Sep 05

Today’s News 5th September 2018

  • Marines Begin Amphibious Landing Exercises In Sweden Ahead Of Massive NATO War Games

    The Marine Corps Times on Tuesday reported the details of the run-up to what’s being described as NATO’s largest ever military games in a decade, called Trident Juncture, set to take place right up along Russia’s border with Europe.

    Currently, the US Marine Corps is engaged in preparatory maneuvers with Swedish counterparts in a training exercise that involves mock raids and amphibious operations up and down Sweden’s coastal island archipelagos. 

    Some 75 US Marines are said to be involved in the training which involves navigating an area of thousands of small islands known as the Stockholm Archipelago and which extend nearly 40 miles to the east into the Baltic Sea. 

    Prior Baltic NATO exercises in Ravlunda, Sweden from 2015. Image source: Flickr/U.S. Navy photo

    Russia is interpreting the exercises as a deeply provocative military action that signals NATO could be planning to use Scandinavian countries as a launch point for a potential future conflict. 

    The Marines are considered America’s most advanced forward deployed force “as the President may direct” according to their founding purpose and codified under the National Security Act of 1947. For this reason they are considered a “force projection” and “first to be deployed” unit in any major conflict.

    Though Trident Juncture, which will involve nearly 40,000 NATO troops, is not set to start until later this Fall, the Marine exercise, called Archipelago Endeavor, is part of a broader and semi-permanent build-up of American Marine forces in Scandinavia which was first reported months ago. 

    It was revealed in early June that the Norwegian government, which is hosting the NATO games, intends to add 400 U.S. Marines to Norway before the most significant military exercise since the Cold War, according to the country’s Ministry of Defense. By the time the Trident Juncture games begin, about 700 Marines in total are expected to be present in the Scandinavian region, and will reportedly be based in Norway for a period of five years. 

    Predictably, Russia has responded by pointing to the “anti-Russia” nature of the impending NATO exercises. 

    View of the Stockholm Archipelago, where the Marines are training this week. 

    During a briefing last week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “The troops and equipment of the alliance members and individual partner countries will be used on land, at sea and in the air to improve the skills of defensive and, crucially, offensive operations in the northern latitudes in case of a ‘high intensity’ conflict with a ‘comparable enemy.’” She added, “This demonstration of military potential will unfold in the immediate proximity to Russian borders and has a clear anti-Russian nature.”

    When Norway announced previously that it would double the number of US Marines in the country, Moscow warned of dire consequences and went so far as to describe the move as “an attack”.

    Notably, even though Sweden is a “nonaligned country” it’s increasingly upped its willing participation and closeness with NATO through periphery drills such as the currently ongoing Archipelago Endeavor exercise. Two years ago Russian President Putin formally announced for the first time that Russia would increase its own troop presence along its border with Finland should Moscow sense increased NATO aggression in the region.

    And last May non-NATO members Finland and Sweden formalized their intent to form a closer security relationship with the United States by signing a joint letter representing a non-binding pledge to partner in NATO military exercises. 

    According to the Marine Corps Times report, the US forces are also testing newly accessed weapons as part of the amphibious training drills: 

    The exercise also allows Marines to get their hands on Sweden’s Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle. The Corps plans to equip its grunts in the coming year with the Gustaf as it phases out the Mk 153 Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon, also known as the SMAW or SMAW MoD 2.

    The three-week training event is scheduled to last to September 8.

    As NATO’s chess pieces continue being positioned in Sweden and Norway and other regions around the Baltic in the largest military exercise since the Cold War this fall, how will Russia respond?

  • Hungary And Italy Unite On Migrants: EU Is About To Take A Nosedive

    Authored by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The EU is facing a real problem now that a new alliance has emerged within it. The Aug. 28 Hungary-Italy high-level meeting was a landmark event that seriously jeopardized European unity as those deep divisions emerged into the open. Budapest and Rome agreed to jointly oppose Brussels on the issue of migration. Expressing their determination to take a tough stance, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Italian Deputy Head of State and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini hit it off, creating what CNN called a Trojan horse within the European Union. The two agreed to jointly pursue their anti-immigration agenda prior to the European elections next May. Both slammed French President Macron for his stance on the problem. PM Orban described Macron as “the leader of the pro-migration parties in Europe today.”  According to him, “There are currently two camps in Europe and one is headed by (Emmanuel) Macron.”

    Before that event, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte met with his Czech counterpart Andrej Babis, who is also opposed to relocating refugees.

    The Sunday Express cited Massimiliano Panarari, a political science professor at Luiss University in Rome, who believes that “Italy has become a laboratory of European populism and risks moving away not only from Europe, but also from western democracies and getting closer, together with Orbán’s Hungary, to Vladimir Putin, who enjoys Salvini’s manifestations of sympathy.”

