- Escobar: Syria May Be The Biggest Defeat For The CIA Since Vietnam
Escobar: Syria May Be The Biggest Defeat For The CIA Since Vietnam
Authored by Pepe Escobar via ConsortiumNews.com,
What is happening in Syria, following yet another Russia-brokered deal, is a massive geopolitical game-changer.
I’ve tried to summarize it in a single paragraph this way:
“It’s a quadruple win. The U.S. performs a face saving withdrawal, which Trump can sell as avoiding a conflict with NATO ally Turkey. Turkey has the guarantee – by the Russians – that the Syrian Army will be in control of the Turkish-Syrian border. Russia prevents a war escalation and keeps the Russia-Iran-Turkey peace process alive. And Syria will eventually regain control of the entire northeast.”
Syria may be the biggest defeat for the CIA since Vietnam.
Yet that hardly begins to tell the whole story.
Allow me to briefly sketch in broad historical strokes how we got here.
It began with an intuition I felt last month at the tri-border point of Lebanon, Syria and Occupied Palestine; followed by a subsequent series of conversations in Beirut with first-class Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian, Russian, French and Italian analysts; all resting on my travels in Syria since the 1990s; with a mix of selected bibliography in French available at Antoine’s in Beirut thrown in.
The Vilayets
Let’s start in the 19thcentury when Syria consisted of six vilayets — Ottoman provinces — without counting Mount Lebanon, which had a special status since 1861 to the benefit of Maronite Christians and Jerusalem, which was a sanjak (administrative division) of Istanbul.
The vilayets did not define the extremely complex Syrian identity: for instance, Armenians were the majority in the vilayet of Maras, Kurds in Diyarbakir – both now part of Turkey in southern Anatolia – and the vilayets of Aleppo and Damascus were both Sunni Arab.
Nineteenth century Ottoman Syria was the epitome of cosmopolitanism. There were no interior borders or walls. Everything was inter-dependent.
Ethnic groups in the Balkans and Asia Minor, early 20th Century, Historical Atlas, 1911.
Then the Europeans, profiting from World War I, intervened. France got the Syrian-Lebanese littoral, and later the vilayets of Maras and Mosul (today in Iraq). Palestine was separated from Cham (the “Levant”), to be internationalized. The vilayet of Damascus was cut in half: France got the north, the Brits got the south. Separation between Syria and the mostly Christian Lebanese lands came later.
There was always the complex question of the Syria-Iraq border. Since antiquity, the Euphrates acted as a barrier, for instance between the Cham of the Umayyads and their fierce competitors on the other side of the river, the Mesopotamian Abbasids.
James Barr, in his splendid “A Line in the Sand,” notes, correctly, that the Sykes-Picot agreement imposed on the Middle East the European conception of territory: their “line in the sand” codified a delimited separation between nation-states. The problem is, there were no nation-states in region in the early 20thcentury.
The birth of Syria as we know it was a work in progress, involving the Europeans, the Hashemite dynasty, nationalist Syrians invested in building a Greater Syria including Lebanon, and the Maronites of Mount Lebanon. An important factor is that few in the region lamented losing dependence on Hashemite Medina, and except the Turks, the loss of the vilayet of Mosul in what became Iraq after World War I.
In 1925, Sunnis became the de facto prominent power in Syria, as the French unified Aleppo and Damascus. During the 1920s France also established the borders of eastern Syria. And the Treaty of Lausanne, in 1923, forced the Turks to give up all Ottoman holdings but didn’t keep them out of the game.
Turkish borders according to the Treaty of Lausanne, 1923.
The Turks soon started to encroach on the French mandate, and began blocking the dream of Kurdish autonomy. France in the end gave in: the Turkish-Syrian border would parallel the route of the fabledBagdadbahn — the Berlin-Baghdad railway.
In the 1930s France gave in even more: the sanjak of Alexandretta (today’s Iskenderun, in Hatay province, Turkey), was finally annexed by Turkey in 1939 when only 40 percent of the population was Turkish.
The annexation led to the exile of tens of thousands of Armenians. It was a tremendous blow for Syrian nationalists. And it was a disaster for Aleppo, which lost its corridor to the Eastern Mediterranean.
Turkish forces under entered Alexandretta on July 5, 1938.
