- Paul Craig Roberts Urges "Bring Back The Cold War"
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
Pundits have declared a “New Cold War.” If only! The Cold War was a time when leaders focused on reducing tensions between nuclear powers. What we have today is much more dangerous: Washington’s reckless and irresponsible aggression toward the other major nuclear powers, Russia and China.
During my lifetime American presidents worked to defuse tensions with Russia. President John F. Kennedy worked with Khrushchev to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Richard Nixon negotiated SALT I and the anti-ballistic missile treaty, and Nixon opened to Communist China. President Carter negotiated SALT II. Reagan worked with Soviet leader Gorbachev and ended the Cold War. The Berlin Wall came down. Gorbachev was promised that in exchange for the Soviet Union’s agreement to the reunification of Germany, NATO would not move one inch to the East.
Peace was at hand. And then the neoconservatives, rehabilitated by the Israeli influence in the American press, went to work to destroy the peace that Reagan and Gorbachev had achieved. It was a short-lasting peace. Peace is costly to the profits of the military/security complex. Washington’s gigantic military and security interests are far more powerful than the peace lobby.
Since the advent of the criminal Clinton regime, every American president has worked overtime to raise tensions with Russia and China.
China is confronted with the crazed and criminal Obama regime’s declaration of the “pivot to Asia” and the prospect of the US Navy controlling the sea lanes that provision China.
Russia is even more dangerously threatened with US nuclear missile bases on her border and with US and NATO military bases stretching from the Baltics to the Black Sea.
Russia is also threatened with endless provocations and with demonization that is clearly intended to prepare Western peoples for war against “the Russian threat.” Extreme and hostile words stream from the mouth of the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who has called the president of Russia “the new Hitler” and threatened Russia with military force. Insouciant Americans are capable of electing this warmonger who would bring Armageddon upon the earth.
Yesterday, Israel’s voice in the US, the New York Times, added to Hillary’s demonization of the most responsible leader in the world with this editorial: “Vladimir Putin’s Outlaw State.” This irresponsible and propagandistic editorial, no doubt written by the neoconservatives, blames all the troubles in Ukraine and Syria on Putin. The NYT presstitutes know that they have no case, so they drag in the US-orchestrated false report on MH-17 recently released by Washington’s Netherlands vassal.
This report is so absurd as to cast doubt on whether intelligence exists anywhere in the Western world. Russia and the now independent Russian provinces that have separated from Ukraine have no interest whatsoever in shooting down a Malaysian airliner. But despite this fact, Russia, according to the orchestrated report, sent a surface-to-air missile, useful only at high altitude, an altitude far higher than the Ukrainian planes fly that are attacking Russians in the separated republics, to the “rebels” so that the “rebels” could shoot down a Malaysian airliner. Then the missile system was sent back to Russia.
How insouciant does a person have to be to believe this propaganda from the New York Times?
Does the New York Times write this nonsense because it is bankrupt and lives on CIA subsidies?
It is obvious that the Malaysian airliner was destroyed for the purpose of blaming Russia so that Washington could force Europe to cooperate in applying illegal sanctions on Russia in an attempt to destabilize Russia, a country that placed itself in the way of Washington’s determination to destabilize Syria and Iran.
In a recent speech, the mindless cipher, who in his role as US Secretary of Defense serves as a front man for the armaments industry, declared the one trillion dollars (1,000 billion dollars or 1,000,000 million dollars, that is, one million dollars one million times) that Washington is going to spend of Americans’ money for nuclear force renewal is so we can “get up in the morning to go to school, to go to work, to live our lives, to dream our dreams and to give our children a better future.”
But Russia’s response to this buildup in Washington’s strategic nuclear weapons is, according to Defense Secretary Aston B. Carter, “saber rattling” that “raises serious questions about Russia’s leaders commitment to strategic stability.”
Do you get the picture? Or are you an insouciant American? Washington’s buildup is only so that we can get up in the morning and go to school and work, but Russia’s buildup in response to Washington’s buildup upsets “strategic stability.”
What the Pentagon chief means is that Russia is supposed to sit there and let Washington gain the upper hand so Washington can maintain “strategic stability” by dictating to Russia. By not letting Washington prevail, Russia is upsetting “strategic stability.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been broken and tamed by the neoconservatives, recently displayed the same point of view with his “ultimatum” to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In effect, Kerry told Lavrov that Russia must stop helping Syria resist the jihadist forces and allow the US-supported ISIS to regain the initiative and reduce Syria to the chaos in which Washington left Libya and Iraq. Otherwise, Kerry said that the agreement to cooperate is off.
There can be no cooperation between the US and Russia over Syria, because the two government’s goals are entirely different. Russia wants to defeat ISIS, and the US wants to use ISIS to overthrow Assad. This should be clear to the Russians. Yet they still enter into “agreements” that Washington has no intention of keeping. Washington breaks the agreements and blames Russia, thus creating more opportunities to paint Russia as untrustworthy. Without Russia’s cooperation in setting themselves up for blame, Russia’s portrait would not be so black.
