- UK Denies Asylum To Christian Convert From Iran Because "Christianity Is Not Peaceful"
The UK has denied asylum to an Iranian man because he said on his application that he converted from Islam to the “peaceful” religion of Christianity, according to The Independent.
The Home Office quoted excerpts from the bible in the man’s rejection letter – saying the book of Revelations is “filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence,” and concluded that “These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a ‘peaceful’ religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge.”
When contacted by The Independent, the Home Office essentially said “our bad” – claiming that the letter was “not in accordance” with proper policies for claims based on religious persecution, and that it was working to improve employee training.
Lawyers and campaigners said the case demonstrated a “distortion of logic” and a “reckless” approach to asylum seekers’ lives, stemming from a tendency by the department to “come up with any reason they can to refuse” cases. –The Independent
The asylum seeker’s caseworker, Nathan Stevens, tweeted “I’ve seen a lot over the years, but even I was genuinely shocked to read this unbelievably offensive diatribe being used to justify a refusal of asylum.”
Excerpt from a home office reasons for refusal letter for a convert to Christianity. I’ve seen a lot over the years, but even I was genuinely shocked to read this unbelievably offensive diatribe being used to justify a refusal of asylum. pic.twitter.com/R1wA1HMNwH
— Nathan Stevens (@nathestevens) March 19, 2019
According to the latest immigration statistics, there has been a marked increase in incorrect asylum refusals – with successful appeals up 5% since 2015-2016.
“You can see from the text of the letter that the writer is trying to pick holes in the asylum seeker’s account of their conversion to Christianity and using the Bible verses as a tool to do that,” said legal expert Conor James McKinney – deputy editor of the website Free Movement. McKinney said the case was a symptom of the Home Office’s reputation to “come up with any reason they can to refuse asylum.”
“The Home Office is notorious for coming up with any reason they can to refuse asylum and this looks like a particularly creative example, but not necessarily a systemic outbreak of anti-Christian sentiment in the department.” -Conor James McKinney
The case is a “particularly outrageous example of the reckless and facetious approach of the Home Office to determining life and death asylum cases,” said Sarah Teather, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in the UK. Teather added that JRS frequently encounters cases where asylum has been refused on “spurious grounds,” adding “Some of these cases require more legal knowledge to recognise than this bizarre misquoting of the Bible, but as this instance gains public attention, we need to remember it reflects a systematic problem and a deeper mindset of disbelief, and is not just an anomaly that can be explained away.”
- Moment Of Truth Looms For Second Referendum: The Plan All Along Or A Head Fake?
The news that Theresa May has officially requested an extension to Article 50 until the end of June has been in the making since the European Court of Justice announced in December 2018 that the UK has the right to unilaterally revoke the article at any point prior to the UK leaving the EU.
In an article published at the time, I argued that the ECJ’s decision was designed to begin the process of the government legislating for a second referendum. To quickly summarise what has happened since, in the past three months the Brexit withdrawal agreement was rejected twice by the House of Commons, Theresa May survived a series of no confidence votes, parliament stated its opposition to both a no deal scenario and holding a second referendum before supporting an extension to Article 50, and finally speaker John Bercow announced that the government would only be allowed to put the Brexit withdrawal agreement to parliament again if it contained a ‘new‘ proposition.
Regular readers will know that since last year my position on Brexit has been consistent, in that I believe a no deal exit from the EU is the most likely outcome and that a ‘People’s Vote‘ could be used to facilitate this eventuality.
One explanation for why the Prime Minister has requested only a three month extension to Article 50 is that it would avoid the UK having to take part in upcoming EU parliamentary elections. Whilst this is possible, I do not think it is the primary reason.
Last week, Independent MP Sarah Wollaston tabled an amendment that called for Article 50 to be extended and for a second referendum on Brexit to be held. The amendment was comprehensively defeated, with the majority of the opposition Labour party abstaining from the vote. Elements of the party and The People’s Vote campaign went on record as saying that the timing of the amendment was too soon, and so as a result they did not rally behind it.
As with other supposed set backs to another vote, critics rounded on the news believing that the result killed off any prospect of another referendum from materialising. As I have stressed before, this interpretation is I believe premature.
On the same day as Wollaston’s defeated amendment, parliament voted by a majority to take no deal ‘off the table‘. But this was only in relation to the exit date of March 29th. It did not account for an extension of Article 50 and with that a new exit date.
It also needs to be stressed that the motions against a no deal and a second public vote were non-binding on the government. What neither did is definitively rule out the possibilities.
A month ago I wrote how on March 23rd a ‘Put it to the people‘ march is taking place in London that will call for a referendum on the government’s Brexit withdrawal agreement. With just a couple of days to go, the line from the European Union is that a request to extended Article 50 would only be granted by its 27 member states for a specific purpose. To extend in order to just give more time for negotiations on an non-negotiable deal would not be acceptable.
Tied in with this was House of Commons speaker John Bercow’s announcement that he would dismiss a motion for a third meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement unless it was markedly different from what has already been rejected.
Asked by MP Geraint Davies if a meaningful vote would be ‘intrinsically different‘ if it included the provision for the final say going to a public vote, Bercow responded by saying that he would look at the specifics but would ultimately abide by the principle that the proposition should be ‘different‘ and ‘not the same or substantially the same‘.
In other words, Bercow has left open the possibility. It is highly unlikely that either he or the European Union would reject a proposal that would legislate for an act of ‘democracy‘.
