby and jade stones that are illicitly smuggled into Yunnan.

Gem exchanges, $50,000 gold bars, a $500,000 bribe, and deals benefiting two Vancouver-area tycoons feature in the lengthy record of charges proven against Yunye in Yunnan Provincial Court. The verdict states Yunye abused his power from 2007 until his arrest in 2014.

the entire status quo is a fraud...,

oftwominds |  Fraud as a way of life caters an extravagant banquet of consequences.

This can't be said politely: the entire status quo in America is a fraud.

The financial system is a fraud.

The political system is a fraud.

National Defense is a fraud.

The healthcare system is a fraud.

Higher education is a fraud.

The mainstream corporate media is a fraud.

Culture--from high to pop--is a fraud.

Need I go on?

We have come to accept fraud as standard operating practice in America, to the detriment of everything that was once worthy. why is this so?

One reason, which I outline in my book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All, is that centralized hierarchies select for fraud and incompetence. Now that virtually every system in America is centralized or regulated by centralized hierarchies, every system in America is fraudulent and incompetent.

Nassim Taleb explains this further in his recent article How To Legally Own Another Person (via Lew G.)

The three ingredients of fraud are abundant: pressure (to get an A, to please your boss, to make your sales numbers, etc.), rationalization (everybody's doing it) and opportunity. 

Taleb explains why failure and fraud become the status quo: admitting error and changing course are risky, and everyone who accepts the servitude of working in a centralized hierarchy--by definition, obedience to authority is the #1 requirement-- is averse to risk.

As as I explain in my book, these systems select for risk aversion and the appearance of obedience to rules and authority while maximizing personal gain: in other words, fraud as a daily way of life. 

Truth is a dangerous poison in centralized hierarchies: anyone caught telling the truth risks a tenner in bureaucratic Siberia. (In the Soviet Gulag ,a tenner meant a ten-year sentence to a labor camp in Siberia.) 

And so the truth is buried, sent to a backwater for further study, obfuscated by jargon, imprisoned by a Top Secret stamp, or simply taken out and executed.Everyone in the system maximizes his/her personal gain by going along with the current trajectory, even if that trajectory is taking the nation off the cliff. 

madame let them eat cake at it again...,

guardian |  The leaders of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have warned that the industrial scale of international tax avoidance revealed by the Panama Papers represents a “great concern” for the global economy and is having a “tremendously negative effect on our mission to end poverty”.

Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, said the revelations that many of the world’s richest and most powerful people are avoiding paying millions in taxes by hiding money from the taxman in offshore havens is a “great, great concern” and “very, very damaging” to the bank’s “mission to end extreme poverty”.

“When taxes are evaded, when state assets are taken and put into these havens, all of these things can have a tremendous negative effect on our mission to end poverty and boost prosperity,” Kim said as he opened the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Washington. 

Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, said the Panama Papers, an unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, showed that “the [international tax] rules appear to be skewed towards” the global rich. 

“Clearly what has resulted from the review of these Panama Papers indicates that however important [international tax rules to prevent] base erosion and profit shifting … it is unfinished business,” she said in an opening address to the meeting. 

Lagarde said more global cooperation is needed to stop tax avoidance and to ensure “the net does not have little loopholes here and there”. “A lot of things have gone global but there is one thing that has not gone global and that is tax. It is still very much a local affair,” she said. “International cooperation really has to be significantly improved and we are happy to play our part.”

the engineered implosion of the house of saud...,

uprootedpalestinians |  For a while there have been incessant rumors, from London to New York, and across the Middle East, of a possible coup in Riyadh.

Now a policy-making source with intimate knowledge not only of the House of Saud but its real masters in the Washington/Wall Street axis has offered an unprecedented glimpse into the current, groundbreaking power play in the Kingdom.

According to the source, «Prince Mohammed bin Salman really does realize what is happening. He is being set up. He is surrounded by consultants going over the entire Saudi economic system aiming for its reorganization – which is certainly necessary. And some of these consultants at the same time are organizing the data for the CIA. This would make any transition away from the monarchy – which the CIA loathes – much easier, towards a favored military officer».

And this would also imply that some of Aramco’s Western employees – hired to hold the place together – are your proverbial CIA agents; a classic cover for clandestine ops.

