Good morning 99percenters!
Morning news dump and music by Robert Earl King.

Defense Industry Revenue Forecast Gushes Over Global Turmoil

The global aerospace and defense industry is out of its doldrums. According to a new report by the accounting firm Deloitte, “the resurgence of global security threats” promises a lucrative “rebound” in defense spending.

The report alerts investors that “revenue growth” is “expected to take a positive turn” due to the terrorism and war in the Middle East and the tensions in Eastern Europe and the South China Sea.

Many analysts predicted declining revenue for the weapons industry as the U.S. scaled down military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, as this chart from the Deloitte report shows, no other country even comes close to spending as much as the U.S. does.

But now governments around the world have moved swiftly to hike defense budgets to “combat terrorism and address sovereign security matters.”

U.S. Dropped 23,144 Bombs on Muslim-Majority Countries in 2015
Nobel Peace Prize-winner President Obama dropped a serious amount of ordnance last year.

Council of Foreign Relations resident skeptic Micah Zenko recently tallied up how many bombs the United States has dropped on other countries and the results are as depressing as one would think. Zenko figured that since Jan. 1, 2015, the U.S. has dropped around 23,144 bombs on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, all countries that are majority Muslim.

The chart, provided by the generally pro-State Department think tank, puts in stark terms how much destruction the U.S. has leveled on other countries. Whether or not one thinks such bombing is justified, it's a blunt illustration of how much raw damage the United States inflicts on the Muslim world:

It does not appear to be working either. Despite the fact that the U.S. dropped 947 bombs in Afghanistan in 2015, a recent analysis in Foreign Policy magazine found that the Taliban control more territory in Afghanistan than at any point since 2001. The U.S. has entered its 16th year of war in Afghanistan despite several promises by the Obama administration to withdraw. In October of last year, President Obama reversed his position and decided to keep American troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2017.

Oil, money, politics and evil: Our leading Middle East ally is the worst country imaginable
America's BFF relationship with the corrupt, vicious and oil-rich Saudi despots might be our worst mistake of all

American foreign policy is full of things we can’t see and things we don’t talk about. The drone war of the Obama years; the “extraordinary rendition” and “enhanced interrogation” of the George W. Bush years. Nixon and Kissinger’s secret bombing campaign in Cambodia. The overthrow of democratic governments we didn’t like: Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1961, Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Once you get started with this stuff it’s hard to stop, and pretty soon your friends are giving you that look, like they’re wondering at what point you’ll start talking about your stormy personal relationship with Richard Helms, or the microchips implanted in your dental work.

But even by those standards, the case of Saudi Arabia is special. We love Saudi Arabia so much! The Bush family loves Saudi Arabia; the Clinton family loves Saudi Arabia. You and I are frequently told that we love Saudi Arabia, even if we aren’t exactly sure why. We write mash notes in Saudi Arabia’s yearbook, in pink Magic Marker with lots of hearts: BE-HEDDING ALL THOSE PPL! U R SO SEXY!!! We have never overthrown a democratic government in Saudi Arabia. It would admittedly be difficult to do so, since Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that has never had a democratic government and never will. Our tax dollars and Saudi oil dollars flow back and forth between Washington and Riyadh in a bewildering matrix understood by no one, ending up along the way in the handbags of hookers in Vegas and the tip baskets of croupiers in Macau.

It’s kind of a crazy, stupid love. No, I mean that. It’s diagnosably insane and unbelievably stupid, verging on suicidal. Saudi Arabia is damn near the worst place in the world when it comes to all those human rights and civil liberties America supposedly cares about so deeply. (Actually, it seems like the worst place in the world in general, but that’s a broad and highly subjective claim.) Women are effectively the property of their fathers, husbands or brothers. Homosexuality does not officially exist, and is punishable by death. Internal dissidents and critics of the monarchy have been convicted on such charges as “breaking allegiance with the ruler” and “contact with foreign news organizations to exaggerate the news.”

