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Brazil’s Senate has overwhelmingly approved a military intervention in Rio de Janeiro that was first proposed by President Michel Temer last week – the latest step in the president’s crackdown on crime and social unrest ahead of a hotly contested local election coming later this year.

As we noted last week, Temer is ordering the military to restore order in the drug-ravaged streets of Rio in the largest intervention since Brazil’s return to Democracy in the mid-1980s. A collapse in public spending on social services has caused crime to reemerge in Brazil’s slums, spiking to levels unseen since 2009.

The decree, which was issued on Friday, had already passed the House, and the Senate vote was the final obstacle to a military takeover of the local police. However, per the AFP, while support for the crackdown is broad-based, it also has its critics: There is particular controversy over government calls for the army-led police to be able to serve mass search and arrest warrants in favelas.

In fact, the prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, who ran infamous anti-corruption operation car wash – which nearly ensnared Temer – said there’s no legal precedent or justification for such mass searches of favelas.

“The penal code does not authorize serving collective or generic search warrants. On the contrary, it demands the greatest possible precision in the homes being searched,” he tweeted.

Furthermore, there’s concern that the crackdown – which was inspired by a series of street robberies during Carnevale festivities in the city – will lead to abuse of the poorest most vulnerable citizens while doing little to address systemic problems like pervasive poverty and poor access to education.

However, the horrifying stories of the crime wave have helped rally popular support for the crackdown.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bastiat Knew the Proper Limits of Government Force

February 18, 2018

Bastiat Knew the Proper Limits of Government Force

If you don’t violate the life, liberty, or property of someone else, you should not see the arm of the law.

High school students in the United States are usually required to take a course in government. They learn about the structure of government but rarely discover the appropriate role of government or the justifiable limits for the use of force in our society. If they did, one of their required readings would be Frédéric Bastiat’s treatise The Law, a seminal mid-Nineteenth-century work that describes eternal truths about life and how we pursue justice. These truths are just as valid today as they were then.

Natural Rights and the Role of Government

Bastiat states that individuals are born with the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. From this notion, the only proper function of the use of force or the law is the collective organization of the natural right to self-defense of these rights.

“Every individual has the right to use force for lawful self-defense. It is for this reason that the collective force — which is only the organized combination of the individual forces — may lawfully be used for the same purpose; and it cannot be used legitimately for any other purpose.”

He then defines any illegitimate use of force or of the law as legal plunder. This is an all-encompassing term which includes any unjustified violation of the life, liberty, or property of others. Many examples abound today with regulations on labor (e.g. minimum wage laws), products (e.g. subsidies and tariffs), health care, education, or even the use of marijuana or any other drugs.

Legal plunder has two primary motivations:

The first is stupid greed. For example, you would never think of robbing your neighbor, but are complacent if the government uses legal plunder to rob him on your behalf.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Pie Is Shrinking So Much The 99% Are Beginning To Starve

January 27, 2018

Melissa E Dockstader/Shutterstock

The Pie Is Shrinking So Much The 99% Are Beginning To Starve

How much longer until the pitchforks come out?

Social movements arise to solve problems of inequality, injustice, exploitation and oppression. In other words, they are solutions to society-wide problems plaguing the many but not the few (i.e. the elites at the top of the wealth-power pyramid).

The basic assumption of social movements is that Utopia is within reach, if only the sources of the problems can be identified and remedied. Since inequality, injustice, exploitation and oppression arise from the asymmetry of power between the few (the financial and political elites) and the many, the solution is a reduction of the asymmetry; that is a tectonic realignment of the social structure that shifts some power—economic and/or political—from the few to the many.

In some instances, the power asymmetry is between ethnic or gender classes, or economic classes (for example, labor and the owners of capital).

Social movements are characterized by profound conflict because the beneficiaries of the power asymmetry resist the demands for a fairer share of the power and privileges, while those who’ve held the short end of the stick have tired of the asymmetry and refuse to back down.

Two dynamics assist a social, political and economic resolution that transfers power from those with too much power to those with too little power: 1) the engines of the economy have shifted productive capacity definitively in favor of those demanding their fair share of power, and 2) the elites recognize that their resistance to power-sharing invites a less predictable and thus far more dangerous open conflict with forces that have much less to lose and much more to gain.