The whole process started a while ago, in April 2014, when there were rumblings in Riyadh about a move to get rid of King Abdullah. Eventually a compromise was struck; Bandar bin Sultan, a.k.a. Bandar Bush – who badly bundled the war in Syria via his sponsorship of an army of Jihadis – was fired as the real culprit in this Saudi-led war of terror. And Prince Mohammed bin Nayef was promoted to number two in the Kingdom – duly under the orders of His Masters’ Voice in Washington. As he was anointed Crown Prince, Nayef was all but enshrined as the next King in the succession of King Salman.

What the publicity-savvy young Salman wants is to turn the tables. He sees himself as his father’s successor. Yet internal resistance is fierce. According to the source, «it does not play well among the poor masses of the Kingdom that he brags about a two-trillion-dollar stock value of Aramco when they are suffering the removal of House of Saud subsidies». As for the Saudi oil wealth, the young Salman deceptively does not believe «the decline in oil prices poses a threat to us, for us it’s a free market that is governed by supply and demand».

saudi secrets at risk of a global airing...,

NYTimes |  Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.

Several outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom’s economy. But the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The administration, which argues that the legislation would put Americans at legal risk overseas, has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot.

“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’ family members pushing for the legislation.

cable news missrepresented and underreported mass protests of political corruption on capital hill...,

theintercept |  THE DEMOCRACY SPRING, a protest movement calling on Congress to “end the corruption of big money in our politics” and “ensure free and fair elections,” converged on Capitol Hill on Monday, staging a nonviolent sit-in that resulted in over 400 arrests — a massive number by Washington sit-in standards.

While the action, dubbed #DemocracySpring, garnered wide coverage on social media and over 136,000 tweets, cable news programs found little time to cover the political protests, instead focusing largely on horse-race coverage of the presidential candidates for most of the day.

During daytime and afternoon news segments, CNN did not devote any coverage to the actions. MSNBC mentioned the protests for approximately 12 seconds, while Fox News mentioned the arrests and discussed the protests for about 17 seconds.

MSNBC and Fox News not only provided minimal coverage, but hosts on both networks misrepresented the protests, claiming they were narrowly focused only on “voting rights issues.” The focus on systemic political corruption, an issue that was widely criticized during the rally yesterday, was ignored.

Later in the day, CNN posted a short item on its website. The protests were widely covered by CSPAN, Al Jazeera, and NPR, among other outlets. But cable news programs, which specialize in American political news, were another story. 

naked political corruption in high places: how payoffs to politicians look everywhere else but here...,

acting-man |  The revelations about the prime ministers account are connected to the so-called 1MBD scandal involving Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund. The fund has been an utter disaster, “mislaying” some $4 billion in total – and its advisory board is chaired by none other than Najib Razak.

Two things have piqued our interest: for one thing, we were beginning to wonder about the fact that Najib Razak actually remains in office and has so far successfully deflected all attempts to unseat him over the scandal, including massive public protests (however, the air is clearly getting thinner now).

Secondly, ABC has recently sent a team of investigators to Malaysia, who were briefly arrested after attempting to ask the prime minister a few questions. For a while it looked like they may actually face jail time, but that was probably considered one step too far and they were let go after two weeks. They were in Kuala Lumpur while filming a documentary on the still burgeoning scandal.

The documentary – “State of Fear: Murder and Money in Malaysia” – is truly fascinating. As the blurb at ABC’s web site says:

“It’s a story of intrigue, corruption and multiple murders, stretching from the streets of Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, to Switzerland, France and the US as well as Hong Kong and Singapore, all the way to Australia’s doorstep.”

the goldman-sachs settlement is an abomination and an insult to all americans...,

libertyblitzkrieg |  The increased use of eminent domain to transfer property to powerful political interests, the ramifications of the wars on terrorism and drugs, and the violation of the property rights of bondholders in the auto-bailout case have weakened the tradition of strong adherence to the rule of law in United States. We believe these factors have contributed to the sharp decline in the rating for the legal-system area.

To a large degree, the United States has experienced a significant move away from rule of law and toward a highly regulated, politicized, and heavily policed state.

– From the 2014 post: New Report – The United States’ Sharp Drop in Economic Freedom Since 2000 Driven by “Decline in Rule of Law”

The American public should be out in the streets by the hundreds of thousands demanding the resignation of President Barack Obama in response to the total sham settlement just announced by the U.S. government with Goldman Sachs. This farce should be seen for what it really is; a gigantic establishment middle finger waving contemptuously in the face of the reliably neutered and long-suffering American public.