It’s the Mormons and the Kochs: The secret roots of white, male Bundy rage
The goals of the Bundys and the Koch brothers coincide — it's all about acquiring public lands and exploiting them

For rationalists, 2016 has gotten off to a rough start.

This time, Americans have their own religious folk to blame. The mundane origins of the religion in question should provoke smirks, to say the least, among nonbelievers, but for at least some of its votaries, this is a faith worth dying — and killing —  for. Less humorous is the challenge being posed to our Constitution and the ties to powerful moneyed interests.

Almost two years after Cliven Bundy, the renegade Nevada Mormon who orchestrated an armed confrontation with the federal government to avoid paying fees for grazing cattle on public land, wondered aloud to reporters about whether “the Negro” was better off under slavery than “under government subsidy,” his son Ammon (also a Mormon) is treating us to a farcical, yet still potentially deadly, reprise of the standoff led by his father.

By now you must know the story, but here’s a recap, just in case. On Jan. 2, in the boondocks of Oregon, Bundy fils and an undetermined number of self-proclaimed fellow “Citizens for Constitutional Freedom” (in reality, guys with guns who reject the very rule of law enshrined in the Constitution) seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and have refused to budge, all in solidarity with Oregonian ranchers (and convicted arsonists) Dwight and Steven Hammond and their plight.  They are demanding justice for the Hammonds, and pledge to resist the “terrorism that the federal government is placing on the people.”

The Oregon Standoff Makes One Thing Clear: The U.S. Government Is Fundamentally Right Wing
If the armed militia members weren’t white — or if they were leftists — they would’ve been raided by now.

Armed right-wing extremists occupied a federal building in Oregon late on January 2. The white militants, from far-right, anti-government militias led by the infamous Bundy family, announced they would remain there indefinitely, and were willing to “kill or be killed if necessary.”

The response of the federal government was lackluster, to put it mildly. Two days into the armed occupation, law enforcement authorities admitted they had no plans to deal with it.

Gracious, euphemistic media treatment echoed the paltry governmental response.

In response, social media and Op-Ed pages of newspapers were inundated with condemnations of white privilege and arguments that the far-right militants would have been violently removed if they were people of color.

Hillary Clinton Made More in 12 Speeches to Big Banks Than Most of Us Earn in a Lifetime

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders this week assailed rival Hillary Clinton for taking large speaking fees from the financial industry since leaving the State Department.

According to public disclosures, by giving just 12 speeches to Wall Street banks, private equity firms, and other financial corporations, Clinton made $2,935,000 from 2013 to 2015:

Clinton’s most lucrative year was 2013, right after stepping down as secretary of state. That year, she made $2.3 million for three speeches to Goldman Sachs and individual speeches to Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Investments, Apollo Management Holdings, UBS, Bank of America, and Golden Tree Asset Managers.

Where Were the Post-Hebdo Free Speech Crusaders as France Spent the Last Year Crushing Free Speech?

It’s been almost one year since millions of people — led by the world’s most repressive tyrants — marched in Paris ostensibly in favor of free speech. Since then, the French government — which led the way trumpeting the vital importance of free speech in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings — has repeatedly prosecuted people for the political views they expressed, and otherwise exploited terrorism fears to crush civil liberties generally. It has done so with barely a peep of protest from most of those throughout the West who waved free speech flags in support of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.

That’s because, as I argued at the time, many of these newfound free speech crusaders exploiting the Hebdo killings were not authentic, consistent believers in free speech. Instead, they invoke that principle only in the easiest and most self-serving instances: namely, defense of the ideas they support. But when people are punished for expressing ideas they hate, they are silent or supportive of that suppression: the very opposite of genuine free speech advocacy.

Days after the Paris march, the French government arrested the comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala “for being an ‘apologist for terrorism’ after suggesting on Facebook that he sympathized with one of the Paris gunmen.” Two months later, he was convicted, receiving a suspended two-month jail sentence. In November, on separate charges, he was convicted by a Belgian court “for racist and anti-Semitic comments he made during a show in Belgium” and was given a two month prison term. There were no #JeSuisDieudonné hashtags trending, and it’s almost impossible to find the loudest post-Hebdo Free Speech crusaders denouncing the French and Belgian governments for this attack on free expression.

