- Julian Assange Says Trump Won't Be Allowed To Win, "Clinton And ISIS Are Funded By The Same Money"
One day after Julian Assange officially revealed for the first time that the source of hacked Podesta and DNC emails in Wikileaks’ possession is not Russia, in the second excerpt from the John Pilger Special, to be broadcast by RT on Saturday Julian Assange accuses Hillary Clinton of misleading Americans about the true scope of Islamic State’s support from Washington’s Middle East allies.
As previously reported, in an August 17, 2014 email made public WikiLeaks last month, Hillary Clinton, who had served as secretary of state until the year before, urges John Podesta, then an advisor to Barack Obama, to “bring pressure” on Qatar and Saudi Arabia, “which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIS and other radical Sunni groups.”
“I think this is the most significant email in the whole collection,” Assange, whose whistleblowing site released three tranches of Clinton-related emails over the past year, told Pilger in the interview. “All serious analysts know, and even the US government has agreed, that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS and funding ISIS, but the dodge has always been that it is some “rogue” princes using their oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves. But that email says that it is the government of Saudi Arabia, and the government of Qatar that have been funding ISIS.”
As recounted by RT, Assange and Pilger, who sat down for their 25-minute interview at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where the whistleblower has been a refugee since 2012, also talked about the conflict of interest between Clinton’s official post, her husband’s nonprofit, and the Middle East officials, whose stated desire to fight terrorism may not have been sincere.
John Pilger: The Saudis, the Qataris, the Moroccans, the Bahrainis, particularly the first two, are giving all this money to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton is secretary of state, and the State Department is approving massive arms sales, particularly Saudi Arabia.
Julian Assange: Under Hillary Clinton – and the Clinton emails reveal a significant discussion of it – the biggest-ever arms deal in the world was made with Saudi Arabia: more than $80 billion. During her tenure, the total arms exports from the US doubled in dollar value.
JP: Of course, the consequence of that is that this notorious jihadist group, called ISIL or ISIS, is created largely with money from people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation?
JA: Yes.
The conversation then turns to the imminent presidential election: Pilger questioned Assange over increasingly frequent accusations from the Clinton camp, and Western media, that WikiLeaks is looking to swing next week’s US presidential election in favor of Donald Trump – perhaps at Russia’s behest.
However, just as he did last week, Assange again dismissed the prospect of Trump, who is almost tied in the polls, winning as unlikely, and not necessarily due to his standing with the electorate.
“My analysis is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that? Because he has had every establishment off his side. Trump does not have one establishment, maybe with the exception of the Evangelicals, if you can call them an establishment,” said Assange. “Banks, intelligence, arms companies, foreign money, etc. are all united behind Hillary Clinton. And the media as well. Media owners, and the journalists themselves.”
He is right, but the same was said about Brexit.
- CLiNToN PaY To PLaY…PART II
- "This Quickly Escalates Into Open Warfare" – Why The Government Is Preparing For Post-Election Chaos
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,
There have been a wide array of reports suggesting that the U.S. government is preparing military and Homeland Security assets for widespread election fall out. Given the mainstream media’s inclination towards Hillary Clinton and recently presented evidence that Democrat operatives have been attempting to illegally influence the ballot box through falsifying votes and electronic tampering, it appears that concerns surrounding a rigged election are not necessarily unfounded, as President Obama would have us believe.
With the election just days away, the fix appears to be in and some Americans are readying themselves for a confrontation should one be necessary.
As the most divisive presidential election in recent memory nears its conclusion, some armed militia groups are preparing for the possibility of a stolen election on Nov. 8 and civil unrest in the days following a victory by Democrat Hillary Clinton.
They say they won’t fire the first shot, but they’re not planning to leave their guns at home, either.
…
Trump has repeatedly warned that the election may be “rigged,” and has said he may not respect the results if he does not win. At least one paramilitary group, the Oath Keepers, has called on members to monitor voting sites for signs of fraud
…
Over the past week, some prominent Trump supporters have hinted at violence.
“If Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musket,” former Illinois Representative Joe Walsh wrote on Twitter last week. Conservative commentator Wayne Root fantasized about Clinton’s death while speaking at a Trump rally in Las Vegas on Sunday.
Back in Georgia, the Three Percent Security Force wrapped up rifle practice in the midday sun. They then headed further into the trees to tackle an obstacle course with loaded pistols at their sides, ready for whatever may come.
Source: Zero Hedge via Raw Story
The story comes from the mainstream media, of course, and ties in the Oklahoma City bombing, Waco and the Ruby Ridge incidents, all of which involved people with ties to militias.
