- If The Disunited States Of America Is To Survive…
Authored by Ilana Mercer via The Unz Review,
“We are one American nation. We must unite. We have to unify. We have to come together.”
Every faction in our irreparably fractious and fragmented country calls for unity, following events that demonstrate just how disunited the United States of America is.
They all do it.
Calls for unity come loudest from the party of submissives – the GOP. The domineering party is less guilt-ridden about this elusive thing called “unity.”
Democrats just blame Republicans for its absence in our polity and throughout our increasingly uncivil society.
These days, appeals to unity are made by opportunistic politicians, who drape themselves in the noble toga of patriotism on tragic occasions. The latest in many was the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre of Oct. 27.
In the name of honesty—and comity—let us quit the unity charade.
The U.S. is not united. Neither is America a nation in any meaningful way. It hasn’t been one for a long time.
Consider: In the late 1780s, Americans debated whether to nationalize government or keep it a decentralized affair. The discussion was one in which all early Americans partook, nationwide.
Think about the degree of unity that feat required!
The eternal verities of republicanism and limited government were understood and accepted by all Americans. The young nation’s concerns centered on the fate of freedom after Philadelphia. (The Anti-Federalists, the unsung heroes who gave us the Bill of Rights, turned out to be right.)
Around the time The Federalist Papers were published in American newspapers – Americans were a nation in earnest.
For it takes a nation to pull that off – to debate a set of philosophical and theoretical principles like those instantiated in these Papers, Federalist and Anti-Federalist.
The glue that allowed so lofty a debate throughout early America is gone (not to mention the necessary gray matter).
The Tower of Babel that is 21st century America is home not to 6 million but 327 million alienated, antagonistic individuals, diverse to the point of distrust.
Each year, elites pile atop this mass of seething antagonists another million newcomers.
Democrats, who control the intellectual means of production – schools, social media, TV, the print press, the publishing houses, think tanks, the Permanent Bureaucracy – they insist mass immigration comports with “who we are as a people.”
The last is yet another hollow slogan – much like the unity riff.
Modern-day Americans, some of whose ancestors were brought together by a “profound intellectual and emotional attachment to individual liberty,”possess little by way of social capital to unify them.
We don’t share the same core values, morals or mannerisms. We don’t revere the same heroes. We tear down other countrymen’s historic monuments. (As governor, Nikki Haley, hardly a member of The Mob, led the charge in South Carolina.) We display different regalia. Our attachment to one language, English, is tenuous at best, and waning.
Surveys suggest Americans today would rather avoid one another, choosing instead to hunker down unhappily in front of the telly.
As Americans, what unites us most is our passion for, and patterns of, consumption. America is an economy, not a nation.
Unite we Americans do over the state of our sovereign debt – it’s bad! But not over what it means to be a sovereign people.
For half the country, sovereignty entails hordes of defiant scofflaws breaking the border. For the other half, sovereignty means borders. (And some respite, maybe even a moratorium on the incessant influx.)
People become rightfully resentful of others when forced into relationships against their will.
Signs of the attendant, endemic civil unrest are already evident.
Don’t knock the cliché. Good fences (or walls) do indeed make good neighbors, within countries and between them.
A sense of security and sovereignty are essential to the health of individuals and nations alike. Developmental health in kids is predicated on respecting their bodies and their boundaries.
Wait a sec: Kids need boundaries but the communities in which they reside don’t?
Why do boundaries or borders become cardinal (racist) sins when staked out by communities? And why is trespass a praiseworthy creed?
A peaceful society is one founded on voluntary associations, not forced integration.
By extension, if the Christian pastry man doesn’t care to bake a cake for a gay wedding; leave him be. There are plenty cake-makers who’ll cater for your event.
Where’s the morality and munificence in compelling a service from an unwilling service provider? Servitude not service iswhat the gay master is extracting from the baker subordinate.
People are harming nobody when they withhold their wares. It’s their right. The baker owns his labor and his property. Leave him alone.
Currently, our overlords in Deep State D.C. insist that because we’re so rich and innately mean, they should decide what to do with the lion’s share of our earnings (including to distribute it to the world.)
No need. Americans are terribly generous—and most generous when left to choose their charities.
We are most generous to strangers in need when they, in return, don’t encroach on our space, and respect the natural rights we have in our person and property.
Besides, people get mad, even murderous, when Big Brother tells them who to shower with brotherly love.
