My Job is Going Away, and I Am Thrilled About It

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."   
- C.S. Lewis, [From the Preface] The Screwtape Letters


So it was approximately two weeks ago that my coworkers and I got our first ‘official’ announcement of when our contract, and hence our employment, is ending.  As of today, we’ve got just under six weeks of employment left here.  We all knew it was an eventuality once the contract was awarded to a different company last year, yet the mood in the office still seems somewhat somber with a tinge of desperation.  The funny thing is that unlike most people here, I am actually looking forward to my employment and time here coming to an end.  I am counting the days with anticipation, not dread.

Before you say it, no, I’m not mental.  And no, I’m not planning to be a welfare sponge either.  This is simply me being eager to move on to new things, and knowing that I don’t have to scramble to find any job available to pay the bills because we have put a lot of effort in increasing our financial resilience and living well below our means.  This job was nothing more than a means to an end (that end being saving money for future business endeavors), and I am eager to leave this behind me.

Now before I start talking too much trash, let me explain that the company I work for is actually not a terrible place to work by any means.  It treats us slightly better than what you typically might expect from any big corporation, and the (local) management is not only competent but they’re fairly considerate and forthcoming to the employees.  It sucks working for them in the sense that it sucks working in just about ANY corporate environment, but compared to most corporations they are pretty decent.

No, the biggest issue I have with my job is that we work for a government customer, and just about every cliché regarding government incompetence, inefficiency, and cronyism has been demonstrated for us in spades.  I’ve worked for poorly run private businesses before, yet both of those places end up looking like Apple or Google when compared to this particular government organization.  It gets to the point where it can be funny to watch it unfold, at least until one remembers that it’s our tax dollars being used to fund this circus of ass-clowns.  But while the incompetence and inefficiency displayed by the government organization and officials in question is grating, what I find hardest about working here is the work culture.  The culture in this, and I expect most other, government organizations can be summed up as follows:

- Groupthink dominates everything.... sucking up and doing ONLY what you're told tends to gets you ahead, whereas independent thought and proactive behaviors more often than not just opens oneself to criticism from management and stalls ones career.

- Seniority and the approval of those with it trump the strength of any particular idea, plan, or proposal.

- Accepting responsibility and taking accountability for your actions is usually seen as only a risk to one's career, where avoiding accountability or spreading it around so wide it cannot be applied to any one person or small group is the key to success.

- Growing your department and securing more money for it supersedes the need for efficiency or whatever is good for the customer, taxpayer, and/or nation.

- The rules only apply to the rank-and-file, not your boss and especially not upper management.  Try applying the rules to upper management and you will get spanked.... HARD (a warning to you sysadmins and network security folks managing government systems).


Don't get me wrong, I know full well that these elements are often found in private enterprise too.  Particularly large corporations and businesses... the larger the organization the more bureaucracy you typically find, and these behaviors thrive in bureaucracy.  Hell, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has made a wonderful career of skewering these behaviors in the corporate world.  However there usually tends to be a practical limit to how much it prevails in the business world, as any business too entrenched in these behaviors becomes consistently unprofitable and eventually fails.  Government organizations are very rarely under any pressure to be profitable or produce more than they consume (which doesn't necessarily have to be measured in monetary terms), and the ways in which their performance is typically measured (if it ever is) are usually pretty vague and much more about conforming to the system and not creating controversy than being productive or the level of service they offer.

So that is why I'm happy to be leaving.  Over the long term, the environment just feels toxic and appears to make the people in it dumber over time.  And being a government contractor instead of a government employee doesn't make it much better.... you're still exposed to this toxic mindset & culture, just to a somewhat lesser degree.  Putting up with this environment is a small part of the reason I started writing here, to exercise the thinking and analytical skills that get so little use during my work activities.  Some people put up with certain jobs so as to gain knowledge or skills that can be used for some later goal in life, like running their own business.  Sadly, the biggest learning experience I can take from this job is a long list of things NOT to do when operating an organization or running a business.  Though I suppose that can be just as valuable in its own way...

Link of the Week: Dangers of Crossing The Political Elite in Argentina

Sorry for the delay in posting, but sometimes life gets in the way, you know?

Anyway, this link of the week comes from an article from Haaretz, written by the journalist who broke the story in Argentina of the death of a prosecutor there ONE DAY before he was due to deliver incriminating testimony on the despot queen... er, president... of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, and a number of other connected people (you can read more about that here).  I just thought it was an interesting example of the need to use caution when crossing your local political elite.  Speaking truth to power needs to be done and I'm glad journalists like Damian Pachter, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, and others are doing it.  I just encourage them and anyone who does the same to not assume that being a public figure, having journalist credentials, or the laws of the land will protect you from reprisal.  The bulk of the political elite here in the US usually tend to be more subtle than those in Argentina, but they would still not hesitate to bury you forever if you're enough of a threat and they think they can pull it off...