With the last ‘People’s Vote‘ march this Saturday, it appears to now be designed to move sentiment in favour of a second referendum prior to the original exit day of March 29th. Potential evidence for this comes from EU Commission President Jean Claude Junker, who has strongly intimated that a decision on whether to grant an extension to Article 50 will not be taken until next week,which means after the referendum march. Assuming an extension is approved, the EU may then go on to state that it is a one time deal to accommodate a public vote and that it cannot be extended for a second time.
As for Theresa May’s proposal of extending Article 50 until June 30th, EU Council President Donald Tusk has said a short extension is possible but would be ‘conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons‘.
Many parliamentarians who twice rejected the withdrawal agreement have indicated that they would support it a third time round if it included the proposition for the public to have the final say. This seems to be the direction of travel and the only way in which the deal would be accepted by the speaker as a new proposition.
Of more interest to me, though, is the motivation behind an extension to Article 50 that would only last until June 30th.
It was a few of weeks prior to Donald Trump securing the U.S. presidency that I first mentioned how when the 2016 EU referendum took place, it occurred at the same time central bank chiefs were gathering in Basel for the Bank for International Settlements annual conference. This is a conference that always takes place in the latter part of June.
At the start of January I raised the suggestion that a June referendum could become a reality. My suspicion is that if a second vote goes ahead, it would take the form of a streamlined campaign, one that would offer the public the options of supporting Theresa May’s deal (assuming it still stands), remaining in the EU or leaving on World Trade Organisation terms. This would mean a second referendum taking place in around twelve weeks time.
Should this be the case, then the vote would likely coincide with the movements of the BIS once more. And if my prediction of a no deal exit from the EU is proven correct, the economic fallout from this scenario would require close coordination between central banks, given that currency and equity markets would be heavily impacted.
What Brexit and Trump’s victory showed is that in the background key globalist institutions were convening. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that moves to extend Article 50 are coinciding with the EU Council Summit on March 21st and 22nd – the same two days where a meeting in Cambridge is scheduled between the BIS, the Bank of England, Cambridge University and the University of Basel. The topic? ‘New Economics of Exchange Rate Adjustment‘. The Bank of England and the Federal Reserve also meet this week to decide on interest rates.
If we assume a third meaningful vote goes ahead next week that included the provision for a second referendum, and that it passes with a majority, the motivation for extending Article 50 would then be clear.
Something else to consider is that under this scenario, those in parliament who want to remain in the EU would have to vote in support of leaving the union just so they can secure a referendum for which they would campaign to remain in the bloc. The sense of betrayal already felt by swathes of the electorate would only be heightened if they witnessed MP’s using the deal as nothing more than an opportunity to cancel Brexit altogether.
The next round of theatrics would be over the question on the ballot paper. Recall that in previous weeks the likes of Lord Kerr (author of Article 50 and a member of the Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission), Chuka Umunna, founder of Best for Britain Gina Miller and ex Prime Minister Tony Blair have all raised the prospect of the ballot containing three options – one of which would be for a ‘hard‘ Brexit.
The popular consensus is that another referendum would offer just two options, to either leave with the negotiated deal or remain in the EU. This would eliminate from the campaign the possibility of a no deal Brexit, something which I have reasoned is beneficial to globalists as they would use it to scapegoat the vehicles of resurgent nationalism / protectionism as being responsible for a major impending economic downturn, but also as an opportunity to further centralise power.
For this reason, I expect a no deal option would be presented to the British public. As in 2016, opinion polls all point to the electorate wanting to remain in the EU. They were wrong then and I believe would be wrong again.
A new leave or ‘hard‘ Brexit campaign would play upon the desires of many to ‘take back control‘ of the United Kingdom from the ‘elites‘ and to talk up the prospects of the country, whereas a remain campaign runs the risk of being condescending to the public by pushing the narrative that they were conned the first time round, or worse were ignorant in their societal outlook.
In the middle would sit Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement. If indeed it was carried forward to a referendum, it is feasible that it would become a theatrical tug of war between hard ‘Brexiteers‘ and remainers to convert those minded to support the deal over to their side.
Growing public sentiment is that the establishment have been doing everything it can to overturn the first referendum result. Faith in politicians has never been lower than it is today. In such a febrile atmosphere, if you give voters the option of voicing their discontent through the ballot box, the chances are that they will deliver in kind.
- DoD Orders New Drone To Simulate Warfare With Russian And Chinese Stealth Jets
The Department of Defense (DoD) awarded Sierra Technical Services, Inc. (STS) with a follow-on contract to build a second demonstrator of the 5th Generation Aerial Target (5GAT) stealth drone.
The 5GAT is a fighter-size drone that is designed to train U.S. Armed Forces in how to counter Chinese or Russian fifth-generation fighter jets. The Pentagon is studying whether follow-on production versions of the drone can be used for air-to-air and ground-to-air weapons evaluation, pilot training, and ground forces training, reported FlightGlobal.
Last March, STS was awarded the initial prime contract on the development of the first 5GAT demonstrator. Both contract awards originated from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Contracting Office.
The defense contractor expects the first 5GAT to fly this summer. The second drone is scheduled for flight testing in the second half of 2020.
Both 5GAT drones are being manufactured at Tehachapi Municipal Airport, a small airport in Tehachapi, California. The contractor is using composites for the airframe and recycled parts from Northrop T-38s and F-5s, including landing gear and General Electric J85 single-shaft turbojet engines.
