Monthly Archives: May 2019

The Limits of American Destructiveness, by Dmitry Orlov

The main limit on American destructiveness is that the rest of the world is getting tired of destruction. From Dmitry Orlov at cluborlov.blogspot.com:

US foreign policy has always been directed at wrecking anything that wasn’t deemed sufficiently American and replacing it with something more acceptable—especially if that something allowed wealth to flow into the US from the outside. Compromises were reserved for the USSR, but even there the Americans constantly tried to cheat. For everyone else there was just submission, which was usually tactfully disguised as a positive—a seat at the big table which offered better chances for peace, prosperity and economic and social development.

Of course, it was a simple enough matter to pierce this veil of hypocritical politeness and to point out that the US, living far beyond its means, has only managed to survive by looting the rest of the world, but anyone who dared to do so would be ostracized, sanctioned, regime-changed, invaded and destroyed—whatever it took.

The US establishment has lavished its wrath on anyone who dared to oppose it ideologically, but it reserved its most extreme forms of malice for those who dared commit the cardinal sin of attempting to sell oil for anything other than US dollars. Iraq was destroyed for this very reason, then Libya. With Syria the juggernaut bogged down and stalled out; with Iran it is unlikely to ever get started.

Even the spineless European politicians are now forced to admit that US policies are designed to enrich certain American interests at the expense of their constituents; they understand by now that further denial would cause them further harm at the polls. Most insultingly to the American ego, US attempts at making Russia and China submit are being greeted with shrugs, titters and eye rolls. And now anybody who wants to can openly criticize the US and scheme behind its back.

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Press Freedom is Under Threat in the Land of its Birth, by Dave Lindorff

The freedom of the press in the colonies, now under assault in the Julian Assange case, predates the establishment of the United States. From Dave Lindorff at counterpunch.org:

The trial, as imagined by an illustrator in the book Wall Street in History – Public Domain

Hong Kong.

Here in this ultra-modern city on the coast of southern China, I read in the morning paper that 11 consulates representing most of the nations of Europe, have lodged protests with the city’s chief executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor over a controversial new extradition bill that if passed would allow Hong Kong to extradite suspects to nations with which Hong Kong does not have an extradition deal. That would include China (a country of which Hong Kong is an integral part while still retaining local control over such things as its legal system which remains based upon British Common Law, not Chinese law).

I was not surprised to see that the US Consulate here in Hong Kong did not join in the protest against the new bill.

After all, the US is itself clearly flouting the extradition treaty it signed in 2003 with the UK, which states that neither nation will extradite to the other anyone who faces politically motivated prosecution. Yet just this past week, the US filed 17 charges of violation of the hoary US Espionage Act, a measure enacted by Congress in 1917 during the First World War that has rarely been used since then and that is widely viewed as designed to target political opponents of the government.

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WikiLeaks Expresses ‘Grave Concerns’ for Assange’s Health, by Joe Lauria

Britain treats convicted mass killers better than it’s treating Julian Assange. From Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com:

WikiLeaks on Wednesday said it was gravely concerned for the health of its publisher, Julian Assange, and questioned Britain’s “standing as a human-rights abiding nation.”

WikiLeaks has condemned Britain for its treatment of Julian Assange, expressing “grave concerns” for the health of its publisher who has been transferred to the health ward of Belmarsh prison in London.

In a statement released on Twitter on Wednesday, the publication also condemned Ecuador for having created conditions “incompatible with basic human rights” for Assange, who had been granted asylum in its London embassy and remained there for seven years. He was cutoff the last year from the internet with only minimal visits permitted.

Assange is serving a 50-week sentence in the maximum-security prison for skipping bail in 2012 when he was wanted for questioning by Sweden on sexual assault allegations. That year he entered Ecuador’s embassy and remained there until British police were invited in to arrest Assange on April 11.

He had sought asylum fearing onward extradition from Sweden to the United States to face charges under the Espionage Act.  As he had predicted, the U.S. filed an extradition request with Britain the day he was arrested, and last Thursday he was charged under the Espionage Act for possessing and disseminating classified information.