In other words, ceding 40% of their wealth-power still conserves 60%, while stubborn resistance might trigger a revolution that takes 100% of their wealth-power.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Chinese Insurer Warns Of “Mass Defaults, Social Unrest” Due To “Mass Redemption” Run

May 18, 2017

Chinese Insurer Warns Of “Mass Defaults, Social Unrest” Due To “Mass Redemption” Run

One month ago, China came “this close” to the one event which terrifies Beijing more than anything: a run on China’s shadow banks.

As a quick reminder, 150 customers of China’s Mingsheng Bank, the country’s largest private bank, were furious in mid-April when they learned that some 3 trillion yuan invested in Wealth Management Products, the backbone of China’s shadow banking system, had vaporized after bank employees had engaged in fraud and embezzled the funds without ever investing it (later it emerged that Mingsheng employees had put the money into “cultural relics” and jewelry, for their own use).

And while fraud and embezzlement are both endemic in China, the bigger concern raised by the article was the threat of a bank run across China’s massive and unregulated, nearly $10 trillion shadow banking system. Indeed, while there have been numerous allegations and warnings that China’s entire shadow banking facade, dominated by WMPs and other “investment products”, is nothing but a giant ponzi scheme in which recoveries – should there be a bank run, a topic recently discussed on Bloomberg – would be non-existent if there is ever a bank run, defaults of WMPs issued by big banks – and this case an unapproved WMP – are rare, as are shadow bank runs.

For now.

However, in a stunning announcement made by one of China’s largest insurers, Foresea Life has warned of “mass defaults and social unrest” unless China’s regulator lifts a recent ban on its issuance of new products. In a letter to China’s insurance regulator, first reported by the Financial Times, Foresea Life Insurance which is a heavy investor in WMPs, has warned that the company expects “redemptions” of 60 billion yuan, or $8.7 billion, this year and might be unable to meet payouts unless it is able to sell new products.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Politicians Are Now Making Plans in Case the Public Turns Against Them Violently

February 10, 2017

Politicians Are Now Making Plans in Case the Public Turns Against Them Violently

(ANTIMEDIA) Washington, D.C. — As protests continue to break out all around the nation over President Donald Trump’s desire to scrap Obamacare, Politico reported Tuesday that many politicians are beginning to worry about their own personal safety — to the point where some are having private sessions to discuss the matter.

Citing sources who were in the room, Politico writes:

“House Republicans during a closed-door meeting Tuesday discussed how to protect themselves and their staffs from protesters storming town halls and offices in opposition to repealing Obamacare.”

Some of the suggestions, the news outlet reports, include “having a physical exit strategy at town halls, or a backdoor at congressional offices to slip out of, in case demonstrations turn violent; having local police monitor town halls; replacing any glass office-door entrances with heavy doors and deadbolts; and setting up intercoms to ensure those entering congressional offices are there for appointments, not to cause chaos.”

While protests are popping up all over, the Republicans’ private session was no doubt prompted by events that happened over the weekend. While speaking before a raucous crowd in Roseville, California, Representative Tom McClintock had to be escorted from the stage and away from the event by local police officers.

McClintock, who held town hall meetings during the politically volatile days of both the Tea Party and Occupy movements, told The Hill he’s never seen anything like it:

“This was something very different. After an hour, the incident commander for the Roseville Police Department advised us the situation was deteriorating and felt it necessary to get me out of the venue. That’s never happened before.”

This sentiment appeared to be echoed at Tuesday’s closed-door session. Commenting on the meeting, Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker of North Carolina stated:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s Worse Than You Think

November 12, 2016

It’s Worse Than You Think

New York City police officers guard Trump Tower, President-elect Donald Trump’s Manhattan home. (Richard Drew / AP)

Widespread social unrest will ignite when Donald Trump’s base realizes it has been betrayed. I do not know when this will happen. But that it will happen is certain. Investments in the stocks of the war industry, internal security and the prison-industrial complex have skyrocketed since Trump won the presidency. There is a lot of money to be made from a militarized police state.