A criminal financial organization that engaged in billions upon billions in fraud against the “muppet” public is once again getting off with barely a slap on the wrist and nobody’s going to do a thing about it. As I’ve said for years and years, until the public says enough is enough nothing is going to change. I suppose that’s simply not going to happen until the next economic downturn, which could emerge in earnest any day now.

David Dayan knows as much about this issue as anyone, and he just penned a scathing assessment of this perversion of justice at the New Republic. Here are a few excerpts from his piece, Why the Goldman Sachs Settlement Is a $5 Billion Sham:

all TBTFB's kept playing wild and loose after 2008 meltdown/bailout - CUZ SOMEBODY LET THEM!!!

reuters |  When Cubic Energy Inc's bankruptcy plan took effect on March 1, shareholders of the Dallas-based oil and gas company were wiped out. Among the losers was Wells Fargo & Co.

The bank had a nearly 10 percent stake in Cubic Energy at the end of 2015 - worth more than $25 million at the company's peak - through a private equity-style unit called Wells Fargo Energy Capital.

The No. 3 U.S. bank by assets, like its rivals, has billions of dollars' worth of exposure to the struggling energy industry through regular loans that are souring. But the case of Cubic Energy shows that Wells Fargo went further into risky areas than other banks, and may now face a reckoning.

The whole sector has been devastated by a 60 percent plunge in oil prices from highs of over $100 a barrel in 2014. The price drop has squeezed energy firms, especially smaller ones, and made it harder for them to pay back loans.

Some of Wells Fargo's most volatile exposure sits within Wells Fargo Energy Capital, a unit that sought fat returns through equity investments and high-risk loans to small companies like Cubic Energy, assuming the energy boom would last.

On top of the equity investment, Cubic owed Wells Fargo nearly $30 million in debt as of Nov. 30, according to its reorganization plan. The bank received land and other assets in Louisiana as part of the reorganization.

What those Louisiana assets are worth today is anyone's guess, said Jon Ross, who was Cubic's vice president of operations until it collapsed.

electronic waste in africa

spiegel |  Over 40 million tonnes of electric and electronic waste (also known as e-waste) are produced worldwide every year. That is boundless heaps of refrigerators, computers, television sets, ovens, telephones, air conditioning units, lamps, toasters and other electric and electronic devices, with a total weight equal to seven times that of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The greatest producers of e-waste per person are the United States and the European Union, while developing countries, such as China, are producing an ever-increasing amount. Only a small part of this waste – about 15.5% in 2014 – is recycled with methods that are efficient and environmentally safe.

The West African country of Ghana, currently undergoing intense economic growth, is an important centre for receiving, re-using, recovering and disposing of electronic waste. Accra, the capital, hosts a thriving second-hand market, a sprawling network of repair shops, and a range of activities which attempt to tap into the full potential of e-waste. And yet, it is also the location of an enormous and heavily polluted electronic waste dumpsite.

A European family deciding to buy a flat-screen TV. A government office disposing of its old printers. A school replacing the computers in its computer lab. A teenager switching his smartphone to a newer model. A non-profit renewing their IT equipment. All operations which – when multiplied by the actual amount – produce the millions of tonnes of electronic waste that flood the planet each year. Many of these abandoned electric and electronic devices still have commercial value, some because they are still functioning and others because they contain valuable materials which can be recycled. This is why they are loaded onto containers, shipped from the ports of developed countries and sent to developing countries, like Ghana. Awaiting them at their destination is a widespread network of middlemen, dealers, repairmen and second-hand salesmen who choose the devices, test that they are operational and put the e-waste from rich countries back into circulation in the local economy.

This large market supplies enterprises, offices and households with second hand electrical appliances and electronic devices, which is how devices which have already lived a first life can start a second one in Africa. But all those objects that are already broken on arrival – in violation of the Basel Convention, which bans the transportation of hazardous waste, including non-operational electronic devices, between countries – and those that die out after their second use end up in the local dumping grounds.

there's no place for clean drinking water under free trade agreements

systemicdisorder |  Yet another standoff between clean drinking water and mining profits has taken shape in Colombia, where two corporations insist their right to pollute trumps human health and the environment. As is customary in these cases, it is clean water that is the underdog here.