Britain had twice ignored rulings by the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention that the UK should let Assange free and pay him compensation. “The UK’s refusal to abide by UN rulings, and its subsequent treatment of Mr. Assange since his arrest, presents serious questions about the UK’s standing as a human rights-abiding nation,” WikiLeaks said in its statement.

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‘Spying’: Comey Doth Protest Too Much, by Thomas Knapp

James Comey only lies when his mouth moves. From Thomas Knapp at antiwar.com:

“We didn’t ‘spy’ on anyone’s campaign,” writes former FBI director James Comey in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

“We asked a federal judge for permission to surveil” former Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, but that’s not “spying.”

Before that (unmentioned in the op-ed), we infiltrated an informant into the campaign to gather information on its operations, but that’s not “spying.”

What a strange allergic reaction from Comey, and others associated with US intelligence and counterintelligence operations, to US Attorney General William Barr’s simple statement before the US Senate: “Spying on a campaign is a big deal … I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.”

Comey insists that the spying was indeed “adequately predicated,” and that for some reason this makes it not spying.

It was spying.

You know, the same activity for which 98-year-old Patricia Warner, who infiltrated Nazi circles in Spain during World War Two, just received the Congressional Gold Medal.

The same activity for which dozens of CIA assets have received the Intelligence Star medal, and for which 113 of them have their names inscribed on that agency’s “Memorial Wall.”

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Assange Is Reportedly Gravely Ill, And Hardly Anyone’s Talking About It, by Caitlin Johnstone

There’s no denying that it would be extremely convenient to many of the powers that be if Assange helpfully died while in prison. May they’re helping him along. From Caitlin Johnstone at medium.com:

Julian Assange’s Swedish lawyer Per Samuelson has told the press that “Assange’s health situation on Friday was such that it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him.”

This jarring revelation has been reported by a small handful of outlets, but only as an aside in relation to Sweden refusing Samuelson’s request for a postponement of a scheduled hearing regarding Assange’s detention in absentia for a preliminary investigation of rape allegations. The fact that the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder is so ill that he can’t converse lucidly is itself far more significant than the postponement refusal, yet headlines mentioning Samuelson’s statement focus on the Swedish case, de-emphasizing the startling news from his lawyer.

As of this writing I’ve been able to find very few news outlets reporting on this at all, the most mainstream being a Reuters article with the very tame headline “Swedish court rejects delay of Assange hearing over ill-health: lawyer”. The Sydney Morning Herald also covered the story without even mentioning illness in headline, instead going with “Swedish court rejects effort to delay Assange hearing”. The much smaller alternative media outlet World Socialist Website has been the only outlet I’ve found so far which reports on Samuelson’s statement in anything resembling its proper scale, publishing a good article titled “Despite Assange’s ill-health, Swedish court rejects delay to hearing” a few hours ago.

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Globalists Only Need One More Major Event To Finish Sabotaging The Economy, by Brandon Smith

They only need one, and Brandon Smith thinks they may get three. From Smith at alt-market.com:

As I predicted in my article ‘Trump Trade Wars A Perfect Smokescreen For A Market Crash’, published in March of 2018, as well as in my article ‘The Trade War Distraction: Huawei And Linchpin Theory’, published in December of 2018, the US/China trade dispute has escalated into an all out war with no end in sight. The claims of many analysts and skeptics a year ago that the trade war would be over quickly and that China would fold to US tariffs has been proven incorrect. The reason why these analysts got it so wrong centers primarily on their misunderstanding of the true purpose behind the events.

The goal of this war is NOT to balance the US trade deficit or pursue more fair circumstances for US exports and imports. The intention of the Trump Administration is NOT to fight back against Chinese “exploitation” of US markets, this kind of rhetoric is pure theater.  Nor is it Trump’s intention to undermine globalist structures or agreements in order to bring back American manufacturing (a carrot that has been flaunted in front of American faces for a long time to lure them into supporting destructive policies such as dollar devaluation). On the contrary, the real purpose of Trump’s trade war is to provide a distraction massive enough to cover for the controlled demolition of the US economy and parts of the global economy by globalists and the central banks they control.