Why I fled Argentina after breaking the story of Alberto Nisman’s death

"In an exclusive column, Jewish journalist Damian Pachter – who first reported on the death of the special prosecutor – recounts the intimidation, the sleepless nights, the agent who stalked him and his ultimate decision to head for Israel.

By Damian Pachter     

So here they are, the craziest 48 hours of my life.

When my source gave me the scoop on Alberto Nisman’s death, I was writing a piece on the special prosecutor’s accusations against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, her (Jewish) Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, two pro-Iran “social activists” and parliamentarian Andrés Larroque. I learned that Nisman had been shot dead in his home.

The vetting process wasn’t too tough because of my source’s incredible attention to detail. His name will never be revealed.

Two things stood in my mind: my source’s safety and people’s right to know what happened that day, though not necessarily in that order.

Of course, for both speed and the contagion effect, Twitter was the way to go. The information was so solid I never doubted my source, despite my one or two colleagues who doubted me because I only had 420 Twitter followers — a number now eclipsing 10,000.

As the night went on, journalists contacted me in order to get the news from me even more directly. The first to do so was Gabriel Bracesco.

Once I tweeted that Nisman had died, hundreds of people quickly retweeted the news and started following me. That was my first of many sleepless days.

“You just broke the best story in decades,” lots of people said. “You’re crazy,” was another take. Either way, nobody questioned that the situation was very grave.

The following days were marked by a government trying to create an official story. First, the head of state suggested a “suicide hypothesis,” then a mysterious murder. They of course were not to blame. In anything.


That week I received several messages from one of my oldest and best sources. He urged me to visit him, but in those crazy days I underestimated his proposal.

On Friday I was working at the Buenos Aires Herald.com newsroom when a colleague from the BBC urged me to look at the state news agency’s story on Nisman’s death. The piece had some serious typos but the message was even stranger: The agency quoted a supposed tweet of mine that I never wrote.

I cursed in anger, adding amid the profanity: “I’ll tweet this and then they’ll see.” But I waited a few minutes to cool down and realized that this tweet was a kind of coded message.

So I bounced it off my friend, who said: “Get out now and go to Retiro,” Buenos Aires’ central bus station. “And come visit me. You have to leave the city.” It was around 8:30 P.M.

I was very lucky: When I arrived a bus would be leaving in two minutes. Where that bus was going I’ll never reveal either."



Read the rest here.

Life Without Adversity or Struggle Makes For Weak Children and Worse Adults

Stumbled across this article this week:

Murderous Son, Who Killed His Hedge Fund Father Over $200 Allowance, Was A Mentally-Disturbed Princeton Economics Grad

"The most bizarre story from the past weekend was the shocking murder of Tom Gilbert, 70, founder of the Wainscott biotech-focused hedge fund, who was shot dead in his Sutton Place apartment on Sunday Afternoon: shocking because the alleged shooter was none other than his Millennial, hence unemployed, 30-year-old son. What was certainly unclear at the time was what would be the motivation of a son to kill his successful and wealthy father, especially in such dramatic cold blood.

We now know not only the motivation, thanks to AP:

    "The son of a millionaire Manhattan hedge fund founder who allegedly gunned down his dad over his allowance has been arraigned on a second-degree murder charge, authorities said.

    A law enforcement source told the New York Post that Thomas Gilbert Jr. had just been told by his father that he would only receive $400 for spending money per month from that point on in addition to $2,400 per month for rent. The younger Gilbert had previously received $600 per month."

... but also the alleged psychopath's background:

    "Gilbert Jr. attended Princeton, graduating in 2009 with a degree in economics. Authorities said he had no recent work history."

And then it gets really bizarre. As the Mail reports, Junior was also charged with 21 counts of criminal possession of forgery devices after skimming device and 21 blank credit cards found at his home, and may have also burned down a rival's Hamptons mansion"

(Read the rest of the article and the associated links here)


The article later makes mention that he was "jobless and seemed to have few prospects, and little interest, for finding serious work.... instead, he spent most of his time in the Hamptons, going to the gym, doing yoga and surfing.  It also said his "one professional aspiration was starting his own hedge fund but his father wouldn't give him seed money to start it".

Now I take this, like with anything in the mainstream OR alternative media, with a grain of salt so I expect that some details might be off.  But if even half of what's said about his background is correct, it paints the picture of a man who didn't want for anything and had every reasonable advantage while growing up, and still expected life to give him what he wanted as an adult.  Even after finishing college at Princeton for gods sakes, his father gave him a monthly allowance that amounted to $3000 a month for housing and basic expenses.  Taking the story at face value for now, IMO the problem wasn't necessarily that he was given these things, but that he'd grown to expect these things (and more) as his due. 