The headline set the stage: “Russia’s Brutal Bombing of Aleppo May Be Calculated, and It May Be Working.” According to the NYT report, Russia was not bombing ISIS. Russia was “destroying hospitals and schools, choking off basic supplies, and killing aid workers and hundreds of civilians.”
The NYT asks: “What could possibly motivate such brutality?”
The NYT answers: Russia is “massacring Aleppo’s civilians as part of a calculated strategy . . . designed to pressure [moderates] to ally themselves with extremists,” thereby discrediting the forces that Washington has sent to overthrow Syria and to reduce the country to chaos.
When America’s Newspaper of Record is nothing but a propaganda ministry, what is America?
Pundits keep explaining that Washington’s 15 year old wars in the Middle East are about controlling the routing of energy pipelines. Little doubt this is a factor as it brings on board powerful American energy and financial interests. But this is not the motive for the wars. Washington, or the neoconservatives who control the US government, intend to destabilize the Russian Federation, the former Soviet Central Asian countries, and China’s Muslim province by adding Syria and then Iran to the chaos that Washington has created in Iraq and Libya. If Washington succeeds in destroying Syria as it succeeded in destroying Libya and Iraq, Iran becomes the last buffer for Russia. If Washington then knocks off Iran, Russia is set up for destabilization by jihadists operating in Muslim regions of the Russian Federation.
This is clear as day. Putin understands this. But Russia, which existed under Washington’s domination during the Yeltsin years, has been left threatened by Washington’s Fifth Columns in Russia. There are a large number of foreign-financed NGOs in Russia that Putin finally realized were Washington’s agents. These Washington operatives have been made to register as foreign-financed, but they are still functioning.
Russia is also betrayed by a section of its elite who are allied economically, politically, and emotionally with Washington. I have termed these Russians “America Worshipers.” Their over-riding cause is to have Russia integrated with the West, which means to be a vassal of Washington.
Washington’s money even seems to have found its way into Russian “think tanks” and academic institutions. According to this report, two think tanks, one Russian one American, possibly funded by Washington’s money, have concluded that “US,Russia ‘Have far more common interests than differences’ in Asia-Pacific.”
This “academic report” is a direct assault on the Russian/Chinese alliance. It makes one wonder whether the report was funded by the CIA. The Russian media fall for the “common interest” propaganda, because they desire to be included in the West. Like Russian academics, the Russian media know English, not Chinese. Russia’s history since Peter the Great is with the West. So that is where they want to be. However, these America Worshipping Russians cannot understand that to be part of the West means being Washington’s vassal, or if they do understand the price, they are content with a vassal’s status like Germany, Great Britain, France, and the rest of the European puppet states.
To be a vassal is not an unusual choice in history. For example, many peoples chose to be Rome’s vassals, so those elements in Russia who desire to be Washington’s vassal have precedents for their decision.
To reduce Russia’s status to Washington’s vassal, we have Russian-US cooperation between the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations and the US-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. These two co-conspirators against Russian sovereignty are working to destroy Russia’s strategic alliance with China and to create a US-Russian Pacific Alliance in its place. One of the benefits, the joint report declares, is “maintaining freedom of navigation and maritime security.”
“Freedom of navigation” is Washington’s term for controlling the sea lanes that supply China. So now we have a Russian institute supporting Washington’s plans to cut off resource flow into China. This idiocy on the part of the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations is unlikely to reassure China about its alliance with Russia. If the alliance is broken, Washington can more easily deal with the two constraints on its unilateralism.
Additionally, the joint report says that Moscow could cooperate with Washington in confidence-building measures to resolve territorial disputes in the Asia-Pacific region. What this means is that Russia should help Washington pressure China to give up its territorial claims.
One cannot but wonder if the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations is a CIA front. If it is not, the CIA is getting a free ride.
The foreign policy of the United States rests entirely on propagandistic lies. The presstitute media, a Ministry of Propaganda, establishes an orchestrated reality by treating lies as fact. News organizations around the world, accustomed as they are to following Washington’s lead, echo the lies as if they are facts.
Thus Washington’s lies–such as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasions–become the reality.
Russia’s very capable spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, understands that Washington uses the Western media to control explanations by shaping public opinion. She terms it a “reality show.” However, Zakharova thinks the problem is that Washington misuses “international relations and international platforms for addressing internal issues.” By this she means that Obama’s foreign policy failures have made him hysterical and impudent as he strives to leave a legacy, and that American/Russian relations are poisoned by the US presidential campaign that is painting Trump as a “Putin stooge” for not seeing the point of conflict with Russia.
The US presstitutes are disreputable. This morning NPR presented us with a report on Chinese censorship of the media as if this was something that never happens in the US. Yet NPR not only censors the news, but uses disinformation as a weapon in behalf of Washington and Israel’s agendas. Anyone who depends on NPR is presented a very controlled picture of the world. And do not forget German newspaper editor Udo Ulfkotte, who admits he planted stories for the CIA in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitnung and says that there is no significant European journalist who doesn’t do the same thing.
