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.

Continue Reading at Kunstler..... 

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.

Continue Reading at Club Orlov..... 

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.

Continue Reading at RT Op-Edge.... 

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.

Continue Reading at Russia Insider..... 

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.

Continue Reading at Oil Price..... 

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.

Continue Reading at War Is Boring..... 

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.

Continue Reading at SHTFplan..... 

What We Can Do...

EP autos - Libertarian Car Talk:

Until enough people’s minds are changed about coercion and collectivism, resistance isfutile. The debate will continue to be about how much should be stolen from whom and for what purpose – rather than about whether anything should be stolen by anyone for any purpose.

As things are, many people believe it is ok to steal from others – provided the stealing is done on their behalf by other people (these are called “tax collectors”) and the stolen goods are called by pleasant but intellectually dishonest, morally evasive names (examples include Social Security, welfare, foreign aid, grants and so on).

Continue Reading at EP Autos.... 

Why Kremlin Trolls Always Win

Club Orlov:

A most interesting book has recently come out: Phil Butler’s Putin's Praetorians: Confessions of the Top Kremlin Trolls. It’s a good book to read for all those who wish to peer behind the crazy funhouse mirror set up by Western media. It includes contributions from people who have been active in opposing the barrage of counterfactual press coverage emanating from “fake news” factories such as the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN.

Continue Reading at Club Orlov.... 

Why Roy Moore Matters

Patrick J. Buchanan:

Why would Christian conservatives in good conscience go to the polls Dec. 12 and vote for Judge Roy Moore, despite the charges of sexual misconduct with teenagers leveled against him?

Answer: That Alabama Senate race could determine whether Roe v. Wade is overturned. The lives of millions of unborn may be the stakes.

Republicans now hold 52 Senate seats. If Democrats pick up the Alabama seat, they need only two more to recapture the Senate, and with it the power to kill any conservative court nominee, as they killed Robert Bork.

Continue Reading at Patrick J. Buchanan..... 

The History of North Korea's Arsenal

Stratfor Worldview:

Editor's Note

The war of words between the United States and North Korea is escalating, and the world is watching intently to see what each country does next. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has even threatened to carry out an atmospheric nuclear test over the Pacific Ocean. But such a display would simply be the latest in a lengthy series of missile and nuclear tests that spans over a decade. Each new step that Pyongyang has taken in its development of missile and nuclear technology has been critical to its goal of acquiring a viable nuclear deterrent to U.S. military action against it. And further strides are on the horizon.

• Nov. 29, 2017: North Korea launches an intercontinental ballistic missile from Sain Ni near Pyongyang. It flew a distance of 960 kilometers for 50 minutes at an altitude of 4,500 kilometers, later landing in the Sea of Japan, 210 kilometers off the west coast of Japan's Aomori prefecture.
• Sept. 15, 2017: North Korea launches another Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile that flies over northern Japan. The missile reached an altitude of 770 kilometers and flew a distance of 3,700 kilometers.
• Sept. 3, 2017: North Korea carries out a sixth nuclear test. Pyongyang claims it was a test of a hydrogen bomb.

Continue Reading at Stratfor Worldview.... 

Fighting Israel's Wars

Russia Insider:

There has been a report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into foreign lobbying in Washington while another story relates how his team is investigating the alleged contact of a Donald Trump associate with a Hungarian. Both are part of the ongoing investigation into Russiagate.

Unless I am wrong, which happens occasionally, Hungary is a member of the European Union and also of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It has relatively free elections and its government changes as a result.

No one but the Mueller commission has considered contact with a Hungarian citizen to be a potential threat to American democracy. But then again, no one has really made the case in any kind of credible fashion that meeting with a Russian is either ipso facto criminal or treasonous, or that Moscow’s media does anything beyond what other state-owned broadcasters tend to do, but you wouldn’t know that from reading the mainstream press or from watching MSNBC and CNN.

Continue Reading at Russia Insider...... 

Making Trump’s Bad Foreign Policy Even Worse

The American Conservative:

The Trump administration’s foreign policy may soon become even worse than it already is:

The White House has developed a plan to force out Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, whose relationship with President Trump has been strained, and replace him with Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director, within the next several weeks [bold mine-DL], senior administration officials said on Thursday.

Mr. Pompeo would be replaced at the C.I.A. by Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas who has been a key ally of the president on national security matters, according to the White House plan.