Two million people are dependent on water from a high-altitude wetlands, which is also a refuge for endangered species, that a Canadian mining company, Eco Oro Minerals Corporation, wants to use for a gold mine. The wetlands, the Santurbán páramo in the Andes, has been declared off-limits for mining by Colombia’s highest court due to the area’s environmental sensitivity. Eco Oro is suing the Colombian government because of this under the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

The dispute will likely be heard by a secret tribunal that is an arm of the World Bank, even though the World Bank has provided investment capital for Eco Oro to develop the mine.

Eco Oro has not said how much money it intends to ask for, but another mining company, the U.S.-based Tobie Mining and Energy Inc., has separately sued Colombia for US$16.5 billion because the government refused to allow it to establish a gold mine in a national park. To put that $16.5 billion in perspective, the total represents more than 20 percent of Colombia’s budget.

To the north, El Salvador is still awaiting the decision of another secret tribunal in a case heard in September 2014. An Australian mining company, OceanaGold, sued El Salvador for $301 million because it was denied a permit to create a gold mine that would have poisoned the country’s biggest source of water.

Under “free trade” agreements (which have little to do with trade and much to do with enhancing corporate power), governments agree to the mandatory use of “investor-state dispute mechanisms.” What that bland-sounding phrase means is that any “investor” can sue a signatory government to overturn any law or regulation it does not like because the law or regulation “confiscates” its expected profits, with no limitations on who or what constitutes an “investment.” These cases are not heard in regular judicial systems, but rather in secret tribunals with no oversight, no public notice and no appeals. The judges who sit on these tribunals are corporate lawyers whose regular practice is representing corporations in these types of disputes.

as goes lake karibe, so goes zambia...,

NYTimes |  Even as drought and the effects of climate change grew visible across this land, the Kariba Dam was always a steady, and seemingly limitless, source of something rare in Africa: electricity so cheap and plentiful that Zambia could export some to its neighbors.

The power generated from the Kariba — one of the world’s largest hydroelectric dams, in one of the world’s largest artificial lakes — contributed to Zambia’s political stability and helped turn its economy into one of the fastest growing on the continent.

But today, as a severe drought magnified by climate change has cut water levels to record lows, the Kariba is generating so little juice that blackouts have crippled the nation’s already hurting businesses. After a decade of being heralded as a vanguard of African growth, Zambia, in a quick, mortifying letdown, is now struggling to pay its own civil servants and has reached out to the International Monetary Fund for help.

malawi declares state of emergency over drought

aljazeera |  Malawi has declared a state of disaster over worsening food shortages caused by a severe drought as concerns grow over a hunger crisis spreading across much of southern Africa.

Malawi's maize production has dropped by 12 percent, leaving it short of about one million tonnes of maize needed to feed the population, President Peter Mutharika said in a statement on Tuesday.

About 2.8 million Malawians - nearly 20 per cent of the population - face food insecurity, making the country one of the worst hit in southern and eastern Africa, where the current drought affects 50 million people, according to United Nation figures.

"I declare Malawi [to be in] a state of national disaster following prolonged dry spells during the 2015/16 agriculture season," the Malawian president said.

"With the increased maize deficit, it is expected that an increased number of people will be food-insecure and will require humanitarian relief assistance for the whole 2016-17 consumption year," he said.

the food, poverty, and power dialectic - how has the hunger to obesity transformation evolved?

bnarchives |  Food is still a crucial form of social control – only that now it comes in a very different guise. Whereas until recently – and even today in parts of China, South Asia and Africa – the main threat for the underlying population was having too little to eat, nowadays it is having too much. The poor, traditionally punished by hunger, are now much more likely to be penalized by obesity.

This massive, ongoing transformation is reshaping the heart, mind and body of the capitalist subject. The undernourished, underweight, work-till-you-drop poor are gradually being replaced by their overfed, overweight, shop-till-you-drop descendants. And this inversion is hardly for the better. Although the adipose poor live longer than their scrawny predecessors, they are not necessarily healthier. They tend to suffer from non-communicable diseases – primarily diabetes, hypertension, strokes, cancer, heart attacks, atherosclerosis and other cardiovascular ailments Diamond 2012: Ch. 11. And having been born into a hyper-capitalized complex of cheap industrial food, accessible pharmaceutical drugs and a highly intoxicating mass media, many of them are gradually losing their ability to control their inflating bodies and liberate their captured souls.