    There was something really important that Mr. Orban said during the press conference after the meeting with Salvini in Milan, the city that gave birth to Silvio Berlusconi, an Italian member of the European People’s Party (EPP) and ex-prime minister. The Hungarian PM “asked permission” to meet the Italian official from Berlusconi, who is a long-standing friend of Russia President Vladimir Putin. So is Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban. And Salvini? He opposes the Russian sanctions and is a member of the government headed by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who is expected to visit Moscow soon. While Europe is fending off the US attacks and the trade war lingers on, Russia’s influence is growing for the simple reason that many leaders want a friendly relationship with Moscow while defying the rule of Brussels.

    Italy called for immediate changes to EU’s Operation Sophia during the EU-wide summit of defense and foreign ministers in Vienna that was held Aug. 30-31. No agreement was reached about the ports where the ships filled with migrants would disembark. The EU’s anti-trafficking mission in the Mediterranean (Operation Sophia), currently headed by Italy, is in jeopardy. Rome is threatening to close its ports to the mission if no solution is found this week. If so, it’ll be a heavy blow to EU unity right before the Sept. 20 summit in the Austrian city of Salzburg that was convened to discuss migration — a hot-button issue on which the bloc has failed to reach an agreement.

    The anti-migration stance is backed by the Visegrad Group (V4), which includes the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, as well as Austria, that stands in defense of the right to remain national states instead of becoming part of a federalist entity led by the French-German alliance. The V4 is openly challenging the EU on its refugee policy.

    In July, the EU took legal action against Poland over the reform of its judicial system. But Warsaw is backed by Budapest. Poland and Hungary have joined together in opposition to the EU bureaucracy on many issues. With the two nations supporting one another, no EU sanctions can be levied against them. According to EU’s Article 7, two members are enough to bring that mechanism to a standstill.

    The emerging “anti-Merkel/Macron” alliance, comprising the Visegrad Group, Austria, and Italy, might soon be strengthened by a country that has been known as an exemplary EU member. The parliamentary election in Sweden will take place on September 9. The far-right Eurosceptic Sweden Democrats are expected to win big – by 18.7% – an increase of almost 50% over the 2014 election. Bookies predict an even larger win. If so, that party will hold the balance of power. The Sweden Democrats have threatened to vote down any government that does not give them a say over immigration policy. In any event, they’ll play an important role in the horse trading that will follow the election.

    The idea of a multi-speed Europe has been revived by the French president, auguring a possible split of that bloc that is already divided into mini-coalitions. Chances are slim for the EU to remain united. The bloc is about to take a nosedive. It’ll have to work really hard to survive, but the chances of overcoming the deepening rift appear to be slim at best.

  • Taliban Announces Death Of Notorious Terrorist Jalaluddin Haqqani

    He was head of a terror network that’s been called “the Sopranos of the Afghanistan War” which has been a lead group behind the most feared guerrilla warfare insurgency of the past thirty years in central Asia. 

    Jalaluddin Haqqani’s death was announced by the Taliban early Monday; however, it is unclear when exactly he died as prior death claims have been a matter of intense speculation since at least 2007, which is the year that some Afghan sources claim it actually happened. 

    According to a Taliban statement Haqqani died after a long illness, but further details weren’t given. He’s one of the most notable and controversial figures ever confirmed to have been trained by the CIA. 

    Jalaluddin Haqqani was friends with Osama Bin Laden, but Haqqani’s group goes back further and is more deeply rooted in central Asia than al-Qaeda. 

    The ‘Haqqani network’ has close ties to al-Qaeda and operates largely independently under the Taliban umbrella, and is based in the tribal Pakistani border area of Waziristan. Its roots go back to the 1970’s and the group was among the most effective mujahideen organizations to be trained and sponsored by the CIA in the US war against the Soviets in central Asia. 

    Their favored tactic, as CNN reports, citing war studies is “bold and complex suicide bombings, including high-profile attacks on US and foreign personnel and assassinations of high level people in Kabul and northern Afghanistan”. 

    Fox News reporting of his death describes that he “was considered a prized CIA asset” and a previous LA Times profile of his group says “The network is believed to be financed by some Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, and by the Pakistani establishment”.

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    Indeed when the Trump White House first announced earlier this year that the US would be cutting $300 million in military aid to Pakistan over its failure or refusal to root out Islamist militants, the Haqqani network was precisely one of the groups named. 

    In a September 2011 New York Times profile of Michael Vickers, who had been a top CIA officer planning US arms flow and covert logistics to the Afghan mujahideen, Haqqani was bluntly acknowledged as initially a CIA asset:

    During the Reagan administration, Mr. Vickers funneled weapons to, among others, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, both now morphed into Afghan insurgent leaders who are fighting the United States.