America’s Subservience to the Saud Family

The Saud royal family are by far the world’s largest buyers of U.S. weapons. The King of Saudi Arabia is by far the world’s richest person, with a net worth well over a trillion dollars; and, when his (Aramco’s) 260 billion barrels of oil reserves were valued at $100 per barrel, his net worth was around $15 trillion. The King has total control over the world’s largest (in terms of dollar-value) company: Aramco. (On January 7th, Britain’s Economist  bannered “Saudi Arabia is considering an IPO of Aramco, probably the world’s most valuable company.” Aramco is certainly the world’s largest oil company in terms of sales, and it has twice the reserves of the company that has the world’s second-largest reserves; nobody comes even close to Aramco’s dominance.) Since 1980, the Saudi government has owned 100% of Aramco; the Saudi government is totally under the King’s exclusive control. The King owns all that oil, and his extraction cost is reputed to be the world’s lowest. Forbes and Bloomberg decline to estimate his wealth, because kings don’t want them to; but, clearly, his dwarfs that of anyone such as Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. And Gates and Buffett don’t possess the power to keep their wealth from becoming published, but the Saudi King does.

On 13 September 2010, Britain’s Telegraph  headlined “US secures record $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia.” On 28 January 2012, Dayton Business Journal  bannered “Top 10 foreign buyers of U.S. weapons,” and Saudi Arabia was #1 that year, with $13.8B. #2 was UAE, with 10.4B. UAE is run by six royal families, all friends of the Saud family; and, like the Sauds, they follow the strictest, Wahhabist-Salafist, form of Islam, the type of Sunni Islam that’s preached by ISIS and by Al Qaeda. Current ‘defense’ expenditure figures aren’t available; but, clearly, the Sauds are now fully embroiled in slaughtering Shiites both in Yemen and in Syria, and are buying far more U.S. weapons today than they were before — the sum probably dwarfs any previous sales-volume. 

It’s good business for the owners of U.S. ‘Defense’ contractors. On 15 May 2015, Alex Kane at Alternet headlined “4 U.S. Companies Getting Rich Off Gulf Arab Conflict With Iran,” and the companies were: Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and United Technologies. In 2015, lobbying for the “Defense” sector amounted to $96 million. $56 million of that was specifically on “Defense Aerospace.” If the Sauds weren’t buying lots of that hardware, then some very wealthy Americans would be significantly less wealthy than they now are. It’s mutually beneficial. (Though not beneficial for the people those bombs and bullets are killing and maiming.)

The REAL Reason Sunni Governments Like Saudi Arabia Are At War Against the Shias

The Shias Are Sitting On All of the Oil and Gas

While the Sunnis and Shias have been competing for more than a thousand years, they have largely co-existed peacefully until recently.

Why are they involved in an open war across multiple countries now?

Much of modern geopolitics is driven by hydrocarbons … i.e. oil and gas.

Is this true of the Sunnis-Shia war?

Yes, the U.S. and its allies are backing the Sunnis against the Shias … in order to wage war for oil.

Jihadi John Version 2.0

It didn't take long for IS (Islamic State) to find a new cartoon-style villain to fill the shoes of Mohammed "Jihadi John" Emwazi. The masked villain often appeared in high-value productions, narrating them with a perfect British accent, as the enemies of IS were slain in increasingly elaborate and equally gruesome manners.

Just as Jihadi John's villainy reached a crescendo, the US claimed it targeted and killed him in a drone strike. Nothing resembling actual confirmation was produced afterward, and many questioned the value or impact of eliminating what was for all intents and purposes merely a figurehead.

Instead of actually identifying and dismantling IS on the battlefield, the US appears to be faux-fighting the organization in a public relations campaign mimicking the simplistic narratives children might see during a G.I Joe episode on Saturday morning:

"The bad guy died, we are winning."