The way the report itself is framed appears to have the purpose of sowing seeds of “crazy conspiracy theorists” into the minds of the general public so that if push comes to shove government actions will be justified in the eyes of the American citizenry.
But whatever the narrative, it is clear that the possibility of post-election chaos is becoming all the more probable. Whether the initial outcome shows a Trump win or a Hillary win, there are going to be tens of millions of very pissed off people in this country. And there’s a very good chance that some of them will take action, which according to Mike Adams could subsequently lead to open warfare on the streets of America:
As I’ve publicly predicted numerous times over the last year, if Donald Trump wins, the radical extreme leftists go on a violent rampage that leads to the rest of us begging for martial law. After half a dozen cities burn with riots and looting, Trump invokes a national emergency, deploying National Guard troops across the most devastated urban areas, and the radical left finds itself in a shooting war with the government.
If Hillary Clinton wins, all the Trump supporters who have been violently assaulted, spat upon and physically attacked by the radical left un-holster their concealed weapons and start shooting back. This quickly escalates into open warfare between lunatic leftist Hillary supporters and armed Trump “Second Amendment” people who basically figure they’ve got nothing left to lose anyway, so why not fight to save America?
Full Report: The Election Is A Ticking Time Bomb: “Chaos Will Erupt In Less Than 100 Days”
It would only take a small group, perhaps even one that’s operating under a false flag, to light a wildfire that could spread from coast to coast. The assets, as Jeremiah Johnson warns, have already been put into place by the Obama administration:
In summary, the U.S. is prepositioning its “enemy-assets” to blame – on what the administration does – for a collapsed election labeled as “rigged” or the suspension of the election for any number of reasons, real or illusory, such as a genuine attack the U.S. provokes or an attack the U.S. carries out on itself. Civil unrest and/or war are the escape hatches to bail out of the Constitution and to take control of the country…not letting either crisis go to waste. With civil rest or a world war, the administration will be handed the country on a platter – indefinitely – and the election will be a moot point, whether it happened or not.
Full report: The United States Is Pre-Positioning “Enemy Assets” In Preparation For A Rigged Election
All of this may sound extreme, but this Presidential election has been nothing short of insane thus far.
Whatever the outcome, there will be calls of rigging from both sides, especially if it happens to be Hillary Clinton who , as evidence shows, has been rigging things all along.
It only took one bullet in 1914 to lead to widespread global confrontation. In the end, no one really cared who fired it or who got shot. The assets had already been positioned ahead of time and were just waiting for someone to detonate the powder keg.
If this is the case in America today, then this election will not end on November 8th, but could drag on for weeks or months as we saw with Bush vs. Gore in 2000.
Should tensions heat up and lead to confrontation, it is possible that President Obama will call for a national emergency and activate the Doomsday Executive Order to “restore order.” In this instance, the entire country could be on lock-down, so preparing for this outcome now in the event of curfews, rationing or any number of other potential scenarios is in order.
- Commuter-In-Chief: Obama Cuts Sentences Of 72 More Drug Dealers; Total Exceeds Previous 11 Presidents Combined
Earlier today President Obama commuted the sentences of another 72 federal prisoners bringing his total to 944, more than the previous 11 presidents combined. This latest move is just further evidence of his stated intention to ramp up commutations throughout the remainder of his presidency. While the President often claims publicly that his commutations are only for “low-level” and “non-violent” criminals, The Hill points out that 16 of the 72 commutations from today were for people serving life sentences.
Friday’s clemency grants include 16 people serving life sentences. More than two dozen will be released as early as next spring, but many will not be freed immediately.
Some will not get out of prison until fall 2018. Other inmates’ releases are conditional on them entering enter residential drug treatment programs.
During the final stretch of his presidency, Obama has ramped up his use of clemency power to free prisoners serving lengthy sentences handed down during the government’s war on drugs.
In his typical fashion, the President also took to Twitter to brag about his latest “accomplishment.”
.@POTUS has commuted more sentences than the past 11 presidents combined. Today, he granted 72 more: https://t.co/at8cs4afpw pic.twitter.com/63bfxvoONf
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 4, 2016
Of course, Obama has repeatedly denounced long sentences for “nonviolent, low-level” drug offenses as overly punitive, arguing they’ve had a devastating impact on “communities of color.” That said, we would encourage everyone to take a look at the DOJ’s list of offenses committed by the folks that Obama is intent upon releasing. Below is a brief sample…do these look like “nonviolent, low-level” criminals to anyone?