Pompeo has been rumored as one of Tillerson’s likely replacements for a while, but it hadn’t been clear how soon the change might be taking place. Cotton had likewise been mentioned as the top contender to replace Pompeo, so while it would be horrible news it isn’t unexpected. It’s not clear to me what qualifies them for these positions, but both would likely be confirmed if they are nominated.

Continue Reading at The American Conservative.... 

America's $20 trillion debt 'should keep people awake at night'

RT Business News:

Americans shouldn’t forget their country owes the biggest debt in history, warns the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen.

"I would simply say that I am very worried about the sustainability of the US debt trajectory. Our current debt-to-GDP ratio of about 75 percent is not frightening, but it's also not low," Yellen said.

Continue Reading at RT Business News.... 

Bombing Afghanistan for Peace and Prosperity

Strategic Culture:

In May this year the Carnegie Endowment for Peace assessed that “The security environment in Afghanistan is still precarious... the government remains heavily dependent on foreign aid... the combination of a weakening Afghan regime and an unchecked Taliban resurgence could lead to the catastrophic collapse of the Afghan government and state...”

It is essential that a policy be constructed in order to move the country towards security, peace and prosperity, and this, so far, has involved an increase in US combat troops and expansion of the aerial bombing campaign.

Continue Reading at Strategic Culture..... 

The Asymmetry of Bubbles: the Status Quo and Bitcoin

of two minds - Charles Hugh Smith:

Shall we compare the damage that will be done when all these bubbles pop?

Regardless of one's own views about bitcoin/cryptocurrency, what is truly remarkable is the asymmetry that is applied to questioning the status quo and bitcoin. As I noted yesterday, everyone seems just fine with throwing away $20 billion in electricity annually in the U.S. alone to keep hundreds of millions of gadgets in stand-by mode, but the electrical consumption of bitcoin is "shocking," "ridiculous," etc.

Since the U.S. consumes about 20% of the world's energy, we can guesstimate the total amount of electricity wasted on stand-by and similar sources of waste is more on the order of $100 billion annually.

Continue Reading at of two minds..... 

"Worst Yet To Come" - They Are Dropping Like Flies As Planned Take Down Of The "Elite" Garners Fresh Blood

All News Pipeline:

By Susan Duclos

(Part Two) - Sex Scandal Sacrifices Are Low Level Rats Being Thrown To The Wolves To Cover Up PedoGate

(Part 3) 'A Trail Of Death' - Strange Number Of PedoGate Investigators And Observers Have Died

On October 12, 2017, while Hollywood being rocked by the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandals, and the #MeToo mob was in the midst of naming dozens of other celebrities and alleging they too were responsible for sexual misconduct, ANP reported on the existence of the "Sh*tty Media Men" list that claimed members of some of the biggest news outlets were sexual abusers, and we said we believed we were watching a "brilliant scheme," to take down the establishment liberal "elite."

Continue Reading at All News Pipeline..... 

The Great Palestinian Shakedown: Have the Arabs Had Enough?

Gatestone Institute:

• Like most Arab countries, the Saudis too have finally realized that the Palestinians are ungrateful and untrustworthy. Saudi Arabia and most of the Arab countries are obviously fed up with the recurring attempts by the Palestinians to blackmail them and extort money from them.
• The Palestinians are crying Wolf, Wolf! -- but only a few in the Arab world are listening to them. This, in a way, is encouraging and offers hope for them finally to be released from decades of repressive and corrupt governance.
• These are just some of the challenges Saudi Crown Prince is facing. It is important to support him in the face of attacks by some Palestinians and other spoilers.

A young Saudi man has posted videos on social media in which he calls the Palestinians "dogs" and "pigs." The man says that Saudi Arabia has provided the ungrateful Palestinians with "billions of dollars" during the past few decades. "The Palestinians," the Saudi man charges, "have been milking us for decades."

The videos, which have since gone viral, have understandably drawn strong condemnations from Palestinians, who say they would not have been made public without the tacit approval of the Saudi authorities. For the Palestinians, the abusive videos represent yet another sign of increased tensions in their relations with Saudi Arabia.

Continue Reading at Gatestone Institute.... 

This Trump Decision Is A Major Blow To The Administrative State

The Daily Caller:

The Trump administration switched sides Wednesday in a case pending before the Supreme Court that could retroactively nullify tens of thousands of agency decisions.

The case, Lucia v. SEC, has major implications for the process by which federal agencies try or punish those in violation of laws or regulations.

The litigation concerns an agency’s decision to allow career bureaucrats to preside as the functional equivalent of judges during enforcement proceedings. These officials, called administrative law judges (ALJs), are hired by career bureaucrats. They are not appointed by the president, a court or an agency head, but they exercise significant authority on behalf of the U.S. government in official proceedings.

Continue Reading at The Daily Caller.... 

Money Imperialism

Michael Hudson - The Unz Review:

In theory, the global financial system is supposed to help every country gain. Mainstream teaching of international finance, trade and “foreign aid” (defined simply as any government credit) depicts an almost utopian system uplifting all countries, not stripping their assets and imposing austerity. The reality since World War I is that the United States has taken the lead in shaping the international financial system to promote gains for its own bankers, farm exporters, its oil and gas sector, and buyers of foreign resources – and most of all, to collect on debts owed to it.

Each time this global system has broken down over the past century, the major destabilizing force has been American over-reach and the drive by its bankers and bondholders for short-term gains. The dollar-centered financial system is leaving more industrial as well as Third World countries debt-strapped. Its three institutional pillars – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organization – have imposed monetary, fiscal and financial dependency, most recently by the post-Soviet Baltics, Greece and the rest of southern Europe. The resulting strains are now reaching the point where they are breaking apart the arrangements put in place after World War II.

Continue Reading at The Unz Review..... 

War on RT ramps up. US Congress withdraws RT America’s accreditation on Capitol Hill

The Duran:

RT America has been stripped of its Congress credentials as the US State Department confirms that it will not change RT’s FARA status.

RT reports that the US Congress has withdrawn RT America’s accreditation on Capitol Hill, citing the company’s “foreign agent” status. That’s hours after the State Department said the US Foreign Agents Registration Act “does not restrict an organization’s ability to operate.”

Continue Reading at The Duran..... 

The Death of the American Movie Theater

The American Conservative:

Every time I go to the movies, I am reminded why I never go. I am not a huge movie fan, but my parents gave me a certain appreciation for the art form done well. I sat through enough Depression-era black-and-white films as a kid that I actually like some of them. I think the 1989 Batman film is the best, because Jack Nicholson isn’t overacting as the Joker, and because half of the film is not filled with CGI 9/11 reenactments.

Many movies used to feature shots that lasted more than two seconds, and theatrical experiences that did not feature ribcage-rattling sound effects. And say what you will about all those Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pair-ups and their even larger legion of clones, which were the mass-produced cinema of their day; they were not made primarily to push the envelope on violence or profanity, or to market a series of Fred Astaire action figures or Ginger Rogers breakfast cereals.

Continue Reading at The American Conservative.... 

Reality Check: The Facts vs. the Left's Top Two Lies About Tax Reform

Town Hall - Guy Benson:

In the interest of intellectual honesty and transparency, let's begin with a few important concessions to skeptics of the GOP tax reform bill: First, not every single American would be a winner under the plan.  A small percentage of US taxpayerswould see a tax increase (disproportionately, these would be higher-income itemizers from high-tax states), and a number of deductions that help certain people with heavy medical expenses and student loan debt would be eliminated (proponents say much or all of the resulting blow would be mitigated by lower rates and a doubled standard deduction).  Second, among the "losers" would be a small percentage of middle class families and filers.  Third, even using a "dynamic" score of the legislation -- which takes into account the growth-stimulating effects of tax cuts and simplification -- it is likely that the plan would add hundreds of billions to cumulative federal deficits over the next decade.  The debt matters.  Fourth, some Republicans believe the plan is too tilted toward corporate tax reductions (the current US statuary and effective rates are internationally uncompetitive), arguing that a small portion of those planned cuts should be redirected to families with children.

Continue Reading at Town Hall..... 

Cryptomania!

Club Orlov:

There is a lot of attention currently being paid to cryptocurrencies. On the one hand there are those who claim that their rise in value is actually a symptom that conventional, fiat currencies are crashing. This begs the question as to why precious metals aren’t skyrocketing, and the usual answer is that their prices are being manipulated using the futures market that keeps “paper” gold cheap while “physical” gold is growing scarce; at some point these manipulations will stop working and gold will shoot up to $10,000 an ounce. (Sounds good to me!) This also begs the question as to why, if fiat currencies are crashing, there isn’t much inflation at all. Even in countries that have been plagued with high inflation for decades, such as Russia, this is no longer a problem; there, inflation is now under 3%. There isn’t much inflation in the US either, provided you exclude from it all of the local extortion rackets: real estate, health care and education. (Armed robbery usually isn’t part of the basket of products and services used to compute inflation.) Hyperinflation is not hard to find (in Venezuela) but this is not commonly seen as a worldwide, systemic problem.

Continue Reading at Club Orlov..... 

What Now?

Kunstler:

“Contact with Russians.” Grown men and women, doubling and re-doubling down on a political fantasy, repeat this prayer hour after hour on the cable channels and Web waves as if trying to exorcise a nation possessed by the unholy hosts of Hell. But such vicars of the news as Wolf Blitzer, Rachel Maddow, Chuck Todd, and Dean Baquet (of The New York Times) only shove the country closer to a cliff of constitutional crisis.

To a certain class of people — a class that includes a lot of Intellectuals-Yet-Idiots, as Nassim Taleb has dubbed them — President Donald Trump is a figure of supernatural malignity who must be ousted at all costs. I did not vote for Donald Trump and I do not admire him; but I rather resent the dishonesty that is being marshaled against him, especially the mis-use of judicial procedure and the mendacious propagandizing of the nation in service to that end.

This is what it comes down to: General Mike Flynn, designated National Security Advisor, conferred with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak after the 2016 election about two pressing matters: a vote in the UN orchestrated against Israel, and sanctions imposed against Russia by outgoing President Obama on December 28, two weeks before the inauguration. Both these matters could be viewed as bits of mischief designed deliberately to create foreign policy problems for the incoming administration.

Continue Reading at Kunstler..... 

The Future Is What We Make of It – Part 2

Liberty Blitzkrieg:

I want to really think differently than the very consistent liberal-media line of, Well if they just knew better they would vote differently. They’re under-informed, they’re under-educated. I think it really misunderstands something, which is that, just because people are not acting rationally in accordance with what you think is rational, doesn’t mean that they’re not acting rationally. And I think there’s perfectly rational voter behavior in voting for Trump. For economic reasons and social reasons. 

Life is getting worse. You are less comfortable in your own house, in your own town, in your own skin. Your outlook for the future is worse with every passing year. And you conscientiously voted for people through this entire time. So it is actually an established fact that the system did not work for you. This representative democracy thing. And so you go and lob a grenade at it, when the grenade becomes available. And that is rational.

– From the excellent interview of Masha Gessen via The Atlantic

In yesterday’s post, I discussed the future opportunity and danger presented by that large mass of the American public that self-identifies as part of “the resistance.” Before I continue, we should revisit a few of the key points made. For example:

Continue Reading at Liberty Blitzkrieg..... 

The Dog that Didn't Bark

Israel Shamir - The Unz Review:

The best solutions to difficult problems are simple. The Columbus Egg. The Gordian Knot. The Procrustean Bed. So many people strained their fingers trying to untangle the messy knot, until Alexander came and slashed it open with one fine stroke of his mighty sword. Wise men vainly tried to make an egg stand upright on its end on the table, until Columbus smashed one end. Procrustes solved the problem of the great diversity of population height-wise, by chopping off the legs of the tall and stretching the legs of the short.

Now the glorious if a tad too long name of the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (or MBS) should join the list of the great solution-makers. He faced the problem of having a broke country, an empty treasury, and a lot of very rich citizens with full coffers.

Continue Reading at Unz Review.... 

Totalitarian Regimes Aren't the Only Bloodthirsty Ones

Mises Wire:

Justin Murray

Lately, there has been a buzz of stories attempting to discredit one form of government philosophy over another as being more dangerous. Some organizations are pointing to the horrors of Communism. Others are claiming that the greatest threat to humanity is Fascism. The conclusion we're meant to draw is that if we only avoid a particular type of totalitarian government, then things will be fine. Unfortunately, even if we do avoid the worst totalitarian regimes — those that existed under famous despots like Hitler and Stalin — we still find that states have a particular penchant for killing immense numbers of innocent people. 

Let us take, for example, the United States. The latest fear gripping the US is the danger presented by a recent string of large scale shootings. These incidents are viewed as existential threats to the safety and security of those living in the US. Further, between 1960 and 2016, 105,915 people found themselves a victim of a homicide. This seems like a tremendous number. However, when compared against the number of civilians killed between 2002 and 2006 in Iraq as a result of US operations, which are estimated at around 655,000, we begin to see a stark contrast between the ability of private citizens to inflict large scale death when compared with a State apparatus. In four short years, the government of the United States did what street gangs and church shooters would take an estimated 350 years to do to the population of Iraq alone. When we pile on Syria, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (not to mention all the other small bush wars the US gets involved in all over the globe), 21st century America already exceeds private homicide totals for major regions over the course of multiple centuries.

Continue Reading at Mises Wire..... 

School District Bars Church From Distributing Flyers Because They Are Too Religious

The Daily Sheeple:

Lawyers intervened on behalf of a local church after a Nevada school district barred them from distributing flyers because the flyers were too religious.

Chapel Dayton Valley participated for years without trouble in a community flyer distribution program run by the Lyon County School District, until the school district changed its policy regarding flyers in 2017, according to religious liberty legal organization First Liberty.

Lawyers from First Liberty and Michigan-based law firm Lipson Neilson sent a letter to the school district Thursday demanding that the policy, which bars flyers with any speech deemed religious, be reversed on the grounds that it violates the first amendment.

Continue Reading at The Daily Sheeple.... 

True Dangers Posed by North Korea

SHTFplan:

This article’s purpose is not to deal with the political issues behind the potential conflict between North Korea and the United States. For some time, now, the United States has needed a “wake up call” among the citizens. The Obama administration carried on a disinformation campaign of denying North Korean capabilities. The reason: to downplay the threat (increasing over the years) and simultaneously to weaken the United States by eroding her military capabilities and opening us up to an attack.

That being mentioned, the naysayers among “experts” who concluded that “North Korea does not possess the capability to inflict a nuclear strike on the United States” are now in full-180-degree mode: now they are admitting the truth.

There could not be much more of a stark truth than the words spoken after the successful test launch of North Korea’s newest ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) on 11/29/17. The U.S. Secretary of Defense, General Mattis said this:

Continue Reading at SHTFplan.... 

The Problem Isn't Populism: the Problem Is the Status Quo Has Failed

of two minds - Charles Hugh Smith:

The top 5% who have benefited so immensely from the consolidation of wealth and power cannot confess the status quo has failed the bottom 95%.

The corporate/billionaires' media would have us believe that the crisis we face is populism, a code word for every ugly manifestation of fascism known to humanity. By invoking populism as the cause of our distemper, the mainstream media is implicitly suggesting that the problem is "bad people"--those whose own failings manifest in an attraction to fascism. If we can successfully marginalize these troubled troglodytes, then our problem, populism, would go away and the wonderfulness, equality and widespread prosperity of pre-populist America will be restored.

The problem isn't populism--the problem is the status quo has failed 95% of the populace. Life isn't wonderful, prosperous and filled with expansive equality except in the Protected Elite of the top 5% of technocrats, corporate executives, tenured academics, bureaucrats, financiers, bankers, lobbyists and wealthy (or soon to be wealthy) politicos.

Continue Reading at of two minds..... 

Smart Cities Of The Future Will Be Like Nazi Germany On Steroids

All News Pipeline:

Smart Cities Of The Future Will Be Like 'Nazi Germany On Steroids' - No Privacy, No Freedom, No Free Enterprise And One Step Closer To Completing The Globalists 'New World Order' Agenda 

By Mary Taylor

Making our cities smarter and smarter may pacify our enemies—the dynastic elites and other “globalist thugs,” that endorse Agenda 21 and the New Urban Agenda--but what will we do when those same cities disintegrate into no-go zones? 

When you read this week’s headlines about problems in “progressive” cities like Portland, you may want to head for the hills rather than live in one. 

A Fox News article headlined “Trouble in Portlandia” details the death threats, homelessness and rampant crime that is driving companies and families away from making a home in this oh-so-progressive city. 

Continue Reading at All News Pipeline..... 

ICC Launches Probe into US Military: Monster Turns Against Creator

Strategic Culture:

Everybody knows the story about Frankenstein monster turning against its creator. Such things happen in real life. The respectable Wall Street Journal was used by John Bolton, an American lawyer and diplomat who has served in several Republican administrations, as a trumpet to sound alarm. The threat to the United States is posed by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC, established in 2002, is the world’s first permanent court set up to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The body is known for its Western bias. It was the reason African states left the ICC last year. The court has been usually used as an instrument to deal with those who refused to bow to the pressure of the US and other Western powers. But things change. Today, the ICC is viewed by the US as a source of danger and a body undermining the America’s image globally.

An extraordinary event triggered the Mr. Bolton’s reaction. It has been reported that the ICC chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, is seeking approval to investigate allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, including possible torture by US forces and the CIA. In a statement on the ICC website, Ms Bensouda said the prosecutor’s office believed an investigation was required owing to “the gravity of the acts committed . . . and the absence of relevant national proceedings against those who appear to be most responsible for the most serious crimes within this situation”. The move is likely to provoke anger in Washington and the Bolton’s article is just the first salvo.

Continue Reading at Strategic Culture....