The tariff soap opera and most of Trump’s other foreign and domestic policies are eerily similar to those of Herbert Hoover just before the advent of the Great Depression. This is not a coincidence. The narrative for an economic collapse rivaling that of the Great Depression has been set, and the root circumstances are very similar.

Since the crash of 2008, the US has been suffering a slow grinding decline in fundamentals (the collapse of an empire often takes time). The response of central banks was to slow the crash using stimulus measures and near zero interest rates, but this strategy was not meant to reverse US economic decline. The purpose of QE was meant to inflate an even larger bubble than before, one that would encompass every aspect of the economy including the dollar; a bubble that when popped would devastate the US specifically and create panic around the world.

Now the stimulus phase of the globalist agenda is over. US M2 money supply growth has been decelerating and is hovering near 10 year lows, while stimulus measures have evaporated in most countries except China. Global dollar liquidity has been dwindling as the Federal Reserve continues to cut its balance sheet unabated.

This would explain why US equities are struggling to stay afloat despite the fact that corporate buybacks of stocks have increased to historic highs in 2019. Central banks, most importantly the Fed, are no longer propping up the system; the life support has been pulled and the parts of the economy that have been dependent are taking their last breaths.

The trade war situation as it is now is not enough of a distraction in my view, however. At least one more major event with global ramifications (or perceived global ramifications) is needed by the elites before they can implode the ‘Everything Bubble’ without taking the blame for the consequences.

Trade War Shock And Awe

There are several powderkegs that exist today that would serve the purpose of occupying the minds of the masses while the globalists finalize the crash. As noted, I continue to predict the trade war as it stands will accelerate unabated until the plunge in fundamentals and equities is complete. We haven’t seen anything yet as far as trade war chaos.

The US/China conflict has the potential to become an economic world war, with multiple countries beginning to take sides. Japan and the UK have opted to support US interests, which is not surprising since China and Japan have hated each other for generations and the US is the UK’s strongest economic partner in the wake of the Brexit. Already some people are declaring this to mean that the US will gain the majority of global support and crush China.

But keep in mind, as I outlined and evidenced in my recent article ‘America Will Lose The Trade War Because That Is What Globalists Want To Happen’, the trade war itself is a farce on both sides of the Pacific, as both China and the US are controlled by the same financial power centers (such as the Bank for International Settlements).  The fact that some people are jumping on the patriot bandwagon to cheer for expanded confrontation with China as if a globalist engineered war is a war we can “win” is disturbing and sad to witness.  My suspicion is that there is a concerted disinformation campaign in play on the internet to drum up the false impression of consensus support for the trade war while the activities of the real villains (the international banks) are ignored.

As this Kabuki theater moves forward, I think many analysts will find themselves shocked as more and more nations start taking China’s side in the conflict.

The most powerful option China has at its disposal is the dumping of US Treasuries and the dollar as the world reserve mechanism, but it is likely to use this tactic only when the US economy is at its most unstable. China is the number one exporter/importer in the world and the US consumer is ready to tap out as retail numbers stumble and household debt skyrockets. The US market is only 18% of Chinese exports, a sizable piece of the pie, but hardly a devastating blow to the Chinese economy should it be denied to them.

The bottom line is that China will ultimately dictate global trade terms as they possess the largest manufacturing base, they decide what currency they will accept, and whose debt they will prop up.  China has also established very close economic ties with key nations over the past decade, including Russia, Germany, India, Australia, and even Saudi Arabia. Do not be surprised if most if not all of these nations eventually support China in the trade war, dropping the dollar as the reserve currency and following China’s lead.

Skeptics of this outcome are pretty much the same people that originally claimed the trade war would be over by now and that Trump would be victorious.  They will cry foul today at the idea that the globalists have rigged the game and that the US is being set up to fail, but when they are shown to be wrong once again they will state proudly that they “saw it coming all along”.