Gerardo Hernandez – Conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, 18 U.S.C. § 371; conspiracy to gather and transmit national defense information, 18 U.S.C § 794(c); conspiracy to commit murder, 18 U.S.C. § 1117; fraud and misuse of documents, 18 U.S.C § 1546(a); possession with intent to use five or more fraudulent identification documents, 18 U.S.C. § 1028(a)(3); acting as an agent of foreign government without prior notification to the Attorney General, 18 U.S.C. § 951
Anthony Pender – Possession of a firearm by convicted felon; possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base
Tesmone Darin Paschal – Possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; aided and abetted in the possession of a firearm by a convicted felon
Mark Foster – Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine, 21 U.S.C. §§ 846 & 841(b)(1)(A); carrying or possessing a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)
Ali Reno Harden – Possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1); possession of a firearm having an obliterated serial number, 18 U.S.C. § 922(k); possession with intent to distribute more than five grams of cocaine base, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) & 851; possession of a firearm during the commission of a drug trafficking crime, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c); possession of marijuana, 21 U.S.C. §§ 844 & 851
Finally, here is the full statement from the President’s White House blog released earlier today:
Following last Thursday’s grant of 98 commutations, today, President Obama granted commutation to another 72 federal inmates. In just an eight-day period, the President has issued two rounds of grants, totaling 170 commutations. With today’s grants, the President has now commuted the sentences of 944 individuals, including 324 life sentences.
What President Obama has done for commutations is unprecedented in the modern era. The President is committed to reinvigorating the clemency authority, demonstrating that our nation is a nation of second chances, where mistakes from the past will not deprive deserving individuals of the opportunity to rejoin society and contribute to their families and communities. The President’s 944 commutation recipients have earned that second chance — whether by obtaining a GED, taking vocational programming to learn skills for future employment, or addressing the substance abuse that so often has led to their criminal conduct. These stories demonstrate that neither society nor these individuals benefit from disproportionate sentences that keep rehabilitated individuals incarcerated, even after they have been adequately punished for their wrongdoing. The personal stories behind each of the President’s commutation recipients underline the individualized consideration that goes into each grant.
Only Congress can achieve the broader reforms needed to ensure our federal sentencing system operates more fairly and effectively in the service of public safety. As Congress returns this month, it is essential that they take up bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation, including reforms that address the excessive mandatory minimum sentences that imprisoned many of the individuals receiving commutation today.
944 extra democrat voters and counting…
- Hillary And Bill Clinton: The "Bonnie & Clyde" Of American Politics
Submitted by Wayne Madsen via Strategic-Culture.org,
Whether the information originated from hacked e-mails and computer files or Freedom of Information Act requests, the revelations about the political and business activities of Hillary and Bill Clinton and their cronies hearken back to another era, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the crime spree of another unscrupulous couple: bank robbery desperados Bonnie and Clyde.
Aside from Hillary Clinton running her own lucrative «off-the-books» foreign policy via her private email servers and e-mail chain of associates and flunkies, it was her and her husband’s joint Clinton Foundation and Teneo Capital operations that scream out the word «corruption.» The servers were merely a mechanism by which the Clintons ran their own «pay-to-play» racketeering operation, something that would have been the envy of a contemporary of Bonnie and Clyde, Chicago crime boss Al Capone.
Teneo, which runs a hedge fund operation and a «private intelligence» service jam-packed with former Central Intelligence Agency operatives, is where Mrs. Clinton’s «gal pal» and aide Huma Abedin worked simultaneously to her government employment with the State Department. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe of 650,000 emails found on the laptop computer of disgraced former New York Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Abedin, is but the proverbial tip of the iceberg. While FBI agents pore through Abedin’s emails that were discovered on the laptop and looking Mrs. Clinton’s emails that were either not destroyed by her aides or which were never accounted for, the real story is the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation and Teneo.
Five FBI field offices are investigating the racketeering of the foundation and the foreign connections of Teneo. The offices include New York; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Miami. Little Rock is the home of the Clinton Foundation, while New York is the home base of Teneo. The addition of the Miami field office to the Clinton probe is significant. One of Teneo Intelligence’s many global offices is located in Bogota, Colombia. A secretive Colombian private equity fund, «Fondo Acceso», financed by Mexican mega-billionaire Carlos Slim and Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, is run out of the Clinton Foundation’s Bogota office. Tracking the money being fed into the Clinton Foundation may include proceeds from the illegal narcotics traffic in Colombia and other nearby countries. The Bogota activities of the Clinton Foundation, «Fondo Acceso», which ironically means «Access Fund», and Teneo appear to be concentrated in the Chico Business Park in the Colombian capital. Therefore, the involvement of the Miami office, in investigating Clinton Foundation funding, including the major donations from Slim and Giustra, makes a world of sense.