In a separate 2018 statement, the company told FlightGlobal that 5GAT is a low-cost solution to the Boeing QF-16, a full-scale target drone that uses the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon airframe. The Pentagon paid STS $15.9 million to complete the first 5GAT. The second contract’s dollar amount was not disclosed in the company’s latest press release.
5GAT is equivalent in size to the F-16. It’s designed with fifth-generation characteristics that allow it to travel Mach 0.95 with a maximum operating altitude of 45,000ft. The purpose of the new drone is to train U.S. fighter pilots for dogfights against Chinese or Russian fifth-generation jets.
- Goodbye To The Internet: Interference By Governments Is Already Here
Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
There is a saying attributed to the French banker Nathan Rothschild that “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” Conservative opinion in the United States has long suspected that Rothschild was right and there have been frequent calls to audit the Federal Reserve Bank based on the presumption that it has not always acted in support of the actual interests of the American people. That such an assessment is almost certainly correct might be presumed based on the 2008 economic crash in which the government bailed out the banks, which had through their malfeasance caused the disaster, and left individual Americans who had lost everything to face the consequences.
Be that as it may, if there were a modern version of the Rothschild comment it might go something like this: “Give me control of the internet and no one will ever more know what is true.” The internet, which was originally conceived of as a platform for the free interchange of information and opinions, is instead inexorably becoming a managed medium that is increasingly controlled by corporate and government interests. Those interests are in no way answerable to the vast majority of the consumers who actually use the sites in a reasonable and non-threatening fashion to communicate and share different points of view.
The United States Congress started the regulation ball rolling when it summoned the chief executives of the leading social media sites in the wake of the 2016 election. It sought explanations regarding why and how the Russians had allegedly been able to interfere in the election through the use of fraudulent accounts to spread information that might have influenced some voters. In spite of the sound and fury, however, all Congress succeeded in doing was demonstrating that the case against Moscow was flimsy at best while at the same creating a rationale for an increased role in censoring the internet backed by the threat of government regulation.
Given that background, the recent shootings at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and at mosques in Christchurch New Zealand have inevitably produced strident demands that something must be done about the internet, with the presumption that the media both encouraged and enabled the attacks by the gunmen, demented individuals who were immediately labeled as “white supremacists.”
One critic puts it this way, “Let’s be clear, social media is the lifeblood of the far-right. The fact that a terror attack was livestreamed should tell us that this is a unique form for violence made for the digital era. The infrastructure of social media giants is not merely ancillary to the operations of terrorists — it is central to it [and] social media giants assume a huge responsibility to prevent and stop hate speech proliferating on the internet. It’s clear the internet giants cannot manage this alone; we urgently need a renewed conversation on internet regulation… It is time for counter-terrorism specialists to move into the offices of social media giants.”
It’s the wrong thing to do, in part because intelligence and police services already spend a great deal of time monitoring chat on the internet. And the premise that most terrorists who use the social media can be characterized as the enemy du jour “white supremacists” is also patently untrue. Using the national security argument to place knuckle dragging “counter-terrorism specialists” in private sector offices would be the last thing that anyone would reasonably want to do. If one were to turn the internet into a government regulated service it would mean that what comes out at the other end would be something like propaganda intended to make the public think in ways that do not challenge the authority of the bureaucrats and politicians. In the US, it might amount to nothing less than exposure to commentary approved by Mike Pompeo and John Bolton if one wished to learn what is going on in the world.
Currently I and many other internet users appreciate and rely on the alternative media to provide viewpoints that are either suppressed by government or corporate interests or even contrary to prevailing fraudulent news accounts. And the fact is that the internet is already subject to heavy handed censorship by the service providers, which one friend has described as “Soviet era” in its intensity, who are themselves implementing their increasingly disruptive actions to find false personas and to ban as “hate speech” anything that is objected to by influential constituencies.
Blocking information is also already implemented by various countries through a cooperative arrangement whereby governments can ask search engines to remove material. Google actually documents the practice in an annual Transparency Report which reveals that government requests to remove information have increased from less than 1,000 per year in 2010 to nearly 30,000 per year currently. Not surprisingly, Israel and the United States lead the pack when it comes to requests for deletions. Since 2009 the US has asked for 7,964 deletions totaling 109,936 items while Israel has sought 1,436 deletions totally 10,648 items. Roughly two thirds of Israeli and US requests were granted.
And there is more happening behind the scenes. Since 2016, Facebook representatives have also been regularly meeting with the Israeli government to delete Facebook accounts of Palestinians that the Israelis claim constitute “incitement.” Israel had threatened Facebook that non-compliance with Israeli deletion orders would “result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.” Facebook chose compliance and, since that time, Israeli officials have been “publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders.” It should be noted that Facebook postings calling for the murder of Palestinians have not been censored.
And censorship also operates as well at other levels unseen, to include deletion of millions of old postings and videos to change the historical record and rewrite the past. To alter the current narrative, Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all have been pressured to cooperate with pro-Israel private groups in the United States, to include the powerful Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL is working with social media “to engineer new solutions to stop cyberhate” by blocking “hate language,” which includes any criticism of Israel that might be construed as anti-Semitism by the new expanded definition that is being widely promoted by the US Congress and the Trump Administration.
Censorship of information also increasingly operates in the publishing world. With the demise of actual bookstores, most readers buy their books from media online giant Amazon, which had a policy of offering every book in print. On February 19, 2019, it was revealed that Amazon would no longer sell books that it considered too controversial.