An uneasy co-existence, not coerced unity, is the only hope for calm in our country.
Respectful disunity is the only way forward.
- Partisanship Rules At The Midterms
As the U.S. midterms approach, a survey by YouGov suggests that there is only one thing at the front of most voters’ minds.
Ahead of healthcare issues, immigration and the economy, Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes that the largest share of respondents said that a candidate’s political party is the most important factor in deciding who they will vote for.
You will find more infographics at Statista
In what is turning out to be a vote either for or against the president, the elections are going to be a major bellwether for the first two years of Trump.
The importance for those on both sides of the partisan divide is clearly not being underestimated.
- For Russia, Change Comes SWIFTly
During the ruble crisis of 2014/15 Russia announced in the wake of U.S. and European sanctions over reunifying with Crimea that it would begin building a domestic electronic financial transfer system, an alternative to SWIFT.
That system, System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS), is not only now functioning in Russia, according to a report from RT it now handles the financial transfer data for more than half of Russia’s institutions.
According to Anatoly Aksakov, head of the Russian parliamentary committee on financial markets:
The number of users of our internal financial messages’ transfer system is now greater than that of those using SWIFT. We’re already holding talks with China, Iran and Turkey, along with several other countries, on linking our system with their systems,” Aksakov said.
“They need to be properly integrated with each other in order to avoid any problems with using the countries’ internal financial messaging systems.”
This is a follow up to last month’s boast by the Russians that their system was seeing a lot of international interest. How much of this is boast and how much of it is reality remains to be seen, but the important point here is that the minute the U.S. weaponized SWIFT for use in its foreign policy, something like this was bound to occur.
China has its own internal system. And other countries are building theirs as well.
The SWIFT Cost
A common theme on this blog is that control is an illusion. Power is ephemeral. The best way to exercise your power is to have it but never use it. Because once you do use it you define for your enemies the costs of their lack of compliance to your edicts.
And if there is one thing humans are good at it is responding to known incentives. Once we can calculate the cost of one behavior over another we can then decide which one is more important to us.
Once costs of staying in SWIFT rise above the benefits of building your own alternative, you build an alternative.
SWIFT is a market power similar to a CEO having billions in restricted stock in their company. A lot of hay is made about the net worth of people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
Quoting their net worth by multiplying their known holdings times the current price of the stock is useless. Because they can’t sell it. It is market power or perceived wealth that evaporates the moment they signal to the market their intention to sell.
In reality, if they tried to sell their stock all at once the value of the stock would plummet as buyers would run for the hills and they would realize far less than their stated net worth before the selling began.
So, if anything they are a captive of their own success, needing to manage the creation carefully to avoid damaging its reputation, market position and, ultimately, its business.
SWIFT is a monopoly system, a monopoly born of convenience and inertia thanks to it being neutral to whims of international political spats. Enter the late stage of imperial thinking in the U.S. where our control over world affairs is waning first in the hearts and minds of various people around the world and then in policy and you have the beginning of the end of SWIFT as the only international financial transfer system.
Back in 2010, I remember Jim Sinclair banging his shoe on the table about our threatening Switzerland over opening up its customer data looking for ‘tax cheats’ under FATCA. He said then that the Obama administration was idiotic for doing this.
This is where I got the maxim, once you go nuclear you have no other option.
And he was right.
Then Iran was cut out of SWIFT in 2012 to effect regime change which also failed. And that woke the world up to the reality. The U.S. and Europe will attempt to destroy your livelihood if you dare oppose its unilateral demands.
Our political and financial elites, The Davos Crowd, will stop at literally nothing to ensure your compliance.
Too bad that SWIFT is just code. It’s just an encrypted messaging system. And like the push to stifle alternative voices on social media – de-platforming Alex Jones and Gab for examples – the solution to authoritarian control is not fighting fire with fire, but technology.
And that’s exactly what Russia has done. They applied themselves, spent the money and wrote their own code. Code is, after all, hard to control.
De-coding SWIFT’s Power
It is also what is happening all over the Internet communications supply chain right now. The infrastructure independent content producers need to resist corporate control is being built and will see their businesses rise as so many more people are now woke to the reality of the situation.
As Russian banks and businesses reap the benefits of no longer existing under SWIFT’s Sword of Damocles, others will see the same benefits.