Ironically, this obesity revolution has been driven by wheat, rice, corn and potatoes – the very same crops that leveraged food power in the earlier hunger era. The plants that forced and lured hunters and gatherers into centralized state structures are now used – together with numerous supplements, both chemical and mental – to enslave capitalist subjects to their own irresistible cravings. And as the sedated, junk-food eating subjects become bigger and heavier, their previously ‘fat cat’ capitalist rulers eat organic, go to the gym and grow leaner and meaner.

middle-east water shortage the root cause of war and refugee crisis?

revealnews |  Secret conversations between American diplomats show how a growing water crisis in the Middle East destabilized the region, helping spark civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and how those water shortages are spreading to the United States.

Classified U.S. cables reviewed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting show a mounting concern by global political and business leaders that water shortages could spark unrest across the world, with dire consequences.

Many of the cables read like diary entries from an apocalyptic sci-fi novel.

“Water shortages have led desperate people to take desperate measures with equally desperate consequences,” according to a 2009 cable sent by U.S. Ambassador Stephen Seche in Yemen as water riots erupted across the country.

On Sept. 22 of that year, Seche sent a stark message to the U.S. State Department in Washington relaying the details of a conversation with Yemen’s minister of water, who “described Yemen’s water shortage as the ‘biggest threat to social stability in the near future.’ He noted that 70 percent of unofficial roadblocks stood up by angry citizens are due to water shortages, which are increasingly a cause of violent conflict.”

Seche soon cabled again, stating that 14 of the country’s 16 aquifers had run dry. At the time, Yemen wasn’t getting much news coverage, and there was little public mention that the country’s groundwater was running out.

These communications, along with similar cables sent from Syria, now seem eerily prescient, given the violent meltdowns in both countries that resulted in a flood of refugees to Europe.

Groundwater, which comes from deeply buried aquifers, supplies the bulk of freshwater in many regions, including Syria, Yemen and drought-plagued California. It is essential for agricultural production, especially in arid regions with little rainwater. When wells run dry, farmers are forced to fallow fields, and some people get hungry, thirsty and often very angry.

The classified diplomatic cables, made public years ago by Wikileaks, now are providing fresh perspective on how water shortages have helped push Syria and Yemen into civil war, and prompted the king of neighboring Saudi Arabia to direct his country’s food companies to scour the globe for farmland. Since then, concerns about the world’s freshwater supplies have only accelerated.

heatwave, mass casualties and suicides strike india amidst two year long drought and water crisis

robertscribbler |  India’s Two Year Drought - The drought itself is an ongoing feature — one that has lasted now for two years in many provinces as abnormally high temperatures and reduced monsoonal rains have produced severe and widespread impacts. In total, 10 of India’s 29 states are now suffering under drought conditions. Some locations, like the Maharashtra town of Latur, east of  Mumbai, are experiencing water shortages so severe that Indian officials have dispatched a drought relief train — containing a half a million liters of water — to provide aid. For hardest hit areas, the situation is so dire that riots are now a risk — prompting authorities to outlaw gatherings of more than 5 people near some water distribution sites. Maharashtra itself is experiencing some of the most severe losses with reports indicating that reservoirs there are at less than 5 percent capacity. Average capacity for all reservoirs throughout India amounted to just 29 percent by the end of March — and the annual monsoonal rains are still at least two months away.

Overall impacts are quite widespread. Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand has declared a water emergency. And the Ganges River is now so low that it is unable to provide water to cool one of the largest coal-fired electrical power stations in West Bengal — forcing it to suspend operations.The great river is dramatically shrunken — causing islands of mud to emerge even as pollutants concentrate in its thinning thread. A diminishing flow that India’s 1.3 billion people rely on for much of their water. It’s a greater crisis so extreme that late last month one of BBC’s India correspondents asked — is this the worst water crisis India has ever faced?

Such broad-ranging and long-lasting drought has hit India’s farmers hard. Last year, more than 3,500 farmers committed suicide after facing some of the worst conditions ever to strike India. This year, the situation is arguably even worse — forcing some desperate regions to consider cloud seeding as a means of possible drought alleviation.

rural water, not city smog, is china's pollution nightmare

NYTimes |  More than 80 percent of the water from underground wells used by farms, factories and households across the heavily populated plains of China is unfit for drinking or bathing because of contamination from industry and farming, according to new statistics that were reported by Chinese media on Monday, raising new alarm about pollution in the world’s most populous country.

