The Digital-Military-Industrial Complex Exposed

From Zero Hedge:

Apparently, the age of the old-fashioned spook is in decline....

What is emerging instead is an obscure world of mysterious boutique companies specializing in data analysis and online influence that contract with government agencies.

As they say about hedge funds, if the general public has heard their names that’s probably not a good sign. But there is now one data analysis company that anyone who pays attention to the US and UK press has heard of: Cambridge Analytica. Representatives have boasted that their list of past and current clients includes the British Ministry of Defense, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of State, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and NATO. Nevertheless, they became recognized for just one influence campaign: the one that helped Donald Trump get elected president of the United States. The kind of help the company offered has since been the subject of much unwelcome legal and journalistic scrutiny.

Carole Cadwalladr’s recent exposé of the inner workings of Cambridge Analytica shows that the company, along with its partner, SCL Group, should rightly be as a cautionary tale about the part private companies play in developing and deploying government-funded behavioral technologies. Her source, former employee Christopher Wylie, has described the development of influence techniques for psychological warfare by SCL Defense, the refinement of similar techniques by SCL Elections through its use across the developing world (for example, a “rumor campaign” deployed to spread fear during the 2007 election in Nigeria), and the purchase of this cyber-arsenal by Robert Mercer, the American billionaire who funded Cambridge Analytica, and who, with the help of Wylie, Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon, and the company’s chief executive Alexander Nix, deployed it on the American electorate in 2016.

But the revelations should also prompt us to ask deeper questions about the kind of behavioral science research that enables both governments and private companies to assume these powers.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-23/digital-military-industrial-complex-exposed

Moving Towards a Digital Economy-the Beginning of the End

From Zero Hedge:

“Some online games have become the new opium to poison the growth of teenagers,”said Yu Xinwen, a vice president of Guangzhou University and delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) recently convened in Beijing. Ms. Yu is urging the Chinese government to a establish classification system for online games.

As robotics replace non-skilled workers and those unemployed workers spend their time playing games online, the digital economy is already replacing the industrial, just as the industrial economy replaced the agrarian at the beginning of the last century. Farmers gave up their acres of cropland and moved to cities in order to support themselves and their families. With robots and autonomous vehicles replacing non-skilled workers at major employers, many of the unemployed (mostly men) may have nothing better to do than play video games.

The Wall Street Journal opinion page pointed out that the recent imposition of a tariff on imported steel may very well help the steel industry, but it will be unlikely to increase employment for steelworkers. Referencing Bloomberg, the Journal presented the case of Voestalpine AG’s steel plant in Austria, which produces 500,000 tons of steel per year and employs 14 workers.  In the 1960’s, that same plant would have required 1000 steelworkers.

So why not let children play video games as much as they want. Perhaps children can see clearly where their world is heading and intend to get their first. Except for those few gifted or affluent, they may be developing the skills they will need to survive in the coming digital economy.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-07/moving-towards-digital-economy-beginning-end

"THESE PEOPLE ARE PROUD AND UNDERSTAND NOTHING. THEY HAVE AN UNHEALTHY INTEREST IN CONTROVERSIES AND ARGUMENTS ABOUT WORDS, RESULTING IN ENVY, STRIFE, VICIOUS TALK, SUSPICION AND CONSTANT FRICTION AMONG SIMILARLY CORRUPT MINDS. THEY ABANDON TRUTH, AND THINK THAT FAITH IS A MEANS TO FINANCIAL GAINS. VIRTUE WITH CONTENTMENT IS OUR TREASURE. FOR WE BRING NOTHING INTO THIS WORLD, AND WILL TAKE NO THINGS OUT OF IT. BUT IF WE HAVE OUR BASIC NEEDS FULFILLED, BE CONTENT WITH THAT." 
1 TIMOTHY 6:4-7

Even McKinsey gets it: High wages improve economic performance

From Naked Capitalism:

McKinsey is turning on neoliberal orthodoxy by advocating high employment, high wage, high demand policies.

“After a year-long analysis of seven developed countries and six sectors,” global management consultancy company McKinsey has “concluded that demand matters for productivity growth and that increasing demand is key to restarting growth across advanced economies.” Which means—surprise, surprise—higher wages for the workforce. The report by James Manyika, Jaana Remes and Jan Mischke was published in the Harvard Business Review. Their analysis marks a shift from the prevailing paradigm of the past several years in which poor productivity growth was viewed as largely a function of supply-side factors such as excessively “rigid” labor markets (hence the call to make it easier to hire and fire workers, and reduce unionization), insufficiently low tax rates (hence the drive to reduce corporate tax rates), a largely unskilled labor force (hence the push for more H1-B visas for Silicon Valley jobs), and too little global competition (hence the need for more, not less free trade).