A US Media Lost in Propaganda

Vulgar, crude, racist and ultra-sexist though he is, Donald Trump can still see how awful the American mainstream media is.

I think one of the main reasons for Donald Trump’s popularity is that he says what’s on his mind and he means what he says, something rather rare amongst American politicians, or politicians perhaps anywhere in the world. The American public is sick and tired of the phony, hypocritical answers given by office-holders of all kinds.

When I read that Trump had said that Sen. John McCain was not a hero because McCain had been captured in Vietnam, I had to pause for reflection. Wow! Next the man will be saying that not every American soldier who was in the military in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq was a shining hero worthy of constant media honor and adulation.

How Debt Conquered America

Since its center-stage debut during the Occupy Wall Street movement, “the 99%” – a term emblematic of extreme economic inequality confronting the vast majority – has become common place. The term was coined by sociology professor David Graeber, an Occupy leader and author of the encyclopedic Debt: The First 5,000 Years, published just as the Occupy movement captured headlines.

What Graeber’s monumental work did not emphasize specifically, and what most Americans still do not appreciate, is how debt was wielded as the weapon of choice to subjugate the 99% in the centuries before the Occupy protesters popularized the term. Like so many aspects of our Lost History, the legacy of debt has been airbrushed from our history texts, but not from our lives.

The original 99% in America did not occupy Wall Street in protest. They occupied the entire Western Hemisphere as original inhabitants of North and South America. After 20,000 years of Occupy Hemisphere, an Italian entrepreneur appeared, having pitched an investment opportunity to his financial backers in Spain.

A Unified Theory of Corruption – The Deep State
LongTime Capitol Hill Insider Exposes the Kind of Government We Really Have

The Holy Grail of physics has always been to find what Einstein called a Unified Field Theory, or, as we’ve come to know it today, a theory of everything. One idea, one set of equations that could explain the physical universe.

Imagine if such a thing existed in government and politics. If we could look at the last 40 years of upheaval, change, and political dislocation, and find the one thread that explains it all.

The term “The Deep State” originated in the Ottoman Empire — where the Turks recognized that their leaders owed allegiance to elites, and placed the opportunities and prerogatives of nationalism, corporatism, and elites over the interest of its citizens.

Fearful Food Industry Jeopardizing Public's Right to Information

I just don't get it.

Over the more than 20 years I have worked as a business journalist, I've always been motivated by a simple premise: Knowledge is power, and that power belongs with the public. The spread of information that people can use to make decisions - what to buy, what to eat, where to invest, etc. - helps support and promote the principles of freedom and democracy, I believe.

That's why the fear and loathing emanating from the food industry over the public's right to information about the food they consume is so hard for me to grasp.

As we kick off 2016 the leaders of many of the nation's largest and most powerful food companies are doubling down on their commitment to block mandatory labeling of foods made with genetically engineered crops, and they are seeking Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's help to do so. The issue has become urgent for the industry as what would be the nation's first mandatory labeling measure is set to go into effect July 1 in Vermont. The industry has thus far failed to convince a federal court to block the law's implementation, though the fight could go to trial this spring.

Will the TPP Set Back a Campaign to Stop a Proposed Coal Mine on Montana Tribal Land?

The air was hazy from distant wildfires on August 29 when a gift arrived on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in southeast Montana. Carvers from the Lummi Tribe in Washington state brought a totem pole as a sign of support for those fighting the Otter Creek project, a proposed strip mine and rail spur on the Northern Cheyenne Tribe's traditional lands.

At a ceremony marking the pole's arrival, ranchers, whose families have been on the land for generations, and tribal members, whose families go back even further, joined together to speak of the sacredness of the land and water, and of their duty to protect this inheritance for generations to come

The new mine would extract around 1.3 billion tons of coal. Arch Coal and its partners would blast a new rail spur through hills, across ranches, and along the Tongue River to connect the mine to the Burlington Northern main line. Open train cars would carry coal to a proposed export terminal to be built on the Lummi Tribe's traditional lands. From there, the coal could be shipped to Asia; burning it would emit billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Although some welcome the jobs associated with this project, thousands—from southeast Montana to the Pacific coast—have expressed opposition, citing concerns about pollution, noise, impacts on fisheries, and climate change.