Teneo was co-founded by longtime Bill Clinton associate Doug Band, who served in Clinton’s White House Counsel’s Office and later as Clinton’s chief aide in the Clinton Foundation and its associated Clinton Global Initiative. Band’s brother is Bill Clinton’s medical doctor who accompanies the ex-president on foreign trips. Doug Band was the point person who lobbied the incoming Barack Obama administration in 2008 to appoint Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.
Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at State ensured that there was little separation between her department, the Clinton Foundation and Global Initiative, and Teneo. Abedin served as Mrs. Clinton’s «transition team» leader as the Secretary of State left the department to launch her presidential candidacy after the November 2012 election. From that time on, Mrs. Clinton, Abedin, Doug Band, Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta, and others engaged in an email flurry to 1) ensure that the files in the private servers were either scrubbed or sanitized; 2) to officially sever all links between them and the Clinton Foundation and Teneo; and 3) to paint a picture for the public that all was well and legal with Mrs. Clinton’s term as America’s chief foreign policy executive. Unfortunately, the entire Clinton team has been exposed with the publication of emails from Mrs. Clinton’s swearing in as Secretary of State in 2009 to after she launched her campaign for the White House in 2013.
The picture painted by the emails is one of modern-day gangsters milking everything they possibly could out of supposed public service.
The FBI’s New York field office is also likely looking at Teneo’s dealings with other Clinton allies. It was Teneo that advised former New Jersey Democratic Governor Jon Corzine's MF Global investment firm as it was collapsing amid charges of major fraud by Corzine, a Clinton loyalist. It is also known as Mrs. Clinton communicated with President Obama over her private server and that Obama used a pseudonym. Obama lied to the American people when he stated that he first learned of the existence of Mrs. Clinton’s server from news media reports. There is little wonder why Obama has refused to condemn FBI director James Comey for re-launching his probe of the Clinton emails, based on the discovery of the additional traffic on Weiner’s laptop. Presidents who dug themselves deep into scandals by lying about «what they knew and when they knew it» helped sink the administration of Richard Nixon and almost cost Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton their presidencies. Obama was wise not to interfere in the FBI’s many criminal cases now building up like a tidal wave against Mrs. Clinton.
The many Clinton scandals also involve the illegal shipment of U.S.- and foreign-manufactured weapons to jihadist rebels in Libya and Syria against U.S. law. When Clinton and Abedin oversaw the jihadist rebellions in both countries, the U.S. was subject to imposing a United Nations arms embargo directed against both civil war theaters. The sudden decision on October 5, 2016, by the Justice Department to drop all charges against the State Department-licensed Turi Defense Group of Arizona and its owner, Marc Turi, for violating U.S. law by shipping unregistered weapons to Libyan rebels, some of which were transferred to Syrian rebels by the CIA station in Benghazi, indicates that Attorney General Loretta Lynch wanted the Turi case to disappear before the November 8th election.
The federal trial of Turi and his company was due to begin on November 8th. The indictment of Turi was brought in the U.S. Court for the District of Arizona in Phoenix. Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport was the scene of an impromptu and highly-questionable tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch on June 27, 2016. Turi claims that approval for the secret weapons shipments to Libya and onward to Syria were personally approved by Mrs. Clinton and had a green light from the CIA. Any new email or other evidence that Mrs. Clinton authorized illegal weapons shipments to jihadist terrorists would have required the FBI to broaden its investigation of both Hillary and Bill Clinton, as well as Lynch. Mrs. Clinton may have violated federal law by permitting the shipment of weapons to belligerent parties in Libya and Syria; Mr. Clinton may have obstructed justice in talking to the Attorney General; and Lynch may have violated her oath of office in misusing her position as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice.
The Clinton scandal, in many ways, resembles the Iran-Contra episode more than it does Watergate. In Watergate, the cover-up by Nixon and his cronies, in many respects, was worse than the original crimes. In Iran-Contra, the arms and drugs smuggling crimes were equal to the cover-up, including the criminal role of then-Vice President George H. W. Bush in the entire affair. With the Clintons’ «E-mailgate», shipping U.S. weapons to terrorists and accepting foreign campaign donations from dodgy regimes in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Qatar are every bit as bad as the obvious ensuing cover-up by Hillary Clinton and her and her husband's cronies.
