Abracadabra

Kunstler:

And so, as they say in the horror movies, it begins…! The unwinding of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. Such an esoteric concept! Is there one in ten thousand of the millions of people who sit at desks all day long from sea to shining sea who have a clue how this works? Or what its relationship is to the real world?

I confess, my understanding of it is incomplete and schematic at best — in the way that my understanding of a Las Vegas magic act might be. All the flash and dazzle conceals the magician’s misdirection. The magician is either a scary supernatural being or a magnificent fraud. Anyway, the audience ‘out there’ for the Federal Reserve’s magic act — x-million people preoccupied by their futures slipping away, their cars falling apart, their kid’s $53,000 college loan burden, or the $6,000 bill they just received for going to the emergency room with a cut finger — wouldn’t give a good goddamn even if they knew the Fed’s magic show was going on.

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The XIII Commandments of Communities that Abide

Club Orlov:

Over the past two Thursdays I have run two articles (1, 2) that looked back on and more or less wrapped my efforts at trying to inspire sustainable community-building efforts in the North American context, at least of the land-based variety. I am still hopeful about the possibilities of self-sufficient homesteads, and I am continuing to work on providing a different sort of context—for building mobile, floating communities—based on Quidnon—"A Houseboat that Sails". There will be more on it soon. But to wrap up the theme that I launched over three years ago with the book shown on the left, here is a rather important excerpt from it.

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US & Europe’s farcical hypocrisy over Russian foreign media law

RT Op-Edge:

It’s so brazenly hypocritical, it could be a joke. The US and the European Union rushed to condemn Russia’s new media laws restricting foreign entities. At the same time, they assume the unilateral right to hound Russian news outlets as “foreign agents.”

Do as we say, not as we do, is the arrogant mentality here.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin signed new legislation into law last weekend, the Kremlin described the measures as a “symmetrical response” to moves in the US earlier this month forcing Russian state-owned broadcaster RT to register as a foreign agent.

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Basic US Military Problem: Most Expensive Does Not Equal Best

Russia Insider:

Boosting military spending was one of President Trump’s major campaign pledges. The fiscal 2018 defense spending bill introduced by a joint House-Senate conference committee allows $692 billion, including $626 billion in base budget spending and $66 billion more for the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund.

There are other security related expenses of other agencies, which exceed $170 billion. They include the National Nuclear Security Administration in the Department of Energy, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the State Department, the Homeland Security, the FBI, and Cybersecurity in the Department of Justice.

Defense spending accounts for almost 16 percent of all federal spending and roughly half of discretionary spending. The United States spends more on national defense than the next eight biggest national defense budgets in the world combined, including China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Kingdom, India, France, and Japan.

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U.S. Asks China To Cut Off Oil Supply To North Korea

Oil Price.com:

China should cut off North Korea’s access to crude oil following the latest missile launch from Pyongyang, and Washington has asked it to do just that, the U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said, adding that “if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.”

The U.S. has for months insisted that more radical measures be taken against the North Korean regime, but Beijing has been reluctant to step up the pressure too much, wary of bringing a refugee crisis on its own head in case of an open military conflict in the region.

Haley’s warning comes on the heels of the third intercontinental missile test launch that North Korea announced earlier this week, claiming now its missiles can hit any location in the United States. North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un said this test showed that North Korea had become a full nuclear power.

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What If Japan Had Never Bombed Pearl Harbor?

War Is Boring:

Suppose Robert E. Lee had laid hands on a shipment of AK-47s in 1864. How would American history have unfolded? Differently than it did, one imagines.

Historians frown on alt-history, and oftentimes for good reason. Change too many variables, and you veer speedily into fiction. The chain connecting cause to effect gets too diffuse to trace, and history loses all power to instruct. Change a major variable, especially in a fanciful way — for instance, positing that machine-gun-toting Confederates took the field against Ulysses S. Grant’s army at the Battle of the Wilderness — and the same fate befalls you. Good storytelling may teach little.

What if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor? Now that’s a question we can take on without running afoul of historical scruples. As long as we refrain from insert nuclear-powered aircraft carriers sporting Tomcat fighters into our deliberations, at any rate.

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Signs Of War: Russian Military Deploys Marines On North Korean Border

SHTFplan:

Following North Korea’s most recent missile launch are the signs of impending war.  Russia has now deployed Marines to the North Korean border.

Russian marines have begun practicing landing operations at its border with North Korea, following Pyongyang’s controversial missile launch test this week, the military said. Although this is just one of several drills conducted over the past month, more are expected. According to Newsweek, Russian naval infantry servicemen and the crews of Russia’s Pacific Fleet ships Admiral Nevelskoy and Peresvet, carried out a swift, amphibious charge on a beachhead in the Primorye region, Russia’s only one to border North Korea.

The cargo and staff boarded Admiral Nevelskoy at Desantnaya Bay and simulated the landing at the Klerk training range, both of which are in Primorye, Pacific Fleet spokesman Nikolay Voskresenskiy told state-run news agency RIA Novosti. Peresvet made its pickup elsewhere but also arrived in the area near Klerk. -Newsweek

This military drill comes just one day before the Pacific Fleet kicks off a series of training exercises in Primorye and the far more eastern Kamchatka. Those drills will involve around 1,000 troops and over 150 items of equipment. The drills will also involve live fire exercises.

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