If deficient demand (and a concomitant commitment to full employment) is not considered relevant as far as productivity goes, the policy framework is very different. Fiscal policy is diminished because there is little point in “wasting” limited financial resources on fiscal stimulus, higher real wages, or a restructuring of the private debt overhang. And economic inequality doesn’t even factor into the equation at all. Rising inequality, growing polarization and the vanishing middle class have all been seen as unfortunate, but inevitable byproducts of globalization, rather than drivers of slow potential growth.

By contrast, the McKinsey analysis leads to a very different policy outcome—one that places demand management and full employment at the heart of macroeconomic policy-making.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/03/even-mckinsey-gets-high-wages-improve-economic-performance.html

Weekend Reading: The Greatest And Most Enduring Gifts of All

From Jesse's cafe:

How often we are perplexed and distracted by the setbacks and mishaps of life.  How often we may feel that God is distant and uncaring, because He has not given us what we wished to have at that moment, or taken away something that we cherished.

We may come to ignore the many good things, the abundance of gifts and tender mercies that are taken for granted, and even greater treasures yet to come, to pursue some passion of the moment, some alluring attractions wrapped in pride, selfishness, and self-pity.

We may have already squandered the gifts of God, and cast them aside, and walked away from our loving homes, to pursue the offices and pleasures and glamours of this world.

And so, in the end, we find that we subsist on the unfulfilling food, fit only for pigs, in our anger and delusion, and are left empty, and unsatisfied.   We dwell in disappointment, disillusion, and despairing from those things that we thought would bring us happiness.  And so we are shut off, alienated from those who would have fellowship with us.

But in this sorry state, in our regrets and recollections of our foolishness and weakness, we may come to see that there is still hope for us, still a light shining in the darkness, if we will only take the way to return home,  and try to recover our own true selves again.

We are not animals, even though we may choose to live and act as such. We are the children of God.  We are His, because He has given us the two greatest gifts that anyone may receive, what makes us human,  and His sons and daughters: repentance and forgiveness.

Let us remember always His faithful and loving presence,  His offering of these gifts to us, and be grateful, and kinder to ourselves, by using them as He has intended us to do.  

And above all,  remember to extend these same gifts to others, who may be less worthy, and not be like the elder brother, willfully separating ourselves from our father, and sisters, and brothers, by our pride of place and our worldly achievements.

For this is a season of penance and sorrow, that ends in the rich harvest of homecoming and rejoicing, and life.

Tax collectors and notorious sinners were all gathering round to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the experts in the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners, and even eats with them.' And so he told them this story...

‘There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, “Father, give me my share of the estate.” So he divided his property between them.

‘Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

‘When he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.”  So he got up and went to his father.


‘But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms round him and kissed him.

‘The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

‘But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.  For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” So they began to celebrate.

‘Meanwhile, the elder son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. “Your brother has come,” he replied, “and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.”

‘The elder brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”

‘“My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.  But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”’

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.kr/2018/03/the-greatest-gifts-of-all.html

Foolishness of Trump's steel tariffs

Korean steelmakers are concerned that heavy tariffs proposed by Donal Trump would hurt their businesses.  Mish raises an important issue on Trump's trade policy.

From Mish's blog:

Trump hopes tariffs will bring back steel manufacturing jobs. It won't happen.

However, the jobs are gone and will never return. NAFTA has nothing to do with it.

The US is producing 7.7% more steel than in March of 1990 with over 48,000 fewer workers.

I created that Chart in Fred by totalling steel workers in Indiana, Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Those are the only states tracked now. If there were more states tracked in 1990, the decline in workers is even greater. There is production in other states but it is minimal.

Don't blame NAFTA. Steel employment went on a deep dive nearly four years earlier.

The fact of the matter is US plants are aging dinosaurs compared to China's. China invested in modernized plants, the US didn't.

The bottom line is simple: If its good for the consumer, it's good policy.

Instead, Trump is promoting trade wars that mathematically cannot be won.

https://www.themaven.net/mishtalk/economics/foolishness-of-trump-s-steel-tariffs-in-one-image-fBLkKMBRNUK57mnRrBs0qQ