I’ve been making this point all year, the more the Trump administration uses tariffs and sanctions to achieve its political goals the more it will ultimately weaken the U.S.’s position worldwide. It won’t happen overnight.
It will build, gradually, steadily until one day the threat will no longer be there.
We may have already reached that moment as President Trump has ruled out pressuring SWIFT to cut Iran out of the system. Too bad his evil Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin doesn’t agree with him.
But, Mnuchin is living in the past, he doesn’t respect the resistance that’s forming to U.S. financial hegemony. He will though when it proves ineffectual.
Russia’s SPFS will gain clients across Iran, Turkey, China and the rest of its close trading partners. This will accelerate the de-dollarization of Russia’s main trade, hydrocarbons, since many of these countries are major buyers of Russian oil.
When you hear the announcement from a German bank under sanctions from the U.S. for trading in Russian energy that it will use SPFS as its transfer system, that will be the real wake up call to the markets.
Change then will comes, forgive the obvious pun, swiftly.
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- The U.S. "Cannot Win Militarily" In Afghanistan, Says Top Commander In Shocking Interview
Historians of the now seventeen-year old U.S. war in Afghanistan will take note of this past week when the newly-appointed American general in charge of US and NATO operations in the country made a bombshell, historic admission. He conceded that the United States cannot win in Afghanistan.
Speaking to NBC News last week, Gen. Austin Scott Miller made his first public statements after taking charge of American operations, and shocked with his frank assessment that that the Afghan war cannot be won militarily and peace will only be achieved through direct engagement and negotiations with the Taliban — the very terror group which US forces sought to defeat when it first invaded in 2001.
“This is not going to be won militarily,” Gen. Miller said. “This is going to a political solution.”
Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the U.S. commander of resolute support, via EPA/NBC Miller explained to NBC:
My assessment is the Taliban also realizes they cannot win militarily. So if you realize you can’t win militarily at some point, fighting is just, people start asking why. So you do not necessarily wait us out, but I think now is the time to start working through the political piece of this conflict.
He gave the interview from the Resolute Support headquarters building in Kabul. “We are more in an offensive mindset and don’t wait for the Taliban to come and hit [us],” he said. “So that was an adjustment that we made early on. We needed to because of the amount of casualties that were being absorbed.”
Starting last summer it was revealed that US State Department officials began meeting with Taliban leaders in Qatar to discuss local and regional ceasefires and an end to the war. It was reported at the time that the request of the Taliban, the US-backed Afghan government was not invited; however, there doesn’t appear to have been any significant fruit out of the talks as the Taliban now controls more territory than ever before in recent years.
Such controversial and shaky negotiations come as in total the United States has spent well over $840 billion fighting the Taliban insurgency while also paying for relief and reconstruction in a seventeen-year long war that has become more expensive, in current dollars, than the Marshall Plan, which was the reconstruction effort to rebuild Europe after World War II.
Even the New York Times recently chronicled the flat out deception of official Pentagon statements vs. the reality in terms of the massive spending that has gone into the now-approaching two decade long “endless war” which began in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Via NYT report As of September of this year the situation was as bleak as it’s ever been after over a decade-and-a-half of America’s longest running war, per the NYT’s numbers:
But since 2017, the Taliban have held more Afghan territory than at any time since the American invasion. In just one week last month, the insurgents killed 200 Afghan police officers and soldiers, overrunning two major Afghan bases and the city of Ghazni.
The American military says the Afghan government effectively “controls or influences” 56 percent of the country. But that assessment relies on statistical sleight of hand. In many districts, the Afghan government controls only the district headquarters and military barracks, while the Taliban control the rest.
For this reason Gen. Miller spoke to NBC of an optimal “political outcome” instead of “winning” — the latter being a term rarely if ever used by Pentagon and officials and congressional leaders over the past years.
Miller told NBC: “I naturally feel compelled to try to set the conditions for a political outcome. So, pressure from that standpoint, yes. I don’t want everyone to think this is forever.”
And ending on a bleak note in terms of the “save face” and “cut and run” nature of the U.S. future engagement in Afghanistan, Gen. Miller concluded, “This is my last assignment as a soldier in Afghanistan. I don’t think they’ll send me back here in another grade. When I leave this time I’d like to see peace and some level of unity as we go forward.”
Interestingly, the top US and NATO commander can now only speak in remotely hopeful terms of “some level of unity” — perhaps just enough to make a swift exit at least.