    “Yes, most of my colleagues from those days are now on the dark side,” Mr. Vickers acknowledged in a recent interview in his antiseptic office. “We were well aware that they weren’t the ideal allies.” Nonetheless, he said, “You make a deal with the devil to defeat another devil.”

    The group went on to become “by far the most lethal group, not just inside Afghanistan, but in South Asia in general,” in the words of Ahmad Majidyar, a fellow at the Middle East Institute and an expert on Afghanistan-Pakistan security issues, who further described, “The group is more like a criminal mafia group rather than an insurgent group.”

    Though belatedly listed by the United States as a terror organization in 2012, we wonder if any current or retired CIA officers will have a brief moment of fond memories reminiscing back to the days of training Haqqani’s men during the 1980’s. 

  • How The CIA Undermined Civil Rights

    Submitted by Disobedient Media

    Although the Civil Rights Movement resulted in many well known changes at an institutional level, it is widely agreed that the movement did not succeed in a total transformation of American society. The dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not fully realized. The exact reasons for this are subject to debate, which often unfortunately devolves into partisan blame shifting between conservatives and liberals. In contemplating this history, little attention is given to one of the most unfortunate reasons that the Civil Rights Movement lost steam – interference and attacks from American intelligence agencies bent on neutralizing what they saw as a force of change that could destabilize society.

    Efforts to marginalize and degrade the success of the Civil Rights Movement has played out for many years, but took on an initial intensity during the 1960’s. CIA assets including Gloria Steinem were never far removed from a larger overall process in which black American civil rights leaders were targeted and African American society was disrupted. Agents like Steinem were directly involved with spreading propaganda like a virus during the 60’s and beyond. The effects on the black community in the United States have been so tragically consequential that they could safely be defined as an experiment in population control. An examination of the methods in which the Civil Rights Movement was targeted can teach us much about our history, and even more about what we must vigilantly watch for in the future.

    I. Steinem’s History With The CIA

    The beginning of Steinem’s history with the CIA is somewhat unclear, although the facts indicate she was recruited either during her university years or immediately afterwards. From 1956 to 1958, Steinem traveled to India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow. According to documentation of Steinem’s career, individuals she met with during her time there included Indian Communist Party founder M. N. Roy and a researcher who appeared to have been a CIA agent. Steinem’s “official” association with the CIA began upon her return to the United States in 1959 when she took charge of a front organization called the Independent Research Service where she was tasked with recruiting students to attend Soviet-controlled youth festivals in 1959 and 1962.

    In 1978, feminist group Restockings wrote in the book Feminist Revolution that Steinem was listed as a co-director of an Independent Research Service pamphlet titled A Review of Negro Segregation in the United States which alleged that segregation of black Americans was at least partially self-perpetuated. When Feminist Revolution was first published, the CIA-connected Ford Foundation was among those to demand that publisher Random House remove all references to Steinem and the Independent Research Service.

    The connection between Steinem, the Independent Research Service the CIA was not exposed until 1967 when the details of the clandestine support were leaked to Ramparts Magazine, then reported widely by the Washington Post and New York Times. Both the CIA and Steinem herself would ultimately acknowledge the connection in subsequent years, although they both insisted that their work aimed to combat Communism.

    Steinem discusses her tenure with the CIA in the aftermath of its exposure

    Steinem’s acknowledged tenure with the CIA resulted in a number of high profile connections with individuals involved in various CIA operations. Research from the University of Missouri-St. Louis lists the Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank chairman John McCloy, OSS psychological warfare expert and senior executive at Time, Inc. C.D. Jackson and Watergate-connected CIA operative Cord Meyer as individuals who supported her work with the Independent Research Service. Although the CIA placed some degree of trust in Steinem, other agencies were wary of her. A few years later the FBI warned the Justice Department’s civil rights division that Steinem was a security risk and an inadvisable hire due to what they considered to be unacceptable far left associations.

    Although the relationship between Steinem and the CIA supposedly terminated after 1962, her associations with high profile figures controlling public policy continued. According to Julian Assange, Steinem dated Henry Kissinger during his years working for the Nixon administration. She would also spend nine years in a relationship with Stanley Pottinger, the former Assistant Attorney General with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division who insisted that there was no evidence of FBI involvement in the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.

    When Steinem founded Ms. Magazine in 1971, she chose Elizabeth Forsling Harris, a PR executive who helped with advance work for John F. Kennedy’s 1963 trip to Dallas, Texas as her co-founder and publisher. An examination of the effects and goal of her work throughout the late 1960’s and early 70’s gives the distinct impression that Steinem’s association with the CIA may not have ended, instead playing a role in the agency’s known attempts to undermine domestic Civil Rights groups during this period.