Now the article does mention that there were reports of possible mental illness involved and that he may have been off his medication.  And his ex-girlfriend supposedly said he deeply resented his father and was obsessed about never being good enough for him, so it's possible that his father was an emotionally distant or maybe even abusive prick.  But given how he allegedly tried to stage it as a suicide (a sign that he was lucid enough to think logically in how to cover his tracks), I'd say mental illness and/or daddy issues didn't play the biggest part in this.  While several factors were probably at play, I suspect that it would never have progressed as far as murder if it weren't for a massive sense of misplaced entitlement.  Most of the people who have crappy parents simply settle for moving far far away, not killing them.

Given what is reported I'd say he's probably a good example of a failure in parenting.  The murder is on him and him alone, but I'd say his upbringing and his parents played a prominent role in his aimless existence and lack of ambition as an adult.  And that brings me to a pet peeve of mine in the U.S., and that's the parents who spoil their kids by buying their love, giving into every demand, and insulating them from every challenge, hardship, and tough situation.

Looking back at my childhood, I have to admit I usually didn't want for much.  As middle class kids growing up in southcentral Alaska, my brother and I weren't rich but we didn't live hand-to-mouth either.  We were pretty much like most kids growing up today, with one important difference... our parents didn't try buying our love with material possessions, they didn't give us everything we asked for, and most importantly they allowed and encouraged us to be independent and solve problems or tough situations for ourselves.  Help was provided if asked for, but they didn't go overboard trying to solve all our problems for us like the 'helicopter parents' that started becoming prevalent sometime in the 90's or 2000's.  My parents tried their best to provide help, yet still tried to make sure effort was required on our part.  I think a good example was with our first cars... our parents said they were willing to pay for half of whatever car we wanted to buy, with the other half (as well as insurance, gas, and maintenance costs) being our responsibility.  In hindsight I think that was a very balanced approach... it made it possible for us to have something more than a total rusted-out piece of crap for our first cars, yet the onus was still on us to keep a job in order to have a car at all.  And it made us appreciate our cars more, even if they were on the cheap side.  Personally, at the time I was thrilled they were willing to throw in even half of the price of my new car (earlier I was expecting to be paying for all of my first car myself), which probably says something good about the way they raised us.  In contrast, some other kids in our high school had parents buy them a car outright on their 16th birthday, sometimes brand new cars or trucks (there were some pretty well-off neighborhoods in the area).  Some of those kids bothered me a bit... not so much because they had much nicer cars than I did, but mostly because they didn't seem to really appreciate them as much as they should have (evidenced by their lack of care and the reckless things they did in them).

There is a lot of flack that Millenials receive, most typically called out for being spoiled, entitled, or lacking the 'grit' needed to tackle many of life's challenges and obstacles (often turning to their parents for help with every problem they have).  While there's some truth to this description for many Millenials (thankfully not all of them), it's their parents that are primarily responsible for their kids being this way.  I get more thankful every year that my parents didn't do this to me and my brother.  It was tough enough to shake off all the counterproductive programming from schools & media and find a purpose and direction in life that was right for me... that initial journey would have been so much harder if I didn't have some measure of resilience and ability to survive on my own.  Sadly, many of the parents responsible for these entitlement behaviors are from my Gen-X generation.  With myself being at the younger or tail end of that generation and having kids later in life, my kids are much younger (6 and 1 year-old) than most kids parented by my generation.  But I still see this kind of behavior in the kindergarteners and early grade-school kids that my son and his cousin plays with, so it's clear this "killing with kindness" parenting is still going on.  The roughest part is that despite all our efforts in encouraging self-reliance and putting in extra effort, I still see bits of that entitlement and materialist mentality being expressed by my son and his cousin at times.  Not a lot, but enough to where it gets me examining the other influences on them, like television and interactions with the other kids at school and during play.  It's one more argument for pulling our children out of the public school system and limiting TV time.

Ultimately, children need to be exposed to a little hardship or struggle in order to be prepared for the bigger challenges they'll face as adults.  It's a little late for much of the Millenial generation (those born from 1982-2004 according to Strauss-Howe Generational Theory); those who are already adults will just have to grow up fast and make up for the lessons their parents failed to teach them as they try to find their way in the adult world.  Some will fail (or fail spectacularly, like this Thomas Gilbert Jr. at the point he killed his father), while others will toughen up in the face of adversity and find ways to persevere.  But for those Millenials that are not yet adults and those in my kids' "Homeland Generation" (2005-present), their parents still have the opportunity to instill a sense of self-reliance and toughness that they'll need as adults.

But hey, if that sounds like too much work don't worry.... you can always try again when they're 35 years old, unemployed, and living with you while they do nothing but mooch off of you and play video games 24/7.

Link of the Week: Mocking Our Growing Police State

Today's link is from The Onion, titled 'How Police Are Revamping their Tactics'


"In the wake of widespread protests against police brutality and discrimination, law enforcement departments across the country are instituting new rules and policies to ensure safer practices. Here are some of the ways departments are reforming their training, tactics, and management in light of scrutiny:

-    Improved training to ensure that combat-ready assault rifles are not misused in the course of community policing
-    Armored vehicles to be decorated with murals celebrating the communities in which they are deployed
-    Switching to new all-organic tear gas blend
......"