- 33 Trillion Reasons Why The New York Times Is Wrong About Russiagate
Authored by Gareth Porter via ConsortiumNews.com,
New research shows The New York Times was even further off the mark in blaming Russian social media for Trump’s win…
Even more damning evidence has come to light undermining The New York Times‘ assertion in September that Russia used social media to steal the 2016 election for Donald Trump.
New research shows that a relatively paltry 80,000 posts from the private Russian company Internet Research Agency (IRA) were engulfed in literally trillions of posts on Facebook over a two-year period before and after the 2016 vote.
That was supposed to have thrown the election, according to the paper of record. In a 10,000-word article on Sept. 20, the Times reported that 126 million out of 137 million American voters were exposed to social media posts on Facebook from IRA that somehow had a hand in delivering Trump the presidency.
The newspaper said:
“Even by the vertiginous standards of social media, the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone.”
But Consortium News, on Oct. 10, debunked that story, pointing out that reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti failed to report several significant caveats and disclaimers from Facebook officers themselves, whose statements make the Times’ claim that Russian election propaganda “reached” 126 million Americans an exercise in misinformation.
What Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 31, 2017 is a far cry from what the Timesclaims.
“Our best estimate is that approximately 126,000 million people may have been served one of these [IRA-generated] stories at some time during the two year period,” Stretch said.
Stretch was expressing a theoretical possibility rather than an established fact. He said an estimated 126 million Facebook members might have gotten at least one story from the IRA –- not over the ten week election period, but over 194 weeks during the two years 2015 through 2017—including a full year after the election.
That means only an estimated 29 million FB users may have gotten at least one story in their feed in two years. The 126 million figure is based only on an assumption that they shared it with others, according to Stretch.
Facebook didn’t even claim most of those 80,000 IRA posts were election–related. It offered no data on what proportion of the feeds to those 29 million people were.
In addition, Facebook’s Vice President for News Feed, Adam Moseri, acknowledged in 2016 that FB subscribers actually read only about 10 percent of the stories Facebook puts in their News Feed every day. The means that very few of the IRA stories that actually make it into a subscriber’s news feed on any given day are actually read.
And now, according to further research, the odds that Americans saw any of these IRA ads—let alone were influenced by them—are even more astronomical. In his Oct. 2017 testimony, Stretch said that from 2015 to 2017, “Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or ‘served,’ a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds.”
That 33 trillion figure is 412.5 million times larger than the total of 80,000 IRA posts in that two year period. To put that in perspective, the Russian-origin Facebook posts represented just .0000000024 of total Facebook content in that time.
Shane and Mazzetti did not report the 33 trillion number even though The New York Times’ own coverage of that 2017 Stretch testimony explicitly stated, “Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users’ News Feeds everyday.”
The Times‘ touting of the bogus 126 million out 137 million voters, while not reporting the 33 trillion figure, should vie in the annals of journalism as one of the most spectacularly misleading uses of statistics of all time.
- A Gun Capable Of Fitting Into A Wallet Is Being Sold By An American Arms Company
The National Interest recently profiled the latest firearm which is pushing the limits in terms of size and technology — except this isn’t a “big gun” — but quite the opposite. A North Carolina company has produced and is currently selling a single-shot “credit card gun” which fits into a wallet, and which can be neatly tucked away in a person’s back pocket.
A military analyst writing for The National Interest describes the gun, called the “LifeCard,” as “a single-shot, single-action .22 designed to resemble an innocuous credit card.”
The credit-card sized pistol was “fashioned from lightweight anodized aluminum with a steel trigger and tilt-up barrel” which enables “the 7 oz. pistol folds up into a 3.375 inch by 2.215 inch card that, despite its half-inch thickness, can fit with relative ease inside your back pocket or average wallet.”
It was developed by a North Carolina-based company Trailblazer Firearm, and has enough ammo storage for four rounds.
The company has billed it as a weapon of “last resort” in dangerous, unexpected situations, but it’s also sure to draw controversy given the extreme ease of concealment and potential for passing through security screenings, similar to the controversy evoked by 3-D printed guns.
Via Trailblazer Firearms “Trailblazer Firearms fully intends to spearhead innovative new firearms products starting with the LifeCard, available later this month,” Trailblazer president Aaron Voight said in a statement. “New designs and true innovation have been the exception and our goal is to be the pioneer laying new trails for gun enthusiasts, designers, and manufacturers.”