The Third-Ever Super El Niño Is Underway — Here’s What North America Can Expect
There have been only two “super” El Niños until now: in 1982-83 and 1997-98. This time around, global warming will amplify its impacts.

A major El Niño is under way now. It already has substantially influenced weather patterns around the globe, but could have even bigger impacts this winter. There have been only two “super” El Niños until now: in 1982-83 and 1997-98. We are now experiencing a third “super” El Niño.

Every El Niño cycle is different. The effects from this year’s already include a record number of hurricanes/typhoons in the Pacific and intense wildfires in Indonesia.

In the United States over the next several months, El Niño is expected to cause heavy rains across the South, with the potential for coastal flooding in California, along with relatively mild and dry weather in the northern states. Global climate change, which, along with the El Niño, is making 2015 the warmest year on record, is likely to amplify these impacts.

Weather Extremes Slash Cereal Yields

LONDON—Climate change may have already begun to take its toll of agriculture. New research suggests that drought and extreme heat in the last 50 years have reduced cereal production by up to 10%. And, for once, developed nations may have sustained greater losses than developing nations.

Researchers have been warning for years that global warming as a consequence of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—in turn, a pay-off from increased fossil fuel combustion—will result in a greater frequency or intensity in extremes of weather.

They have also warned more recently that weather-related extremes could damage food security in Europe, Africa and India.

The Climate Movement Is Stuck in "Groundhog Day"; Here's How It Can Break Free

Throughout 2015, I had a hard time explaining my feeling about the Paris climate talks. Friends and allies would excitedly ask me if I was going and I'd force a smile and explain that no, I had been to enough United Nations climate meetings. The truth was that after more than five years of attending and watching U.N. climate talks, the whole thing had started to feel like the climate movement had gotten itself stuck in a time-warp and we were living the same two weeks over and over again every year.

As I watched the Paris talks unfold, the whole thing started to feel like the movie Groundhog Day. If you haven't seen it or don't remember, the basic premise is that Bill Murray plays a weatherman who gets caught in a time loop, reliving the same day in rural Pennsylvania over and over. Just looking at the major actions, each one seemed to be a repeat of something from the past. Red lines in Doha and red lines in Paris. Sit-ins and walk-outs year after year from Copenhagen to Durban to Rio to Warsaw. I was reminded of something a friend told me about the Doha talks — the outcome was so predictable that he wrote press releases months in advance and the only change he had to make to the one about the final reaction was the date.

Nevertheless, there is good news. About halfway through Groundhog Day, Bill Murray realizes that his only way out of the time warp is to become a better person. In Paris, it feels like the climate movement — the collective Bill Murray in this analogy — have reached a similar point. On the one hand, it's great news because coming out of Paris it feels like we've crested a hill. On the other hand, it's awful because from the top of this hill, we can now see the mountain peak we have to ascend. In Groundhog Day terms, it's great because we know how to get out, but since time isn't standing still, we can't afford to keep repeating history over and over. So, with that in mind, here are three suggestions for ways the climate movement can break free.

Human Impact Has Pushed Earth Into the Anthropocene

There is now compelling evidence to show that humanity’s impact on the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and wildlife has pushed the world into a new geological epoch, according to a group of scientists.

The question of whether humans’ combined environmental impact has tipped the planet into an “Anthropocene” – ending the current Holocene which began around 12,000 years ago – will be put to the geological body that formally approves such time divisions later this year.

The new study provides one of the strongest cases yet that from the amount of concrete mankind uses in building to the amount of plastic rubbish dumped in the oceans, Earth has entered a new geological epoch.

“We could be looking here at a stepchange from one world to another that justifies being called an epoch,” said Colin Waters, principal geologist at the British Geological Survey and an author on the study published in Science.