The situation is far more serious than Zakharova realizes. Russians seem unable to get their minds around the fact that the neoconservatives are serious about imposing Washington’s hegemony on the rest of the world. The neoconservative doctrine declares that it is the principal goal of US foreign policy to prevent the rise of any country that would have sufficient power to serve as a check on American unilateralism. This neoconservative doctrine puts Russia and China in Washington’s crosshairs. If the Russian and Chinese governments do not yet understand this, they are not long for this world.
The neoconservative doctrine fits perfectly with the material interests of the US military/security complex. The US armaments and spy industries have had 70 years to entrench themselves with a huge claim on the US budget. This politically powerful interest group has no intention of letting go of its hold on US resources.
As long ago as 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his last public address to the American people warned that the Cold War confronted Americans with a new internal danger as large as the external Soviet threat:
“Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
President Eisenhower’s warning that our liberties were equally at stake from the military/security complex as from the Soviet Threat did not last 24 hours. The military/security complex buried Eisenhower’s warning with extraordinary hype of the Soviet Threat.
In truth, there was no Soviet threat. Stalin had buffered Russia from the West with his control of Eastern Europe, just as Washington controlled Western Europe. Stalin had eliminated Trotsky and his supporters who stood for world revolution. Stalin declared “socialism in one country.”
Stalin terminated international communism. But the American military/security complex had much money to gain from the Amerian taxpayers in order to “protect America from International Communism.” So the fact that there was no effort on the part of the Soviet Union to subvert the world was ignored. Instead, every national liberation movement was declared by the US military/industrial complex to be a “falling domino” of the Communist takeover of the world.
Ho Chi Minh begged Washington for help against the French colonialists in Vietnam. Washington told him to go to hell. It was Washington that sent Ho Cho Minh to seek communist support.
The long Vietnam war went on for years. It enriched the military/security complex and officers’ pensions. But it was otherwise entirely pointless. There were no dominoes to fall. Vietnam won the war but is open to American influence and commerce.
Because of the military/security complex more than 50,000 Americans died in the war and many thousands more suffered physical and psychological wounds. Millions of Vietnamese suffered death, maiming, birth defects and illnesses associated with Washington’s use of Agent Orange.
The entire war was totally pointless. It achieved nothing but destruction of innocents.
This is Washington’s preferred way. The corrupt capitalism that rules in America has no interest in life, only in profit. Profit is all that counts. If entire countries are destroyed and left in ruins, all the better for American armaments industries.
Yes, please, a new Cold War. We need one desperately, a conflict responsibly managed in place of the reckless, insane drive for world hegemony emanating from the crazed, evil criminals in Washington who are driving the world to Armageddon.
- Sept 11 Widow Is First American To Sue Saudi Arabia For Terrorism: Her Full Lawsuit
Two days ago, after the stunning Congressional override of Obama’s veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism (JASTA), aka the “Sept.11” bill, we wondered how long until the first lawsuit by a Sept 11 victim naming Saudi Arabia as a defendant would emerge.
Has any “Sept 11” lawsuit been filed against Saudi Arabia yet
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 29, 2016
We didn’t have long to wait.
On Friday, September 30, a woman widowed when her husband was killed at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 became the first American to sue the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Washington DC District Court, just two days after Congress slammed Obama for siding with Saudi Arabia, overriding his presidential veto only for the first time in his administration, and enacting legislation allowing Americans to sue foreign governments for allegedly playing a role in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
Stephanie Ross DeSimone alleged the kingdom provided material support to al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. Her suit is also filed on behalf of the couple’s daughter. DeSimone was two months pregnant when her husband, Navy Commander Patrick Dunn was killed.
She is suing for wrongful death and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
In the lawsuit she alleges that “at all material times, Saudi Arabia, through its officials, officers, agents and employees, provided material support and resources to Osama bin Laden (“bin Laden”) and Al Qaeda. The support provided by Saudi Arabia to bin Laden and Al Qaeda assisted in or contributed to the preparation and execution of the September 11th attacks and the extrajudicial killing of Patrick Dunn.“
She adds that “Al Qaeda was funded, to the tune of approximately $30 million per year, by diversions of money from Islamic charities” and explains”
Al Qaeda’s development into a global terrorist network was funded primarily by the money and other material support it received from the Kingdom and purported charities acting as agents and alter-egos of the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, many of which worked with the Al Qaeda leadership during the Afghan jihad. These governmental agents served as the primary conduits for channeling financial, logistical, operational, and ideological support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad for more than twenty years.
Fifteen of the 19 men who hijacked airliners used in the attack were Saudi nationals. One jet struck the Pentagon, seat of the U.S. military, two destroyed the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York while another crashed in a Pennsylvania field as its passengers fought back against the hijackers.
While a U.S. commission that investigated the 2001 attacks said in a 2004 report that it “found no evidence that the Saudi government, as an institution, or senior officials within the Saudi government funded al-Qaeda”, this will be the first time that a US court will be forced to rule if Saudi Arabia was indeed responsible. The kingdom has previously denied culpability. Its embassy didn’t immediately reply to an e-mailed message seeking comment on the suit.