After years of focus on China’s hazy skies as a measure of environmental blight, the new data from 2,103 underground wells struck a nerve among Chinese citizens who have become increasingly sensitive about health threats from pollution. Most Chinese cities draw on deep reservoirs that were not part of this study, but many villages and small towns in the countryside depend on the shallower wells of the kind that were tested for the report.

“From my point of view, this shows how water is the biggest environmental issue in China,” said Dabo Guan, a professor at the University of East Anglia in Britain who has been studying water pollution and scarcity in China.

“People in the cities, they see air pollution every day, so it creates huge pressure from the public. But in the cities, people don’t see how bad the water pollution is,” Professor Guan said. “They don’t have the same sense.”

"People Would Be Stunned To Know The Extent To Which The Fed Is Privately Owned"

zerohedge |  With every passing day, the Fed is slowly but surely losing the game. 

Only it is not just former (and in some cases current) Fed presidents admitting central banks are increasingly powerless to boost the global economy, even if they still have sway over capital markets. What is far more insidious to the Fed's waning credibility is when former economists affiliated with the Fed start repeating mantras that until recently were only a prominent feature in the so-called fringe media. 

This is precisely what happened today when former central bank staffer and Dartmouth College economics professor Andrew Levin, special adviser to then Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke between 2010 to 2012, joined with an activist group to argue for overhauls at the central bank that they say would distance it from Wall Street and make its activities more transparent and accountable to the public. 

Levin is pressing for the overhaul with Fed Up coalition activists. Many of the proposed changes target the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which are quasi-private and technically owned by commercial banks in their respective districts. 

All of that is not surprising. What he said to justify his new found cause, however, is. 

"A lot of people would be stunned to know” the extent to which the Federal Reserve is privately owned, Mr. Levin said. The Fed “should be a fully public institution just like every other central bank” in the developed world, he said in a conference call announcing the plan. He described his proposals as "sensible, pragmatic and nonpartisan."

Why is that stunning? Because it has long been a bone of contention if only among the fringe media, that at its core the Fed is merely a private institution, beholden only to its de facto owners: not the people of the U.S. but to a small cabal of banks. Worse, the actual org chart of who owns what is not disclosed, even as the vast majority of the U.S. population remains deluded that the Fed is a publicly owned institution. 

As the WSJ goes on to note, the former central bank staffer said he sees his ideas as designed to maintain the virtues the central bank already brings to the table. They aren’t targeted at changing how policy is conducted today. “What’s important here is that reform to the Federal Reserve can last for 100 years, not just the near term,” he said.

And this is coming from a former Fed employee and Ben Bernanke's personal advisor! That in itself is a most striking development, because now that the insiders are finally speaking up, it will be a race among both current and prior Fed workers to reveal as much dirty laundry as possible ahead of what is increasingly being perceived by many as the Fed's demise.

peasants get life for 3 petty crimes, .00001% get to hide the profit from crimes against humanity...,

newyorker |  Witanhurst, London’s largest private house, was built between 1913 and 1920 on an eleven-acre plot in Highgate, a wealthy hilltop neighborhood north of the city center. First owned by Arthur Crosfield, an English soap magnate, the mansion was designed in the Queen Anne style and contained twenty-five bedrooms, a seventy-foot-long ballroom, and a glass rotunda; the views from its gardens, over Hampstead Heath and across the capital, were among the loveliest in London. For decades, parties at Witanhurst attracted potentates and royals—including, in 1951, Elizabeth, the future Queen.

In May, 2008, I toured Witanhurst with a real-estate agent. There had been no parties there for half a century, and the house had not been occupied regularly since the seventies. The interiors were ravaged: water had leaked through holes in the roof, and, upstairs, the brittle floorboards cracked under our footsteps. The scale of the building lent it a vestigial grandeur, but it felt desolate and Ozymandian. A few weeks later, Witanhurst was sold for fifty million pounds, to a shell company named Safran Holdings Limited, registered in the British Virgin Islands. No further information about the buyers was forthcoming.

In June, 2010, the local council approved plans to redevelop the house and five and a half acres of grounds, maintaining Witanhurst as a “family home.” It was the culmination of a long battle with other Highgate residents, who did not welcome such an ambitious project. Since then, Witanhurst’s old service wing has been demolished and replaced with the so-called Orangery—a three-story Georgian villa designed for “everyday family accommodation.” And beneath the forecourt, in front of the main house, the new owners have built what amounts to an underground village—a basement of more than forty thousand square feet. This basement, which is connected to the Orangery, includes a seventy-foot-long swimming pool, a cinema with a mezzanine, massage rooms, a sauna, a gym, staff quarters, and parking spaces for twenty-five cars. In late 2013, the local council approved plans for a second basement, beneath the gatehouse, which will connect that building to both the main house and the Orangery. Earlier this year, the owners also sought planning permission to extend an underground “servants’ passage.”