You can read the rest at The Onion here.

2015 as a ‘The Year of Chaos’, Part 2: Possible Examples of Disorder in the Year Ahead

“When the fabric of society is so rigid that it cannot change quickly enough, adjustments are achieved by social unrest and revolutions.”  - John Boyd Orr

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”  - Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924)

Though I am not alone in calling for next year to be an exceptionally turbulent one, I don’t agree with those who are predicting collapse of calamitous proportions for next year… Especially those who are assuming this next year will herald an epic dollar collapse or gigantic stock market crash in the US.  While I can’t dismiss it as a possibility, given the other factors in play I simply see the odds of that happening next year as quite low.  Yes, the stock prices and to a lesser extent the general economy are kept afloat in part by the Federal Reserve’s money-printing and easy money policies.  And yes, the US government’s spending habits are out of control and it will eventually take its toll on the dollar.  But hard as it is to believe sometimes, many countries are in worse straits.  Chris Martenson of PeakProsperity.com coined a phenomenon he calls ‘From the Outside In’, which more or less states that economic instability is likely to express itself at the economic fringes first and then make its way towards the center.  

In the context of this oncoming crisis, the ‘center’ of the Western economies would be the US, and the ‘fringe’ would probably include countries like Venezuela, Ukraine, Russia, and the weaker Eurozone economies such as Greece.  While I do see a very high probability (if not near-certainty) of an eventual currency crisis with the US dollar, I think we will need to see some of the other dominoes fall first before it’s our turn.  Venezuela and Argentina have been in the midst of currency crises for a while now, more recently followed by Ukraine and just now starting to play out in Russia (though Russia is a bit of a special case given the unusual external pressures, i.e. sanctions, being put on it).  I expect more of the peripheral countries in Europe and some Middle East nations would be next.  Once that occurs and we start to see the same occurring in the EU and Japan, THEN I think we have to brace ourselves for America’s turn.  I expect this will take some time to play out given the size of some of the economies involved, as larger economies usually have a certain amount of ‘inertia’ (for the lack of a better term) that prevents them from seeing the same degree of rapid declines that smaller economies sometimes do.  On the other hand I do expect counterproductive reactions by those running America’s political machine, which will hasten America’s approach to an eventual currency crisis.  I just don’t think it will happen in a year or less.

While I predict that 2015 will be a pivotal point in history, that doesn’t mean we’ll experience the most turbulent of what’s to come that particular year.  Rather, it will merely herald the start of a ‘new normal’, where a major change in peoples’ expectations and the political & economic status quo across most of the world BEGINS. 

So getting down to the nitty-gritty, what are the likely expressions of instability for next year going to be and (in my amateur assessment) their likelihoods of occurring?

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1) Deteriorating economic conditions across the majority of the world (80% likelihood)

This seems pretty obvious to me, but I suppose it might not be if one is not exposed to alternative news sources or news media outside the US.  In a nutshell, we have the European Union pretty much either in economic stagnation or outright recession, we have emerging markets experiencing a lot of pain, and China’s economy is expected to slow further (the big question there is HOW MUCH slower), and the countries that are in the business of providing raw materials to China (like Australia) are feeling the pinch from China’s slowdown.  While things are not exactly rosy in America’s economy that matters to most of us (i.e. the economy minus the bloated financial sector and its shenanigans), by comparison with much of the rest of the world we’re doing alright.  In most places outside the US, however, things are looking grim, with nothing in sight at this time showing that they are likely to improve.  So basically, next year I expect economic recession in many nations outside the US, or a ‘global recession’ as it were.  

Economically, the US might take a hit but will probably still manage to do better than most nations next year, as the ‘flight to safety’ of foreign money to the US buoys the economy here for a little while.  In fact, I half expect the US will do well enough initially where the pundits and so-called “experts” will say something like “the US economy has decoupled from the world” or “this is proof America is the greatest nation on earth and our economy has nowhere to go but up”.  If you happen to be in the US, take advantage of this to shore up your savings and use the time to plan a strategy to thrive when the US economy does eventually get taken out to the woodshed.  Eventually though, I’m guessing 1-3 years later, the US economy will join the rest of the world as inflows of foreign money will dry up and central bank stimulus loses effectiveness.  Now regarding the collapse in oil prices, if it gets worse or persists more than 6 months from now, I do expect that will devastate to the US oil industry (especially offshore oil and shale oil sectors) and in turn negatively affect the US economy.  However, I expect a certain amount of lag time (a year maybe?) before it will start really hurting the broader economy.  There is some possibility however that a prolonged oil price collapse can create a systemic crisis in the financial system (seeing as there is a lot of borrowed money involved with these unconventional oil plays), but I’ll be mentioning that a little later.