An official at Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the state-run Saudi Press Agency on Sept. 29 that the U.S. Congress must correct the 9/11 bill to avoid “serious unintended consequences,” adding the law is of “great concern” to the Kingdom.
Well, thanks to this lawsuit, Saudi Arabia will now be able to provide its opinion in court. Here is what it will have to deny, courtesy of DeSimone’s lawsuit:
Beyond the massive financial sponsorship of Al Qaeda’s global jihad, the Saudi government, through its agents, officials and purported charities, has been intimately involved in all aspects of Al Qaeda’s operations including:
- (1) raising and laundering funds on behalf of Islamic terrorist organizations and associated separatist movements, including Al Qaeda;
- (2) channeling funds to Islamic terrorist organizations, fighters and associated separatist movements, including Al Qaeda;
- (3) providing financial and logistical support and physical assets to Islamic fighters and terrorists, including Al Qaeda;
- (4) aiding and abetting Al Qaeda’s terrorist activities, including the planning, coordination, funding and execution of terrorist attacks;
- (5) permitting Islamic fighters and terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, to use ostensible employment with their organizations as a vehicle for gaining access to conflict regions, thereby allowing those individuals to carry out militant and terrorist activities in those areas;
- (6) serving as liaisons to localized terrorist organizations on behalf of Al Qaeda, thereby assisting Al Qaeda in expanding its operational base and sphere of influence;
- (7) funding and facilitating shipments of arms and supplies to Islamic terrorist organizations and associated separatist movements, including Al Qaeda;
- (8) funding camps used by Al Qaeda and associated jihadist organizations to train soldiers and terrorists, including camps used to train the September 11th hijackers;
- (9) actively recruiting new members for Islamic terrorist organizations and associated separatist movements, including Al Qaeda;
- (10) working throughout the World to spread Al Qaeda’s jihadist ideology and draw new adherents to its cause;
- (11) serving as channels for distributing information and documentation within Islamic terrorist organizations and associated separatist movements, including Al Qaeda, and from Islamic terrorist organizations and separatist movements to the media;
- (12) disseminating publications designed to advance Al Qaeda’s radical Islamist ideology throughout the Muslim world and legitimize violent jihad against Christians and Jews on the grounds that they are “infidels” who do not deserve to live; and
- (13) openly advocating for Muslims to take up arms against Western and democratic societies, including the United States.
The full 54-page lawsuit laying out the plaintiff’s entire case is presented below. And now that the first lawsuit has been filed, we expect a deluge of similar lawsuits. It remains unclear if, now that it is about to be dragged into countless US courts, Saudi Arabia will execute on its threat from 6 months ago and proceed to sell billions in Treasuries and other US assets.
- 90 Days Later: Still No Signs Of Brexit 'Doom & Gloom'
For the first half of the year, we were warned early and often by authorities that the Brexit vote could be a calamity for the ages.
For example, the IMF claimed that a “Leave” result would threaten to “cause severe damage”, while Standard and Poor’s said that it would “paralyze” investment in the UK.
But, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, it turns out that the real Brexit casualty isn’t the UK economy – instead it is the reputation of the many professional economists who wrongly predicted doom and gloom as the likely aftermath.
THE STORY SO FAR
Today’s chart looks at the three months before and after the Brexit vote, which took place on June 23, 2016.
Courtesy of: Visual CapitalistThe two charts tracked are the GBP/EUR and the FTSE 100. The former is the price of the British pound in terms of euros, and the latter is a major stock index that includes the largest companies listed in London, such as Barclays, Glencore, HSBC, Royal Dutch Shell, or Sainsbury’s.
As expected, both markets have seen some action in the aftermath of the vote to leave. The pound has depreciated in terms of euros, but it is still higher now than it was from 2009-2011 in the post-crisis period. Against the ultra-strong USD, the pound is at decade-lows – but many other currencies are in similar territory as well.
The FTSE 100 is another story. It’s relatively close to all-time highs – and even despite the fears of a potential collapse of Deutsche Bank, it’s climbed over 12% since the initial Brexit slump.
In both cases, the action was partly underscored by the Bank of England, which announced a new stimulus program (QE) after its August meeting, while cutting rates from 0.5% to 0.25%.
OTHER INDICATORS
While there’s been movement in the currency and equity markets, other economic indicators have been status quo or better for the UK so far.
Retail sales beat in July and August, and unemployment remains at 11-year lows. Purchasing manager indices dropped temporarily, but jumped back up.
The economists that predicted that the sky was falling? They’ve been forced to revise growth expectations back up, at least on a short-term basis. It’s been dubbed the “Brexit Bounce” by The Spectator, a conservative magazine based in London.
While there is likely still going to be some long-term fallout from the Brexit decision, many “experts” blew it on this one.