Government regulation combined with corporate social media self-censorship means that the user of the service will not know what he or she is missing because it will not be there. And once the freedom to share information without restraint is gone it will never return. On balance, free speech is intrinsically far more important than any satisfaction that might come from government intrusion to make the internet less an enabler of violence. If history teaches us anything, it is that the diminishment of one basic right will rapidly lead to the loss of others and there is no freedom more fundamental than the ability to say or write whatever one chooses, wherever and whenever one seeks to do so.
- Russia Develops Shotgun Drone To Combat Drone Attacks
On March 12, the Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property published the registration of a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a shotgun embedded into its airframe.
The unmanned interceptor is a “tail-sitting drone,” said C4ISRNET news. The drone is classified as a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicle, meaning that it can take off and land vertically, and then fly horizontally. It has a wingspan of 10 ft., weighs roughly 50 pounds, and has an impressive flight time of 40 minutes (flight time is dependent on weather conditions).
C4ISRNET says the interceptor drone uses a semi-automatic shotgun to blast enemy drones out of the sky.
The interceptor patent was granted to the Almaz-Antey defense corporation, a Russian state-owned company, which has been designing the drone for the last several years.
“This CUAS drone is in line with in increasing number of technologies and designs created to combat hostile drones,” Samuel Bendett, an adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses told C4ISRNET. “Russians think that it’s important to fight adversary drones not just from the ground via a number of electronic and kinetic countermeasures, but in the air itself. Hence this rifle drone joining the Carnivora cUAS drone.”
The registration follows several small armed drone attacks on Russian Khmeimim Air Base in Syria. These were the work of jihadists operating out of Idlib, such as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, who launched the small makeshift drones in an attempt to penetrate Russian defenses, even targeting the Russian naval facility at the Syrian port city of Tartus.
Most of the drone attacks occurred in early 2018 were intercepted by Russian air defense systems, but six were landed by electric warfare specialist.
It marked the “first time that terrorists massively used unmanned combat aerial vehicles of an aircraft type that were launched from a distance of more than 50 kilometers, and operated using GPS satellite navigation coordinates,” the Russian ministry had said in a statement.
Small drones are a significant problem on the modern battlefield. No major military has adequately prepared nor has the proper weaponry to combat this new and emerging threat fully. After Russia experienced this threat first hand in 2018, it now seems that a drone-mounted shotgun could be the short-term solution.
- How To Identify A Globalist Criminal
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
In my work analyzing the behavior and motives of globalists I often hear people question the validity of the label. Sometimes this is done by those who are purely uneducated about the background of what I can only call an organized cabal or criminal syndicate. Sometimes it is done by dishonest people who are seeking to sow the seeds of doubt. To be clear, yes, globalists are a very real group with a very real agenda, and this agenda is not morally or rationally sound.
The argument then arises – “If globalists are a real threat, then we should identify them one by one…”
This argument is often a ruse which insinuates that if a person points out the facts surrounding a crime on the part of globalists, his position is still not valid until he names them all in succession. This is a classic Alinsky tactic; to demand that the researcher catalog every person involved in a conspiracy or present a perfect solution to the criminality which may or may not be available, otherwise they should shut up and stop talking about the problem. The intent is to get us caught up in the weeds debating the extent of who is involved or whether one solution is superior to another.
Acknowledging that a specific agenda exists is the first step before anything else can be accomplished.
Obviously, one cannot outline a long list of globalist names in every essay or article. This would make each article dozens of pages long and is counterproductive. Naming names might be helpful in some circumstances, as I have done in the past such as in my article ‘Globalist Disinformation Spotlight On – Mohamed El-Erian’. I welcome readers to examine that article because El-Erian is a good example of what a globalist is and the kind of ideology they espouse. It is my feeling though that it is more important to focus on the behaviors, rhetoric, institutional affiliations and beliefs of globalists, because these elitists often hide in plain sight.
Not all of them publicly call themselves “globalists”; some of them do. However, they ALL have the same character traits and they all support the same agendas.
First and foremost I suppose I should address the so called “elephant in the room”; it is important to note that there is a concerted disinformation effort by a small group of people lurking in the corners of the liberty movement to push the notion that globalism is a purely “Jewish conspiracy”. And, as our social and economic structures grow more unstable, people look for easy answers and the idea is starting to gain some traction. Their claim? It’s all about the Jews, all the globalists are Jewish or somehow secretly related to Jews or are married to Jewish partners, etc. This is simply false, so let’s get this out of the way…
The Jewish conspiracy narrative, I believe, is 4th generation warfare, a psychological operation, an attempt to mislead liberty movement activists away from a much deeper and darker issue. It also may be an attempt to attach the movement to white supremacy or white identity groups as if they are interchangeable. Frankly, I do not care what other people believe as long as they keep to themselves and leave others alone. If someone takes special pride in their pigmentation or culture, great, I wish them the best of luck. It is true that some cultures function better than others, but this has far more to do with the superior cultures being more free.
Just because we have a distaste for the race-baiting insanity and hatred of white people or western culture displayed by the social justice left, this does not mean we need to swing to the other extreme and become zealots ourselves. I actually think the ability to discriminate at times is highly useful, but such simplistic divisions based on bias and broad generalizations make us weak, not strong. It makes us easy to conquer, not a formidable opponent to the globalists.
Here are the facts:
The vast majority of globalists are not of Jewish origin and are not zionist in their political affiliations. While there are sectors of globalist institutions that have more Jewish people than others (such as the Federal Reserve), this does not indicate a majority or any sort of broad “Jewish conspiracy”. On the contrary, the directorial boards and memberships of most globalist institutions have a small minorities of Jews, and are majority Anglo in origin. One can simply look at the board of directors of groups at the top of the globalist pyramid like the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements, or World Bank and verify that this is the case.