China has yet to fully retaliate against the latest increase in US tariffs. When it does, the attack will be far larger than cutting off purchases of US agricultural goods. The next escalation could be the trigger than sends the crash into overdrive.

Iran War Looming

War with Iran at this time makes no sense whatsoever unless you look at it from a globalist perspective. The globalists are the only group that stands to gain from such catastrophe, as war with Iran would seal the fate of the US economy. The most immediate threat would be the potential shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran, which would take nothing more than sinking a few large cargo vessels along the narrow and more shallow portions of the straight, placing mine fields, or staging anti-ship missiles within striking range. The subsequent explosion in oil prices would be devastating to the global economy and the US economy would struggle under high energy prices even with expanded domestic oil drilling.

In the longer term complete destabilization of the Middle East would result, well beyond what we have already seen, and the costs to taxpayers as well as the cost in American lives would be high. Beyond this, the distraction would be epic and very effective. This event coupled with the trade war would fulfill the globalist narrative that the Trump Administration and the conservatives that support him are a “menace” to global stability. Any financial crash at that point would undoubtedly be blamed on Trump as well as his supporters.

Currently, the mainstream media is very quiet on the Iran situation despite the sudden shift of US military resources to the region, which leads me to believe that a conflict is being planned in the near term.

Brexit Finalized

This event may not be concluded until the end of this year, but I still maintain as I always have that the Brexit and the growth of populism in Europe is a distraction that has actually been encouraged by globalists through the use of forced mass immigration measures to terrify the citizenry.  I successfully predicted the outcome of the Brexit vote in 2016 based on this theory, and it still holds true so far today.

The “rise of the populists” in Europe and the US at the exact same time that central banks are withdrawing liquidity and at the exact same time that fundamentals are plummeting is yet another unlikely coincidence.

The only event that was needed to fulfill the populist takeover narrative was a major win by a nationalist party on the European mainland.  Thanks to French president Macron being the worst leader in recent French history, that event has occurred.  Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Party has overtaken Macron’s LREM party in the EU parliamentary elections.  The populists have gained ground in Italy and Germany as well; not enough to retain any real influence, but enough to get blamed for the financial disaster that is about to happen.

The final plot twist the elites need in the EU, I believe, is a no-deal Brexit.  I predict the Brexit will conclude and that the UK will indeed break with the EU. The latest announcement of Theresa May’s resignation seems to indicate that this will be the case, and that a no-deal scenario is the most probable scenario. The EU has publicly stated that there will be NO renegotiations of the Brexit deal after May leaves.  Sovereignty activists will cheer the Brexit outcome, and then things will start to go horribly wrong. European markets will tank and certain major banks (Deutsche Bank and Italian majors?) will announce insolvency. The panic felt in 2008 will return and hit the EU and the UK hard, and the Brexit movement will get the blame while central banks escape any culpability.

Only one of these events is needed to initiate the next stage of economic collapse, but it is possible we will see all three occur in due course. While the current crash started at the end of 2018, the year of 2019 will probably be the one that is most remembered in history books as the beginning of Great Depression 2.0.

 

Western Supremacy Is On Its Way Out, by Paul Craig Roberts

Immigration is the cherry on the sundae of Western collapse. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

On May 28 I wrote that “the Western world is collapsing so rapidly that I am afraid that I am going to outlive it” ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/05/24/whiteness-is-the-new-evil/ ). My article was about the rising demonization of white people that is producing a collapse in their confidence. Inculcated guilt is making whites willing to accept discrimination against them in order to elevate Arab, African, and Hispanic migrants that greedy corporations and witless political leaders have brought into the country.  The Identity Politics of the Democratic Party works to the advantage of darker skinned migrants who present themselves as the victims of the white-faced victimizer.  Just as Jews discovered the advantage of infecting gentiles with guilt, so have the Arabs, Africans, and Hispanics.  