- Meet The Young Virginia Democrat That Registered 19 Dead People To Vote In Virginia
Just yesterday we wrote about an FBI investigation into potential voter fraud in the critical swing state of Virginia after it was revealed that 19 dead people had recently been re-registered to vote (see “FBI Investigating More Dead People Voting In The Key Swing State Of Virginia“). While the Washington Post caught wind of the investigation, it was not known who was behind the operation…until now.
Meet, Andrew Spieles, a student at James Madison University, and apparently “Lead Organizer” for HarrisonburgVOTES. According to the Daily News-Record, Spieles confessed to re-registering 19 deceased Virginians to vote in the 2016 election cycle.
While this should come as a surprise to precisely 0 people, Spieles just happens to be Democrat who, accorded to a deleted FaceBook post, apparently recently ran for Caucus Chair of the Virginia Young Democrats.
It’s too bad really, sounds like Spieles had all the right “special talents” required to be very successful politician…he just forgot the most important first rule: “Don’t get caught.”
The 19 applications of deceased citizens were submitted by Spieles through an organization called HarrisonburgVOTES. According to the organization’s “About Us” page, HarrisonburgVOTES is a “non-partisan” voter registration organization in Harrisonburg, VA and the surrounding areas.
As the HarrisonburgVOTES webpage points out, the sole goal of the organization is to raise the number of registered voters in Harrisonburg to 25,000…though it’s unclear what percentage of that goal was intended to be filled by dead voters.
The sole goal of HarrisonburgVOTES is to increase the number of registered voters in Harrisonburg and the surrounding areas to increase and encourage civic engagement.
Harrisonburg has the lowest percentage of voting age population (VAP) registered to vote among Virginia localities. Very roughly, about 17,000 people are registered to vote and about 18,000 are voting age and not registered. The goal of HarrisonburgVOTES will be to overcome these issues and raise the number of registered voters to 25,000.
HarrisonburgVOTES was founded by Joseph Fitzgerald who, “shockingly”, is also a prominent democrat in Harrisonburg. Fitzgerald is currently Chairman of the Sixth Congressional District Democratic Committee in Virginia and the former Mayor of Harrisonburg.
Fitzgerald told reporters, of course, that his organization had no knowledge of Spieles’s actions and fired him immediately after his confession.
“He’s smart, and he understands the [political] process,” Fitzgerald told the Daily News-Record of Spieles. “Who the hell knows what his motivations were?”
While we agree it’s difficult to be 100% sure about anyone’s motivations, we would be willing to put money on it having something to do with registering a bunch of dead people and then having them all vote for Hillary in November….just a hunch.
- Voting For Survival: The Election Story Of 2016
Submitted by TJ Brown via The Foundation for Economic Education,
Is it just me, or does this year appear to be the most pessimistic election season ever? Typically during presidential elections, you notice people’s optimism as they extol their preferred political candidate. This year, however, not so much.
Which Poison Is the Least Potent?
Of course there are plenty within each political party who support their party's nominee. But the mainstream vibe I’ve been getting is mixed. Most people aren’t cheering campaign slogans of Hope & Change. Most people aren’t enthusiastic about the future they’re being promised by their elected representatives.
There is a sense of betrayal held by supporters of the Bernie Revolution, which promised to oppose corporate corruption in politics, only to endorse the person who is possibly the most cronyistic political candidate Washington has to offer.
The rebranding of social media hashtags such as #ImWithHer to #IGuessImWithHer exemplifies dispirited submission, rather than positive momentum. Ask a Hillary voter why they’re supporting Hillary, and chances are it’s not because of her policies or her personality. It’s because they are disgusted by and terrified of the opposing candidate, Donald Trump.
It is the same with Trump’s base. Many are supporting him solely because they feel threatened by a Hillary Clinton presidency. They fear her quasi-socialist economic plans, her hawkish history on foreign policy, and her disregard of the second amendment.
And even third party candidates feel the same. I’ve often said that much of Gary Johnson’s momentum is not due to his charisma or ideas, but more because many people have equal disdain for both Trump and Hillary, who in many ways are ideologically interchangeable.
The voice of the American people is so disenfranchised that people are no longer voting based on the desires they want their government to satisfy. Rather, they’re voting based on the least negative inevitable effect the new administration will have on their life.
There is an upside to this. Even a cause for hope.
How Did We Get to This Point?
As with any monster, as government grows, it becomes more threatening and uncontrollable. The democratic process, once used to proactively control the state’s power, has now transformed into a tool of defensive opposition to the threat that same state now poses to our liberty and happiness.
Some people will claim that this reckless condition of government overreach is due to greedy interests, bad leaders, and bad laws. But the truth is, this beast we find ourselves fighting is of our own creation. It is government created by the people, of the people, but not for the people.
The pessimism of voters today needs to become optimism about what can be done once the force of rule relinquishes its control.
Public policy has become exploitation by self-interested citizens looking to control their fellow man via regulatory rule over individuals, markets, academia, and property. This, coupled with the intrinsic power of the state to place itself above the moral standards we hold ourselves to, is why this system exists. It’s not a broken system. It’s an abused system that has been dominated by authoritarian mendicants.