This emergent Syria — out of conflicting Turkish, French, British and myriad local interests —obviously could not, and did not, please any community. Still, the heart of the nation configured what was described as “useful Syria.” No less than 60 percent of the nation was — and remains — practically void.Yet, geopolitically, that translates into “strategic depth” — the heart of the matter in the current war.To the eastern steppes, Syria was all about Bedouin tribes. To the north, it was all about the Turkish-Kurdish clash. And to the south, the border was a mirage in the desert, only drawn with the advent of Transjordan. Only the western front, with Lebanon, was established, and consolidated after WWII.
From Hafez to Bashar
Starting in 1963, the Baath party, secular and nationalist, took over Syria, finally consolidating its power in 1970 with Hafez al-Assad, who instead of just relying on his Alawite minority, built a humongous, hyper-centralized state machinery mixed with a police state. The key actors who refused to play the game were the Muslim Brotherhood, all the way to being massacred during the hardcore 1982 Hama repression.
Secularism and a police state: that’s how the fragile Syrian mosaic was preserved. But already in the 1970s major fractures were emerging: between major cities and a very poor periphery; between the “useful” west and the Bedouin east; between Arabs and Kurds. But the urban elites never repudiated the iron will of Damascus: cronyism, after all, was quite profitable.
Damascus interfered heavily with the Lebanese civil war since 1976 at the invitation of the Arab League as a “peacekeeping force.” In Hafez al-Assad’s logic, stressing the Arab identity of Lebanon was essential to recover Greater Syria. But Syrian control over Lebanon started to unravel in 2005, after the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, very close to Saudi Arabia, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) eventually left.
Bashar al-Assad had taken power in 2000. Unlike his father, he bet on the Alawites to run the state machinery, preventing the possibility of a coup but completely alienating himself from the poor, Syrian on the street.
What the West defined as the Arab Spring, began in Syria in March 2011; it was a revolt against the Alawites as much as a revolt against Damascus. Totally instrumentalized by the foreign interests, the revolt sprang up in extremely poor, dejected Sunni peripheries: Deraa in the south, the deserted east, and the suburbs of Damascus and Aleppo.
Protest in Damascus, April 24, 2011. (syriana2011/Flickr)
What was not understood in the West is that this “beggars banquet” was not against the Syrian nation, but against a “regime.” Jabhat al-Nusra, in a P.R. exercise, even broke its official link with al-Qaeda and changed its denomination to Fatah al-Cham and then Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (“Organization for the Liberation of the Levant”). Only ISIS/Daesh said they were fighting for the end of Sykes-Picot.
By 2014, the perpetually moving battlefield was more or less established: Damascus against both Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS/Daesh, with a wobbly role for the Kurds in the northeast, obsessed in preserving the cantons of Afrin, Kobane and Qamichli.
But the key point is that each katiba (“combat group”), each neighborhood, each village, and in fact each combatant was in-and-out of allegiances non-stop. That yielded a dizzying nebulae of jihadis, criminals, mercenaries, some linked to al-Qaeda, some to Daesh, some trained by the Americans, some just making a quick buck.
For instance Salafis — lavishly financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — especially Jaish al-Islam, even struck alliances with the PYD Kurds in Syria and the jihadis of Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (the remixed, 30,000-strong al-Qaeda in Syria). Meanwhile, the PYD Kurds (an emanation of the Turkish Kurds’ PKK, which Ankara consider “terrorists”) profited from this unholy mess — plus a deliberate ambiguity by Damascus – to try to create their autonomous Rojava.
A demonstration in the city of Afrin in support of the YPG against the Turkish invasion of Afrin, Jan. 19, 2018. (Voice of America Kurdish, Wikimedia Commons)
That Turkish Strategic Depth
Turkey was all in. Turbo-charged by the neo-Ottoman politics of former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the logic was to reconquer parts of the Ottoman empire, and get rid of Assad because he had helped PKK Kurdish rebels in Turkey.
Davutoglu’s Strategik Derinlik (“Strategic Depth’), published in 2001, had been a smash hit in Turkey, reclaiming the glory of eight centuries of an sprawling empire, compared to puny 911 kilometers of borders fixed by the French and the Kemalists. Bilad al Cham, the Ottoman province congregating Lebanon, historical Palestine, Jordan and Syria, remained a powerful magnet in both the Syrian and Turkish unconscious.
No wonder Turkey’s Recep Erdogan was fired up: in 2012 he even boasted he was getting ready to pray in the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, post-regime change, of course. He has been gunning for a safe zone inside the Syrian border — actually a Turkish enclave — since 2014. To get it, he has used a whole bag of nasty players — from militias close to the Muslim Brotherhood to hardcore Turkmen gangs.