When the refurbishment is complete, Witanhurst will have about ninety thousand square feet of interior space, making it the second-largest mansion in the city, after Buckingham Palace. It will likely become the most expensive house in London. In 2006, the Qatari royal family bought Dudley House, on Park Lane, for about forty million pounds; after a renovation, its estimated resale value is two hundred and fifty million pounds. Real-estate agents expect that the completed Witanhurst will be worth three hundred million pounds—about four hundred and fifty million dollars.

If a vast and lavishly appointed house in Manhattan—a palace nearly double the size of the White House—were being redeveloped on the edge of Central Park, New Yorkers would want to know who lived there. Londoners are equally inquisitive, and concerted efforts have been made to uncover the identity of Witanhurst’s owners. Shortly after the house was sold, it became known—from local gossip and publicly accessible planning documents—that Witanhurst belonged to a family from Russia. Several newspapers speculated that the owner was Yelena Baturina, Russia’s richest woman, and the wife of Yury Luzhkov, then the mayor of Moscow. (Luzhkov and Baturina reportedly enriched themselves while he was in office, before Luzhkov clashed with the Russian government; she now lives in London.) Baturina denied owning Witanhurst, and in 2011 she sued the London Sunday Times for publishing an article titled “BUNKER BILLIONAIRESS DIGS DEEP.”

The Baturina lawsuit and the continued secrecy surrounding Witanhurst have intensified the guessing game. Generally, the names of homeowners in Britain are listed in the Land Registry, which can be read for a small fee. But listings for properties owned by offshore companies do not disclose individual beneficiaries. In the British Virgin Islands, records reveal merely the name of the “registered agent” of Safran Holdings—Equity Trust Limited, a local agency that holds several such positions and is connected to the company by name only—and the company’s post-office box, on the island of Tortola.

A recent investigation by the Financial Times found that more than a hundred billion pounds’ worth of real estate in England and Wales is owned by offshore companies. London properties account for two-thirds of that amount. Charles Moore, a former editor of the Telegraph, says that London’s property market has become “a form of legalized international money laundering.”

peasants allow lying, cheating, murderous oxygen-thieves to rule U.S.

resourceinsights |  Was it corruption that led to the bailout instead of a takeover? Or was it an honest difference of opinion about what would work best under emergency circumstances?

We can argue whether these examples of transfers of funds from one group to another are fair. But by themselves they do not constitute a systemic risk to the stability of the entire economic and social system. In fact, some would argue that such transfers enhance that stability. However one evaluates these transfers, I would contend that a much worse corruption is to subject our society knowingly to systemic failures such as severe climate change and widespread crop failures.

To understand this contention, we must review the material basis for our modern society. Despite all the hype about the service economy, the activities which make the service economy even possible are agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining and manufacturing. These sectors create the surplus food and fiber, the surplus energy and minerals, and the surplus goods that allow so many of us to do something other than farm, fish, log, mine or manufacture goods.

By "surplus" I mean that those engaged in the five essential underlying activities of the modern economy provide more food and fiber, extract more energy and other mineral resources, and make more things than they themselves will use. In fact, in so-called developed societies, the people in these occupations create surpluses in their respective areas that are nothing short of astonishing.

In the United States for example, those working in agriculture, fishing and forestry number 2.4 million or about 1.6 percent of the working population of 149 million as of 2015 according the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those working in mining including oil and natural gas production (which, after all, is really just another type of mining) number 917,000 or about 0.6 percent of the working population. These two groups provide most of the raw materials for the rest of the economy while constituting just 2.2 percent of the workforce. Some raw materials, notably oil and metal ores, are supplemented with imports. But that is counterbalanced in part by agricultural exports that are about one-third of all crops grown.

Those working in manufacturing number 15.3 million, dwarfing the number who actually provide the feedstocks for that manufacturing. But manufacturing workers still only constitute 10.3 percent of the total U.S. workforce. We also supplement our manufactured goods with imports. But we export high-value goods such as airplanes, pharmaceuticals and advanced machinery.