    II. Targeting Of Black America And Civil Rights

    The rapid initial success of the civil rights movement, and the promise it held to effectively disrupt the power structures in the United States at the height of the Cold War made it an obvious target for intelligence groups, both within the United States and abroad. Actions taken against the black community during these years included targeting civil rights leadership, drafting and deploying black males to fight in foreign conflicts and destruction of black society by targeting the family unit and promoting gender conflict.

    A. Targeting Black Leaders

    Black leaders had been targeted by intelligence and government agencies long before the 1960’s, but it was the 60’s that were marked by a series of targeted assassinations. Two of the most well known from this period are likely Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Although Malcolm X, a Black Nationalist, spent most of his career in opposition to MLK’s nonviolent approach to Civil Rights his opinions shifted just a year prior to his death. In May 1964, Malcolm was quoted in the New York Times as stating that his perspectives of white people had changed and that he would work with the younger generations to combat racism. He was assassinated in February 1965.

    As one of the most iconic leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. was undoubtedly a high-priority target. Although Dr. King delivered a number of socialistic critiques of capitalism during his lifetime he was ardently opposed to communism. It was this opposition in fact that caused him to be the only high profile American to be targeted by intelligence agencies in both the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union’s KGB opposed Dr. King due to his unwillingness to allow Communist sympathizers to foment poor race relations. His death came several years after Malcolm X’s in 1968.

    Civil rights leader Andrew Young (L) and others standing on balcony of Lorraine motel pointing in direction of assailant after assassination of civil rights ldr. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who is lying at their feet. Joseph Louw—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

    The removal of leadership figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X was essential to sideline individuals who might be more nationalistically minded or support American socialists over foreign supported extremism intended to deteriorate the Civil Rights situation.

    B. Disrupting Black Society

    Targeted assassinations of leadership figures coincided with the Vietnam War, which lead to a disproportionate number of black men being drafted or otherwise deployed to the war zone. The Oxford Companion to American Military History stated that although blacks represented 11% of the US population from 1965 to 1969, they made up 12.6% of the soldiers in Vietnam. The majority of these served in the infantry where they suffered casualty rates of 14.9%.

    It was statistics like these that caused Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights leaders to denounce Vietnam as being “a white man’s war, a black man’s fight” where black men were far more likely to see combat. Deploying males to a war zone also had the effect of disrupting society in a manner similar to the Second World War.

    C. Consolidation Of CIA Domestic Intelligence Programs Under Operation CHAOS

    The Central Intelligence Agency has a long and tenured history of interfering in foreign politics. Their domestic operations, however, have been given considerably less attention in recent years. By the end of the 60’s the CIA began to centralize their various domestic operations under a single program known as Operation CHAOS. Officially begun in 1967, all existing CIA domestic programs were consolidated under CHAOS after Richard Nixon assumed the presidency in January 1969.

    Operation CHAOS served as a means for the CIA to infiltrate and spy on groups and individuals they considered to be behaving in a manner that was “illegal and subversive.” Organizations that were targeted by the CIA included socialist-leaning student organizations, the Black Panther Party and Ramparts Magazine, the publication that first exposed Gloria Steinem’s relationship with the CIA.

    On April 4th, 1969, Steinem published her “landmark” piece “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation” in New York Magazine. The article’s main focus was to encourage women to break away from the Civil Rights movement and “start concentrating on their own problems.” With Civil Rights leadership weakened by targeted assassination and men of fighting age being shipped out to a foreign theater of combat her writings served to perpetuate these issues by causing gender conflict within the civil rights movement.

    “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation” stood in total contrast to previous prevailing philosophies that supported societal models, which Steinem attacked as “patriarchal.” Leadership such as Dr. King preached that the cornerstone to building a strong black American community was the nuclear family. In 1966, King gave a speech where he stated that black America’s “very survival was bound” to their ability to create and foster strong families. “The whole of society,” King said, “rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.” With figures like King out of the way by 1969 there was clear opportunity to attack what he had seen as a cornerstone of the black society in America – healthy and harmonious families. The spark that was lit by Steinem’s article would inoculate the Civil Rights Movement with a new strain of feminism that spread like a pathogen.

    III. Exposure Of Operation CHAOS And Coverup

    The years following 1969 were marked by turbulence and increasing inter agency spats. While the FBI supplied the CIA with intelligence for Operations CHAOS, they refused to provide any context or analysis due to the perception that this would violate their charter. It’s possible that this tension contributed to the outbreak of the 1972 Watergate scandal, where an active CIA asset was arrested while bugging the DNC’s headquarters and a senior FBI official provided information exposing the scandal to the Washington Post.

