Weaponizing Social Science: Pentagon Plans To Shape and Control Mass Civil Breakdowns

 

To protect and promote our vital corporate interests with advanced social techniques, a compliant press, and boatloads of dark money, at home and abroad.

 

Managing perceptions. 

O brave new world, that has such creatures in it.

We had a dream.  And now its becoming a nightmare.

We come in peace.

 

"A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies...

Social science is being militarised to develop 'operational tools' to target peaceful activists and protest movements....

Minerva-funded social scientists tied to Pentagon counterinsurgency operations are involved in the "study of emotions in stoking or quelling ideologically driven movements," he said, including how "to counteract grassroots movements."



Prof David Price, a cultural anthropologist at St Martin's University in Washington DC and author of Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State, "when you looked at the individual bits of many of these projects they sort of looked like normal social science, textual analysis, historical research, and so on, but when you added these bits up they all shared themes of legibility with all the distortions of over-simplification. Minerva is farming out the piece-work of empire in ways that can allow individuals to disassociate their individual contributions from the larger project."

Minerva is a prime example of the deeply narrow-minded and self-defeating nature of military ideology. Worse still, the unwillingness of DoD officials to answer the most basic questions is symptomatic of a simple fact – in their unswerving mission to defend an increasingly unpopular global system serving the interests of a tiny minority, security agencies have no qualms about painting the rest of us as potential terrorists."

Read the entire story in The Guardian here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - On the Cusp - With All Respect To Willem Buiter

"We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further. A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake.  Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it. It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded. The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down. So was the U.K."

Sir Eddie George, Governor Bank of England to Nicholas J. Morrell, chief executive of Lonmin Plc.

George Osborne, Staring at the Abyss Once Again

Gold ran up to almost the exact resistance of the bear flag. No coincidence there.

Silver also took back the 17 handle.

Follow through is everything.

Looking at the Comex delivery reports, there are a large number of gold contracts being stopped, not so much silver.

But in the warehouses, gold is relatively quiet, while silver bullion continues to see movements in size.

 

US Silver coin sales are setting a record this year.  Imagine that. 

 

With all due respect to Willem Buiter, the Citibank economist who spotted the 6,000 year bubble in precious metals, gold and silver will more likely be considered de facto money when today's paper dollars, and the lords of the central banks who created them, are nothing more than dirt under a toddler's fingernails.

I think the gold market in the US is a paper fake.  There is almost no doubt in my mind now.  It is no more tied to fundamentals than Liar's poker is tied to the US currency levels.

During the day I mentioned to Bill Murphy that the physical markets will some day deliver a size twelve shoe, with likely some impressive velocity, into the posterior of the US financialized markets.

And at that point, the smarmy hands of Wall Street will once again come slithering towards our pockets, perhaps wearing the cuff links of the Federal Reserve, and be expecting a bailout to 'save the system.'

God have mercy, if we allow that to happen again.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 h

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

"This is the contempt in which they hold the majority of American people and the political process: the common people are easily led fools, and everyone else who is smart enough to know better has their price.

And they would beggar every middle class voter in the US before they will voluntarily give up one dime of their ill gotten gains."

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup, May 2009

World markets were selling off overnight, and so were US markets early this morning.  The Greek stock market lost almost 13 percent in one day.

 

Encouraging words about printing euros from the ECB helped to turn the markets around, with a buying campaign in the SP futures and some opportunistic dip buying in techs saving the day.

 

The pigmen are rubbing their hands and licking their chops, looking for a 'Santa Claus rally' to fill their bellies into the quiet trading of year end.   That is a stock market rally that occurs in the very quiet holiday trading at year end and the first week in the new year.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Reprise: The Quiet Coup d'Etat in the Anglo-American Financial System

 

“The fine thing about pacts with the devil is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions.   Otherwise, why would you be recompensed with hell?”

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

 

This is a reprise of an interview with MIT economist Simon Johnson which I first wrote about in February, 2009.

 

I think I ought to republish this as a reminder every few years, until reform has been achieved, or until the Internet as we know it goes dark.

 

Have we heeded Simon Johnson's warning? Has he proven to be prescient? Is crony capitalism and the kleptocracy becoming bolder, more aggressive, ever more demanding?

"I think I'm signaling something a little bit shocking to Americans, and to myself, actually. Which is the situation we find ourselves in at this moment, this week, is very strongly reminiscent of the situations we've seen many times in other places.