Our capitalist democracy ceased to function more than two decades ago. We underwent a corporate coup carried out by the Democratic and Republican parties. There are no institutions left that can authentically be called democratic. Trump and Hillary Clinton in a functioning democracy would have never been presidential nominees. The long and ruthless corporate assault on the working class, the legal system, electoral politics, the mass media, social services, the ecosystem, education and civil liberties in the name of neoliberalism has disemboweled the country. It has left the nation a decayed wreck. We celebrate ignorance. We have replaced political discourse, news, culture and intellectual inquiry with celebrity worship and spectacle.

Fascism, as historian Gaetano Salveminipointed out, is about “giving up free institutions.” It is the product of a democracy that has ceased to function. The democratic form will remain, much as it did during the dictatorships in the later part of the Roman Empire, but the reality is despotism, or in our case, corporate despotism. The citizen does not genuinely participate in power.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Grasshopper Nation: Planning For Those Who Aren’t Prepared

June 4, 2016

wikimedia

Grasshopper Nation: Planning For Those Who Aren’t Prepared

Whom will you help? And how much will you be able to?

Take a moment to reflect on all the people you care about who aren’t reading this article. Or sites like this, which wrestle with the implications of limits to growth and the concerning unsustainability of the economic and natural systems our society depends upon.

How many of your family members, good friends, and neighbors simply choose to ignore the messages from those of us alarmists on the “doomer” side, and live life trusting that tomorrow will always look and feel pretty much like today? Most of them? All of them?

Look, it’s understandable. Humans aren’t wired well to respond to future risk that isn’t visible as an immediate threat. And temperamentally, we prefer good news over bad, so we seek to overweight the former and discount the latter. Who wants to stress out about what “might” happen tomorrow, anyways — can’t we just enjoy life today?

The rift between the preparedness-minded and those not is age-old, as fables like Aesop’s The Ant & The Grasshopper date at least as far back as the 5th century BCE.

We spend our focus on this website engaging the “ants”, the empirically-minded folks who look at the data and concur that there is sufficient possibility of one or several crises (economic, energy-related, environmental — or a combination of such) occurring in the next several years. And that taking advance action is prudent.

But the ants are the minority.

Forget about planning for the more esoteric risks posed by faulty monetary policy or energy economics — 72% of Americans don’t even have a basic emergency response kit in place should an ordinary kind of disaster strike (power outage, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, etc).

The simple reality is that, if you’re investing your energies towards building resilience against potential hardship, most of those around you likely aren’t.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Recipe for Collapse: Rising Military and Social Welfare Spending

March 23, 2016

Recipe for Collapse: Rising Military and Social Welfare Spending

Leaders faced with unrest, rising demands and dwindling coffers always debauch their currency as the politically expedient “solution.”

Whatever you think of former Fed chair Alan Greenspan, he is one of the few public voices identifying runaway entitlement costs as a structural threat to the economy and nation. We can summarize Greenspan’s comments very succinctly: there is no free lunch. The more money that is siphoned off for entitlements, the less there is for investment needed to maintain productivity gains that are the foundation of future income generation: Greenspan: Worried About Inflation, Says “Entitlements Crowding Out Investment, Productivity is Dead” (via Mish)

Many people look to the rising costs of the U.S. military as the structural problem, and they have a point: there is no upper limit on military spending, and the demands (by the civilian leadership of the nation) on the services and the Pentagon’s demands for new weaponry are constantly pushing budgets higher.

But the truth is entitlement spending now dwarfs military spending:entitlements are more than $1.75 trillion, half of all Federal spending, while the Pentagon, VA, etc. costs around $700 billion annually.

We have a model for what happens when military and social welfare spending exceed the state’s resources to pay the rising costs: the state/empire collapses. The Western Roman Empire offers an excellent example of this dynamic.

As pressures along the Empire’s borders rose, Rome did not have enough tax revenues to fully fund the army. Hired mercenaries had become a significant part of the Roman army, and if they weren’t paid, then the spoils of war became their default pay.