    With the increasing public scrutiny of covert domestic programs, Operation CHAOS was officially shut down in 1973. In 1974, journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the program with an investigative piece published in the New York Times. The expose caused enough public outrage for the establishment of committees in the House and Senate as well as the Rockefeller Commission, headed Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller. These investigations were marked by attempts from Ford Administration officials to block Congressional committees from accessing information and interview with officials and focusing on the more easily controlled Rockefeller Commission.

    The Commission’s goal was not to reveal wrongdoing by US intelligence agencies but to mitigate damage caused by leaks. Famous revelations such as the disclosure of Project MKULTRA were in fact “safe” because CIA officials considered these programs to be failures. It is already public knowledge that some information including disclosures of the CIA’s involvement in assassination plots was removed from the final report by the Commission. The involvement of Nelson Rockefeller, whose family was involved with government calls for population control and funded Nazi-affiliated eugenics programs which maintained files on millions of Americans marked for genetic elimination was especially inappropriate and showed the pervasive interest of special interests in embedding themselves within the Rockefeller Commission for their own private purposes.

    IV. Post-Rockefeller Commission

    Targeting black communities continued long after the 1960’s. When disclosure of US bioweapon experimentationon American populations began in the 1970’s tragedies such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments showed that black Americans were specifically targeted by various bioweapon programs conducted by various government agencies. Much of the information surrounding these programs remains classified, “destroyed” or otherwise kept from the public sphere. It is impossible to know the full extent of these programs that used American citizens as guinea pigs for experiments in biological warfare and population control methods.

    Reporters who exposed other CIA targeting of black American communities were singled out for discrediting and character assassination. Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance series published with The Mercury News alleged the involvement of the CIA in trafficking of crack cocaine that was rampantly distributed in black communities and resulted in disproportionate sentencing of black Americans. The high incarceration rates that resulted from these policies further contributed to the fragmentation of the black American family unit. Webb was attacked by almost every mainstream media outlet for his revelations and was ultimately found dead with two gunshots to the head.

    The combined effect of legal, biological and sociological attacks on the black community has prevented them from realizing Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a black American society built on bedrock of stable family units. In 1960, two thirds of black children lived with two parents – today that number has been reduced to one third. Over 73% of black children are born out of wedlock according the data published by the Center for Disease Control in 2012 (a dramatic increase from 11% in 1938). These statistics are part of an overall decrease in fertility and birth rates that have continued uninterrupted to this day. This trend is alarming, given that social scientists have been observing since the 1960’s that the breakdown of the family unit was not due to economic factors. The obstacles created by the intelligence community and new social theories degraded the ability of black families to retain their cohesive structure, exposing generations to the struggles of single parenthood and continuous poverty.

    Despite these factors that disrupt family structure and make life more difficult for black women, Gloria Steinem as recently as 2015 told the Huffington Post that she credited black women with “starting the feminist movement” she helped foster and spread in the 1960’s and 70’s. She has remained active in various social justice movements. In January 2017, she was a speaker at the Women’s March protests in Washington DC.

    It seems that Operation CHAOS may have lingered on past 1973 in spirit if not in name. Certain members of the Reagan administration would eventually attempt to allow the CIA to resume domestic operations in the 1980’s. The proposal received strong criticism in the New York Times. In 2015, reports began to emerge highlighting claims that an activist crossing the Canadian border was “randomly selected” for a search as part of a program called “Operation Chaos.”

  • Mapping The United States Of Arms

    Making friends and influencing people since 1950…

    The United States is the world’s largest weapons dealer.

    Will Geary, @wgeary, mapped the flows of arms exports leaving the U.S. from 1950 to 2017 to produce the fascinating video…

    The underlying data comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Arms Transfers Database. Units are expressed in trend indicator values (TIV). Each dot on the map = one TIV. Visualization by Will Geary (@wgeary).

  • Paper Money Eventually Returns To Its Intrinsic Value – Zero!

    Authored by Alex Deluce via GoldTelegraph.com,

    In socialist Venezuela, the price of a cup of coffee has doubled every few weeks.

    The annual inflation rate could hit 1,000,000 percent by years end. People can no longer afford food, but that’s okay because there isn’t any food to be found. South America’s once wealthy nation has spiraled from secure and stable into an unimaginable state of hyperinflation. Venezuela is experiencing the results of government mismanagement, corruption, and socialist ideology. President Maduro’s solution to the problem is to proudly lob three zeros off the hyperinflated Bolivar and call it a “miracle solution.”

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    At one time, Venezuela had the largest oil reserves in the world, which provided steady revenues for the country and a good living for its citizens. Oil accounted for most of Venezuela’s exports. Life in Venezuela was excellent. Then, in 1998, came President Hugo Chavez. Chavez used the abundant income stream to go on a spending spree as he instituted a large number of entitlement programs using the oil revenues. A strike in 2003 interrupted Chavez’s plans and caused the GDP to crash by 27 percent in just four months. Chavez began nationalizing industries and instituting price controls, which was the beginning on Venezuela’s inflationary spiral as Venezuelans developed a reliance on their government for products and services.