But they're places we don't like to think of ourselves as being similar to. They're emerging markets. It's Russia or Indonesia or a Thailand type situation, or Korea. That's not comfortable. America is different. America is special. America is rich. And, yet, we've somehow find ourselves in the grip of the same sort of crisis and the same sort of oligarchs...

But, exactly what you said, it's a small group with a lot of power. A lot of wealth. They don't necessarily - they're not necessarily always the names, the household names that spring to mind, in this kind of context. But they are the people who could pull the strings. Who have the influence. Who call the shots...

...the signs that I see this week, the body language, the words, the op-eds, the testimony, the way they're treated by certain Congressional committees, it makes me feel very worried.

I have this feeling in my stomach that I felt in other countries, much poorer countries, countries that were headed into really difficult economic situation. When there's a small group of people who got you into a disaster, and who were still powerful. Disaster even made them more powerful. And you know you need to come in and break that power. And you can't. You're stuck....

The powerful people are the insiders. They're the CEOs of these banks. They're the people who run these banks. They're the people who pay themselves the massive bonuses at the end of the last year. Now, those bonuses are not the essence of the problem, but they are a symptom of an arrogance, and a feeling of invincibility, that tells you a lot about the culture of those organizations, and the attitudes of the people who lead them...

But it really shows you the arrogance, and I think these people think that they've won. They think it's over. They think it's won. They think that we're going to pay out ten or 20 percent of GDP to basically make them whole. It's astonishing....

...these people are throughout the system of government. They are very much at the forefront of the Treasury. The Treasury is apparently calling the shots on their economic policies.

This is a decisive moment. Either you break the power or we're stuck for a long time with this arrangement."

Bill Moyer's Journal - Interview with Simon Johnson, February, 2009.

Johnson also wrote a piece in the Atlantic Magazine titled The Quiet Coup. It may be worth re-reading.

"I am not so optimistic that this reform is possible, because there has in fact been a soft coup d'etat in the US, which now exists in a state of crony corporatism that wields enormous influence over the media and within the government.

Let's be clear about this, the oligarchs are flush with victory, and feel that they are firmly in control, able to subvert and direct any popular movement to the support of their own fascist ends and unslakable will to power.

This is the contempt in which they hold the majority of American people and the political process: the common people are easily led fools, and everyone else who is smart enough to know better has their price. And they would beggar every middle class voter in the US before they will voluntarily give up one dime of their ill gotten gains.

But my model says that the oligarchs will continue to press their advantages, being flushed with victory, until they provoke a strong reaction that frightens everyone, like a wake up call, and the tide then turns to genuine reform."

As far as I can tell, we are right on track for a very bad time of it. And you might be surprised at how far a belief in exceptionalism and arrogant superiority can go before it finally ends, or more likely, fails.

“Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.”

Mary Midgley

US Middle Class Wealth Has Collapsed, Consumed by the Gods of Finance

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.

They kill us for their sport."

William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Reality denied comes back to haunt.”

Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Let's file this under 'why aren't people buying things and saving more?'

Yes I know that wealth is not income. That is a small consolation when you don't have much of either.

The Recovery™ is like Equal Justice™ these days of the Pax Americana and Pax Brittanica.

It is reserved for some, and keeps two sets of books.

Median Household Net Worth is back to what it was in the 1960's.

At least we had better music then.

So who are you going to vote for this time?  Bush, or Clinton?

And may the odds be ever in your favour.

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up

Gold got quite a pop intraday, as repeated attempts to take gold below the key support at 1190 failed.

Oil was down, stocks were down, but gold was not going lower.

And so the metals bears seemed to throw in the towel, and gold rebounded sharply running almost straight up towards the 1210 level.

I thought this was almost certainly a 'technical bounce' with a little flight to safety sprinkled in.

Gold needs to break out of this pattern. I have included a closeup of the relevant part of the chart so you can see the levels.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Eternal Footman Snickers

Stocks were weak today, with a decided lack of new economic news, based I think on 'jitters' with stock valuations at these lofty levels, and yet so many hedge funds underperforming the indices.

Oil took a 4 percent hit, and concern is growing that this is a sign of slackness in aggregate demand, and not a over production move by the US and some of its allies to punish Russia, or the Saudis to give the shale oil crowd a stiff gut check on their long term viability.

But all in all, today was just a pullback. Let's see if we get any follow through anywhere in this market.

There is a surprising lack of liquidity in the market, despite the massive printing that has been done by the Fed.

If the markets get in trouble, it could develop into a blood bath. But that is a big *could*.

Have a pleasant evening.