We can also examine the attendees of past globalist summits like the Bilderberg Group, or the World Economic Forum in Davos and see that again, some Jews might be involved, but are not a majority or even in the highest positions of authority. While the Rothschild family (Jewish) gets a lot of attention as being a major power center within globalist circles, we can see they are but one influence among many.
These people herald from all over the world, and are of every ethnicity and national affiliation one can imagine. So, the broad brush of white identity conspiracy becomes rather useless in helping us figure out who the globalists truly are. It actually misleads us and points us in the wrong direction, and perhaps this is its underlying purpose.
The fallback argument is that they might not be majority Jewish, but they are all “zionists”; which, again, is simply not true. Zionism is definitely a globalist scheme, but more of a side venture designed to manipulate some Jews and evangelicals into zealotry, to be exploited in supporting efforts like war in the Middle East. Zionism itself actually makes Jewish centers like Israel less safe and more prone to destruction. The globalists only care about Israel or the Jewish people in general in so much as they can be used as a tool for other more important efforts.
And, while I have criticized the actions of the Israeli government on many occasions (and been accused of being an anti-semite for it), this is not the same as attacking the Israeli people. Globalism threatens them just as much as it threatens others. I welcome readers to look over the rosters of many of the top globalist organizations; they will find a minority of zionists, not a majority.
If it’s not about the Jews or zionism, then what is globalism really all about? It is vital that we look at the intent, actions, motivations and beliefs of these people. Hyperfocusing on their genetic backgrounds will get us nowhere. How do we know when we are dealing with a globalist? Let’s look at some of the real and universal elements that make globalists an organized and identifiable culture, separate, distinct and destructive…
Globalism As An “Inevitable” Future
Globalists will often claim that globalism, the centralization of all governmental and economic power, is an inevitable byproduct of “progress”. They will state, without any evidence of course, that globalism represents a pinnacle of evolution in human society. Therefore, anyone that stands in the way of globalism is standing in the way of progress, which is apparently a cardinal sin in the new world order.
But centralization of power is nothing new, and dreams of global empire ruled by self appointed “elites” goes all the way back to Plato and his “Republic”. Utopia by the elites for the elites is a tale as old as mankind. It does not represent evolution, but regression to an ideology that human beings have been struggling for thousands of years to escape from.
We should also make the distinction here between globalists and useful idiots. Globalists are people in a position of power adequate enough to help affect the the changes and agendas they describe. Useful idiots (socialist/communists) might espouse globalist rhetoric, but they have no power. They are exploited as a blunt weapon by globalists, but they are not globalists, and will not likely benefit from globalism in the end.
End Of Sovereignty
Globalists treat the idea of sovereignty with disdain. Their attacks usually revolve around nationalism and they will incessantly pontificate on the virtues of open borders. They can also sometimes be caught criticizing the concept of individual sovereignty, but they do seem to fancy the idea that THEY are unique and superior individuals. Individuality and freedom are meant for them, but not for the rest of us.
Single Economic Authority And Monetary System
A key element of globalism is economic centralization which makes perfect sense when you understand that trade is the root of human civilization and survival. Trade is almost as important as the air we breath and the water we drink. The consistent plan presented by globalists is that the IMF in particular must become the bottleneck point for global economic management, and that all the world’s major currencies will be absorbed by the IMF into their SDR basket system.
This would give the IMF the ability to dictate currency exchange rates on a whim, allowing them to homogenize currency values until they are so similar that a single world currency becomes a natural next step. This final product would be a cashless society, based on a digital blockchain-based currency or cryptocurrency.
Single World Government
Globalists all argue that the answer to most of the world’s ailments is one world governance, or the end of nation states and cultural divisions in the name of “peace”. The UN is so far the impetus of this effort, but it is shadowed by various organizations like the IMF, BIS, World Bank, as well as dozens of think tank organizations like the CFR, Tavistock, the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg, Darpa, etc., etc. A practice model for this type of government can be seen in the European Union, which is controlled by a supranational bureaucratic machine run by mostly faceless officials who are not elected and who do not answer to the public.
Globalists have different terms for the shift into a single world government or single currency system. They call it a “global reset, or a “new world order”, or a “multipolar world order”. But all of these marketing labels are basically referring to the same thing.
Close Association
Any politician that works closely with globalist institutions or think tanks is likely a globalist. Any politician or government official that associates regularly and cooperates with known globalists is probably also a globalist.
Environmental Crisis As Hegelian Threat
Not all globalists hit on this topic publicly, but most do. The strategy, which was planned by the Club Of Rome along with top globalists like former UN Director Robert Muller, was to create the idea of an environmental threat so potentially devastating that the only option would be for the public to accept global governance as the solution. Global warming and “climate change” became that existential threat.
It does not seem to matter how often or how brutal the climate change argument is debunked by real data; the globalists desperately push the ideology. It is a primary key to everything they hope to accomplish in terms of centralization, and their timeline is set for the year 2030. Globalists also seem to enjoy fabricating fake moral dilemmas which force people to choose between one evil solution or another. The fake moral dilemma here being that if we do not accept global centralization and elitist management of the planet, we are risking the destruction of our environment on an apocalyptic scale.