So, the percentage of the U.S. workforce that provides the actual material basis for the economy amounts to only 12.5 percent.

example is threat - but - establishment media won't publish big picture of establishment corruption

aljazeera |  Julian Assange: WikiLeaks set an example and the example was the threat. And the example was the threat because the technology, over time, became more available to other people who could then follow the example. But examples really are threats, once they're copied you're not just dealing with one threat any more, you're dealing with normalisation of a particular practice. But we're actually only halfway there. So our technology has been adopted for some of the inputs, a little bit for organisational-to-organisational communication. But unfortunately not much yet on the publishing side. That's still a big problem.

Looking forward as to how I think the Panama Papers will go, it's going to be very hard to get reform without a bulk publishing effort. There's just not the mass, if there are 300 journalists involved that is just not enough mass to deal with the reliance that the establishment of the UK, United States and in fact most countries have in the offshore sector.

Now what you have in practice at the moment is basically a two-tiered tax system where the middle class and the working poor pay income tax and the wealthy essentially don't pay anything. That's a question about the structure of society and that big picture angle is not being engaged with in the journalism that it's done. It is all oh North Korea, oh Russia or sanctions breaking or maybe someone dodging inheritance tax a little bit. But there is a big picture here as well.

Al Jazeera: The stories that we can put a face on. They like to do the stories that they can put a face on ...

Julian Assange: You know, scandals and stories you can put a face on. It can be good for marketing reasons, but what are you marketing in the end? What WikiLeaks does, and what I believe should've been done with this story, is that the scandals are there to market the archive because it's archive that has the scale that can deal with the problem.

how economists rode math to become this era's astrologers...,

aeon |  Since the 2008 financial crisis, colleges and universities have faced increased pressure to identify essential disciplines, and cut the rest. In 2009, Washington State University announced it would eliminate the department of theatre and dance, the department of community and rural sociology, and the German major – the same year that the University of Louisiana at Lafayette ended its philosophy major. In 2012, Emory University in Atlanta did away with the visual arts department and its journalism programme. The cutbacks aren’t restricted to the humanities: in 2011, the state of Texas announced it would eliminate nearly half of its public undergraduate physics programmes. Even when there’s no downsizing, faculty salaries have been frozen and departmental budgets have shrunk.

But despite the funding crunch, it’s a bull market for academic economists. According to a 2015 sociological study in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the median salary of economics teachers in 2012 increased to $103,000 – nearly $30,000 more than sociologists. For the top 10 per cent of economists, that figure jumps to $160,000, higher than the next most lucrative academic discipline – engineering. These figures, stress the study’s authors, do not include other sources of income such as consulting fees for banks and hedge funds, which, as many learned from the documentary Inside Job (2010), are often substantial. (Ben Bernanke, a former academic economist and ex-chairman of the Federal Reserve, earns $200,000-$400,000 for a single appearance.)

Unlike engineers and chemists, economists cannot point to concrete objects – cell phones, plastic – to justify the high valuation of their discipline. Nor, in the case of financial economics and macroeconomics, can they point to the predictive power of their theories. Hedge funds employ cutting-edge economists who command princely fees, but routinely underperform index funds. Eight years ago, Warren Buffet made a 10-year, $1 million bet that a portfolio of hedge funds would lose to the S&P 500, and it looks like he’s going to collect. In 1998, a fund that boasted two Nobel Laureates as advisors collapsed, nearly causing a global financial crisis.

The failure of the field to predict the 2008 crisis has also been well-documented. In 2003, for example, only five years before the Great Recession, the Nobel Laureate Robert E Lucas Jr told the American Economic Association that ‘macroeconomics […] has succeeded: its central problem of depression prevention has been solved’. Short-term predictions fair little better – in April 2014, for instance, a survey of 67 economists yielded 100 per cent consensus: interest rates would rise over the next six months. Instead, they fell. A lot.

Nonetheless, surveys indicate that economists see their discipline as ‘the most scientific of the social sciences’. What is the basis of this collective faith, shared by universities, presidents and billionaires? Shouldn’t successful and powerful people be the first to spot the exaggerated worth of a discipline, and the least likely to pay for it?

In the hypothetical worlds of rational markets, where much of economic theory is set, perhaps. But real-world history tells a different story, of mathematical models masquerading as science and a public eager to buy them, mistaking elegant equations for empirical accuracy.