This erosion of steady pay also eroded the troops’ loyalty to Rome; their loyalties switched to their commanders, who often decided to take his loyal army to Italy and declare himself Emperor.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

China Warns “Social Stability Threatened” As 400,000 Steel Workers Are About To Lose Their Jobs

January 25, 2016

China Warns “Social Stability Threatened” As 400,000 Steel Workers Are About To Lose Their Jobs

In late September, we were stunned to read (and report) that in the first mega-layoff in recent Chinese history, the Harbin-based Heilongjiang Longmay Mining Holding Group, or Longmay Group for short, the biggest met coal miner in northeast China had taken a page straight out of Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg’s playbook and fired 100,000 workers overnight, 40% of its entire 240,000 workforce.

For us this was the sign that China’s long awaited “hard landing” had finally arrived, because as China’s paper of record, China Daily, added then: “now, many migrant workers struggle to find their footing in a downshifting economy. As factories run out of money and construction projects turn idle across China, there has been a rise in the last thing Beijing wants to see: unrest.”

We added that “if there is one thing China’s politburo simply can not afford right now, is to layer public unrest and civil violence on top of an economy which is already in “hard-landing” move. Forget black – this would be the bloody swan that nobody could “possibly have seen coming” and concluded that as for the future of China’s unskilled labor industries, the Fifth Element’s Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg has a good idea of what’s coming.

Fast forward to today when, if not a full million, Xinhua reports that as part of China’s proposed excess capacity production curtailments the country’s steel production slash will translate into the loss of jobs for up to 400,000 workers, estimated Li Xinchuang, head of China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute. Li said more people will be affected in the upstream and downstream industries. According to some estimates just like every banker job in New York “feeds” up to three downstream jobs, so in China every worker in the steel industry helps support between 2 to 3 additional job.s Which means, 400,000 primary layoffs would mean a total job loss number anywhere between 1.2 and 1.6 million jobs!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Swiss Army Chief Warns Of Social Unrest, Calls Upon Citizens To Arm Themselves

December 30, 2015

Swiss Army Chief Warns Of Social Unrest, Calls Upon Citizens To Arm Themselves

Swiss army chief André Blattmann warned, in a Swiss newspaper article on Sunday, the risks of social unrest in Europe are soaring. Recalling the experience of 1939/1945, Blattman fears the increasing aggression in public discourse is an explosively hazardous situation, and advises the Swiss people to arm themselves and warns that the basis for Swiss prosperity is “being called into question.”

As Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reports, speaking on the record for the first time since the November Paris terror attacks, Blattmann told the paper that despite a rise in security incidents over the past two years Switzerland’s means of defence were being reduced.

The situation is growing increasingly risky, Blattman begins.

“The threat of terror is rising, hybrid wars are being fought around the globe; the economic outlook is gloomy and the resulting migration flows of displaced persons and refugees have assumed unforeseen dimensions.”

The situation is growing increasingly risky, Blattman begins.

“The threat of terror is rising, hybrid wars are being fought around the globe; the economic outlook is gloomy and the resulting migration flows of displaced persons and refugees have assumed unforeseen dimensions.”

Blattmann: “Social unrest can not be ruled out”, the vocabulary in public discourse will “dangerously aggressive.”

“The mixture is increasingly unappetizing” Blattmann sees the basis of Swiss prosperity, “has long been once again called into question.”

He recalls the situation around the two world wars in the last century and advises Switzerland, to arm themselves.

The Swiss Armed Forces had held many years ago maneuver, in which the starting point was focused on social unrest in Europe.

* * *

Swiss politicians, of course, responded with disbelief to the army chief and hold his warnings are exaggerated.

Fourth Turning–Social & Cultural Distress Dividing the Nation

November 28, 2015

FOURTH TURNING – SOCIAL & CULTURAL DISTRESS DIVIDING THE NATION

I wrote the first three parts of this article back in September and planned to finish it in early October, but life intervened and truthfully I don’t think I was ready to confront how bad things will likely get as this Fourth Turning moves into the violent, chaotic war stage just over the horizon. The developments in the Middle East, Europe, U.S., China and across the globe in the last months have confirmed my belief war drums are beating louder, global war beckons, and much bloodshed will be the result. Fourth Turnings proceed at their own pace within the 20 to 25 year crisis framework, but there is one guarantee – they never de-intensify as they progress. Just as Winter gets colder, stormier and more bitter as you proceed from December through February, Fourth Turnings get nastier, grimmer, more perilous, with our way of life hanging in the balance.