    The price of crude oil plummeted in 2014, and the economy shrank by 30 percent. Oil revenues, in the form of U.S. dollars, were dwindling, and Venezuela was unable to continue importing necessary goods. These days, in 2018, stores are empty as people attempt to survive on dealing through the black market.

    Venezuela is printing currency at the speed of a copy machine. The more money that is injected into circulation, the more it becomes devalued. The cup of coffee that could be bought for 140,000 bolivars rose to over 1,000,000 within weeks. Today, that cup costs 2,000,000 bolivars. Hyperinflation has placed the purchase of everyday items out of the reach of the average Venezuelan, although President Maduro has granted four wage hikes this year alone.

    Venezuela has lost most of its imports as it remains in a state of unprecedented crisis. People are starving, and the average weight loss is 25 pounds due to lack of food. Still, Maduro continues to print worthless currency. For Venezuela to reach this low abyss has taken a combination of corruption and mismanagement on every level of its nationalized industries.

    Hyperinflation in invariably the result of government mismanagement and the printing of fiat currency. Venezuela isn’t the only country experiencing inflation. According to Steve Hanke of the Cato Institute, the value of the Iranian rial decreased from 98,000 rials to the dollar to 112,000 rials in one day. That’s a one-day devaluation of 12.5 percent. As in Venezuela, the black market currency business in Iran is thriving. While the official exchange rate to the dollar is 44,030, the black market rate is 112,00, an increase of 154 percent over the official rate.

    Professor Hanke has previously dealt with hyperinflation in Bulgaria as adviser to President Petar Stoyanov. At that time, Bulgaria’s rate of inflation was 242 percent a month. Professor Hanke instituted a fixed rate of exchange for Bulgaria’s currency linked to an anchor currency, the German Mark. This prevented manipulation of the country’s currency and allowed market forces to determine its value. This stabilized Bulgaria’s currently quite effectively. Taking the government out of the equation was the prime move to successfully halt the country’s inflation. Bulgaria’s debt has decreased because it was forced to stop printing valueless money and continue spending money it didn’t have.

    Professor Hanke sees this as the solution to Iran’s current inflation problem. He suggests gold as the best “anchor currency” because the value of gold is dependent on market forces instead of government manipulation and whim.

    In 2017, Zimbabwe was another country with a daily inflation rate of 98 percent and an annual rate of 79,600,000,000 percent. Unemployment in Zimbabwe reached 80 percent. The country’s economy had broken down entirely due to its printing of fiat money and extreme socialist policies. In the 1990s, the government began to redistribute land from white farmers to black farmers. The inexperienced black farmers failed to produce enough food and caused a massive shortage and production fell sharply.

    Like other socialist countries, Zimbabwe began to print fiat money and flooding the economy with it. The worse the economic situation became, the more money was being printed. As government debt increased, the money machines continue to crank out currency that became more devalued, thus making it even harder to pay off any debt. As the economic output declined, shortages were on the rise. People had money, but few goods became available. The combination of increased money supply and a higher demand for goods forced up prices sharply. Foregoing all economic logic, President Mugabe blamed the greed of manufacturers for wanting to raise prices. It is the printing of worthless currency that causes inflation and price increase, not greed.

    In a repeat of Chavez’s move in Venezuela, Zimbabwe imposed price controls. But production costs increased quicker than prices, leaving producers with no incentive to produce. This increased the shortages and raised prices even more. Inflation invariably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. There was money to go around, but even a million dollars become worthless if the price of bread is two million dollars. The fare for transportation increased between the morning and evening commutes.

    The causes of hyperinflation are always the same, yet countries are refusing to learn from history.

    When governments begin to print money to pay off their debts, the money supply increases, as do prices. When goods become unaffordable, their demand increases, sending prices even higher. People begin to hoard goods, creating even greater shortages and higher prices. And governments continue to print money that keeps losing value. The formula is tried and true. Still, it continues. Since any articulate eight-year-old can state why a commodity that is rarer will be more valuable, it is a puzzle why central banks and governments can’t seem to grasp that increasing the money supply makes it naturally less valuable.

    1930s Germany, of course, is the standard example of hyperinflation. During WWI, the number of Deutschmarks being circulated rose from 13 million to 60 billion as the government kept the printing presses busy 24 hours a day. While the Deutschmark became valueless, the nation’s debt rose from 5 billion to 100 billion.

    The identical scenario has been repeated in Zimbabwe, and now in Venezuela. Governments have instituted the same solutions and have been met with identical failures.