Psychological Similarities Of Globalists
Probably the most overwhelming epiphany I have come to in my 12 years of analysis into globalism and the nature of evil is that globalists are in fact tied together by a root mental illness or psychological aberration. This occurred during my research on narcissistic sociopathy, or what some circles might call “psychopathy”. Criminology indicates that not all criminals are full blown narcissistic sociopaths, but most full blown narcissistic sociopaths are criminals. Some are simply more successful criminals than others, and this usually depends on their ability to blend in and mimic or manipulate normal people.
Full blown narcissistic sociopaths (or psychopaths) make up around 1% of any given population, but are responsible for the vast majority of violent crimes or criminal enterprises. The lion’s share of justice system resources are used in dealing with these people, as they are four to eight times more likely than the average person to use violence in daily interactions or as a tool to gain advantage, and twenty-five times more likely to end up in prison.
There is a long list of character traits that make a narcissistic sociopath, but the defining features are a complete lack of conscience and empathy, a propensity for moral relativism (the ability to rationalize any and all destructive behavior), a desperate need to be adored or admired by everyone around them, a feeling of being “more special” than most people, a feeling of superiority, delusions of grandeur or an inherent right to manage the lives of others, an obsessive need to control and manipulate, impulsive desires and deviant sexual inclinations, and elitist associations (they will only associate with people they feel are like them and are “equally superior”).
A defining fact of narcissistic sociopathy is that these traits are inborn, not a product of environment. In some cases environment can play a role in activating these traits, but if a person is not born with them, they generally do not adopt them later in life because of a traumatic environment. The following documentaries linked here and here are an excellent overview of high level narcissistic sociopaths.
Narcissistic sociopaths defy all forms of treatment and cannot be reformed. They have no concrete personality beyond these traits, therefore, if you remove the traits, they are left with nothing else. They are almost anti-human; while most people are born with unique personality combinations, narcissistic sociopaths have none, so they mimic the personalities of those around them, mirroring behaviors and collecting or stealing quirks.
Their primary drives are to fulfill their fantasies of superiority and godhood, as well as an endless quest to satiate their dopamine addiction. The more deviant the action, and the more successful they are at getting away with it, the more dopamine they generate and the more satisfied they feel. This leads to an endless cycle, seeking out more and more exploitation of others which becomes less and less satisfying, which leads to even greater deviance.
I came to realize in my studies that these characteristics described almost exactly the observable behaviors of globalists. The difference being that globalists were so high functioning that they had actually built a society of narcissistic sociopaths that operated like a kind of cult, or a corporate entity. The only other historic example I could compare it to would be the mob, or other gangs which have blended into the surrounding normal society and operated in their midst.
I do not know if a society of narcissistic sociopaths with its own tribal customs, mythologies and beliefs has ever been recorded before. While psychopathic people have been known in the past to organize into groups for mutual benefit, the globalists are something different. They are an anomaly; a well maintained culture of parasites that has blended almost seamlessly within normal society in order to feed off of non-psychopathic and empathetic people. The best fictional representation I can think of is the vampire. They are so similar I sometimes wonder if folklore creatures like vampires were based on narcissistic sociopaths as a way to warn people of their presence.
Globalists are indeed a culture, a secretive and occult phenomenon that wants so badly to be recognized and worshiped, but fears public scrutiny. Their motivation at bottom is to condition or tear down normal, moral and free society until it becomes a place in which they can openly be what they really are without fear of judgment or consequences. They want to terraform civilization and make it a habitat that will accept them; a habitat for monsters surrounded by willing victims.
* * *
If you would like to support the publishing of articles like the one you have just read, visit our donations page here. We greatly appreciate your patronage.
- Kremlin Says US "Stoking Tensions" By Deploying 6 Nuke-Capable Bombers To Europe
The Kremlin on Thursday slammed US attempts to “stoke tensions” by flying nuclear-capable bombers near its borders after a series of prior close encounters over the Baltic Sea.
This after the US Air Force starting late last week deployed no less than six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Europe for what it described as “theater integration and flying training” with regional NATO allies and partners.
B-52 readiness exercise. Prior file photo. The training missions are set to occur at various locations across Europe, but on Monday the operation riled Moscow due to four B-52s conducting “flights to several places in Europe, including to the Norwegian Sea, the Baltic Sea/Estonia and the Mediterranean Sea/Greece,” according to an Air Force statement.
US Baltic operations puts American and Russian planes in dangerously close vicinity as there’s been a recent spate of instances over the past year where Russian intercepts of US flights have resulted in heightening rhetoric coming from each side.
For example, in November, the US complained about an “unsafe” intercept of a plane by an Su-27. As video of that incident showed the Su-27 made a pass directly in front of the mission aircraft. Moscow insisted that the pass was indeed safe; however, the Pentagon has consistently condemned the Russian intercepts as “unsafe” and “unprofessional”.
Two weeks ago the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) released stunning footage of yet another intercept of a US spy plane over the waters of the Baltic Sea near the Russian border which occurred on an unknown date.
On Thursday the Russian MoD confirmed it had it had scrambled two Sukhoi SU-27 fighter jets to intercept a U.S. B-52 strategic bomber picked up on radar flying towards Russia’s borders, however at a considerable distance.
No intercept or any close encounters resulted from Thursday’s events, but it suggests the two sides are increasingly willing to play chicken as “red lines” are continually crossed, and this further following this week’s NATO condemnations of Russian “wide-ranging military buildup in Crimea” upon Moscow celebrations of the fifth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Western media dubbed the events Putin’s “Crimean annexation party”.