2) Severe economic crises (and potentially currency crises) in nations on the economic periphery (60% likelihood)

If you wonder what exactly a severe economic crisis is like, look at what Greece has gone through the past several years.   And if you wonder what a currency crisis is like, look at what’s starting to happen in Russia and what’s already well underway in Belarus and Venezuela right now.  For next year, I expect two or more small-to-midsize countries will have their economies imploding from a combination of extreme indebtedness, poor political decisions catching up to them, lack of access to further credit, and in some cases the drop in oil prices.  Nigeria, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, and Russia I think are the lead possibilities, though those are by no means the only possibilities (I consider Japan likely to have its economy crash sometime in the next 3 years).  It is likely you’ve noticed the thing that most of these countries have in common…. namely, most happen to be heavily dependent on oil exports and most don’t have any significant savings to fall back on.  I don’t expect oil prices to stay low more than another year or two, but I don’t think it will take that long to cripple some of these nations’ economies (which is IMO the real reason Saudi Arabia chose not to cut production).  As to currency crises I’m less certain that we’ll see anything new emerge that isn’t part of the already deteriorating situations in Venezuela and Belarus, but if there are I think the contenders are Ukraine and possibly Greece (should it remove itself or be kicked out of the EU and reinstate its own currency).  Now as I mentioned earlier there is a disturbing possibility that sustained low oil prices might create a systemic crisis in the financial markets.  IF this happens then we could see a truly GLOBAL crisis in 2015, one from which the US would NOT likely get a free pass.

3) A spike in civil unrest, domestic turmoil, and even outright revolution in both developed and emerging nations (90% likelihood)

Some of you might say, “hey we are already seeing this!”, but what I’m saying is that you should expect it to get worse for next year.  This is one of next year’s chaotic events that, unlike with the economy, I think the US won’t get to enjoy a temporary reprieve.  For the US I expect it will take two forms.  The first will be a resurgence of something like the Occupy movement, with protests focusing on economic inequality as well as certain aspects of government and/or corporate corruption & misbehavior.  The second form is likely to eclipse the first, taking the form of a larger, more widespread version of what happened in reaction to the police shooting in Ferguson, MO and most likely will be sparked by a similar event.  We have a greater number of people on the edge now, many of them disgruntled and holding fresh resentment over the situation in Ferguson, the death of Eric Garner in NYC, and the increasingly militarized (and in some cases outright oppressive) nature of law enforcement.  At this point many of those are simply looking for an excuse to take to the streets (either to protest or to riot, depending on their scruples or lack thereof).  So I expect this time it will spread faster than the local or federal authority’s ability to contain it.  While I think they will be surprised by the suddenness and intensity of the civil unrest at first, I expect the eventual response by authorities will be brutal, intense, and include some.  Those particular protests and riots will probably be crushed, but it is reasonable to assume the resentment will grow in response, leading to further outbreaks of civil unrest and possibly more violent riots.  In the wake of this we will probably see the next stage of the expansion of the police state in the US, where popular outcry against the riots will give lawmakers and politicians the political cover to do what they already want to do…. namely, further restrict civil liberties and to expand the size & scope of police power as well as surveillance on citizens.  As the authorities become more desperate and eager to discourage any dissent, the lines between nonviolent protesters and rioters/looters will become more blurred and nebulous.  Possibly even getting to the point of expanding the definition of ‘terrorism’ to rioters, looters, and those providing aid to or even associating with said people.  I know this seems very far out or even conspiratorial to some of you, but I implore you to bear with me here.  People in power tend to exercise that power in order to stay in power, whether they are police chiefs, mayors, governors, members of congress, or presidents.  Examine the people in power throughout history and look at the extreme measures many had taken to crush threats to their power, and you’ll find a number of American examples (such as the Sedition Act of 1918).

Overseas I expect the civil unrest will take on a somewhat different flavor, with economics, jobs, and government corruption being the primary drivers in some countries and government repression driving civil unrest in others.  My best model for what to expect is something like what we've already seen in Greece a few years ago and what we saw in the so-called 'Arab Spring', though I think in a few areas it may come closer to actual revolution.  Perhaps Catalonia's push for independence will become more forceful should Spain's government continue to ignore and threaten them, or maybe the Greeks will get REALLY fed up with the EU puppets running their country, or it could be that Iran will finally crumble under the economic stress of low oil prices and public discontent.  I think that in most nations the people aren't that upset quite yet, but the handful that are will set the stage for others in future years.