Psychological and emotional collapse is not the only form of collapse underway in the US and Western world generally.  There is also economic and social collapse, especially in the United States.  Today America’s once great manufacturing and industrial cities, such as Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Flint Michigan, Gary Indiana, have lost 20% of their populations, largely due to the offshoring of US manufacturing. (See https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Laissez-Faire-Capitalism/dp/0986036250/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2W1NDYFTJ7Q82&keywords=paul+craig+roberts+books&qid=1559153009&s=books&sprefix=Paul+Craig%2Caps%2C151&sr=1-4 )

Social collapse is evident in rising homelessness.  Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle have large homeless populations that encamp on city streets, parks, and upscale neighborhoods such as Venice Beach ( https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/las-homeless-surge-puts-hollywoods-progressive-ideals-test-1174599 ).

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What Putin and Pompeo did not talk about, by Pepe Escobar

Pompeo journeys to Russia and plays a very weak hand. From Pepe Escobar at atimes.com:

What Putin and Pompeo did not talk about

Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomes US State Secretary Mike Pompeo, left, during their meeting, in Sochi, Russia. Photo: AFP / Sergey Guneev / Sputnik
Russia is uneasy over the destabilization of Tehran, and on other hotspots the powers’ positions are clear
Even veiled by thick layers of diplomatic fog, the overlapping meetings in Sochi between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov still offer tantalizing geopolitical nuggets.

Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov did his best to smooth the utterly intractable, admitting there was “no breakthrough yet” during the talks but at least the US “demonstrated a constructive approach.”

Putin told Pompeo that after his 90-minute phone call with Trump, initiated by the White House, and described by Ushakov as “very good,” the Russian president “got the impression that the [US] president was inclined to re-establish Russian-American relations and contacts to resolve together the issues that are of mutual interest to us.”

That would imply a Russiagate closure. Putin told Pompeo, in no uncertain terms, that Moscow never interfered in the US elections, and that the Mueller report proved that there was no connection between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

This adds to the fact Russiagate has been consistently debunked by the best independent American investigators such as the VIPS group.

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Technotyranny: The Iron-Fisted Authoritarianism of the Surveillance State, by John W. Whitehead

The panopticon is well under construction. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me.’” ― Philip K. Dick

Red pill or blue pill? You decide.

Twenty years after the Wachowskis’ iconic 1999 film, The Matrix, introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans exist in a computer-simulated non-reality powered by authoritarian machines—a world where the choice between existing in a denial-ridden virtual dream-state or facing up to the harsh, difficult realities of life comes down to a red pill or a blue pill—we stand at the precipice of a technologically-dominated matrix of our own making.

We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day, falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities, virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing us and eventually dominating every aspect of our lives.

Science fiction has become fact.

In The Matrix, computer programmer Thomas Anderson a.k.a. hacker Neo is wakened from a virtual slumber by Morpheus, a freedom fighter seeking to liberate humanity from a lifelong hibernation state imposed by hyper-advanced artificial intelligence machines that rely on humans as an organic power source. With their minds plugged into a perfectly crafted virtual reality, few humans ever realize they are living in a dream world.

Neo is given a choice: to wake up and join the resistance, or remain asleep and serve as fodder for the powers-that-be. “You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe,” Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix. “You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Most people opt for the red pill.

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What Happened to the Freedom of Speech? By Andrew P. Napolitano

The indictment of Julian Assange represents a direct assault on the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press. From Andrew Napolitano at lewrockwell.com:

“Congress shall make no law…
abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press…”

— First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

When James Madison agreed be the scrivener at the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787, he could not have known that just three years later he’d be the chair of the House of Representatives committee whose task it was to draft the Bill of Rights.

In doing so, he insisted that the word “the” precede the phrase “freedom of speech” in what was to become the First Amendment, so as to reflect its preexistence; meaning, the freedom of speech preexisted the United States. Madison believed that the pre-political rights, which he enumerated in the Bill of Rights, are natural to our humanity and he articulated as much in the Ninth Amendment, and in his speeches in support of the ratification of what would become the first 10 amendments.

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