    No country, if properly mismanaged, is immune to hyperinflation. Gold and silver are the best counterattack for individuals faced with fiat currency and spiraling costs. Hard assets are beyond the control of government manipulation and retain their value during the worst of time. Especially in the worst of times. 

  • Japan Paralyzed After Strongest Typhoon In 25 Years Makes Landfall, Killing 8

    Typhoon Jebi struck the heart of one of Japan’s largest metro areas on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and shutting down Osaka’s main international airport indefinitely, leaving close to 3,000 people trapped inside. The storm – the strongest on earth so far in 2018 – made landfall on Tuesday, bringing widespread flooding and winds of up to 130 miles an hour; it paralyzed swaths of the country shuttering shops, factories and amusement parks.

    The storm was the strongest to make a direct hit on the nation’s main islands in 25 years, causing high tides that flooded Kansai International Airport, a key gateway for flights from China and other Asian countries that was built on an artificial island in 1994.

    The typhoon prompted government evacuation orders for more than 49,000 people across southern Japan, with an additional 2 million people advised to flee, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said. Early in the afternoon on Tuesday, an oil tanker unmoored by the storm crashed into the only bridge that connects Kansai International Airport in Osaka Bay to the mainland. The Coast Guard was using a helicopter and patrol boats to rescue crew members, the public broadcaster NHK said.

    The storm traversed Japan’s main island of Honshu before traveling up its western coast, leaving a trail of death. Among the fatalities was the owner of a warehouse that collapsed on him, news reports said.

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    At least 700 flights have been canceled across Japan. Kansai Airport will not reopen on Wednesday. The local police said that travelers stranded at the airport, which sits on a man-made island, had been issued emergency water, bread and blankets, and that ferries were expected to start bringing people to safety Wednesday morning.

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    Kansai is the nation’s third largest airport, after Narita, outside of Tokyo in Chiba Prefecture, and Haneda, near central Tokyo. In 2017, it handled 28 million passengers, three quarters of them from overseas.

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    One of the airport’s two runways and the ground floor of a terminal building, used for sorting luggage and other activities, were under dozens of centimeters of water.

    The airport’s ground vehicles were partly submerged by the deluge, and an access bridge that connects the airfield was damaged by a 2,591-ton tanker that the storm unmoored and cast adrift. Public broadcaster NHK aired footage showing a huge crater in the bridge. The tanker had 11 crew aboard, and a helicopter rescue operation was underway.

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    In Kyoto, damage to the roof of the main rail station brought debris crashing down onto passengers below, injuring three people and closing parts of the station. News footage showed shipping containers strewn across Kobe port, a cargo hub. About 2.2 million homes were without power late Tuesday, according to a central government tally.

    The typhoon hit during a summer of meteorological misery for Japan, with floods and landslides killing more than 200 people in western Japan in July, the same month that heat waves claimed more than 130 lives.

    The transport ministry said it has been unable to assess the full amount of damage to Kansai International Airport and that no Japanese airport has reported such large-scale flooding in recent years. It is not known when the gateway might reopen. Repairing the bridge will take quite some time, according to West Nippon Expressway, the operator of the highway running across the bridge.

    Kansai Airport plays a significant role in Japan’s distribution network, and the closure will severely disrupt supply chains, especially for semiconductors.

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    Last year, 5.64 trillion yen ($50.6 billion) in exports and 3.94 trillion yen in imports passed through the airport. Electronic components, such as semiconductors, were the top export at 1.29 trillion yen, while pharmaceuticals were the biggest import, at 690 billion yen. But without an access bridge, the flow of goods from this hub will cease as it becomes little more than an isolated island.

    Precision equipment maker Disco may see delays in certain exports from its factory in nearby Hiroshima Prefecture. Semiconductor equipment manufacturer Screen Holdings uses the airport to deliver products and parts but will consider other channels, depending on how the situation develops, a spokesperson said.

    Companies will work to secure other routes in the event of a prolonged restoration. A shipping company that handles home deliveries said it will use such alternative facilities as neighboring Osaka International Airport, also known as Itami Airport.

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    All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines canceled all domestic and international flights from Kansai Airport for Wednesday. The airport handled a record 28.8 million travelers last year as the region becomes more popular with tourists, especially in Asia. A slow recovery will inevitably hurt visitors to Japan.

    The Tokaido and Sanyo bullet trains were also out of service Tuesday. The entire Tokaido line was suspended starting at 2 p.m., according to East Japan Railway, known as JR East, with only a special train delivering passengers stuck at stations between Tokyo and Nagoya overnight. Crews are hurrying to remove debris and restore operations, but as of 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday there was no timetable for when service will resume.