If these many cases are what the FBI and its offices in Washington, New York, Little Rock, Los Angeles, Miami, and possibly Phoenix, are now looking at, the FBI director had every right and a constitutional responsibility to inform Congress and the voting public. And FBI director Comey has every right not to tip off to the Clinton gang what he and the bureau may have on them, evidence demanded now by Mrs. Clinton and her supporters. This evidence may become material to the impeachment of Mrs. Clinton from the office of president of the United States should she be elected on November 8th.
- Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander Boasts That The US In "Strong Decline"
Seemingly no amount of cash ransom payments, made in the form of Swiss Francs and Euros (you know, because USD just wasn’t acceptable), are sufficient to buy off a continuously defiant Iranian government. Time and time again the Iranians continue act in a provocative fashion either taking our sailors hostage or provoking our navy fleet in international waters but we still grant more concessions. According to the Daily Mail, the latest Iranian insults come courtesy of Revolutionary Guard commander, Hossein Salami, who told a crowd gathered to celebrate the 1979 US Embassy siege that the US is in “strong decline.”
A senior Iranian military official welcomed Thursday what he said was the “strong decline” of the United States, during celebrations marking the start of the 1979 US embassy siege.
“America is no longer number one and the first power of the world,” deputy Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Salami told thousands gathered outside the former US mission in Tehran.
“America’s political will can no longer manage political and military development in… the world of Islam. America’s political power has strongly declined.”
Perhaps we’re naive but this all sounds more like taunting than a country that wants to engage in reasonable discourse with the United States. Perhaps Secretary of State John Kerry could explain one more time why we lifted sanctions against a country whose commander tells a group of students that “our fight with Americans will continue” all while those students shout “death to America?”
Every year on November 3-4, Iran celebrates the 444-day siege of the embassy when more than 50 diplomats, staff and spies were taken hostage by Islamist students demanding the extradition of the shah, who had fled to America after being deposed a few months earlier in the Islamic revolution.
The crisis severed US-Iranian diplomatic ties for decades, but Tehran last year clinched a deal with world powers to curb its controversial nuclear programme in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions.
Protesters on Thursday chanted the traditional rallying cries of “Death to America” and “Death to the House of Saud”, in reference to Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia.
But the US remains Iran’s main enemy, and Tehran and Washington back opposing sides in several regional conflicts, including Syria and Yemen.
“Our fight with the Americans will continue” Salami said. “Pursuing our ideals in the world of Islam and in Iran, we will recognise no stopping point or red line.”
Meanwhile, this is what we received in return for lifted sanctions and billions of cash:
Mr. Obama, might we suggest it’s time for a new approach?
- …And The Dominoes Fall
With Guy Fawkes Day tomorrow, and America’s “most important election ever” just around the corner, we thought this clip prescient as we have a feeling the dominoes are going to fall soon…
“…so much chaos, someone will do something stupid… and when they do, things will turn nasty”
h/t Jim Quinn’s Burning Platform blog
- Civil War II – Fourth Turning Is Intensifying (Part 1)
Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
“History offers even more sobering warnings: Armed confrontation usually occurs around the climax of Crisis. If there is confrontation, it is likely to lead to war. This could be any kind of war – class war, sectional war, war against global anarchists or terrorists, or superpower war. If there is war, it is likely to culminate in total war, fought until the losing side has been rendered nil – its will broken, territory taken, and leaders captured.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe -1997
As we enter the final stretch of this vitriolic, deplorable, venomous, propaganda saturated, deceitful, rigged presidential election spectacle, it becomes painfully obvious this Fourth Turning is careening toward bloodshed, bedlam, confrontation, and civil war. The linear fixated establishment, who fancy themselves intellectually superior to the irredemables, are too blinded by their sociopathic, increasingly audacious subversion of the Constitution, to grasp the level of rage and disillusionment of a white working class that has been screwed over for decades.
As the Wall Street shysters frantically accelerate their embezzlement of what remains of middle class wealth, with the Fed and the corporate media propagandists as their wing-men, the country devolves into a corporate fascist state. The disposition of the nation grows dark like the sky before an approaching deadly blizzard. As passions boil over and violence portends, this Fourth Turning hastens towards a bloody decade ahead with an uncertain climax.
If you think this is just hyperbole, you either haven’t studied history or your cognitive dissonance and normalcy bias prevent you from seeing the unavoidable societal altering clashes, which occur like clockwork on an eighty year cycle, when the portents are right in front of your eyes. Historian Arnold Toynbee’s great war cycle that arise every 80 years or so, aligns perfectly with the Fourth Turning generational theory. Great wars occur when the generation that doesn’t remember the last catastrophic war ascends to leadership of the country.