The ruling class in government has dominated for so long that it has become exclusively pursuant of interests that contribute to its own benefit rather than the benefit of citizens.
Whether this system will be salvageable remains to be seen, but one thing is abundantly clear: people are fearful of the future actions of their government. And so long as we continue to let it be dominated by power-hungry voters, no matter how altruistic or well-intentioned, the result we are currently woeful of will continue to manifest itself to an even more severe degree than Hillary vs Trump.
That might at first appear a scary direction in which to travel. And yet there is hope. What is really dawning here is a new embrace of reality. Government has not worked to achieve what it promised to do. The pessimism of voters today needs to become optimism about what can be done once the force of rule relinquishes its control. We need a new confidence in what society can accomplish on its own.
If the first step is a total loss of faith in political leaders, so be it, so long as it is accompanied by a renewed faith in the power of individuals and society to achieve greatness without being led by would-be central planners.
- Russia Warns US Military "Aggression" In Syria Would Lead To "Terrible, Tectonic" Consequences
As the drums of war beat louder, following last week’s ultimatum by John Kerry that the US is contemplating a direct military intervention in Syria, including potentially sending US troops on the ground in the war-torn country for the first time, on Saturday Russia warned the US against carrying out any attacks on Syrian government forces, saying it would have repercussions across the Middle East. The warning comes as government forces captured a hill on the edge of the northern city of Aleppo under the cover of airstrikes.
It has been one year since Russia became officially involved in the Syria conflict. The maps below show zones controlled by different forces before Russian intervention in September 2015 and the situation now.
The most obvious change is the collapse in territory controlled by ISIS, as well as the expansion of territories held by the Syrian regime, which is the biggest concern to the US, whose main directive in the Syrian conflict has been less to crush the Islamic State as to minimize the influence and territory of Assad’s regime, replacing it with US-controlled “rebel” forces.
And with Russia – long an ally to Assad as the conflict is fundamentally about Gazprom’s loss of influence over Europe should a Qatari natgas pipelines cross under Syria – having become the biggest hurdle to US strategy in Syria, there has been a notable shift in the US strategy, with western media slamming Russia’s “barbarous airstrikes“, focusing on recent bombing strikes of the rebel-held city of Aleppo, a repeat of US strategy from the summer of 2013 when a doctored “chemical attack” YouTube video was used to justify US presence in the local conflict.
In response, Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying that “U.S. aggression” against the Syrian army “will lead to terrible, tectonic consequences not only on the territory of this country but also in the region on the whole.”
She said regime change in Syria would create a vacuum that would be “quickly filled” by “terrorists of all stripes.”
As AP notes, U.S.-Russian tensions over Syria have escalated since the breakdown of a cease-fire last month, with each side blaming the other for its failure. Syrian government forces backed by Russian warplanes have launched a major onslaught on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo. Syrian troops pushed ahead in their offensive in Aleppo on Saturday capturing the strategic Um al-Shuqeef hill near the Palestinian refugee camp of Handarat that government forces captured from rebels earlier this week, according to state TV. The hill is on the northern edge of the Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and former commercial center.
The al Qaeda-linked Ahrar al-Sham militant group said rebels regained control Saturday of several positions they lost in Aleppo in the Bustan al-Basha neighborhood. State media said 13 people were wounded when rebels shelled the central government-held neighborhood of Midan.
Adding to the propaganda, airstrikes on Aleppo struck a hospital in the eastern rebel-held neighborhood of Sakhour putting it out of service, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the same entity that created the infamous doctored 2013 YouTube video.
Opposition activist Ahmad Alkhatib described the hospital, known as M10, as one of the largest in Aleppo. He posted photographs on his Twitter account showing the damage including beds covered with dust, a hole in its roof and debris covering the street outside. A doctor at the hospital told the Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, that thousands of people were treated in the compound in the past adding that two people were killed in Saturday’s airstrikes and several were wounded.
“A real catastrophe will hit medical institutions in Aleppo if the direct shelling continues to target hospitals and clinics,” said the doctor whose name was not given. He said the whole hospital is out of service.
In a familiar repeat of the 2013 media narrative, opposition activists have blamed the President Bashar Assad’s forces and Russia for airstrikes that hit Civil Defense units and clinics in the city where eastern rebel-held neighborhoods are besieged by government forces and pro-government militiamen.
On Friday, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders demanded that the Syrian government and its allies “halt the indiscriminate bombing that has killed and wounded hundreds of civilians_many of them children,” over the past week in Aleppo. “Bombs are raining from Syria-led coalition planes and the whole of east Aleppo has become a giant kill box,” said Xisco Villalonga, director of operations for the group. “The Syrian government must stop the indiscriminate bombing, and Russia as an indispensable political and military ally of Syria has the responsibility to exert the pressure to stop this.”
It said from Sept. 21 to 26, hospitals still functioning in Aleppo reported receiving more than 822 wounded, including at least 221 children, and more than 278 dead bodies_including 96 children_according to the Directorate of Health in east Aleppo. Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom criticized attacks on civilian targets writing on her Twitter account: “Unacceptable to bomb civilians, children and hospitals in #Aleppo. No humanity. Assad & Russia moving further away from peace.”