The US National Security Council on Monday echoed this sentiment, reiterating in a statement that the Crimean situation “continues to pose a threat to our regional allies.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry acknowledged of Thursday’s B-52 bomber incident that the pair of Russian gets had returned to base without getting close to the American planes.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters “In general, I will limit myself to only saying that of course such actions by the United States do not lead to a strengthening of an atmosphere of security and stability in the region that directly adjoins Russia’s borders,” and he added: “On the contrary, they create additional tensions.”
- Mueller-Dämmerung: It Will Not Be "The End Of Everything", Unless…
Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Unz Review,
If Nietzsche was right, and what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, we can thank the global capitalist ruling classes, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media for four more years of Donald Trump. The long-awaited Mueller report is due any day now, or so they keep telling us. Once it is delivered, and does not prove that Trump is a Russian intelligence asset, or that he personally conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, well, things are liable to get a bit awkward. Given the amount of goalpost-moving and focus-shifting that has been going on, clearly, this is what everyone’s expecting.
Honestly, I’m a bit surprised. I was sure they were going to go ahead and fabricate some kind of “smoking gun” evidence (like the pee-stained sheets from that Moscow hotel), or coerce one of his sleazy minions into testifying that he personally saw Trump down on his knees “colluding” Putin in the back room of a Russian sauna. After all, if you’re going to accuse a sitting president of being a Russian intelligence asset, you kind of need to be able to prove it, or (a) you defeat the whole purpose of the exercise, (b) you destroy your own credibility, and (c) you present that sitting president with a powerful weapon he can use to bury you.
This is not exactly rocket science. As any seasoned badass will tell you, when you’re resolving a conflict with another seasoned badass, you don’t take out a gun unless you’re going to use it. Taking a gun out, waving it around, and not shooting the other badass with it, is generally not a winning strategy. What often happens, if you’re dumb enough to do that, is that the other badass will take your gun from you and either shoot you or beat you senseless with it.
This is what Trump is about to do with Russiagate. When the Mueller report fails to present any evidence that he “colluded” with Russia to steal the election, Trump is going to reach over, grab that report, roll it up tightly into a makeshift cudgel, and then beat the snot out of his opponents with it. He is going to explain to the American people that the Democrats, the corporate media, Hollywood, the liberal intelligentsia, and elements of the intelligence agencies conspired to try to force him out of office with an unprecedented propaganda campaign and a groundless special investigation. He is going to explain to the American people that Russiagate, from start to finish, was, in his words, a ridiculous “witch hunt,” a childish story based on nothing. Then he’s going to tell them a different story.
That story goes a little something like this …
Back in November of 2016, the American people were so fed up with the neoliberal oligarchy that everyone knows really runs the country that they actually elected Donald Trump president. They did this fully aware that Trump was a repulsive, narcissistic ass clown who bragged about “grabbing women by the pussy” and jabbered about building “a big, beautiful wall” and making the Mexican government pay for it. They did this fully aware of the fact that Donald Trump had zero experience in any political office whatsoever, and was a loudmouth bigot, and was possibly out of his gourd on amphetamines half the time. The American people did not care. They were so disgusted with being conned by arrogant, two-faced, establishment stooges like the Clintons, the Bushes, and Barack Obama that they chose to put Donald Trump in office, because, fuck it, what did they have to lose?
The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people’s decision by inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives, getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote this story on a daily basis for nearly three years, and appointing a special prosecutor to conduct an official investigation in order to lend it the appearance of legitimacy. Every component of the ruling establishment (i.e., the government, the media, the intelligence agencies, the liberal intelligentsia, et al.) collaborated in an unprecedented effort to remove an American president from office based on a bunch of made-up horseshit … which kind of amounts to an attempted soft coup.
This is the story Donald Trump is going to tell the American people.
A minority of ideological heretics on what passes for the American Left are going to help him tell this story, not because we support Donald Trump, but because we believe that the mass hysteria and authoritarian fanaticism that has been manufactured over the course of Russiagate represents a danger greater than Trump. It has reached some neo-Riefenstahlian level, this bug-eyed, spittle-flecked, cult-like behavior … worse even than the mass hysteria that gripped most Americans back in 2003, when they cheered on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the murder, rape, and torture of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children based on a bunch of made-up horseshit.
We are going to be vilified, we leftist heretics, for helping Trump tell Americans this story. We are going to be denounced as Trumpenleft traitors, Putin-sympathizers, and Nazi-adjacents (as we were denounced as terrorist-sympathizers and Saddam-loving traitors back in 2003). We are going to be denounced as all these things by liberals, and by other leftists. We are going to be warned that pointing out how the government, the media, and the intelligence agencies all worked together to sell people Russiagate will only get Trump reelected, and, if that happens, it will be the End of Everything.
It will not be the End of Everything.
What might, however, be the End of Everything, or might lead us down the road to the End of Everything, is if otherwise intelligent human beings continue to allow themselves to be whipped into fits of mass hysteria and run around behaving like a mindless herd of propaganda-regurgitating zombies whenever the global capitalist ruling classes tell them that “the Russians are coming!” or that “the Nazis are coming!” or that “the Terrorists are coming!”
The Russo-Nazi Terrorists are not coming. The global capitalist ruling classes are putting down a populist insurgency, delegitimizing any and all forms of dissent from their global capitalist ideology and resistance to the hegemony of global capitalism. In the process, they are conditioning people to completely abandon their critical faculties and behave like twitching Pavlovian idiots who will obediently respond to whatever stimuli or blatantly fabricated propaganda the corporate media bombards them with.