With the establishment of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), for the first time Turkey allowed foreign weaponized groups to operate on its own territory. A training camp was set up in 2011 in the sanjakof Alexandretta. The Syrian National Council was also created in Istanbul – a bunch of non-entities from the diaspora who had not been in Syria for decades.
Ankara enabled a de facto Jihad Highway — with people from Central Asia, Caucasus, Maghreb, Pakistan, Xinjiang, all points north in Europe being smuggled back and forth at will. In 2015, Ankara, Riyadh and Doha set up the dreaded Jaish al-Fath (“Army of Conquest”), which included Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda).
At the same time, Ankara maintained an extremely ambiguous relationship with ISIS/Daesh, buying its smuggled oil, treating jihadis in Turkish hospitals, and paying zero attention to jihad intel collected and developed on Turkish territory. For at least five years, the MIT — Turkish intelligence – provided political and logistic background to the Syrian opposition while weaponizing a galaxy of Salafis. After all, Ankara believed that ISIS/Daesh only existed because of the “evil” deployed by the Assad regime.
The Russian Factor
Russian President Vladiimir Putin meeting with President of Turkey Recep Erdogan; Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov standing in background, Ankara, Dec. 1, 2014 Ankara. (Kremlin)
The first major game-changer was the spectacular Russian entrance in the summer of 2015. Vladimir Putin had asked the U.S. to join in the fight against the Islamic State as the Soviet Union allied against Hitler, negating the American idea that this was Russia’s bid to restore its imperial glory. But the American plan instead, under Barack Obama, was single-minded: betting on a rag-tag Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a mix of Kurds and Sunni Arabs, supported by air power and U.S. Special Forces, north of the Euphrates, to smash ISIS/Daesh all the way to Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor.
Raqqa, bombed to rubble by the Pentagon, may have been taken by the SDF, but Deir ez-Zor was taken by Damascus’s Syrian Arab Army. The ultimate American aim was to consistently keep the north of the Euphrates under U.S. power, via their proxies, the SDF and the Kurdish PYD/YPG. That American dream is now over, lamented by imperial Democrats and Republicans alike.
The CIA will be after Trump’s scalp till Kingdom Come.
Kurdish Dream Over
Talk about a cultural misunderstanding. As much as the Syrian Kurds believed U.S. protection amounted to an endorsement of their independence dreams, Americans never seemed to understand that throughout the “Greater Middle East” you cannot buy a tribe. At best, you can rent them. And they use you according to their interests. I’ve seen it from Afghanistan to Iraq’s Anbar province.
The Kurdish dream of a contiguous, autonomous territory from Qamichli to Manbij is over. Sunni Arabs living in this perimeter will resist any Kurdish attempt at dominance.
The Syrian PYD was founded in 2005 by PKK militants. In 2011, Syrians from the PKK came from Qandil – the PKK base in northern Iraq – to build the YPG militia for the PYD. In predominantly Arab zones, Syrian Kurds are in charge of governing because for them Arabs are seen as a bunch of barbarians, incapable of building their “democratic, socialist, ecological and multi-communitarian” society.
Kurdish PKK guerillas In Kirkuk, Iraq. (Kurdishstruggle via Flickr)
One can imagine how conservative Sunni Arab tribal leaders hate their guts. There’s no way these tribal leaders will ever support the Kurds against the SAA or the Turkish army; after all these Arab tribal leaders spent a lot of time in Damascus seeking support from Bashar al-Assad. And now the Kurds themselves have accepted that support in the face of the Trukish incursion, greenlighted by Trump.
East of Deir ez-Zor, the PYD/YPG already had to say goodbye to the region that is responsible for 50 percent of Syria’s oil production. Damascus and the SAA now have the upper hand. What’s left for the PYD/YPG is to resign themselves to Damascus’s and Russian protection against Turkey, and the chance of exercising sovereignty in exclusively Kurdish territories.
Ignorance of the West
The West, with typical Orientalist haughtiness, never understood that Alawites, Christians, Ismailis and Druze in Syria would always privilege Damascus for protection compared to an “opposition” monopolized by hardcore Islamists, if not jihadis. The West also did not understand that the government in Damascus, for survival, could always count on formidable Baath party networks plus the dreaded mukhabarat — the intel services.
Rebuilding Syria
The reconstruction of Syria may cost as much as $200 billion. Damascus has already made it very clear that the U.S. and the EU are not welcome. China will be in the forefront, along with Russia and Iran; this will be a project strictly following the Eurasia integration playbook — with the Chinese aiming to revive Syria’s strategic positioning in the Ancient Silk Road.