Surprisingly, few if any in the western media have complained about the thousands of civilians killed by the US-backed Saudi bombing campaign in neighboring Yemen.
* * *
Meanwhile, according to leaked closed-door comments by US Secretary of State John Kerry it was revealed how angry John Kerry is about being unable to topple President Bashar Assad by military means.
The New York Times previously acquired a taped conversation between the US
Secretary of State and two dozen Syrian civilians from education,
rescue, and medical groups working in rebel-held areas, during a meeting
on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. “I’ve argued for use of force. I stood up. I’m the guy who stood up and announced we’re going to attack Assad because of the weapons, and then you know things evolved into a different process,” the Secretary of State said in the tape.He told the civilians that “you have nobody more frustrated than we are (the US)” that the Syrian issue is now being solved diplomatically. Kerry also warned the Syrians, who sounded clearly unhappy with Washington’s contribution, that attempts to intervene militarily or provide more support to the rebels by the US may have a reverse effect.
“The problem is that, you know, you get, quote, ‘enforcers’ in there and then everybody ups the ante, right? Russia puts in more, Iran puts in more; Hezbollah is there more and Nusra is more; and Saudi Arabia and Turkey put all their surrogate money in, and you all are destroyed,” the diplomat explained.
* * *
We expect the Syrian proxy war to continue to escalate until either Assad is removed, which however seems unlikely with Russian, and now Chinese backing, behind the Syrian president, or until the proxy war escalates into a full blown world war once US troops are sent to Syria, a move which would be met by a proportional response by Russia and, perhaps, China.
- German Mayor Beaten Unconscious After Announcing Plan To Accept Refugees
Over the past several months, the German people have become increasingly frustrated with Merkel’s “open-border” policy that has allowed over 1mm migrants to flow into the country from the Middle East and North Africa. The flood of migrants has brought with it a wave of violent crime including sexual assaults resulting in a rising nationalist tension as people have turned their backs on Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union party in recent elections.
The most recent example of backlash over the migrant crisis comes from the small German town of Oersdorf in Northern Germany. The Mayor of Oersdorf, Joachim Kebschull (61), was recently beaten unconscious outside of the city’s Town Hall where the construction committee was meeting to discuss a new housing development for migrants. The mayor was apparently struck with a club from behind as he stepped out the Town Hall building to get a laptop from his car.
According to The Telegraph, just hours before the committee meeting Kebschull received a threatening letter saying:
“He who will not listen will have to feel.”
“Oersdorf for Oersdorfers”
According to DW, Kebschull had been receiving threats for months. In fact, the committee meeting had already been postponed twice over bomb threats.
The controversy surrounded a local subsidized housing revitalization where the mayor wanted to offer apartments to asylum-seekers. “If we could also offer a family of refugees a new home in our village, we would like to take this opportunity and make a small contribution to people who had to flee their homes,” the association said in a statement on its website.
Kebschull is still in the hospital but is expected to make a full recovery.
Nach Knüppel-Attacke – Oersdorfer #Bürgermeister auf Weg der Besserung https://t.co/OiJj3sMyPy
— BILD Hamburg (@BILD_Hamburg) October 1, 2016
The attack occurred in the small North German city of Oersdorf just north of Hamburg. Oersdorf has less than 900 residents.
“We cancan’t do this?”
- Minnesota Commissioner Slams Obamacare As "Unfair & Unsustainable" As Rates Soar
Soaring Obamacare premiums and declining insurer participation rates in exchanges across the country have been a frequent topic of conversation for us (see “Obamacare On “Verge Of Collapse” As Premiums Set To Soar Again In 2017” and “Stunning Maps Depict Collapse Of Obamacare “Coverage” In 2017“). So it should come as no surprise to our readers that Minnesota has just announced that 2017 Obamacare rates have been set and are expected to soar nearly 60% on average.
Minnesota Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman posted a letter to the state’s website saying that the state succeeded in preserving the exchanges for one more year by agreeing to massive rate hikes but warned they are on the “verge of collapse.” The letter goes on to describe Minnesota’s healthcare rate environment as “unsustainable and unfair” and notes that “middle-class Minnesotans” are being “crushed by the heavy burden of these costs.”
”Last year at this time when rates were announced, I said there was a serious need for reform in Minnesota’s individual market,” said Rothman. “This year the need for reform is now without any doubt even more serious and urgent.”
He highlighted Governor Mark Dayton’s recent decision to reconvene his Task Force on Health Care Financing to make recommendations to ensure that Minnesota consumers have access to affordable, high-quality health insurance options in the individual market.
“While federal tax credits will help make monthly premiums more affordable for many Minnesotans, these rising insurance rates are both unsustainable and unfair,” said Rothman. “Middle-class Minnesotans in particular are being crushed by the heavy burden of these costs. There is a clear and urgent need for reform to protect Minnesota consumers who purchase their own health insurance.”
Rothman said the reconvened Task Force on Health Care Financing should consider any and all feasible reforms. Above all, he said, it should offer recommendations that can be implemented in the next year to improve market stability and rates for 2018.
“We received over 50 public comments from Minnesotans as part of our rate review,” said Rothman. “I personally read each one. They told heartbreaking stories about how hard-working families are struggling with very tough, painful choices because of these skyrocketing costs. They say that health insurance is unaffordable, and they’re right. This calls for immediate reforms as everyone’s top priority.”
Rate increases ranges from 50% – 67% across Minnesota.
But rates aren’t the only issue. Most of the insurers participating in Minnesota’s individual market also plan to limit enrollment, to avoid taking on too many customers from other insurers that have pulled out of the exchanges all together.
However, Minnesota’s individual market also faces unique challenges because of a disproportionate concentration of individuals with serious medical conditions whose high claims costs must be absorbed by a relatively small risk pool, pushing up rates for everyone in the individual market.
Citing ongoing financial losses, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota announced in late June that it is leaving the individual market, except for its Blue Plus HMO affiliate. The company’s decision affects approximately 103,000 Minnesotans, or about 40 percent of the state’s total individual market.
Rothman said that, following Blue Cross’s announcement, Minnesota’s individual market for 2017 was on the verge of collapse as all of the other insurers indicated that they were also prepared to exit this market.
“The Commerce Department pursued every option within its power to avert a collapse this year,” said Rothman. “We succeeded in saving the market for 2017, with only Blue Cross leaving. But the rates insurers are charging will increase significantly to address their expected costs and the loss of federal reinsurance support. In addition, each insurer except for Blue Plus will limit its total 2017 enrollment to manage its financial or provider network capacity to absorb the many current Blue Cross consumers who will be shopping for new plans.”
Meanwhile, per Bloomberg, Jonathan Gold, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, peddled the same ole fiction that “headline rate changes do not reflect what these consumers actually pay because tax credits reduce the cost of coverage below the sticker price”…which is true for everyone except the overwhelming majority of people that don’t receive subsidies.
Guess we have to add Minnesota’s Insurance Commissioner to Obama’s every growing list of “fiction peddlers.”
- Today's Federal Reserve Makes Volcker Look Timid
Submitted by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,
Let’s look at the Fed’s (and other central banks’) magnitude of monetary manipulation in recent years and the very constrained maneuvering room they now have as a consequence.
Of course, it’s questionable whether they should even be trying to maneuver the economy to the degree that they are. The current problem is a direct result of mistakes made during and after the last financial crisis.
Two Charts: Bernanke Was More Extreme Than Volcker
Here’s a long-term chart of the federal funds rate, the Fed’s main policy tool:
The gray vertical bars represent recessions. You can see how the Fed has historically dropped rates in response to recessions and then tightened again when those recessions ended. I red-circled the drastic loosening and retightening under Paul Volcker in the early 1980s and Ben Bernanke’s cuts to near-zero in 2008.
To this day, the Volcker rate hikes are legendary. No Fed chair has ever done anything like that—before or since. You hear it all the time.
Problem: it’s not true.
Here’s the same chart again. This time with a log scale on the vertical axis. This adjusts the rate changes to be proportionate with percentage rises and falls. The percentage change between 5% and 10% is the same as between 10% and 20%, since both represent a doubling of the lower number.
Looking at it this way, the Volcker hikes are tame.
But the Bernanke cuts dwarf all other interest rate changes since 1955. Nothing else is even close.
Bernanke’s rate cuts were far, far more aggressive than Volcker’s rate hikes.
Why did Bernanke—et al.—cut rates to zero? Because moving rates up and down was all they knew to do.
The Fed Is Scared of Wall Street
Moving rates had always worked before. If it wasn’t working this time, the Bernanke-led Fed figured more of the same should do the trick. And it might have worked for a year or two. After that, though, the Fed was so scared of a negative stock market reaction that they kept rates artificially low for eight years.
Central banks all over the world did the same—and more. The suffering caused by this bone-headed policy has intensified for all these years. You may not be suffering yourself, but I bet someone close to you is. And I guarantee you that your retirement funds have suffered.
Now, the supposedly humming economy is going to suffer another recession in the not-too-distant future. What then?
The Fed Is Ready to Go Negative
For lack of anything else, the Fed is preparing to send interest rates below zero. That was clearly the message from Jackson Hole.
How in Hades did we get to a place where negative rates were considered a good idea? One of the most stupid ideas ever cooked up in academia is now seen as rational and globally applicable.
What should we do? There are not many options. There is no magic wand to get us to normal. If there were, I’m pretty sure the Federal Reserve would wave it at once, because I think everybody realizes that rates should already have been normalized—and that to do so now is going to be problematic.
We really have come to a place where there are no good choices.
* * *
Follow Mauldin as he uncovers the truth behind, and beyond, the financial headlines in his free publication, Thoughts from the Frontline. The publication explores developments overlooked by mainstream news and analyzes challenges and opportunities on the horizon.
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...