In Part 1 of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2 I pondered possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy. In Part 3 I focused on the economic channel of distress which is likely to be the primary driving force in the next phase of this Crisis. In Part 4 I will assess the social and cultural channels of distress dividing the nation, Part 5 the technological, ecological, political, military channels of distress likely to burst forth with the molten ingredients of this Fourth Turning, and finally in Part 6 our rendezvous with destiny, with potential climaxes to this Winter of our discontent.

The road ahead will be distressful for everyone living in the U.S., as we experience the horrors of war, economic collapse, civil chaos, political upheaval, and the tearing of society’s social fabric. The pain and suffering being experienced across the globe today will not bypass the people of the United States.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Concealment Strategies Against Social Unrest, Theft, or Confiscation

September 24, 2015

Concealment Strategies Against Social Unrest, Theft, or Confiscation

It does little good to spend a lot of time and money in preparing for difficult times if you don’t also plan on securing those supplies against the very threats you are preparing for. Severe social dislocations caused by war, economic problems, or widespread natural disasters are almost always accompanied by looting, theft, and increased criminal behavior—sometimes in large mobs that even police cannot control. We need to plan ahead on how to deal with those threats without resorting to violent confrontations, which should be a last resort.

We also have to consider government’s propensity to confiscate stored supplies when in short supply. There is still a 1950’s law on the books that gives the government the power to declare anything in short supply as “hoarding.” In the March 3, 2012 edition of my World Affairs Brief, I covered the relevant sections with the Defense Production Act of 1950 that affect personal storage:

“Sec. 102. HOARDING OF DESIGNATED SCARCE MATERIALS [50 U.S.C. App. § 2072]

In order to prevent hoarding , no person shall accumulate (1) in excess of the reasonable demands of business, personal, or home consumption, or (2) for the purpose of resale at prices in excess of prevailing market prices, materials which have been designated by the President as scarce materials or materials the supply of which would be threatened by such accumulation.”

The wording implies that the government is taking action against those that start to hoard for profit once something gets scarce in a crises, but notice that there is no provision for acknowledging or exempting stockpiles that were accumulated before something was declared scare. That’s what is dangerous about this wording. And there are severe penalties for getting caught “hoarding,” regardless of when your supplies were purchased:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Yes it is Scary – But Necessary

February 3, 2015

Yes it is Scary – But Necessary

COMMENT: Hi Martin,

Once again, thank you for all the information you provide on a daily basis. It is informative as well as scary at the same time. I’m afraid you are preaching to the hard headed. Here in Canada, people truly believe in government and socialist ideologies. It is amazing to see that they do not understand that government incompetence and debt is the real problem. They blame the corporations and the “1%” for not “paying their fair share.” No matter what is said, we here in Canada, want more social assistance and government to help us out. Consider the Liberal party in Ontario was re-elected, even though they wasted billions of dollars on boondoggles, and now they want to implement an Ontario pension plan where they take 1.4% from your paycheck and another 1.4% from the employer to put into a government run pension. We only know where that will end up.

Anyway, I would like to thank you for what you are doing but I’m afraid it is too late as socialism has been ingrained from birth through education.

REPLY: This is the source of the civil unrest. The bankers should sleep with armed guards because this is the type of people who will drag them from their beds in the middle of the night when they realize all is lost in their pensions as they listen to politicians blame the 1% for their failures. The politicians will NEVER admit they do not know how to manage anything. It is always that 1% who do not pay enough rather than their lack of management skills. Society has been rising up against the bankers in every society as government. Even looking at the rule of law, in China they dragged the chief justice out in his robs and killed him on the sport for always ruling in favor of the government many years ago. Riots against bankers even go back to ancient time as well as in the Middle Ages as the people burned the bankers homes in Florence during the 14th century.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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