Wednesday 20 March 2019

Headlines - 20 March, 2019


## Global Ponzi meltdown/House of Cards/global cooling/deflationary collapse ##
Decline of Globalization (Mish)
The change in total global exports has now gone negative.
The Coming Crisis the Fed Can't Fix: Credit Exhaustion
Thus will end the central banks' bombastic hubris and the public's faith in central banks' godlike powers, the "global growth" story, the China story, and all the other fairy tales that have passed as policies for the past decade rather than what they really were: politically expedient cover for the greatest expansion of inequality in modern history.

## Fault lines/flashpoints/powder kegs/military/war drums ##
US military now preparing to leave as many as 1,000 troops in Syria: Report
Empire of Absurdity: Recycled Neocons, Recycled Enemies
There are times when I wish that the United States would just drop the charade and declare itself a global empire. As a veteran of two imperial wars, a witness to the dark underside of America’s empire-denial, I’ve grown tired of the equivocation and denials from senior policymakers.
Moving Forward, Iran Outflanks the U.S. in Iraq and Beyond
US Threatens International Criminal Court
In 2016, 1 in 4 U.S. armed personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan was a private contractor. This means that the war is already being outsourced, yet scholars, the media and the general public know almost nothing about it.
## War on Venezuela ##

## Global unrest/mob rule/angry people/torches and pitchforks ##
French PM removes police chief and vows to shut down rioters
Gilets jaunes protests in Paris and other cities will be banned if ‘radical groups’ are spotted

## Energy/resources ##
Texas Power Prices Surge 700% on a Chilly Morning in Dallas
A chilly morning in Dallas combined with calm winds and idle power plants sent wholesale electricity prices in Texas to the highest level in more than a year.
‘It’s Probably Over for Us’: Record Flooding Pummels Midwest When Farmers Can Least Afford It
Ice chunks the size of small cars ripped through barns and farmhouses. Baby calves were swept into freezing floodwaters, washing up dead along the banks of swollen rivers. Farm fields were now lakes.
Check Your Freezers: 78000 Pounds of Ground Turkey Recalled
What a Waste
Our modern industrial economy traces a straight line from resource extraction to manufacturing to sales to waste disposal. Since Earth has finite resources and limited ability to absorb pollution, the straight-line economy is unsustainable; it is designed for eventual failure.

## Intelligence/security/internet/cyberwar ##
Global Mass Surveillance And How Facebook's Private Army Is Militarizing Our Data
Orwell would be proud.
The Government Is Using the Most Vulnerable People to Test Facial Recognition Software
If you thought IBM using “quietly scraped” Flickr images to train facial recognition systems was bad, it gets worse. Our research, which will be reviewed for publication this summer, indicates that the U.S. government, researchers, and corporations have used images of immigrants, abused children, and dead people to test their facial recognition systems, all without consent.

## Propaganda/censorship/fake news/alternative facts ##
Manning and the New Inquisition
What is taking place is a series of incremental steps designed to strangle the press and cement into place an American version of China’s totalitarian capitalism.
The Coming Wave Of High-Tech Authoritarianism
One of history’s hard lessons is that collapsing financial systems beget authoritarian politics.
Sucking Liberals into a New Cold War
Out of fury against President Trump, many liberals have enlisted in the ranks of the New Cold War against Russia, seeming to have forgotten the costs to rationality and lives from the first Cold War.
US factory orders barely rise; shipments fall further
New orders for U.S.-made goods rose less than expected in January and shipments fell for a fourth straight month, offering more evidence of a slowdown in manufacturing activity.
While the Nation Fragments Socially, the Financial Aristocracy Rules Unimpeded
If there is one central irony in American history, it is this: the citizenry that broke free of the chains of British Monarchy, the citizenry that reckoned everyone was equal before the law, the citizenry that vowed never to be ruled by an aristocracy that controlled the government and finance as a means of self-enrichment, is now so distracted by social fragmentation that the citizenry is blind to their servitude to a new and formidably informal financial aristocracy.

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