If you want a glimpse of the dystopian future … it isn’t an Orwellian boot in your face. It’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Study the Russiagate believers’ reactions to the Mueller report when it is finally delivered. Observe the bizarre intellectual contortions their minds perform to rationalize their behavior over the last three years. Trust me, it will not be pretty. Cognitive dissonance never is.
Or, who knows, maybe the Russiagate gang will pull a fast one at the eleventh hour, and accuse Robert Mueller of Putinist sympathies (or appearing in that FSB video of Trump’s notorious Moscow pee-party), and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the special prosecutor. That should get them through to 2020!
- A Major Bank Capitulates: "This May Be The Time For Helicopter Money Drops"
Long before the Fed was humiliated into reversing its hawkish rate hike policy in January and then again in March, we published – back in June 2015 – “The Blindingly Simple Reason Why The Fed Is About To Engage In Policy Error“, in which we predicted, correctly, that the neutral rate of interest is far too low to allow a lengthy tightening campaign by the Federal Reserve, as the real Fed Funds rate would promptly rise above the neutral rate, further depressing demand, resulting in a policy error.
More importantly, instead of some arcane calculation of the infamous, convoluted r-star (or neutral rate of interest) we said that one might argue for low “implied” equilibrium short rates via debt ratios. For example, if nominal growth is 3 percent and the debt GDP ratio is 300 percent, the implied equilibrium nominal rates is around 1 percent. This is because at 1% rates, 100% of GDP growth is necessary to service interest costs.
So to help the Fed and pundits calculate just where r star is in an economy where total debt/GDP is 350% and rising, and where GDP is 2% and falling, we presented – all the way back in 2015 – a sensitivity table which looks at just two simple variables: nominal growth, or GDP, and total debt/GDP. Assuming the current leverage of the US and assuming 2% in nominal growth, the short-run equilibrium real interest rate is just about 0.57%, something which the Fed now appears to have discovered on its own.
%.
As an aside, we also said that such a policy error could reinforce itself by causing structural damage that puts additional downward pressure on the equilibrium real rate adding that “in this case the yield curve would flatten meaningfully, at least until the Fed actually reversed course by cutting rates.” This is precisely what happened.
Now, nearly four years later, some of the brightest minds in the business have reached the same conclusion which this tinfoil blog came to long before the Fed had even started its hiking process. Case in point – Citi’s special economic advisor, Willem Buiter published a report on Tuesday titled “The neutral real interest rate is going nowhere” in which, using a far more convoluted methodology, the career academic concluded that today’s real neutral policy rate for the US is roughly 0.52%, or more generally, between 0.5 and 1.0%.
Source: @NickatFP We could have told him that four years ago.
Of course, none of this is news either to us, or to our readers – although it certainly appears to be news to Fed Chair Powell who less than 6 months ago stated that there is a “long way” to the neutral rate, when in reality the real Fed Funds rate was already on top of it, as the Fed found out the very hard way in November and December.
What was news, however, is what conclusion Buiter derived from this simple observation. And, in a time when MMT, which as we discussed previously is merely the political camouflage for enacting helicopter money or direct debt monetization by the government, the respected Citi strategist comes to the conclusion that just because the economy now appears to be structurally depressed, it is as good a reason as any to proceed with, drumroll, helicopter money, i.e., MMT. Here is what he “found”:
Most estimates of today’s neutral real policy rate for the US hover between 0.5% and 1%. For the euro area and Japan many estimates are negative. That represents a dramatic decline from the levels seen before 2000. This situation is unlikely to be reversed any time soon. Despite the fourth industrial revolution lurking in the wings, economy-wide productivity growth is stagnant at best. Ageing populations boost private saving rates and weaken the incentives to invest. Fiscal dissaving and enhanced public sector capital formation can raise the neutral real rate but are constrained, especially in the US, by already excessive general government deficits and a rising public debt burden. A lower real interest rate does, of course, make public debt servicing easier, other things being equal. If the lower neural real interest rate is the reflection of a lower underlying growth rate of potential output, fiscal space may not be enhanced significantly once both drivers of fiscal sustainability are allowed for.
One implication for monetary policy is that this may be the time for helicopter money drops, a temporary fiscal stimulus funded by a permanent increase in the stock of central bank money. This makes even more sense when inflation continues to undershoot the inflation target, as is the case in the US and even more so in the euro area and Japan. – Source
And just like that the first official endorsement of helicopter money, pardon, MMT has arrived. It won’t be the last. As Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at Deutsche Bank AG said during a Bloomberg interview on Wednesday, “don’t count on the hubbub over modern monetary theory dying down soon” adding that “it could get a lot bigger.”
Here’s why: “What happens if the economy slows down, what happens if we go down to zero interest rates again? The Fed is going to be back in there again responding in essence to what’s gone on on the fiscal side. You get sort of an MMT-lite- type situation.”
Or, alternatively, scratch the lite part and get full blown helicopter money as one government after next throw in the towel on fiscal conservatism and unleashes the biggest debt-funded spending spree in history, which as so many tragic examples in the past have shown, ends in tears.
As Ruskin concluded, “The natural constraints are inflation. The question is, what point do you hit inflation?” Well, when it comes to traditional risk assets, we already have runaway inflation. When it comes to conventional inflation as measured by the flawed CPI or PCE baskets, by the time it does register, it will be too late to reverse it, and the consequence will be the end of the monetary system as we know it.
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://i0.wp.com/www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/B-52s.jpg?ssl=1){kind=link}
![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://i0.wp.com/zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/buiter%20r%20star%201.jpg?ssl=1){kind=link}