We are eight years into a Crisis period which won’t end until the mid-2020s. As this bitterly vicious presidential campaign accelerates towards a finale which will leave the country divided and irate, the hostile opposing forces will be seeking revenge, retribution, and retaliation no matter the outcome. There is no doubt the regeneracy is well under way.
“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
It was five years ago I spent a couple fascinating hours with Neil Howe, co-author of the Fourth Turning, during the Occupy Wall Street protests. He thought the protests were all passion and no depth, engineered by anarchist Boomers. He was right. I thought OWS might be the start of the regeneracy, but it flamed out quickly. It was only a foreshadowing of what was to come. Whatever event or movement created the regeneracy, it would be driven by the toxic combination of debt, civic decay, and global disorder.
Neil was particularly worried about the Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy and how it was ruining our economic system, creating disincentives to saving and encouraging warped, debt driven speculation. And that was in 2011. The Fed keeping interest rates near zero on behalf of a corrupt establishment for the last eight years has been the primary factor in creating the anger, disillusionment and revolutionary spirit driving the regeneracy.
No critical thinking human being can deny this tumultuous presidential election and its equally turbulent primaries have been fueled by the dreadful self-serving response of the establishment to the 2008 Wall Street created financial collapse; the geopolitical anarchy created by U.S. interventionism in the Middle East; the civic decay created by a failing government educational system; rampant debt financed materialism enabled and encouraged by the financial/media complex; and racial division facilitated by the president and his social justice warrior brethren.
The rescue of Wall Street and destruction of Main Street by the Fed, Wall Street and the captured politicians of both parties in Washington D.C. has created the angry, acrimonious, throw the bums out mood boiling over in flyover America. The widening Grand Canyon gap in wealth between the haves and the have nots, produced by solutions from sociopaths in suits has reached the pitchfork and torch level.
The linear thinking ruling class has been in denial since this Crisis catalyzed in September 2008. Their looting, pillaging and ransacking campaign, designed to enrich and empower a small cadre of shadowy, powerful, wealthy men, had been successful for decades. When you control the currency and interest rates; rig the financial markets; buy the politicians; write the laws and regulations; own the corporate propaganda machines known as the mainstream media; operate a high tech surveillance state; create a dumbed down populace through government school indoctrination; and distract the masses with iGadgets, reality TV, hero worship, professional sports, social media, irrelevant cultural issues, and literally thousands of other modern day bread and circuses; you become arrogant and careless.
These sociopaths are so consumed with their ravenous fleecing of the middle class, waging wars for profit, and shredding the Constitution, they failed to recognize 2008 for the seismic earth shattering event that will change everything. The mood of the country shifted like tectonic plates beneath the nation. The mood continues to grow dimmer, as the peasants grow poorer and the modern day aristocracy (Wall Street bankers, corporate executives, corrupt politicians, shadowy billionaires) accumulate obscene ill-gotten wealth through their complete capture of the system. This perverted, degenerative, criminal degradation of our society is powerfully summed up by Jesse from Jesse’s Café Americain:
“Not all sociopaths wield knives and knotted cords. Some wear suits, and are exceptionally intelligent and articulate, obsessively driven, and are able to use and undermine the law and the rules for their advantage, like weapons. It is never about the win, never about the money. It is about the kill, the expression of their hatred, about elevating themselves with the suffering of others. Bind, torture, kill. Not only with ropes and knives, but also with power and money, and the subversion of law. Lawlessness is their addiction, their will to power.
When societies become lax and complacent, these sociopaths can possess great political power through great amounts of unprincipled money. And over time they become almost anti-human, destroyers of all that is good, all that is life, all that offends their insatiable sickness with its goodness. They twist the public against itself, and turn a broad sweep of society into their killing grounds. This is the undeniable lesson of the last century. There are monsters, and they walk among us.”
Neil Howe has noted in previous articles the catalyst, climax and resolution of Fourth Turnings can be specifically dated. But the regeneracy is more of an era than a date. With only three previous American Fourth Turnings, I imagined the regeneracy to be a specific event where the American people, faced with growing peril and danger, put aside their differences and rallied around a strong leader to build something new. Boy was I wrong.
In retrospect, the American people were numbed by the Great Depression and the bloody initial battles of the Civil War. They just let FDR and Lincoln do whatever they needed to do. The regeneracy marks a growth in centralized authority and resolute governance at a time of great risk and urgency. I believe this era of regeneracy began at the outset of the presidential primaries early in 2016.