4) A significant military action that, in hindsight, will probably be considered the start of a series of regional conflicts that will rival World Wars 1 & 2 in the impact it has on the world (50% likelihood)

I want to be careful here, because I don't want to go on record expecting a global military conflict on the scale of WW2 in our future, and neither do I expect it to start off in a major way like WW1 did.  Rather, I think it's most likely that there will be a large number of smaller regional conflicts across the world, many of them unrelated to each other except that some will have in common one or more larger players supporting one side or another (directly or indirectly).  The larger players will most likely be US, Russia, China, and the core (economically stronger) EU nations, each pursuing its own agenda and forming alliances of convenience as they wage proxy wars with one or more large powers through these various regional conflicts.  At this point I expect US and the EU core to work together initially, and the same with Russia and China.  As the years go on and the balance of power shifts, however, this could easily change, and which way it goes is anyone's guess.  But as for 2015, I expect just one or two small conflicts to break out with some of the larger powers taking a side.  I'm thinking the top candidates for the first region or regions involved would be between the Ukraine, the Middle East, the South China Sea, and North Africa.  My guess is the Ukraine will be the first to herald the official start of this global set of proxy wars given Russia's strong strategic interest and the short-sighted aggressiveness of the US and Europe, but we will just have to see how this shakes out.

5) Some (big) rules will be broken or changed (80% likelihood)

To paraphrase another maxim from Chris Martenson, “when the going gets tough, they will change the rules (in their favor)”.  I expect this will be very true of next year, to the same (or even greater) degree as we had seen how ‘rules’ were changed to bail out the big banks and financial institutions in 2008-2009 and how ‘rules’ were ignored by neglecting to pursue criminal prosecution for said entities or the individuals running them for their criminal misconduct leading up to the housing crisis.  What’s hard to predict is WHAT rules will be changed or broken.  We can pretty much guarantee that however it’s done, it will screw over the vast majority of people in order to support or benefit the wealthiest and most connected corporations, politicians, and interest groups.  One possible example we might see next year could be the rewriting or breaking of the European Union charter in order to change an EU member nation’s status in the EU, from setting up some special category of EU membership and/or currency (to separate the weak nations from the strong) or ejecting them out of the EU entirely.  Another even more likely example might be a bigger repeat of what happened in Cyprus recently with bank depositors footing the bill for a banking crisis, though technically that rule has already been changed in many countries so it is just the widespread realization and pain that's yet to come when it gets put into use.  One big rule change I just have to mention is the potential for the IMF's Special Drawing Rights (SDR's) to be adopted as a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar, though I expect that the chance of that happening in 2015 is small and more likely to happen in later years.  Though we may see some serious planning for it to happen in 2015...

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Given their generally gloomy nature, it doesn't make me happy to throw out these things as probable events for 2015.  But I think we're approaching the limits to how far the various authorities and corporate powers can kick the can down the road, and my intuition is telling me that 2015 is the year that instability will no longer be contained.  Unfortunately for us, all the can kicking in the form of Quantitative Easing (money printing), bank bailouts, short-sighted foreign military entanglements, etc. has just allowed the potential instability to build, so we're likely to be in for a far wilder time than if they'd done nothing at all.  We are in the process of a reversion to a more natural or sustainable state, and the more they intervened the further from that sustainable state we get and the more painful the change and transition will be.

So I will be surprised if only one or none of these come to pass in 2015.  At the same time though I'll be equally surprised if all five come to pass, as I consider these to only likely possibilities and not certainties.  At any rate I write this not to scare people, but only so they don't get blindsided by rapid change and sudden instability.  And remember that there are potential opportunities associated with this rapid change.  Which ones and how and when you decide to take advantage of them is up to you.  We need to ride the wave in order to not be crushed by it. 

Link of the Week: Media Giving Torture a Pass

This article says it all and doesn't need much more to say from me.  I just wanted to highlight this because I was angry with this "but what would Jack Bauer do in this situation?" horsecrap in the media back when the subject of torture was taking front stage last decade, and I'm just as angry about it now.  To use a fictional show and extreme examples of worst-case terror threats as a justification to give the authorities a free pass to torture people for information strikes me as an extraordinarily dangerous and misleading narrative to sell the public on.  Here's my take: if there actually is a situation that comes about with an extremely high risk and high urgency threat, the people holding the captive with the supposed information have to decide whether the threat warrants such an extreme action, and if they truly think it does they act as their conscience dictates and accept the consequences for doing so!  Such situations are special case by their very nature; let the judicial system weigh the case and the extraordinary circumstances accordingly in the sentence they carry out.  All the evidence seems to point that torture is not helpful in most cases anyway in getting reliable information, but assuming there was a time where it is the only way to save many lives, I would accept prison time as a likely consequence and so should the authorities.  Anyway, here's the article:


U.S. TV Provides Ample Platform for American Torturers, But None to Their Victims

By Glenn Greenwald

"I’ve written previously about the transformative experience of meeting and hearing directly from the victims of the abuses by your own government. That human interaction converts an injustice from an abstraction into a deeply felt rage and disgust. That’s precisely why the U.S. media doesn’t air those stories directly from the victims themselves: because it would make it impossible to maintain the pleasing fairy tales about “who we really are.”

When I was in Canada in October, I met Maher Arar (pictured above) for the second time, went to his home, had breakfast with his wife (also pictured above) and two children. In 2002, Maher, a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent who worked as an engineer, was traveling back home to Ottawa when he was abducted by the U.S. Government at JFK Airport, held incommunicado and interrogated for weeks, then “rendered” to Syria where the U.S. arranged to have him brutally tortured by Assad’s regime. He was kept in a coffin-like cell for 10 months and savagely tortured until even his Syrian captors were convinced that he was completely innocent. He was then unceremoniously released back to his life in Canada as though nothing had happened.