But Jared Keller, writing for the military website Task & Purpose, poses the following question regarding the weapon’s ultimate effectiveness in a life and death situation:
But how effective would this $400, uber-hyped firearm actually be in a situation that calls for a stealthily concealed weapon, or a quick draw? The product is so new that reports from the urban battlefield have barely been released.
Though the tiny weapon, which is being compared to the turn-of-the-century Chicago palm pistol, was first unveiled in 2017, it is only recently picking up visibility in the media as the popularity of the weapon grows.
It’s already angering some pundits and journalists on social media after an Israeli arms company recently took note of it.
An American company developed a gun that fits into a wallet and resembles a credit card. It’s ironically named the “Lifecard”. Just what our trigger-happy and bullet-riddled society needs. https://t.co/2RlY1O7NLg
— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) November 3, 2018
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According to the National Interest the gun has been deemed in compliance with the American National Firearms Act given that it’s incapable of firing when folded.
Below is a short video produced by the manufacturer showing just how quickly the “LifeCard” can be deployed. It definitely appears something straight out of James Bond’s collection.
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- California Hit By 39 Quakes In 24 Hours As Scientists Warn Of "Movement Along The San Andreas Fault"
Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
A series of large earthquakes has rattled California over the last 24 hours, and scientists are telling us that the shaking was the result of “movement along the San Andreas Fault system”.
In recent months there has been an alarming amount of seismic activity all along “the Ring of Fire”, and there have been times when the number of global earthquakes has been way above normal. Could it be possible that all of this unusual seismic activity is leading up to something? As you will see below, experts are telling us that we are overdue for the “Big One” to hit California. And when it does eventually strike, it could be far worse than most people would dare to imagine.
Most of the 39 significant earthquakes that have struck California within the last 24 hours have happened along the San Andreas Fault. The following comes from CBS News…
A swarm of earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault, the largest measuring a 4.1 magnitude, rumbled through the Hollister area and the Salinas Valley Friday morning. CBS San Francisco, citing officials, reports the quakes rattled nerves but caused no major damage.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the 4.1 quake hit at 5:58 a.m. PDT 12 miles southwest of the small community of Tres Pinos. It was followed by quakes measuring 3.6, 3.2 and 3.0.
Officials are saying that this shaking was caused by “movement along the San Andreas Fault system”, and the initial magnitude 4.1 quake was quickly followed by a series of more than 20 aftershocks…
After a magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck 12 miles from Hollister at 5:58 a.m., more than 20 aftershocks rattled the area in the following hours. The smaller quakes registered as high as 3.6 magnitude and were felt as far away as Monterey and Santa Cruz.
When you live in an area that sits along a major earthquake fault, it can be easy to forget the potential danger if nothing happens for an extended period of time.
But the danger is always there, and for many California residents the rattling that we witnessed on Friday was a clear reminder of that fact.
Thankfully, these earthquakes did not cause substantial damage, but local residents were definitely shaken up…
One in Hollister said: “Was asleep, felt like someone was shaking the bed.”
Another resident in Monterey Bay expressed concern that recent quakes could indicate a major earthquake – commonly known as the ‘Big One’ – could be on the way.
They wrote: “Been feeling a lot of tremors the last several months.
“The Hayward Fault is overdue and coming to thump. Any time now. It’s definitely coming relatively soon.”
Hopefully this current shaking will fizzle out and things will go back to normal.
But experts tell us that California is definitely overdue for a major earthquake and that “the Big One” will happen at some point…
Experts say California is overdue for a huge earthquake with some warning a major magnitude 7.0 is likely within the next 30 years.
A 2008 report by USGS described the Hayward Fault, which runs to the east of San Francisco, as a “tectonic time bomb” which could threaten the city’s seven million residents.
And when “the Big One” does strike, it could potentially be far worse than most people have ever imagined.
In a previous article, I quoted from a news story about a recent study that concluded that a major earthquake could potentially “plunge large parts of California into the sea almost instantly”…
The Big One may be overdue to hit California, but scientists near LA have found a new risk for the area during a major earthquake.
They claim that if a major tremor hits the area, it could plunge large parts of California into the sea almost instantly.
The discovery was made after studying the Newport-Inglewood fault, which has long been believed to be one of Southern California’s danger zones.
When I first read that, I was absolutely stunned.
But according to Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby, there is a very strong possibility that this could actually happen someday…
Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby, who worked with the Leeper on the study, said the sinking would occur quickly and likely result in part of California being covered by the sea.
“It’s something that would happen relatively instantaneously,” Prof Kirby said. “Probably today if it happened, you would see seawater rushing in.”
The fact that our planet is entering a time of unprecedented seismic activity has been a major theme in my work for a very long time, and I am particularly concerned about the west coast. Just a few weeks ago, there was some unusual shaking farther north along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and I anticipate that the shaking of coastal areas will continue to intensify until things finally break loose.
And the truth is that we can see signs of impending change all around us. Down in southern California, a “moving sinkhole” is now traveling up to 60 feet a day, and it is “destroying everything in its path”…
It is the beginning of the San Andreas fault, where experts fear ‘The Big One’ could begin.
But a small, bubbling pool of mud that stinks of rotting eggs near the Salton Sea is causing concern.
Dubbed ‘the slow one’, experts studying the phenomenon say it is similar to a ‘moving sinkhole’ – and is speeding up, destroying everything in its path.
Imperial County officials studying the muddy spring say it has has been increasing in speed through – first 60 feet over a few months, and then 60 feet in a single day.
Of course this is not just a west coast phenomenon. We have been witnessing unusual seismic activity all over the world, and it has become very clear that our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.
Natural disasters are going to continue to grow worse and worse, and that is going to have extremely serious implications for all of us.
- Kyle Bass Interviews Steve Bannon About China's "Grand Strategy" For Global Domination
On a day when the yuan and the A-shares market rallied on reports of a possible breakthrough in deadlocked US-China trade negotiations (a report that was eventually rebutted by none other than Trump chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow), Real Vision demonstrated an ironic sense of timing by releasing a discussion between two of the most notorious China bears in the West: Hayman Capital founder Kyle Bass, who has staked his reputation on a massive short-yuan position, and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.
Filmed more than a month ago in an undisclosed airplane hanger, the interview involved Bass quizzing Bannon about the former Trump campaign chief’s hostility toward China and why President Trump is justified in taking a hard line against the Middle Kingdom not just in his trade policy, but in the strategy of military containment that Trump has propagated, and how that contrasts with his predecessors “pivot to Asia.” Bass started to the interview by asking Bannon about China’s “grand strategy” and how it cuts against US interests.
The “grand strategy” isn’t a difficult concept to grasp, Bannon explained. Through it, China is leveraging its economic resources to wage a concentrated war of influence against the US. It’s the most ambitious geopolitical strategy that we’ve ever seen, Bannon said. And right, now China is winning.
Their grand strategy is very simple. It’s to be a hegemonic world power. You can see it through One Belt One Road. You can it see through Made In China 2025. You can see through everything they’re doing like their strategy of being the East India Company in Sub-Saharan Africa, what they’re doing to the Caribbean, now what they’re doing in Latin America. What we call all forces of government– all areas of government focus on the economic war against the United States and their military build up.
For some bewildering reason, Wall Street and the Davos set have managed to wilfully ignore the threat posed by China by telling themselves that China isn’t territorially ambitious. But on this, they’re wrong – and China’s continued development of the South China Sea is all the proof one needs to understand that China is a geopolitical threat.
A lot of the Wall Street, City of London, and Frankfurt crowd have kind of said, oh, well, they’re not territorially ambitious. They’ve never been an expansionist power. Well, they’re a geopolitically, expansionist power. And it’s quite extraordinary what they’re doing. And they’re doing it at the same time.
But perhaps the most galling aspect of the West’s preference for appeasement over confrontation when it comes to China was the Obama administration’s willingness to accept China’s claim that its development in the South China Sea was for strictly peaceful purposes.
Another undisclosed airplane hangar, another epic interview. We’re bringing you our next installment on Real Vision’s #BigNameSeason! Watch the full interview with @jkylebass & Stephen K. Bannon now: https://t.co/JfDASsQqlj pic.twitter.com/Ez49y92r28
— Real Vision (@realvision) November 2, 2018
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Three years later, what were uninhabitable reefs only recently have been transformed into 10,000 “stationary aircraft carriers.”
They call them reefs. These are stationary aircraft carriers– Mischeif, Scarborough Reef. All these– these reefs are basically aircraft carriers. And what they’ve done is they’ve put fire control, radar, search radars, and combat planes on them. These things can go.
The problem with Americans’ perception of China, as Bannon explained, is that most people don’t understand the significance of the South China Sea. In terms of trade, it’s a superhighway. And whoever can exercise unilateral control of that region can exert amazing influence on world trade. One-third of world trade – some $5 trillion annually – flows through the region.
My point. When people say the South China Sea, what you have to understand is it’s a superhighway of commerce. They have the biggest ships in the world 24/7, 365 days a year.
That’s why Bannon believes that the South China Sea is one of three flashpoints that could trigger the start of World War III.
You asked me what’s going to happen. I said on my radio show five years ago they would be in a shooting war. The situation in Qatar, and the Persian Gulf, and the South China Sea are the two greatest hotspots of the world for global conflict to start. OK? It’s not Korea. Korea’s a vassal state of China. The whole Korean thing is nothing but a Chinese drama. OK?
And while China prefers to spin the South China Sea as a purely domestic issue – since, in their view, it is unquestionably Chinese territory – the US has everything to lose if it allows itself to be pushed out.
And they will tell you, no, it’s a vital thing. We need America. We need America here because if we lose the South China Sea, we will lose any type of commerce. China would control the whole place. And the Chinese understand that. That’s where they’re trying to push us out. And they’re starting to already have the psychological warfare of exactly that. Hey, it’s 12,000 miles away. It’s really Asia. What are we involved here for? This is another debacle.
China was able to cover its ambitions from Western scrutiny by leveraging its powerful checkbook. It didn’t cultivate allies in the American and UK business communities by force. Instead, it suborned them with investments that Bannon essentially views as bribes.
This is a direct confrontation with China to say, we’re not going to take it anymore. You’ve been in economic war with us. And we’re going to reassert us. Your question about how they ingratiate themself. They’re the guys wrote the biggest checks. They wrote checks to the universities. They’ve essentially bought off the city of London, Wall Street, and the corporations. I say this in a sense of kind of anger. The great investment banks in London and in New York became the investor relations department for this regime.
That’s why, when Wang Qishan visited the US in August to meet with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, he demanded some face time with US captains of industry. And when they demurred, fearful of finding themselves in the middle of the trade war debacle, Wang reminded them that he wasn’t asking.
Being on their back foot by the Trump strategy, they kind of said, hey, we need a financial advisory panel to help us understand what the United States wants and what the United States needs. And it was Paulson, and Schwarzman, and all these characters. And it’s interesting. When they need somebody to come over and help intermediate with the United States, they go to the same guys who have been profiting on this. My understanding is that people came back and said, hey, the UN General Assembly is happening. It’s opera season in New York. My schedule is full. And Wang Qishan said, hey, boys, I don’t think you’re listening. We’re having a meeting. I want everybody to show up.
When people look back on this period, Bannon said, they’re going to be stunned by how easily everyone went along with China’s wishes. But the economic threats emanating from China aren’t solely related to its “grand strategy”. There are also significant risks, as Bass would no doubt agree, in China’s financial sector, which Bannon likened to a house built on sand. And just like with China’s aggressive military posture in the pacific, Western institutions have enabled this as well. And when the reckoning comes in the form of a brutal debt crisis, the fallout will be even worse than what we saw in 2008. And what’s worse, the exact same culprits – the global investment banks and their bosses – will be to blame.
What we’ve seen, and I happen to believe, is that the Chinese economic system is built on a house of sand. And I think it’s going to lead us to a greater financial debacle than 2008 ever was in the exact same culprits that led to the financial crisis in 2008– the investment banks, the commercial banks, the hedge funds, and the government entities. It was the same elites that led to that financial crisis and got bailed out. They had no responsibility and no accountability. They’ve been the same exact actors that have exacerbated the situation in China.
And so yes, the reason the world’s elites – the Party of Davos, the people on Wall Street, what I call the IR departments of China, which are the investment banks, particularly Goldman Sachs and some commercial banks, the lobbyists for China, which is basically the 25 or 30 largest corporations that deal in China today – their lobbyists in Washington, DC. And the big private equity guys like Schwarzman and these guys are all going to have to be held accountable for what went on in China.
Regardless of what happens with the trade war, Bannon believes Trump is doing the necessary, if difficult, work to hold China accountable and to try and slow the global widening of its sphere of influence. China has already infiltrated our intelligence services and our military, they’ve infiltrated our financial system, and now they’re seeking to break apart unquestioned US hegemony over Latin America.
Unless dramatic action is taken, it won’t be much longer until America has been completely boxed in.
- Was Anti-Semitic New York Graffiti Attacker A Liberal-Media-Darling Obama Volunteer?
Just days after the awful events of Pittsburgh, disgusting neo-Nazi graffiti was found Thursday inside a Brooklyn synagogue.
NYPD officials told Breaking911 that the suspect entered Brooklyn’s Union Temple around 8:30 p.m. Thursday night and used a black marker to deface three different locations with the messages, “die Jew rats we are here,” “Jews better be ready,” and “Hitler.”
As one would expect, New York’s officials were extremely quick to decry the disgusting actions, with NY Governor Cuomo releasing the following statement – with a clear intent to pin the blame on one side:
“I am disgusted by the discovery of anti-Semitic graffiti at a house of worship in Brooklyn. At a time when the nation is still reeling from the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, New Yorkers stand united with the Jewish community and against hate in all its forms.
“In New York, we have zero tolerance for discrimination in our laws or in our spirit. I have directed the State’s Hate Crimes Task Force to investigate this hideous act and hold those responsible accountable to the full extent of the law.
“As Governor, I am also doing everything in my power to ensure our religious institutions are free from violence and intolerance. This week, we announced the launch of an additional $10 million grant program to help protect New York’s non-public schools and cultural centers, including religious-based institutions.
“The disgusting rhetoric and heinous violence in this nation has reached a fever pitch and is ripping at the fabric of America, and it must stop. In New York, we have forged community through chords of commonality and we will always stand together against hate and discrimination.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio called the hateful messages “tremendously upsetting.”
“Coming at a time when Jewish New Yorkers are feeling a profound sense of loss and sadness because of what happened at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue and all those who were killed there because of their faith.”
But, in an interesting twist, according to Breaking911, surveillance footage released by authorities captured a photo of the suspect, “described as a male Black, approximately 20-years-old, 5’8″, 140 lbs, with black hair and last seen wearing a red suit jacket.”
And yesterday morning, the local CBS station confirms a man is in custody for the ‘hate crime’.
26-year-old James Polite, of Brooklyn, allegedly wrote the graffiti, according to police.
The suspect also drew a picture of the Puerto Rican flag and wrote “Free P.R.”
Additionally, sources tell CBS2, Polite could be behind a series of fires at other shuls and yeshivas in the area. He was charged with criminal mischief, hate crime, and making graffiti in connection to the messages scrawled at Union Temple.
So not quite the white-supremacist, Trump-supporting, racist, bigot everyone was expecting?
But, in an even more potentially shocking twist, it is possible that the alleged serial anti-semitic graffiti artist is a former Barack Obama volunteer and liberal media darling…
Hey @BarackObama,
Is this the same guy that volunteered for you during your campaign? https://t.co/hOG0dO5xhc pic.twitter.com/XSMXwrl1X4
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 3, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
In 2017, The New York Times wrote a lavish lovefest of a story:
James Polite spent much of his childhood in foster care.
In high school alone, Mr. Polite estimates, he was placed in 10 different homes. And he received little encouragement from social workers to go to college.
But Mr. Polite, now 25, still believed that college was the best next step. He found encouragement as a volunteer in his teens, registering voters and canvassing neighborhoods in New York City during Barack Obama’s first presidential bid.
…
Manhattan Democrat Christine Quinn still remembers their introduction on the steps of City Hall. “James was telling me his story,” she recalled recently in an interview. “And I said, ‘Do you have an internship?’ And he said ‘No.’ And I said, ‘Well, you do now.’”
“James was the adopted child of the Quinn administration,” she said. “And it wasn’t just me. It was the entire City Council staff.”
Of course, there could be another 26-year-old (25 in 2017) black male, living in Manhattan with the same name as James Polite, but we suspect that is a little unlikely.
As The New York Times reports, towards the bottom of their puff-piece:
Despite the assistance, Mr. Polite struggled at Brandeis. Smoking marijuana, he said, became a coping mechanism to manage his stress. He had first tried the drug at a foster home in his early teens, but in college his habit grew to three times a day. He was placed on a health leave of absence in late 2015 and required to enter a rehabilitation program. During treatment, he learned he had bipolar disorder, for which he is now medicated.
More likely is the young man with a bright future, heralded by the liberal media and politicians as a success story waiting to happen, has seen his life take a much darker route.
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