Based upon the reaction of the citizens in the last ten months, the dire problem facing the nation, perceived as the largest threat to our future, happens to be the Deep State establishment currently ruling the country. The captured mainstream media and grey beards running both political parties were completely stunned, horrified, and irate at the unprecedented success achieved by the two anti-establishment candidates, Trump and Sanders.
This election was supposed to follow the script as planned and coordinated by the establishment, with Hillary Clinton defeating Jeb Bush and continuing the corrupt status quo policies agreed to by the bought off leaders of both parties. They badly miscalculated the mood of the country and the whirlwind of change seeking to sweep away the stubborn remnants of a crooked, decrepit, putrid, existing social order. This collective middle finger to the establishment could only happen during a Fourth Turning.
This regeneracy is well under way and is poised to transform and replace the very foundation of this crumbling empire of debt, delusions, and denial. The unanswered question is what happens next. I posed that question to Neil Howe five years ago and he said the specific events of a Fourth Turning are unknowable, but the reaction to those events by the generational cohorts is consistent over time.
We are seeing the reaction of critical thinking Americans as they come to the realization the system is rigged against them. A revolutionary spirit is once again rising among the deplorables. I also asked Neil about the theory Fourth Turnings alternate between external conflicts and internal conflicts. He found the subject fascinating, but didn’t think there were enough data points to make a determination.
Based on the current path of this Fourth Turning, I’m now convinced of this alternating sequence between advancement cycles and atonement cycles. The advancement cycles can be seen as establishing, whereas atonement cycles are disestablishing. It is apparent each Fourth Turning alternates between an external struggle and an internal struggle. The American Revolution was a struggle against an external oppressor – Great Britain.
The Civil War was an internal struggle between the industrial North and the agrarian South. The Depression/World War II struggle was mainly against an external threat – Germany, Japan, and Italy. The American Revolution established our country. There was optimism and elation as a new republic, forged under an enlightened Constitution and led by judicious intelligent men, was born. It was clearly an advancement cycle.
The Civil War disestablished states’ rights, slavery, agrarian society and Constitutional rights. It was an atonement cycle for our actual and implicit sins. There was no glorious high. The resolution felt more like defeat, with the country exhausted, bitter and angry. The country had exhausted itself, spilling the blood of over one million men. The new High after an atonement cycle is like a cold miserable rainy dark Spring.
The Great Depression/World War II Fourth Turning established a new world order led by the United States. As the only major country left unscathed by the ravages of global war, the U.S. became the producer for the world, whose dollar was unquestioned as the currency of global trade. The new High was unleashed with fanfare and adulation. It was like a delightfully warm Spring, with flowers blooming and children frolicking.
All signs point toward this Fourth Turning being a life or death struggle between the ruling class of sociopathic bankers, corporate elites, and sleazy politicians versus the oppressed and infuriated middle class. The lying, deceit, rigging, deception, theft and other crimes perpetrated by the ruling elites will be atoned for. The heroic patriotic revelations from Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Bradley (Chelsea) Manning proving the government and politicians to be lying, corrupt, immoral, sociopathic traitors to the Constitution have undermined the last vestiges of trust in the system and the establishment. The alignment of generational dynamics will provoke the responses to events moving forward. We have been badly led. A silent coup by Deep State perpetrators has led to the complete capture of our economic, financial, judicial and political systems.
A vast swath of the populace has been lured into living beyond their means. The existing system is unsustainable. The Boomer generation does not want to yield on their perceived entitlements. The Millennial generation is saddled with un-payable debts, living in their parents’ basements, working the night shift at Ruby Tuesday. Generation X is trapped in the middle of this generational struggle. The huge economic imbalances, created by politicians buying votes and engineering wealth inequality to benefit the few, have built up over decades like flood waters behind a weakening levee. When the levee breaks the morally bankrupt criminal social order will be swept away in the raging torrent to follow.
Winter will eventually turn into Spring, but it might be a bitter, gloomy, austere Spring. Every Fourth Turning brings on forecasts of imminent doom, but that is also a trait of Prophet (Trump, Clinton) Generations. It’s how they feel about the prospects of their imminent die off; they expect the entire world to go with them. The 2008 financial crisis was horrific, scary and an eye opener for those who blindly believed what they were told by their establishment zoo keepers. The regeneracy has begun; trust in the system has further disintegrated; this presidential election has further deepened this distrust of the entrenched establishment; and the coming bust for stocks, bonds, and real estate will knock out the supports for the dwindling remaining trust in this crooked system.