When he sued the U.S. government, subservient U.S. courts refused even to hear his case, accepting the Obama DOJ’s claim that it was too secret to safely adjudicate.

There are hundreds if not thousands of Maher Arars the U.S. media could easily and powerfully interview. McClatchy this week detailed the story of Khalid al Masri, a German citizen whom the U.S. Government abducted in Macedonia, tortured, and then dumped on a road when they decided he wasn’t guilty of anything (US courts also refused to hear his case on secrecy grounds). The detainees held without charges, tortured, and then unceremoniously released from Guantanamo and Bagram are rarely if ever heard from on U.S. television, even when the U.S. Government is forced to admit that they were guilty of nothing."


Read the rest of the article here.

False Narratives on Population and Resource Depletion

"Choosing to have a child you can't take care of is like farting in an elevator. Sure you got it out, but now it's everyone else's problem."  -Richard Jeni

This article I came across depresses me in so many ways.  It's a clear example of the kind of mindset that's leading all of us into a world of hurt.  I'm not really sure if this author truly believes his own BS or if this is more of an intentional propaganda piece to reinforce the idea that the status quo is stable (I suspect more of the latter given the tone and status-quo friendly nature of the piece), but either way it's a perfect example of the uselessness of the mainstream media in general, and CNBC in particular:

We need more babies! Seriously, this is a problem

“We just learned that the U.S. birthrate fell for the sixth straight year in 2013 to an all-time low.

Pardon me for sounding a bit alarmist, but this is really bad news for our economy, our society, and all of civilization.

Let's start with the economy. I know a lot of us have been brainwashed into thinking that our natural and manufactured resources are shrinking. We're often told that we have a choice of either radically reducing our consumption or our population or we'll eventually run out of water, energy, and food.

Excuse me, but this is hogwash.

That's because we heard the same thing in 1714, or 1814, and probably the year 10,000 B.C.  And they were wrong then too.”

Actually in many cases, they weren’t wrong.  Does he not realize how many civilizations, some of them rather complex, have collapsed at least in part because of lack of resources or resource depletion?  Try looking into Jared Diamond's book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" for starters.  If our energy supplies are not in danger of eventual depletion, perhaps the author could explain why we are drilling in more expensive and difficult oil formations (shale, tar sands, and deep-water), or mining lower quality (and ultimately dirtier) coal for power generation?  These companies don't do these things on a whim or for the mere challenge of it, they do it because there are less of the easy or high quality resources available.

The idiocy continues:

“What's the biggest reason that the doomsayers about the end of the world's resources have always been wrong on?

The answer is that some members of those growing populations decided not to give up and came up with new ideas, technologies and resources to replace and improve living conditions. I'm talking about the people who have come up with the technologies to desalinate water, terrace mountainsides, drain swamps and fight disease with vaccinations and sewage treatment. I'm talking about the people who came up with kerosene to replace whale blubber, petroleum to replace kerosene, natural gas to replace petroleum, and so on and so on.”

Is that desalinization ‘miracle’ helping out the California farmers being devastated by drought?  For that matter, name one example of a usable energy source on the horizon that is not only as transportable and energy dense as oil, but is able to meet just half of our total energy needs?  You can’t because it doesn’t exist.  And those people who harp on about a ‘hydrogen economy’ solving our power needs seem blissfully unaware that on our planet hydrogen is ultimately a form of energy storage, and that still needs to be created from other forms of energy.  I like solar energy, but it cannot fulfill all our energy needs by a long-shot.  Even the most promising technologies, such as nuclear energy using thorium, have inherent limitations.  Technology cannot create energy, it can only help harness existing forms of energy or transform said energy to other forms of energy.  Technology is great in that it can help us better utilize what we HAVE, but it can’t create energy out of nothing.  And in case the author is unaware, as big as it is, the Earth is a finite system with ultimately finite resources.  The only way to get to truly have growth that lasts centuries is to have most of that growth occur beyond the boundaries of our planet, and even that has a multitude of extraordinary challenges, most of which we aren't ready for yet (partly because of politics and partly because some advances simply take time to mature).  We should be stretching beyond the boundaries of our planet, but not because of unthinking adherence to the 'growth is good' mantra.

And notice how the author equates having less children as ‘giving up’ on coming up with new ideas, technologies, and ways to harness resources?  This ‘less children bad, more children good’ kind of black and white thinking totally ignores the other social and economic factors that play into technological progress and breakthroughs.  What's better for technological progress... a planet with maybe 5 billion people where half of them are intelligent and/or motivated enough to advance technological progress, or a planet of 15 billion people with only 5% of said 'thinkers and doers' and the remaining 95% of them having the intellectual and social graces of Clevon from Idiocracy?