As for Erdogan, distrusted by virtually everyone, and a tad less neo-Ottoman than in the recent past, he now seems to have finally understood that Bashar al-Assad “won’t go,” and he must live with it. Ankara is bound to remain imvolved with Tehran and Moscow, in finding a comprehensive, constitutional solution for the Syrian tragedy through the former “Astana process”, later developed in Ankara.
The war may not have been totally won, of course. But against all odds, it’s clear a unified, sovereign Syrian nation is bound to prevail over every perverted strand of geopolitical molotov cocktails concocted in sinister NATO/GCC labs. History will eventually tell us that, as an example to the whole Global South, this will remain the ultimate game-changer.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/20/2019 – 00:00 - These Are The Most (And Least) Generous Countries In The World
These Are The Most (And Least) Generous Countries In The World
The Charities Aid Foundation has released the 2019 edition of the World Giving Index which surveyed 1.3 million people in 128 countries to determine generosity levels.
Unfortunately, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, generosity simply isn’t possible in some countries due to unrest or high poverty levels.
As in previous years, Myanmar had the highest share of people most likely to donate to charity with 81 percent. It consistently tops studies about charitable giving, mainly because of the strong influence of Theravada Buddhists practising Sangha Dana where many people believe that doing good in this life improves their chances of their next life being a better one.
You will find more infographics at Statista
At the other end of the spectrum, the lowest scoring countries in the index were Georgia and Yemen with 6 percent of people stating that they made a charitable donation in the past month.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Charity is more than likely one of the last things on people’s minds in Yemen which has been ravaged by years of war.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/19/2019 – 23:30 - Navy Patents UFO-Like Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor And Hybrid Space/Sea Crafts
Navy Patents UFO-Like Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor And Hybrid Space/Sea Crafts
Authored by Jake Anderson via TheMindUnleashed.com,
A mysterious set of patents filed recently by a U.S Navy researcher has caught the eyes of technologists and conspiracy theorists alike.
These patents describe exotic technologies that do not exist in the commercial or military spheres—as far as we know—and that usually only surface in UFO lore, including high-energy electromagnetic force fields, revolutionary propulsion systems, and a “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft.”
The newest patent is for a practical fusion reactor that could be stored in aircraft to help achieve unimaginable speeds and maneuverability.
The mystery around these patents continues to grow during a time in which the Navy and State Department have stunningly reversed their decades-old policy of not acknowledging UFO sightings. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division is the home of the high-level Navy researcher, the equally mysterious Salvatore Cezar Pais, who in recent years has filed patents for supposedly operable revolutionary technologies such as room temperature superconductor (RTSC) and the high-energy electromagnetic field generator (HEEMFG).
Perhaps the most surprising patent concerns the “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft,” which can supposedly navigate with equal precision through space, air, and water with no heat signature and “engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level.”
In the patents filed, Pais has revealed that Chinese scientists are already way ahead of the United States in such fields. The reason this is a shocking admission is because military personnel, Navy officers, and air pilots have for years reported USOs (unidentified submerged objects) that seem to fly in and out of the sea at incomphrensible speeds.
The newest patent teases the discovery of the “Holy Grail” of energy production, the long sought nuclear fusion reactor, which could revolutionize life on Earth by creating a sustainable long-term fuel source and reduce radioactive waste and greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, scientists do not know how to manage systems that utilize high-pressure plasma in the range of hundreds of millions of degrees Fahrenheit and can only create split second controlled nuclear fusion reactions.
However, the patent for Pais’ “Plasma Compression Fusion Device,” which was only disclosed September 26, 2019 states:
“At present there are few envisioned fusion reactors/devices that come in a small, compact package (ranging from 0.3 to 2 meters in diameter) and typically they use different versions of plasma magnetic confinement. Three such devices are the Lockheed Martin (LM) Skunk Works Compact Fusion Reactor (LM-CFR) , the EMC2 Polywell fusion concept, and the Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration (PFRC) machine. […] These devices feature short plasma confinement times, possible plasma instabilities with the scaling of size, and it is questionable whether they have the ability of achieving the break – even fusion condition, let alone a self-sustained plasma burn leading to ignition.”
Pais states that this technology would be capable of producing as much as a terawatt (1 trillion watts) of power, which vastly surpasses America’s largest current nuclear power plant. While it’s not known whether such technology is possible at all, much less in a compact structure, we do know that the U.S. military and private firms like Lockheed Martin are competing with the government run-Chinese Academy of Sciences to create the world’s first compact nuclear reactor.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/19/2019 – 23:00 - Trump Scraps Plan To Hold 2020 G-7 Summit At His Doral Golf Resort After "Irrational Hostility"
Trump Scraps Plan To Hold 2020 G-7 Summit At His Doral Golf Resort After "Irrational Hostility"
Any journalists who thought that 10:00pm on Saturday may mercifully be devoid of breaking news, were shocked, and furious to discover that that was Donald Trump’s preferred time to tweet, following an intense backlash by both Democrats and Republicans over his trampling of the Emoluments clause, that he would scrap plans to hold next year’s G-7 summit at his Doral golf resort in Miami due to “both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility.”
Instead, Trump said he would “begin the search for another site, including the possibility of Camp David, immediately.”
According to Trump’s late Saturday tweetstorm, the president “thought I was doing something very good for our Country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 Leaders.” The tweet then trailed off into an ad for the (struggling) Doral golf resort, laying out all its positive aspects:
It is big, grand, on hundreds of acres, next to MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, has tremendous ballrooms & meeting rooms, and each delegation would have its own 50 to 70 unit building. Would set up better than other alternatives.
Trump, confused why it would appear a conflict of interest to host the most important people in the world at his property, then explained the he “would be willing to do it at NO PROFIT or, if legally permissible, at ZERO COST to the USA.” But, he added “as usual, the Hostile Media & their Democrat Partners went CRAZY!”
“Therefore”, Trump concluded, “based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider Trump National Doral, Miami, as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020. We will begin the search for another site, including the possibility of Camp David, immediately.”
I thought I was doing something very good for our Country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 Leaders. It is big, grand, on hundreds of acres, next to MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, has tremendous ballrooms & meeting rooms, and each delegation would have…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
…..its own 50 to 70 unit building. Would set up better than other alternatives. I announced that I would be willing to do it at NO PROFIT or, if legally permissible, at ZERO COST to the USA. But, as usual, the Hostile Media & their Democrat Partners went CRAZY!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
….Therefore, based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider Trump National Doral, Miami, as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020. We will begin the search for another site, including the possibility of Camp David, immediately. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
That said, if Trump was hoping that with this decision the media’s outrage would be diminished – if anything it will only validate that complaints and criticisms of Trump’s decision were justified. On the other hand, the media may have moved on: after all, the latest scandal involving Hillary Clinton, Tulsi Gabbard and the rest of the democrats in the primary race, all of whom appear to have picked a side in this bizarre catfight, just may allow the press to forget about Trump for a day or two, as Hillary Clinton decides whether she has enough public and media support to officially enter the race for president. Again.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/19/2019 – 22:32 - China Buying Boatloads Of Soybeans From Brazil After US Trade Talks
China Buying Boatloads Of Soybeans From Brazil After US Trade Talks
China ramped up Soybean purchases from Brazil last week, despite President Trump showboating a potential $50 billion agriculture deal with Beijing.
Multiple traders told Reuters that Brazilian soybeans are more appealing to commercial importers, especially ones from China, who are looking for deep discounts.
As of last week, Beijing hasn’t lifted 25% tariffs on US soybeans nor granted new waivers to state-owned businesses, indicating that China isn’t ready to buy US agriculture products, as of late October.
China typically sources most of its soybeans from the US between October and January, then from South American countries in early 1Q. But this year, according to traders, as the trade war continues to escalate to the point of return, China is abandoning US markets despite positive sentiment from President Trump’s tweets.
U.S. vs. Brazil (Market share of China’s total soybean imports) pic.twitter.com/8tYdlbWbrT
— Michael McDonough (@M_McDonough) October 9, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Since Monday, traders said China purchased eight bulk carrier cargoes of soybeans from Brazil, or about 480,000 tons, worth $173 million.
Brazil is China’s top soybean supplier, and Reuters made an interesting point, “large purchases from South America are unusual at this time of year with the US harvest coming in.” Translation: China isn’t buying US soybeans, so President Trump’s tweets about agriculture purchases are meaningless at the moment and are only used to calm fears of Midwest/Central US farmers.
President Trump and his administration spent several weeks pumping headlines through different wirehouses and even on Twitter, about a breakthrough deal and massive agriculture purchases China was performing.
Three US soybean exporters told Reuters that China logged zero sales with the US last week, along with no transactions at the USDA.
“I’ve not had any inquiries at all for US (shipments),” said one of the US soybean exporters. “There were a few November boats bought from Brazil and several new-crop South American boats for March forward but nothing here.”
Another US exporter said a drop in Brazilian soybean prices triggered boatloads of new purchases by China last week.
Chinese state-owned firms COFCO and Sinograin, which are exempt from US tariffs, have no intention of purchasing US soybeans unless spot prices drop, said one of the exporters.
After the Trump administration spent several weeks pumping the stock market on headlines describing China repurchasing soybeans, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Thursday finally admitted that for China to buy $50 billion worth of US agriculture good, it would depend on spot prices.
On Tuesday, China said that it would struggle to buy $50 billion of US agriculture products if the Trump administration doesn’t remove retaliatory tariffs on some products. Something that President Trump cannot afford to do because it would allow China to continue its ascension as a global superpower.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/19/2019 – 22:30 - 55 Ways To 'Starve The Beast'
55 Ways To 'Starve The Beast'
Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
A term coined in 1985 by an unnamed staffer of the Reagan administration was “Starve the Beast”. This referred to a fiscally conservative political strategy to cut government spending by paying less in taxes. So, in the original sense, “the Beast” was the government, and people were to starve said beast by spending less and using loopholes to pay less in taxes.
Now the Beast is a whole lot bigger.
These days the Beast has a lot more tentacles than just the government.
The system now consists of the government and all aspects of corporatism. Big Agri, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Food, Big Banking, and Big Oil, to name a few. It seems that now it’s the Beast that’s doing the starving, as small businesses close because they can’t compete with WalMart, bigger chains are run out of existence by Amazon, the family farm is on its way out because it can’t compete with the huge, subsidized mega-farms, and people are going bankrupt because they can’t pay the outrageous medical bills…
These mega-corporations aren’t there to make our lives better or easier. They’re there to make as much money as possible and they’ll run you over if you get in their way.
(Please note that there are Amazon links in this article to show you the books I recommend. You may be able to find these books from local sellers.)
When I first wrote this article in 2013, Big Tech wasn’t quite as prevalent. I’ve added some recommendations from the comments over the years to expand this list.
Perhaps more of us need to starve the beast.
Is it convenient to starve the beast and avoid doing business with mega-corporations or to work around funding endless wars that kill and maim our young people while enriching the Military-Industrial Complex?
No, but it’s time.
It’s time for another financial revolution – one where people group together and use the power of the pocketbook to starve all the arms of this Beast that would swallow us whole. If we vote with our dollars, eventually there will, of necessity, be a paradigm shift that returns us to simpler days, when families who were willing to work hard could make a living without selling their souls to the corporate monoliths.
Every penny you spend with small local businesses is a penny that the big box stores won’t have. Everything that you buy secondhand or barter for is an item on which you won’t pay sales tax. Disassociate yourself completely with “the system” that is making Western civilization broke, overweight and unhealthy.
Here are 55 ways to starve the Beast.
Starve the Beast by taking as many of these steps as possible…
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Shop at local businesses with no corporate ties.
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Use natural remedies instead of pharmaceuticals whenever possible.
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Homeschool your children. If you can’t homeschool, at the very least, spend time undoing the indoctrination by giving them the tools to think critically.
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Walk or bike instead of driving when you can.
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When possible, get care from naturopaths and healers instead of doctors.
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Make paper logs from scraps for free heat if you have a wood-burning fireplace or stove.
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Boycott all processed foods.
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Shop at local farmer’s markets or buy directly from the farms themselves.
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Don’t buy from corporate stores: Wal-Mart, Costco, Best Buy, Home Depot. Instead, pay a few extra dollars and buy from local vendors.
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Give vouchers as gifts for an evening of babysitting, a homemade meal, walking the dog, doing a repair, or cleaning
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Join a CSA or farm co-op
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Ditch television (and all the propaganda and commercials). If you want to view programs, enroll in a streaming service without commercials like Netflix.
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Participate in the barter system – although remember that even if no money changes hands, the government would like for you to let them know so you can be duly taxed.
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Buy secondhand from yard sales, Craigslist, and thrift stores
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Sell your own unwanted goods by having a yard sale or putting an ad on Craigslist
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Repair things instead of replacing them
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Avoid fast-food restaurants and chain restaurants
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Dine at locally owned establishments if you eat out.
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Brew your own beer and wine.
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Cook from scratch to avoid all those Big Food chemicals and additives.
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Grow or gather medicinal herbs.
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Give homemade gifts.
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Attend free local activities: lectures, concerts, play days at the park, library events.
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Dumpster dive and pick up things from the curb.
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Play outside: hike, bike, picnic.
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Mend clothing.
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Invite someone over for dinner instead of meeting at a chain restaurant.
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Throw creative birthday parties at home for your kids instead of renting a venue.
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Travel to other countries and note how most are not filled with mega-corporations, and local businesses still thrive.
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Bring your coffee with you in a travel mug.
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Do all of your Christmas shopping with small local businesses and artisans.
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Reduce your electricity usage with candles, solar power, and non-tech entertainment.
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Drop the thermostat and put on a sweater.
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Bring your snacks and drinks in a cooler when you go on a road trip.
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Stay home – it’s way easier to avoid temptations that way. Shopping should not be a form of entertainment.
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Pack lunches for work and school.
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Make delicious homemade treats as a hostess gift.
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Close your bank account or at the very least, strictly limit your balance.
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Visit u-pick berry patches and orchards, then preserve your harvest for the winter.
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Use precious metals stored at home as your savings account.
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Raise backyard chickens for your own eggs.
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If you are a smoker, roll your own cigarettes – if possible go one step further and grow tobacco.
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Brew your own beer, wine, and liquor.
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Use solar power for lighting or cooking.
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Collect rainwater for use in the garden
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Learn to forage.
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Buy heavy, solid, handmade furniture instead of the flimsy imported stuff
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At the holidays, focus on activities and traditions instead of gifts.
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Make your own bath and body products using pure ingredients like coconut oil, essential oils, and herbal extracts
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Get an old-fashioned flip phone while you still can.
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Drive an older car without GPS tracking.
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Use a VPN like ExpressVPN to keep your location information masked on your electronic devices.
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Avoid adding surveillance technology such as Ring or Nest to your home.
Will these activities save America from corporatism and government overreach? Maybe not, but at least you’ll be doing your small part to rebel. Like David fighting Goliath, we are small but we are mighty enemies.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/19/2019 – 22:00 - "Get Over It": Trump Campaign Mocks Outrage Over Mulvaney Comments With T-Shirts
"Get Over It": Trump Campaign Mocks Outrage Over Mulvaney Comments With T-Shirts
The Trump campaign’s latest trolling (after selling plastic straws and “Where’s Hunter?” T-shirts) comes after acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told reporters last week that there’s “going to be political influence in foreign policy,” suggesting that the media “get over it.”
In response, the Trump campaign turned Mulvaney’s comment into yet another T-shirt, as the rest of the media foused on his seeming admission that there was a quid pro quo with Ukraine.
Time to stop the political theater and false accusations.
Time to get back to work for the people of this country.
Time to Get Over It!https://t.co/MEQNVxZEwU
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) October 18, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“Did he also mention to me in past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely,” Mulvaney told reporters. “No question about that. But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.”
This was quickly seized on by White House reporters, who said Mulvaney described a quid pro quo for holding up security assistance to Ukraine unless the country’s alleged involvement with the DNC server was investigated.
Mulvaney, later retracted his statement – saying “Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election. The president never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did anything related to the server.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/19/2019 – 21:30 - The Army Is Building A Cannon Capable Of Firing From Nashville To NYC
The Army Is Building A Cannon Capable Of Firing From Nashville To NYC
Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,
The U.S. national defense budget is one of the most bloated in the world, with funding exceeding $1 trillion as the Pentagon and defense industry-friendly politicians seek to secure the unquestioned dominance of the U.S. Armed Forces across the globe.
However, advances in the military-technical field by U.S. rivals like China and Russia – who have each developed advanced hypersonic deterrent weapons – have gripped U.S. war-planners with a feeling of insecurity over the state of the U.S. military’s overstocked arsenals, as well as a nagging sense that U.S. power is on the long-term decline.
With that in mind, the U.S. army set about developing a brand-new weapon: a powerful cannon that can fire a projectile over a distance of more than 1,150 nautical miles – or the same distance between Nashville, Tennessee and New York City.
The service branch hopes to demonstrate a prototype of the new super-cannon by 2023, after which it will be determined whether the cannon is worthy of undergoing further tests, Defense News reports.
The Army is tackling the new project with the Research and Analysis Center at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, as well as the Center for Army Analysis “to confirm the service can accomplish what is expected from such a system,” Col. John Rafferty said.