“This might result in a Great Devaluation, a severe drop in the market price of most financial and real assets. This devaluation could be a short but horrific panic, a free-falling price in a market with no buyers. Or it could be a series of downward ratchets linked to political events that sequentially knock the supports out from under the residual popular trust in the system. As assets devalue, trust will further disintegrate, which will cause assets to devalue further, and so on.”
Eventually, all of America’s lesser problems will combine into one giant problem. The very survival of the society will feel at stake, as leaders lead and people follow. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers’ visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
The next ten or so years will be atonement for decades of bad choices, corrupt leadership, living beyond our means, waging wars of choice across the globe, believing blatant falsehoods, exhibiting willful ignorance, ignoring facts, and failing to uphold the Constitution. Don’t think you can escape the consequences of this Fourth Turning. It doesn’t matter whether you lived according to a moral code, avoided debt, worked hard, paid taxes, and generally lived an upstanding honorable life.
The death and destruction headed our way will engulf the innocent as well as the guilty. I’m reminded of the penultimate scene in Clint Eastwood’s dark, brooding, vengeful western Unforgiven when Little Bill Daggett laments to “killer of women and children” William Munny that he doesn’t deserve to die this way. Munny responds, “deserves got nothin’ to do with it.” Then he pulls the trigger. This is the kind of future we will be dealing with, whether we like it or not.
In Part Two of this article I will use recent polling data to assess where the most likely sparks will arise to start the civil war conflagration which will accelerate the crumbling of the American Empire. To reinforce the obvious, Fourth Turnings NEVER de-intensify. They end after the spilling of much blood, incomprehensible destruction and the total defeat of the vanquished.
- Demystifying The Chinese Yuan
With one of the world’s largest economies and a growing financial sector, China continues to rise as a global power. And, as The Money Project notes the country’s currency, the Chinese yuan (officially the Renminbi), is also starting to mature.
The most recent evidence of this? The IMF’s decision to include the yuan as a part of its SDR international reserve asset, a basket of major world currencies:
The Chinese economy is significant on a world stage, but its currency and financial system still have major growing up to do.
Courtesy of: The Money ProjectChina is walking a fine balance: it desperately wants to legitimize its currency, but it also must find ways to keep its economic engine moving forward.
The Yuan’s Wild Ride So Far
In the early 1980s, the Chinese began to implement ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’, by opening up the state-controlled economy to the global market in very limited ways.
Since being on the world stage, the yuan has been all over the place. It’s been pegged to the U.S. dollar, unpegged, and then temporarily re-pegged again during the Financial Crisis.
Most recently, the currency was devalued sharply in 2015 to make up for slowing GDP growth. Today, it sits at six-year lows against the U.S. dollar.
The PBOC and the Chinese Yuan
The strategy used by The People’s Bank of China has not been easy to follow.
China wants its currency to matter, but it is also guilty of intervening in currency markets according to the priorities of the day.
In September 2016, for example, the country increased overnight borrowing rates and bought up the yuan in large amounts to counteract shorting from international traders.
The Fix Is In
Onshore, the yuan is allowed to trade within 2% of the PBOC reference point.
The previous day’s trading might be a factor in setting this. Then again, it may not matter. The decision is not up to the market. Value is set by unnamed officials behind the scenes.
This “flexibility” allows China to swing between different strategies for the yuan.
The Dragon’s Gambit
China can print money endlessly to keep the yuan’s value artificially low, which is good for manufacturers. This is handy in a case such as when exports fall year-over-year, and the economy is slowing.
But in other cases, China has different priorities, such as protecting the value of the yuan during times of international uncertainty. It can help to do this by securing the yuan with surprise gold holdings announcements or by dumping massive amounts of U.S. Treasuries to prop up the yuan’s price.
Sometimes these divergent strategies appear to be operating in the same week. Who’s in charge?
International currency traders ultimately don’t know how these decisions are made, or who is making them.
The Golden Hoard That Wasn’t
China’s currency manipulation has helped it to accumulate massive foreign exchange holdings. But these holdings are not a sign of economic strength or a basis for investment in the country’s future. They’re a hedge against currency flight. When the economy is sinking, the government can use these reserves to prop it back up.
The Dragon Sleeps
According to the Bank of International Settlements, trading volume of the Chinese yuan has doubled over the last three years.
But the U.S. greenback and other top currencies have a huge advantage: people think they know what they are worth. The value isn’t set by government apparatchik.
For now, the Chinese yuan remains a sleeping dragon. If China ever really joins the global market in a meaningful way, watch the currency wake up and breathe fire.
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