He goes on to say:

“All of the above came courtesy of humans. Reduce their number, and you also reduce your chances for the great innovations that make life better for the humans already on the planet and make life more comfortable and possible for billions more to join us.

In short, people are our greatest resource. Economic growth cannot occur without human growth. And this is not a problem that can simply be solved by increasing immigration.”

Aha, so here we get to the real issue… economic growth requires human (population) growth.  The author is correct here more or less, but I bet he never asks himself WHY we need economic growth or even if it’s always a good thing.  The real reason that economic growth is so important to us is that our current debt-based monetary system requires constant and exponential growth in order to stay stable.  So in essence he is saying we need population growth to sustain economic growth, which is a requirement only because of the particular debt-based monetary system we use.  The problem is we operate in a finite environment, and while technological cleverness can make us more efficient or introduce substitutes for certain requirements, eventually you will run out of something.  Silly notion here, but why can’t we simply change our monetary and economic system to suit the reality of our situation (i.e. that our world is ultimately finite and sometimes stability or even reduction in size of our economies might be called for)?  I would rather have more resources spread amongst a smaller population than less resources to distribute amongst a huge population.  But if the author thinks that's still a good thing, I invite him to replace his steak, chicken, or pork with bugs, because that might be what's for dinner if we pursue growth at all costs.

The author continues:

“That's because there's a societal price we're paying in this country for having fewer children later in life. Just about every parent I know will tell you that the moment their first child was born was the moment they truly accepted the responsibility of their own adulthood to the fullest. That's a moment I'm willing to delay for teenagers — we generally don't want them becoming parents that young. But when we start seeing more 25- to 45-year-olds who clearly haven't yet grown up yet, I get concerned.”

Horse***t!  Having a child does NOT universally instill greater sense of maturity or responsibility.   In SOME people like myself it may reinforce an existing sense of responsibility, but there are a hell of a lot of people who don’t do anything differently and act like the same irresponsible jackasses they always were.  And besides, there are many paths to maturity and responsibility besides raising a child.  I would argue that starting and running a business could be just as or more conducive to promoting responsibility and maturity.  And even should we accept the author’s assertion as a hard fact, then a couple having just one child is enough.  Two or three or more children wouldn’t make an appreciable difference, would it?

More:

And that's not all. Our growth as a society is stunted when fewer children are around to induce maturity and better behavior in the rest of us — even if we're not parents. Don't we all endeavor to behave a bit better and safer in front of kids? Fewer children means more aimless and purposeless young adults, more violence, and more war. The excellent novel-turned-feature film "Children of Men" featured a chilling portrayal of a world with no birth rate and how it would descend into a nuclear holocaust.”

Again more black-and-white thinking, this time with a large helping of slippery-slope thinking and a garnish of fear.  If less children leads to more violence and more war, how do you explain Japan or South Korea or Singapore?  Their birthrates have become rather low, and I don’t see those societies breaking out in widespread violence and criminality, do you?  Yet much of the Middle East and central Africa, where there are high birth rates in excess of the world average of 2.5 children per woman, are increasingly violent and war-torn regions.  Yes there are other factors at work, but that is my whole point that the author's assertion is extraordinarily weak in the face of other trends and social factors.  The author is simply talking out of his ass here.  Especially considering his only ‘evidence’ comes from citing a fictional story portraying an extreme example of a near-zero birthrate.  

Later in the article the author goes off on family-friendly policies and social welfare and all that.  He has valid points on some of those, but those are tangents that lead off into the political weeds.  My primary criticism is the implicit assumption that growth is always good and it should be our top priority.

Before the accusation is leveled at me, I am not a proponent of population control by any stretch.  I want people to have the freedom to make their own informed decisions, and I think that with a better informed population, most people will voluntarily make family choices that lead to the global population stabilizing.  I'm also not anti-kid and not one of those handful of douchebags that looks down on the couples they call 'breeders'.  I have two children myself and I do feel richer having them in my life.  But my wife and I have these children because we can afford to raise them, and we also choose to stop at 2 kids because that's the number we're comfortable with financially and in regards to the larger issue of population growth (in terms of being under the population replacement fertility rate of ~2.1 children per woman in the developed world).  If a couple doesn't want kids for whatever reason, I respect their choice and I think others should too.  If a couple wants 3, 4, or more children AND it is within their means and their local environment to support that, more power to them as well.  But to encourage people to have more children simply because the monetary and economic system we are using needs that to stay stable?  That is irresponsible on an epic level.

The author has a right to publish his opinion, and even though I heartily disagree with his article, I would not advocate censoring him.  Even when it appears to be more of a propaganda piece meant to keep people ignorant.  But I sure as hell will exercise my right to expose this article for the irresponsible and factually-deficient piece of propaganda BS that it is.

On a final note, I think cartoonist Berke Breathed of Bloom County, Outland, and Opus fame says it best here: