- France Says Russia Spied On Military Satellite In "Star Wars" Space Encounter
On Friday France’s defense minister lashed out at Moscow in an usual accusation, saying a Russian satellite “with big ears” got so close to a French satellite last year that it could mean nothing but a clear attempt to eavesdrop.
Defense Minister Florence Parly accused Russia of attempting to sweep up French military secrets in what she likened to a “Star Wars” type move far above Earth. She identified that the Russian satellite, named Louch-Olymp, approached its own, the Athena-Fidus (which was co-launched by Italy in 2014), in an act of military espionage.
The Athena-Fidus is a French-Italian joint satellite reportedly used for secure military communications and the planning of operations.
“Trying to listen to one’s neighbor is not only unfriendly. It’s called an act of espionage,” Parly charged in a speech in the southern city of Toulouse on Friday. “It got close. A bit too close. So close that one really could believe that it was trying to capture our communications,” she said.
Her comments grabbed global media attention after likening the incident to events in the movie Star Wars: “this little Stars Wars didn’t happen a long time ago in a galaxy far away. It happened a year ago, 36,000 kilometers above our heads,” she said.
Parly further explained that the Russian satellite has “big ears” and is “well-known but a bit indiscreet.” She added that France had taken “the necessary measures” and is still monitoring the Russian satellite closely.
However, it’s curious that while slamming Russia over the “close encounter” and crafting her words as media soundbites by using pop-culture references at the Toulouse-based France space agency conference, Defense Minister Parly is preparing to pitch a new space defense strategy by the end of the year, which no doubt will require a massively expanded budget.
And referencing President Trump’s controversial and massively expensive plan for an American “Space Force” unveiled this summer, Parly affirmed “France is and will be a space power”.
She said she considers the new White House plans as an “extremely powerful signal: the signal of confrontations to come, the signal of the weight of the space sector, the signal of tomorrow’s challenges.”
* * *
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles above the Earth…
- A Diabolic False Flag Empire: Is The American Trajectory Divine Or Demonic?
Authored by Edward Curtin via EdwardCurtin.com,
The past is not dead; it is people who are sleeping. The current night and daymares that we are having arise out of murders lodged deep in our past that have continued into the present. No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history, the cheap grace we bestow upon ourselves.
We have, as Harold Pinter said in his Nobel address, been feeding on “a vast tapestry of lies” that surrounds us, lies uttered by nihilistic leaders and their media mouthpieces for a very long time. We have, or should have, bad consciences for not acknowledging being active or silent accomplices in the suppression of truth and the vicious murdering of millions at home and abroad.
But, as Pinter said,
“I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.”
No one is more emblematic of this noble effort than David Ray Griffin, who, in book after book since the attacks of 11 September 2001, has meticulously exposed the underside of the American empire and its evil masters. His persistence in trying to reach people and to warn them of the horrors that have resulted is extraordinary. Excluding his philosophical and theological works, this is his fifteenth book since 2004 on these grave issues of life and death and the future of the world.
In this masterful book, he provides a powerful historical argument that right from the start with the arrival of the first European settlers, this country, despite all the rhetoric about it having been divinely founded and guided, has been “more malign that benign, more demonic than divine.” He chronologically presents this history, supported by meticulous documentation, to prove his thesis. In his previous book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World, Griffin cataloged the evil actions that flowed from the inside job/false flag attacks of September 11th, while in this one – a prequel – he offers a lesson in American history going back centuries, and he shows that one would be correct in calling the United States a “false flag empire.”
The attacks of 11 September 2001 are the false flag fulcrum upon which his two books pivot. Their importance cannot be overestimated, not just for their inherent cruelty that resulted in thousands of innocent American deaths, but since they became the justification for the United States’ ongoing murderous campaigns termed “the war on terror” that have brought death to millions of people around the world. An international array of expendable people. Terrifying as they were, and were meant to be, they have many precedents, although much of this history is hidden in the shadows. Griffin shines a bright light on them, with most of his analysis focused on the years 1850-2018.
As a theological and philosophical scholar, he is well aware of the great importance of society’s need for religious legitimation for its secular authority, a way to offer its people a shield against terror and life’s myriad fears through a protective myth that has been used successfully by the United States to terrorize others. He shows how the terms by which the U.S. has been legitimated as God’s “chosen nation” and Americans as God’s “chosen people” have changed over the years as secularization and pluralism have made inroads. The names have changed, but the meaning has not. God is on our side, and when that is so, the other side is cursed and can be killed by God’s people, who are always battling el diabalo.
He exemplifies this by opening with a quote from George Washington’s first Inaugural Address where Washington speaks of “the Invisible Hand” and “Providential agency” guiding the country, and by ending with Obama saying “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” In between we hear Andrew Jackson say that “Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number” and Henry Cabot Lodge in 1900 characterize America’s divine mission as “manifest destiny.” The American religion today is American Exceptionalism, an updated euphemism for the old-fashioned “God’s New Israel” or the “Redeemer Nation.”
At the core of this verbiage lies the delusion that the United States, as a blessed and good country, has a divine mission to spread “democracy” and “freedom” throughout the world, as Hilary Clinton declared during the 2016 presidential campaign when she said that “we are great because we are good,” and in 2004 when George W. Bush said, “Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom.” Such sentiments could only be received with sardonic laughter by the countless victims made “free” by America’s violent leaders, now and then, as Griffin documents.
Having established the fact of America’s claim to divine status, he then walks the reader through various thinkers who have taken sides on the issue of the United States being benign or malign. This is all preliminary to the heart of the book, which is a history lesson documenting the malignancy at the core of the American trajectory.
“American imperialism is often said to have begun in 1898, when Cuba and the Philippines were the main prizes,” he begins. “What was new at this time, however, was only that America took control of countries beyond the North American continent.”
The “divine right” to seize others’ lands and kill them started long before, and although no seas were crossed in the usual understanding of imperialism, the genocide of Native Americans long preceded 1898. So too did the “manifest destiny” that impelled war with Mexico and the seizure of its land and the expansion west to the Pacific. This period of empire building depended heavily on the “other great crime against humanity” that was the slave trade, wherein it is estimated that 10 million Africans died, in addition to the sick brutality of slavery itself. “No matter how brutal the methods, Americans were instruments of divine purposes,” writes Griffin. And, he correctly adds, it is not even true that America’s overseas imperialistic ventures only started in 1898, for in the 1850s Commodore Perry forced “the haughty Japanese” to open their ports to American commerce through gunboat diplomacy.
Then in 1898 the pace of overseas imperial expansion picked up dramatically with what has been called “The Spanish-American War” that resulted in the seizure of Cuba and the Philippines and the annexing of Hawaii. Griffin says these wars could more accurately be termed “the wars to take Spanish colonies.” His analysis of the brutality and arrogance of these actions makes the reader realize that My Lai and other more recent atrocities have a long pedigree that is part of an institutional structure, and while Filipinos and Cubans and so many others were being slaughtered, Griffin writes, “Anticipating Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s declaration that ‘we don’t do empire,’ [President] McKinley said that imperialism is ‘foreign to the temper and genius of this free and generous people.’”
Then as now, perhaps mad laughter is the only response to such unadulterated bullshit, as Griffin quotes Mark Twain saying that it would be easy creating a flag for the Philippines:
We can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.
That would have also worked for Columbia, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, and other countries subjugated under the ideology of the Monroe Doctrine; wherever freedom and national independence raised its ugly head, the United States was quick to intervene with its powerful anti-revolutionary military and its financial bullying. In the Far East the “Open Door” policy was used to loot China, Japan, and other countries.
But all this was just the beginning. Griffin shows how Woodrow Wilson, the quintessentially devious and treacherous liberal Democrat, who claimed he wanted to keep America out of WW I, did just the opposite to make sure the U.S. would come to dominate the foreign markets his capitalist masters demanded. Thus Griffin explores how Wilson conspired with Winston Churchill to use the sinking of the Lusitania as a casus belli and how the Treaty of Versailles’s harsh treatment of Germany set the stage for WW II.
He tells us how in the intervening years between the world wars the demonization of Russia and the new Soviet Union was started. This deprecation of Russia, which is roaring at full-throttle today, is a theme that recurs throughout The American Trajectory. Its importance cannot be overemphasized. Wilson called the Bolshevik government “a government by terror,” and in 1918 “sent thousands of troops into northern and eastern Russia, leaving them there until 1920.”
That the U. S. invaded Russia is a fact rarely mentioned and even barely known to Americans. Perhaps awareness of it and the century-long demonizing of the U.S.S.R./Russia would enlighten those who buy the current anti-Russia propaganda called “Russiagate.”
To match that “divine” act of imperial intervention abroad, Wilson fomented the Red Scare at home, which, as Griffin says, had lasting and incalculable importance because it created the American fear of radical thought and revolution that exists to this very day and serves as a justification for supporting brutal dictators around the world and crackdowns on freedom at home (as is happening today).
He gives us brief summaries of some dictators the U.S has supported, and reminds us of the saying of that other liberal Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, who famously said of the brutal Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, that “he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.” And thus Somoza would terrorize his own people for 43 years. The same took place in Cuba, Chile, Iran, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, etc. The U.S. also supported Mussolini, did nothing to prevent Franco’s fascist toppling of the Spanish Republic, and supported the right-wing government of Chiang-Kai Shek in its efforts to dominate China.
It is a very dark and ugly history that confirms the demonic nature of American actions around the world.
Then Griffin explodes the many myths about the so-called “Good War” – WW II. He explains the lies told about the Japanese “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor; how Roosevelt wished to get the U.S. into the war, both in the Pacific and in Europe; and how much American economic self-interest lay behind it. He critiques the myth that America selflessly wished to defend freedom loving people in their battles with brutal, fascist regimes. That, he tells us, is but a small part of the story:
This, however, is not an accurate picture of American policies during the Second World War. Many people were, to be sure, liberated from terrible tyrannies by the Allied victories. But the fact that these people benefited was an incidental outcome, not a motive of American policies. These policies, as [Andrew] Bacevich discovered, were based on ‘unflagging self-interest.’
Then there are the conventional and atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing could be more demonic, as Griffin shows. If these cold-blooded mass massacres of civilians and the lies told to justify them don’t convince a reader that there has long been something radically evil at the heart of American history, nothing will. Griffin shows how Truman and his advisers and top generals, including Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff, knew the dropping of the atomic bombs were unnecessary to end the war, but they did so anyway.
He reminds us of Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s response to the question whether she thought the deaths of more than 500, 000 Iraqi children as a result of Clinton’s crippling economic sanctions were worth it: “But, yes, we think the price is worth it.” (Notice the “is,” the ongoing nature of these war crimes, as she spoke.) But this is the woman who also said, “We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall…”
Griffin devotes other chapters to the creation of the Cold War, American imperialism during the Cold War, Post-Cold War interventions, the Vietnam War, the drive for global dominance, and false flag operations, among other topics.
As for false flag operations, he says, “Indeed, the trajectory of the American Empire has relied so heavily on these types of attacks that one could describe it as a false flag empire.” In the false flag chapter and throughout the book, he discusses many of the false flags the U.S. has engaged in, including Operation Gladio, the U.S./NATO terrorist operation throughout Europe that Swiss historian Daniele Ganser has extensively documented, an operation meant to discredit communists and socialists. Such operations were directly connected to the OSS, the CIA and its director Allen Dulles, his henchman James Jesus Angleton, and their Nazi accomplices, such as General Reinhard Gehlen. In one such attack in 1980 at the Bologna, Italy railway station, these U.S. terrorists killed 85 people and wounded 20 others. As with the bombs dropped by Saudi Arabia today on Yemeni school children, the explosive used was made for the U.S. military. About these documented U.S. atrocities, Griffin says:
These revelations show the falsity of an assumption widely held by Americans. While recognizing that the US military sometimes does terrible things to their enemies, most Americans have assumed that US military leaders would not order the killing of innocent civilians in allied countries for political purposes. Operation Gladio showed this assumption to be false.
He is right, but I would add that the leaders behind this were civilian, as much as, or more than military.
In the case of “Operation Northwoods,” it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who presented to President Kennedy this false flag proposal that would provide justification for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. It would have involved the killing of American citizens on American soil, bombings, plane hijacking, etc. President Kennedy considered such people and such plans insane, and he rejected it as such. His doing so tells us much, for many other presidents would have approved it. And again, how many Americans are aware of this depraved proposal that is documented and easily available? How many even want to contemplate it? For the need to remain in denial of the facts of history and believe in the essential goodness of America’s rulers is a very hard nut to crack. Griffin has written a dozen books about 11 September 2001, trying to do exactly that.
If one is willing to embrace historical facts, however, then this outstanding book will open one’s eyes to the long-standing demonic nature of the actions of America’s rulers. A reader cannot come away from its lucidly presented history unaffected, unless one lives in a self-imposed fantasy world. The record is clear, and Griffin lays it out in all its graphic horror. Which is not to say that the U.S. has not “done both good and bad things, so it could not sensibly be called purely divine or purely demonic.” Questions of purity are meant to obfuscate basic truths. And the question he asks in his subtitle – Divine or Demonic? – is really a rhetorical question, and when it comes to the “trajectory” of American history, the demonic wins hands down.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out one place where Griffin fails the reader. In his long chapter on Vietnam, which is replete with excellent facts and analyses, he makes a crucial mistake, which is unusual for him. This mistake appears in a four page section on President Kennedy’s policies on Vietnam. In those pages, Griffin relies on Noam Chomsky’s terrible book – Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture (1993), a book wherein Chomsky shows no regard for evidence or facts – to paint Kennedy as being in accord with his advisers, the CIA, and the military regarding Vietnam. This is factually false. Griffin should have been more careful and have understood this. The truth is that Kennedy was besieged and surrounded by these demonic people, who were intent on isolating him, disregarding his instructions, and murdering him to achieve their goals in Vietnam. In the last year of his life, JFK had taken a radical turn toward peace-making, not only in Vietnam, but with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and around the globe. Such a turn was anathema to the war lovers. Thus he had to die. Contrary to Chomsky’s deceptions, motivated by his hatred of Kennedy and perhaps something more sinister (he also backs the Warren Commission, thinks JFK’s assassination was no big deal, and accepts the patently false official version of the attacks of 11 September 2001), Griffin should have emphatically asserted that Kennedy had issued NSAM 263 on October 11, 1963 calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam, and that after he was assassinated a month later, Lyndon Johnson reversed that withdrawal order with NSAM 273. Chomsky notwithstanding, all the best scholarship and documentary evidence proves this. And for Griffin, a wonderful scholar, to write that with the change from Kennedy to Johnson that “this change of presidents would bring no basic change in policy” is so shockingly wrong that I imagine Griffin, a man passionate about truth, simply slipped up and got sloppy here. For nothing could be further from the truth.
Ironically, Griffin makes a masterful case for his thesis, while forgetting the one pivotal man, President John Kennedy, who sacrificed his life in an effort to change the trajectory of American history from its demonic course.
It is one mistake in an otherwise very important and excellent book that should be required reading for anyone who doubts the evil nature of this country’s continuing foreign policy. Those who are already convinced should also read it, for it provides a needed historical resource and impetus to help change the trajectory that is transporting the world toward nuclear oblivion, if continued.
If – a fantastic wish! – The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic? were required reading in American schools and colleges, perhaps a new generation would arise to change our devils into angels, the arc of America’s future moral universe toward justice, and away from being the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, as it has been for so very long.
- "Terrorist Theft" – Pakistan's Nukes Outpacing Projections In Uncertain Security Landscape
Pakistan is set to become the world’s 5th largest nuclear weapons state according to an alarming new report which shows the country is set for rapid expansion of its arsenal over the next decade.
The report was issued by an independent nuclear arms monitoring group under the Federation of American Scientists called the Nuclear Information Project and demonstrates that US intelligence has consistently understated and failed to accurately assess Pakistan’s future capabilities.
While the Defense Intelligence Agency (the DIA) projected in 1999 that Pakistan would possess 60 to 80 nuclear warheads by 2020, the report shows the actual current figure at 140 to 150 warheads.
Should the current trend continue unabated, the Federation of American Scientists report indicates, the stockpile could increase to between 220 and 250 by the year 2025.
“We estimate that the country’s stockpile could more realistically grow to 220 to 250 warheads by 2025, if the current trend continues. If that happens, it would make Pakistan the world’s fifth-largest nuclear weapon state,” wrote the authors of the report entitled ‘Pakistani nuclear forces 2018’.
Crucially, the report also focuses on the threat that the country’s vast arsenal, which includes tactical nuke development, could fall into the hands of terrorists, given Pakistan’s shifting and hotbed political landscape. It cites past administrations as feeling confident at the domestic security situation, but emphasizes this was misguided.
The report also references the significant shift in priorities by the Trump administration. The report reads:
In stark contrast, the Trump administration assessment in 2018 was: “We are particularly concerned by the development of tactical nuclear weapons that are designed for use in battlefield. We believe that these systems are more susceptible to terrorist theft and increase the likelihood of nuclear exchange in the region.”
Upon unveiling his South Asia strategy on 21 August 2017, Trump urged Pakistan to stop sheltering terrorist organizations, and noted the need to “prevent nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the hands of terrorists.” US concern over the security of Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons precedes the Trump administration.
Despite security concerns and the presence of Islamist and Taliban factions along Pakistan’s porous tribal Afghan border region, nuclear expansion has continued at unrelenting rapid pace.
“With several delivery systems in development, four plutonium production reactors, and its uranium enrichment facilities expanding, however, Pakistan has a stockpile that will likely increase further over the next 10 years,” says the report further.
Pakistan could be poised to overstep the UK and approach China in the coming years
You will find more infographics at Statista And perhaps more worrisome is that nuclear warheads may be going mobile: “Analysis of a large number of commercial satellite images of Pakistani army garrisons and air force bases shows what appear to be mobile launchers and underground facilities that might be related to nuclear forces,” the report reads.
But perhaps most alarming is the suggestion among some analysts that Pakistan could begin actually approaching China and France in the coming decade, which the report’s authors downplay: “Speculation that Pakistan may become the world’s third-largest nuclear weapon state – with a stockpile of some 350 warheads a decade from now – are, we believe, exaggerated, not least because that would require a buildup two to three times faster than the growth rate over the past two decades.”
Concerning the arms race with India, the report notes, “The efforts seek to create a full-spectrum deterrent that is designed not only to respond to nuclear attacks, but also to counter an Indian conventional incursion onto Pakistani territory.” This has Washington officials worried as “This development has created considerable concern in other countries, including the United States, which fears that it lowers the threshold for nuclear use in a military conflict with India.”
During the opening week of September the Pentagon announced that it “made a final decision” to cancel $300 million in aid to the country after the White House slammed Islamabad for turning a blind eye to terrorism — this after another $550 had been stripped by Congress earlier in the year, bringing the total withheld from Pakistan to $800 million.
President Trump had issued prior threats to do just this, as his first tweet of 2018 had charged the longtime US ally with paying back American foreign aid with “nothing but lies & deceit”. He also vowed, “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”
- Beware The American Snake Oil Salesman
Authored by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The election engineering merchants of George Soros and other “one-size-fits-all” democracy templates may have been vanquished in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Myanmar, but they are, by no means, down and out. International non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have simply borrowed a page from international consultancies and gone quasi-private, racking up lucrative contracts as political advisers to pro-capitalist candidates around the world.
With the US Foreign Service largely neutered under President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, there is virtually no one left at various US embassies in far-flung diplomatic posts to warn host governments about the modern version of American “snake oil salesmen” pitching their election assistance wares to unsuspecting candidates for office.
Take Vanguard Africa, a Washington, DC-based election campaign consultancy that seeks public contributions under the aegis of the Democratic Party’s fundraising organization, ActBlue. During a time when there are complaints in the United States of foreign interference in American elections, why is an outfit like Vanguard America involved in elections in The Gambia and Niger? What is good for the goose should be good for the gander.
If someone donates to ActBlue to elect more Democrats to the US Congress, state legislatures, and mayors’ offices, why is ActBlue, working with Vanguard Africa, involved in helping to elect in January 2017, Adama Barrow as president of The Gambia in West Africa? Vanguard Africa’s US leadership includes Joe Trippi, former Vermont Democratic Governor Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign chairman, and former Democratic US Representative Al Wynn of Maryland.
Vanguard Africa unabashedly admits on its website that it mixes election engineering with lobbying in Washington: “Access to Influential Leaders – Opening lines of communication and building trusted, long-term relationships with key pro-democracy groups, civic leaders, elected officials and policymakers – in Washington, DC and internationally.” While such a service helps line the pockets of Washington lobbyists and increases the profiles of certain African leaders, such as Barrow in The Gambia, it does little to alleviate the extreme poverty of Africans in The Gambia or anywhere else on the continent.
It is not merely the connections of outfits like Vanguard Africa to the Central Intelligence Agency-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that should ring alarm bells, but also its connection to the Washington lobbying organization Sanitas International, whose partner, Christopher Harvin, is a co-founder of Vanguard Africa. Sanitas has a contract with Tzvika Brot, of Delaware-incorporated BSI Public Affairs, Brot ran the 2016 get-out-the-vote campaign targeting US voters in Israel on behalf of Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. Washington deal-making does not get any “swampier” than this. And Mr. Trump, who rants and raves about “draining the swamp,” is one of its chief scaly denizens.
Perhaps it is time for an international convention, either through the auspices of the United Nations or regional supranational organizations, like the African Union, European Union, and others, to prohibit all foreign government or corporate interference in elections in other countries. If narcotics and human trafficking, as well as weapons smuggling, can be banned internationally, why not foreign election interference?
Such a regime would stop Vanguard Africa from providing advice to clients like Daher Ahmed Farah, the president of the of the Movement for Democratic Renewal and Development opposition in the militarily-strategic country of Djibouti on the Red Sea, or Ibrahim Yacouba, a 2021 presidential candidate in Niger and Biram Dah Abeid, a failed 2014 presidential candidate in Mauritania. Questions have been raised about how Abeid became one of the richest men in Mauritania after receiving huge “human rights” grants from foreign NGOs. Apparently, promoting “democracy” on behalf of foreign masters can be a very lucrative business.
Vanguard receives funding from Tony O. Elumelu, one of Nigeria’s richest men and chairman of Heirs Holdings, the United Bank for Africa, Transcorp, as well as the founder of the Africacapitalism Institute. While Barack Obama may have supported the “entrepreneurship” notions of “Africacapitalism,” the quasi-libertarian gobbledygook of a “rising tide lifts all boats” espoused as part of such policies represents a slap in the face of the pan-African socialism of the founders of modern independent Africa. These include Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, and Patrice Lumumba, and later, Muammar Qaddafi and Thomas Sankara.
The Guardian newspaper spelled out the problems associated with the “do-gooder capitalism” of those like Elumelu in a July 12, 2013 piece. The article quotes University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan as asserting that schemes like that of Elumelu parrot the rhetoric often used as a “smokescreen for big business to push towards deregulation.” Bakan believes that such “shared value” business models distort the public’s relationship with mega-businesses. In Africa and Latin America, where state ownership of key industries and foreign government economic assistance programs helped advance national economies from Third World to Second and First World status, the arrival of snake oil salesmen selling “beneficial capitalism” led to crippling austerity imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
Another snake oil merchant, Avenue Strategies Global – co-founded by Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and Barry Bennett, manager of current Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson’s presidential run – is also selling political advice abroad. The firm, which is situated on a corner across from the White House, recently signed a lucrative contract with former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. It is obvious that Avenue Strategies is helping Tymosheno position herself for a future presidential run in Ukraine. And it is quite convenient that the firm, which Lewandowski has departed, is close, both geographically and politically, to the offices of Trump administration key officials, including National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Lewandowski is associated with another political advice consultancy, Turnberry Solutions, LLC of Washington, DC. Perhaps not coincidentally, Trump Turnberry is the name of Trump’s Scottish golf resort. Yet another Lewandowski-linked firm, Washington East West Political Strategies LLC, which dissolved in 2017, had been advising political candidates in Albania and Kosovo, as well as others in the Middle East, Canada, and Central America. Lewandowski’s links with the Amsterdam Group, another Washington lobbying firm, puts him in the same orbit as former YUKOS oil head, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a client of Amsterdam Group and someone who has been working from the United States, Europe, and Israel to oust Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government.
Of more concern is Lewandowski’s links to the Boston, Massachusetts-based social media analytics firm, Crimson Hexagon, which stands accused of manipulating Facebook data to affect election outcomes. The threat posed by the intersection of political advisory firms, “big data” manipulators, and NGOs cannot be underestimated.
Big Brother is now a reality and he does not want your vote, he wants to cast your vote. One of the most sinister buildings on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC is the inaptly-named US Institute of Peace. Its election manipulation activities, conducted in concert with consultancies, data analytics firms, and NGOs, often result in wars and civil strife.
As the weeping over the death of Senator John McCain subsides, it should be remembered that his pride and joy, the election-meddling International Republican Institute, and his former campaign manager, Rick Davis, had longstanding organizational ties to Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. Manafort now sits in a jail cell in Alexandria, Virginia, convicted on eight counts of fraud, and awaiting trial in Washington, DC on additional criminal counts. The Trump administration wasted no time in immersing itself deep into this political swamp and help market American political snake oil to unsuspecting countries around the world.
- Visualizing Argentina's Bank Run In 1 Crazy Chart
In case you were wondering why Argentina hit the ‘full panic’ button late last week with interventions and promises of “painful” austerity to solve its currency collapse crisis, look no further than this chart…
As Bloomberg notes, Argentines pulled about $490 million dollars from personal savings accounts in the final two days of August, when the peso reached a record of 41.6 per U.S. dollar.
This is the biggest drop in 15 months as Argentina’s Reserves have tumbled back to pre-IMF bailout levels…
It is evidently very clear that the collapse of the Argentine peso is making the country’s citizens nervous… and the bank run has begun.
- Middle-Class Melancholia: "But Really, What Are We Supposed To Do?"
Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
The middle class in America is being systematically eviscerated right in front of our eyes.
I don’t normally do this, but today I want to share with you an email that was recently sent to me by a reader. I asked for permission to share her story with all of you, because I think that it will be encouraging for a lot of people out there to understand that they aren’t alone.
In this supposedly “booming” economy, millions upon millions of American families are barely making it from month to month even though they are working as hard as they possibly can. But because the mainstream media has been endlessly touting “good economic news” for the last several years, many of those that are struggling end up believing that something must be wrong with them since they aren’t participating in all of the “prosperity”. But of course the truth is that almost all of the economic rewards have been going to the very top of the economic pyramid. Meanwhile, the middle class continues to shrink and more families fall into poverty with each passing month.
As you read the email that I am about to share with you, there are several things that I want you to notice.
#1 These people are not lazy. The husband has a good job for the area in which they live, and the wife is working very hard to bring in some online income as she takes care of the kids. So neither of them would be considered to be “unemployed”.
#2 They are also very frugal. They have cut expenses as far as they can, and they are still not able to make ends meet.
#3 They are being crushed by medical bills. Our healthcare system is a completely and total nightmare, and there are no solutions in sight. Thanks to the Democrats, soaring health insurance premiums are absolutely crushing middle class families. And the Republicans have had almost two years to try to fix things, and they have completely failed to get anything done. Shame on all of them.
#4 Almost everyone that they know is on government assistance, and so far they have resisted the urge to follow suit. Right now, more than 100 million Americans receive assistance from the government every month, and we are rapidly being transformed into a full-blown socialist nation.
I could say so much more, but let me get right to the email. This story really touched my heart, and I know that it will touch your heart as well…
I and my husband have been reading your blog for five or six years now. So many of your articles sound just like us, and I just wanted to share our situation and perspective as conservative Christians who were actually taught Biblical handling of money. Hopefully it will help you with your writing!
Unlike most millennials, we came into marriage with no debt and a decent savings. We have always lived on a strict budget that usually doesn’t include clothing or eating out; most of the time it doesn’t even include saving! We have never used credit cards. I am very frugal, shopping by what’s on sale, buying in bulk, cooking from scratch, and often doing without. We eat beans more than anything else. We own one vehicle, and half the time have to borrow a car from family because ours breaks down and we don’t have the money to fix it.
We work hard. My husband works for the county more than full time, and makes quite a bit more than most jobs in our area (minimum wage is 8.25 here), but a third of his check goes straight to taxes. I worked outside the home before we had children, and now have a blog and an online business that make a few hundred a month on average. We also work hard growing a large garden and keeping a few animals for food.
Unfortunately we just can’t make ends meet. We’ve used up all of our savings and haven’t been able to replace it. Family members are giving us $500-$1000 every month. We’ve both been in the hospital a few times for injury and illness, and each time costs thousands of dollars. We spent our tax return this year on medical bills, and still owe thousands to the local hospital.
We see what is going on in this country, and around the world, and we want to be prepared, but instead of getting ahead we just get more and more behind. We’ve already sold everything that was worth anything.
After taxes, the biggest expense that is killing us is insurance. All the types of insurance that are mandatory or just seem like a necessity now – health insurance, car insurance, insurance for our mobile home and rental property (required by our landlord), life insurance that is necessary with my husband’s job.
Medical bills are next on the list – who can afford to go to a doctor nowadays, even with insurance? We do everything possible to avoid doctor visits, even having our last child at home without a midwife even though I am considered high risk. Sometimes emergencies happen though, and going to the doctor just isn’t avoidable.
Pretty much all of our friends and co-workers are getting government help every month. Honestly we’d be a lot better off if we did to, but we don’t want to. It’s not the government’s job to take care of everybody.
But really, what are we supposed to do? Is there anything we can do to fix the mess our economy is in? Is there anything people like us can do to get out of this situation, or is it just a hopeless downward spiral that’s going to get worse and worse till we are living under a bridge?
I wrote her back and tried to encourage her. No matter how bad things seem to be in life, there is always a way to turn things around if you just keep on fighting.
And things could turn around for America too, but we would have to be willing to fundamentally change our ways, and at this moment there are no indications that this will happen any time soon.
I get accused of being all about “doom and gloom”, but in my latest book I set forth a detailed prescription for what we need to do to turn things around. And I ran for Congress on a platform of positive solutions, but that message didn’t resonate enough with the voters.
Inexplicably, most Americans seem to like the status quo even though the system is literally coming apart at the seams all around us.
What we have been doing as a nation does not work, it is not sustainable, and it has become exceedingly clear that a day of reckoning is rapidly approaching. At this point it is so obvious that even the mainstream media is starting to warn of imminent economic disaster.
For years, many of us have been warning what would happen if we did not change our ways, and we have been trying to offer alternative solutions, but most Americans continue to embrace the current system and believe that it will be able to survive despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
In the end, it is probably going to take a complete and utter collapse of the current system before most people will wake up, and that is something that nobody will enjoy.
- DARPA Designs ‘Glide Breaker’ Interceptor To Hit Enemy Hypersonic Missiles
As Russia and China jump ahead of the United States with superior hypersonic weapons, one of the Pentagon’s top research and development arms is playing defense with a new, secret project to guard the nation against Mach 5 missile attacks.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Glide Breakers program will research “component technologies” needed for one or more defense systems but will focus heavily on a kinetic-force weapon to intercept high-speed enemy missiles, said The Drive.
Last week, DARPA presented the stylish concept art of the Glide Break for the first time at its D60 Symposium, a three-day conference honoring the organization’s 60th anniversary.
The Drive said the defense agency had previously hosted a meeting with government officials to break down the project and its requirements to interested parties back in July.
“The objective of the Glide Breaker program is to further the capability of the United States to defend against supersonic and the entire class of hypersonic threats,” DARPA said in an announcement for the July 2018 “Proposers Day.” “Of particular interest are component technologies that radically reduce risk for development and integration of an operational, hard-kill system.”
If successfully developed then fielded, the hypersonic missile interceptor would serve as a deterrent against Russia and China. The Drive notes it is unclear if the interceptor is even realistic — saying that striking down a hypersonic missile out of orbit is like trying to “hit one bullet with another bullet.”
The revelation of DARPA’s new missile interceptor program should be viewed as a clear message to Russia and China. Last week, Missile Defense Agency commander Lieutenant General Samuel Greaves warned that China had recently launched “several dozen successful hypersonic missile tests that Washington cannot ignore.”
“The Chinese have now done several dozen successful hypersonic (missile) tests… we just cannot (ignore),” Greaves briefed a group of government officials held by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.
If DARPA successfully transfers the interceptor technology to the US Air Force in the next several years and implements it on the modern battlefield. Then, it would likely be the primary defense system that challenges China’s waverider hypersonic weapon.
To make up for lost time, the Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin with approximately $1.5 billion in contracts this summer to develop a hypersonic missile for the Air Force.
While many believe American Hegemony is here to stay, there is a strong possibility that it could be somewhat displaced in the coming years as China and Russia now lead the hypersonic race. DARPA’s Glide Breaker program should be viewed as a defensive ploy by Washington, as US Admiral Harry Harris, former head of the US Pacific Command and now the ambassador to South Korea, recently said “China’s hypersonic weapons development outpaces ours… we’re falling behind.”
- Hurricane Florence Could Cause Major Damage Hundreds Of Miles Inland
When I moved to southwestern Virginia, I really didn’t expect to be dealing with hurricanes. But, as I’ve just learned, a system like Hurricane Florence could affect places that are as much as 350+ miles from the shore.
So, if you are one of the 112 million and then some of Americans in the area classified as the “East Coast” – particularly the southern to mid-Atlantic part – you need to get prepared.
When and where will Hurricane Florence make landfall?
Hurricane Florence is picking up power and could make landfall as a Category 5 as soon as Thursday. If you aren’t familiar with hurricanes, a Category 5 hurricane has sustained winds of 156 mph or stronger. It is the highest classification for hurricanes.
At this point, it looks like the coast between Charleston, SC, and Norfolk, VA will bear the brunt of the storm, with Wilmington, NC taking a direct hit from the eye. Here’s a map from ABC News:
Now, a very important thing to keep in mind is that hurricanes are unpredictable until they get closer to the shore. At that point, we can know with much more certainty that the storm is headed our way. Unfortunately, at that point, it’s really too late to get prepared. Supplies will be picked over at the stores and roads will be jammed with people fleeing the hurricane.
It’s much better to prepare as far in advance as possible for a hurricane. And if this one turns back out to see, don’t think your preparations have been wasted. Trust me, another one will come and you will be glad you have the supplies that you do.
How far away from the coast can hurricanes affect you?
The National Hurricane Center warns that the pictures on maps are only predictions and that the effects can go far beyond these cones.
NHC tropical cyclone forecast tracks can be in error. This forecast uncertainty is conveyed by the track forecast “cone”, the solid white and stippled white areas in the graphic. The solid white area depicts the track forecast uncertainty for days 1-3 of the forecast, while the stippled area depicts the uncertainty on days 4-5. Historical data indicate that the entire 5-day path of the center of the tropical cyclone will remain within the cone about 60-70% of the time. To form the cone, a set of imaginary circles are placed along the forecast track at the 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, 96, and 120 h positions, where the size of each circle is set so that it encloses 67% of the previous five years official forecast errors. The cone is then formed by smoothly connecting the area swept out by the set of circles.
It is also important to realize that a tropical cyclone is not a point. Their effects can span many hundreds of miles from the center. The area experiencing hurricane force (one-minute average wind speeds of at least 74 mph) and tropical storm force (one-minute average wind speeds of 39-73 mph) winds can extend well beyond the white areas shown enclosing the most likely track area of the center. (source)
I would imagine if you are anywhere near the cone, you need to be making preparations. Here’s the NHC’s map.
Here’s an explanation of the graphic:
This graphic shows an approximate representation of coastal areas under a hurricane warning (red), hurricane watch (pink), tropical storm warning (blue) and tropical storm watch (yellow). The orange circle indicates the current position of the center of the tropical cyclone. The black line, when selected, and dots show the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast track of the center at the times indicated. The dot indicating the forecast center location will be black if the cyclone is forecast to be tropical and will be white with a black outline if the cyclone is forecast to be extratropical. If only an L is displayed, then the system is forecast to be a remnant low. The letter inside the dot indicates the NHC’s forecast intensity for that time:
D: Tropical Depression – wind speed less than 39 MPH
S: Tropical Storm – wind speed between 39 MPH and 73 MPH
H: Hurricane – wind speed between 74 MPH and 110 MPH
M: Major Hurricane – wind speed greater than 110 MPHTheir prediction has it reaching us Friday instead of Thursday. Personally, I plan to have everything in place by Wednesday. You just never know when it comes to Mother Nature.
How should you prepare for Hurricane Florence?
How you should prepare for Hurricane Florence depends where you live.
If you live on the coast and discover that Florence is indeed a Category 5, your best option is to evacuate. A Category 5 is nothing to mess around with. In fact, evacuations may well be mandatory.
If you are going to leave, do so before everyone else is panicking to get out of the way of the hurricane. If you are going to evacuate, by making plans early, you can still reserve a hotel much further inland while some are still available. You can make plans to find one that is pet-friendly or find a kennel that will take your furbabies. If you wait until the last minute, you could end up in some unpleasant shelter.
If you live further inland (or if Florence is much weaker than predicted) the preparations are different. Most folks will hunker down and wait it out. Here are the things you can expect:
- High winds
- Torrential rain
- Flooding (some places are predicting more than 20 inches of rainfall in a day)
- Disruptions of electricity
- Disruptions of municipal water
So to prepare for these things you need to take the following steps:
- Go out to your yard and secure anything that could become a projectile: lawn furniture, large toys, fallen branches, flower pots, etc.
- If there are trees with dead or weak limbs overhanging your house, have the branches removed.
- If you live in a low-lying area or near a body of water, make an evacuation plan in case of flooding.
- Remove things from your basement or lower floors of your home to protect them from possible flood waters. It may be enough to merely put the items up on wooden pallets you scavenged from the trash of a local business.
- Prepare for a power outage that could last for 2 weeks. (go here for details).
- Be sure to have food on hand that doesn’t require cooking.
- Have plenty of water for humans or pets (again, enough for 2 weeks).
- Have back up power all charged up for cell phones.
- Pick up some ice so you can store some of your groceries in coolers and keep fridges and freezers cold for longer.
- If you live in an area that is likely to flood, be prepared to be stranded at home until the waters recede.
- Make sure to pick up prescription medication and other supplies for special needs.
Obviously, this is a quick list of preparations. For something a little bit more detailed, download this free checklist with the things you need to do to get ready for the hurricane.
If you want to go more in-depth, pick up a copy of my book, The Prepper’s Hurricane Survival Guide.
Hurricane Florence isn’t the only one to worry about
Unfortunately, there are quite a few hurricanes brewing in the oceans off American coasts. Isaac is close on the heels of Florence and has reached tropical storm status. Isaac may turn into a hurricane and at this time, seems likely to be aimed further south than Florence.
Tropical Storm Isaac formed in the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, the National Hurricane Center said. It’s one of three storms churning in the Atlantic Ocean, with Tropical Storm Florence heading toward the U.S. East Coast and Tropical Storm Helene heading toward some of the Cabo Verde islands.
As of a 11 p.m. ET, Isaac was located 1,580 miles east of the Windward Islands, which include St. Lucia, Dominica, Martinquie and Grenada. A westward motion with an increase in forward speed is expected during the next few days, the National Hurricane Center said.
Isaac had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph on Saturday.
Should Isaac stay on this course, Florida and the Gulf could take the hit. Again – Isaac is too far out for accurate predictions – the storm could easily turn out to sea before it ever makes landfall.
Hawaii was recently hit with an unusual event for the island state – Hurricane Lane. And now, another hurricane is headed toward Hawaii. This one is Hurricane Olivia, which is expected to threaten the islands as soon as next Tuesday.
Now a Category 1 storm, Olivia was about 825 miles east-northeast of Hilo, Hawaii as of 11 p.m. local time Saturday (5 a.m. Sunday ET), the Central Pacific Hurricane Center said.
The storm may be near the Hawaiian Islands late Tuesday, the center said, warning that tropical storm or hurricane watches could need to be issued Sunday.
“Little change in strength is forecast during the next couple of days, and Olivia is expected to remain a hurricane through Monday evening. Some gradual weakening is possible on Tuesday, but Olivia will likely remain a threat to the Hawaiian Islands next week,” the hurricane center said
“While it is too soon to determine the location and magnitude of the worst impacts, all interests in Hawaii should continue to monitor the progress of Olivia, and use this time to prepare for the increasing likelihood of direct impacts from this system early next week,” the center warned. (source)
I hope you’ll heed these warnings and start getting prepped today for the potential of some incredibly bad weather this week.
- China's Inflation Comes In Hot; Here's Why It Won't Last
With China launching an aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus over the past 2 months to keep its economy humming in response to Trump’s trade wars, coupled with the sharp depreciation in the Chinese Yuan ever since Trump launched his first round of tariffs on Chinese imports, whisper expectations ahead of today’s CPI and PPI data out of China were of an upside surprise to consensus expectations even as some analysts were concerned that China’s trade war-driven slowdown would hit its inflation data.
Well, this time the “whispers’ won, with both August CPI and PPI coming in stronger than expected, as consumer prices rose 2.3%, higher than the 2.1% consensus (at the top end of the forecast range of 1.6% to 2.3%) above last month’s 2.1% and the highest since February; PPI also came in stronger, printing at 4.1% above the 4.0% expected, if well below July’s 4.6%.
The modestly stronger (than expected) CPI will bolster the case for PBOC support of the Yuan, as continued currency weakness would only lead to further gains in inflation (just ask Erdogan). That said, the offshore Yuan was largely unchanged on the news, as despite the small uptick inflation remains muted, and will not be a major concern for the central bank.
As for PPI, despite today’s beat expect further weakness, because as go China’s commodities, and especially coal, so goes PPI, and in light of the ongoing commodity market weakness (once again courtesy of Trump’s trade wars) there is no reason to expect wholesale Chinese inflation to rebound any time soon:
Finally, while inflation this month may have come in hotter than expected, the far bigger risk is one of deflation, largely as a result of the ongoing collapse in China’s credit impulse, which leads the industrial metals commodity index with a 15 month lead, suggesting that commodity prices are set for a sharp drop in the coming year.
And speaking of China’s credit impulse, recall the dire forecast laid out by Goldman yesterday, which expects a sharp – and deflationary – collapse in Chinese consumption as a result of what the bank expects to be the worst credit impulse print this decade as soon as next quarter.
In other words, enjoy the “stronger than expected” inflation prints out of China. They won’t last.
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