Before entering live trials, the program first has to pass through what Rafferty described as “big technology gates,” and one will be completed “very soon” in what is said to be an early ballistic test at a Virginia facility.
The Army hopes that the new cannon can offer an edge on U.S. adversaries who have their own formidable defensive and deterrent capabilities. Rafferty believes that a U.S. strategy imbued with long-range air defense systems and artillery and coastal defense seamlessly integrated with long-range, over-the-horizon radars will be difficult to counter for U.S. foes.
Rafferty explained:
“That integrated system challenges even our most sophisticated aircraft and challenges our most sophisticated ships to gain access to the area.
That layered enemy standoff at the strategic level was really the fundamental problem. One of the ways to solve that problem is to deliver surface-to-surface fires that can penetrate this [anti-access, area-denial] complex and disintegrate its network and create windows of opportunity for the joint force to exploit.”
However, the key question is whether the new project can successfully enhance the Army’s capabilities without being too expensive—a key criteria for passing each of the technology gates.
Rafferty added:
“This idea of volume and affordability and lethality is first and foremost in our minds.”
In a recent interview, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville told Defense News:
“A lot of that comes down to cost.
If we are able to develop the strategic, long-range cannon system, the rounds may be only $400,000 or $500,000 compared to multimillion-dollar rounds. Cost does matter, and we are concerned about cost.
There are some, definitely, physics challenges in doing these types of things, and that is the trade-off.”
The chief added that the Army is “trying to be innovative, but what they have to do is demonstrate the capability at each phase along the way. And if that doesn’t happen, we are not doing it.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/19/2019 – 21:00 - "There Is A Global Crisis" – Israel Diamond Industry Collapses Amid Faltering Demand
"There Is A Global Crisis" – Israel Diamond Industry Collapses Amid Faltering Demand
Macroeconomic headwinds are developing across the world. At least 90% of all countries are experiencing a slowdown in growth that has stumped central bankers and policymakers. No one at the moment can figure out how to restart the global economy. With the risk of a worldwide trade recession soaring for 2020, if not has already arrived, consumers are pulling back on spending, which has contributed to a collapse in the global diamond industry, something that we’ve been documenting this year.
The latest stress in the global diamond industry is emanating from Israel. Ynetnews is saying the country’s diamond exports have plunged 22%, a sign that consumer demand from Asia is faltering.
Trade data showed for the first three quarters of 2019, Israeli exports of diamonds were $2.62 billion, down from $3.32 billion during the same period last year.
In 3Q19, imports and exports of diamonds by Israel plunged 28% YoY.
The Times of Israel blamed the downturn on the trade war and social unrest in Hong Kong.
Yoram Dvash, president of the Israel Diamond Exchange, told Ynetnews:
“There is a global crisis. The government needs to help out the industry. Everywhere people are helping because they understand that there are difficulties now. Trump’s trade war with China and the Hong Kong protests really influence the industry. Hong Kong accounts for about 30% of our exports. The Hong Kong government said that in recent times, the sector that’s been damaged the most there has been the jewelry industry.”
Dvash said Hong Kong jewelry shops, which import hundreds of millions of dollars of diamonds from Israel per year, have noticed collapsing demand from mainland China because of the social unrest and economic downturn in the region.
“Right now, the Chinese government isn’t granting visas to Chinese to go to Hong Kong in order to put pressure on business people there and hurt the economy. It’s paralyzing the number 2 diamond market in the world,” Dvash said.
A source told Ynetnews that a credit crisis in India involving Indian diamond companies has negatively impacted the global industry.
Earlier this month, De Beers’, one of the largest diamond exploration, diamond mining, and diamond retailing companies in the world, saw a 39% YoY drop in September sales.
A diamond analyst last month said markets remained oversupplied, resulting in weak global sales.
“The current malaise in the market is due to oversupply,” said Paul Zimnisky, an analyst in New York, who said diamond buyers had too much inventory.
Spot diamond prices on the IDEX Diamond Index shows how oversupplied conditions have weighed down prices in the last 8 months.
Source: Bloomberg
And while diamonds are supposed to “a girl’s best friend”, recent months have seen gold the preferred shiny thing of choice…
Source: Bloomberg
Shares in Signet, the world’s largest retailer of diamond jewelry, have crashed 89% in the last four years.
It appears a diamond crisis is unfolding, and this is what usually happens right before a global recession, a sign that the consumer can no longer power the global economy. Turmoil is ahead.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/19/2019 – 20:30
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