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    “We are teaming with local governments and related agencies, who I want to exert every effort to prevent the damage from expanding,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday afternoon in Tokyo at a meeting at the disaster response headquarters.

    But Jebi, which means “swallow” in Korean, has already left untold economic damage in its wake, shutting down factories across a wide area.

    Huge waves caused by Typhoon Jebi hit a fishing port in Aki, in Kochi Prefecture on Japan’s western coast

    Daikin Industries shut down its Osaka headquarters and three nearby plants on Tuesday, while Panasonic closed air conditioner and refrigerator production facilities in Shiga Prefecture. Daihatsu Motor shuttered three factories in the area, including its main plant in Osaka Prefecture.

    Toyota Motor on Tuesday evening was forced to stop production at 11 car and component factories in Aichi Prefecture, where it is based. Plants in other areas were also shuttered. A Toyota representative said its production and supply networks over a broad area were affected but added that operations will resume Wednesday morning.

    Panasonic also halted production, including at a Shiga Prefecture factory that makes air conditioners and refrigerators.

    Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry says in statement that 1.4 million buildings are without power nationwide as of 5:30am local time after Typhoon Jebi slammed into western Japan on Tuesday. Kansai Electric, the utility worst hit, says in separate statement that there are 1.09 million buildings without power in its service area as of 6am.

    Kansai electric, the utility worst hit, says in separate statement that there are 1.09 million buildings without power in its service area as of 6am. As many as 2.1 million buildings lost power at the height of the storm in Kansai’s service area and the utility has requested 40 high-voltage mobile power stations from rival power suppliers.

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    Major department stores in the Kansai region, around Osaka, were forced to close. J. Front Retailing shut all eight of its Kansai stores for the whole day. It was the first time the Kobe store has closed since 1995, when a 7.2-magnitude earthquake devastated the city.

    H2O Retailing, which operates the Hankyu and Hanshin department store chains, closed 12 stores in Kansai. Takashimaya and Kintetsu Department Store also shut some outlets.

    Universal Studios Japan in Osaka was closed a full day for the first time in 17 years on Tuesday and will remain shut on Wednesday to continue clearing debris. The park is scheduled to reopen on Thursday.

  • '70s TV Show Predicts "End Of Civilization By 2040" As Elites Warn Earth "To Undergo Major Transformation"

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

    An old television broadcast from 1973 has been discovered that warns that things will start getting really bad on this planet around the year 2020 and that our current civilization will come to an end in 2040. 

    The 1973 television broadcast focused on an MIT computer model known as “World One” that attempted to predict what growing pollution and population levels would mean for our planet if nothing was done. 

    This computer model was funded by the Club of Rome, and these days the exact same people are still trying to scare us into giving up our national sovereignty “for the good of the planet” so that they can implement their “New World Order”. 

    They hope to convince all of us that we are facing “global problems” that require “global solutions”, and they are convinced that power is better off in the hands of global policy-making institutions such as the United Nations.

    If you would like to watch the doomsday television broadcast from 1973 that was recently unearthed, you can find it right here. 

    If the MIT computer model is correct, things should start getting really, really bad over the next few years, and without a doubt it is entirely possible that we could see that happen.

    But even if the MIT model is proven correct, the goals of those that funded it are deeply insidious.  The Club of Rome was founded by some of the top globalists on the entire planet, and their ultimate goal is “a New World Order with corporations managing everything.”  The following comes from WND…

    Dug up from the TV vaults, the program predicts things are going to get extremely bad in 2020 – just about the time, coincidentally, Donald Trump is seeking re-election as president of the United States. That’s when the quality of life goes down to zero. Pollution becomes so serious it will start to kill people, which in turn will cause the population to diminish, lower than it was in the 1900s.

    “At this stage, around 2040 to 2050, civilized life as we know it on this planet will cease to exist,” the report states.

    Alexander King, the then-leader of the Club of Rome, evaluated the program’s results to also mean that nation-states will lose their sovereignty, forecasting a New World Order with corporations managing everything.

    Since 1973, the goals of the Club of Rome have not changed.

    The organization is getting ready to celebrate their 50th anniversary, and one of their top priorities right now is “implementing the Sustainable Development Goals”…

    In October, a 50th anniversary two-day conference will be hold by the Club of Rome on the “Sustainability Challenges for a World of 10 Billion People.”

    Six sessions are planned:

    1. Addressing a Planetary Emergency: Global Climate Change
    2. What Economy is Needed for a World of 10 Billion People?
    3. Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
    4. Prospects for Renewable Energy and a True Green Economy
    5. Insuring Humanity Survives the Anthropocene
    6. Human Values for the Anthropocene

    Founded by David Rockefeller, past and current members have included: Al Gore , Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, George Soros, Tony Blair, Deepak Chopra, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Marianne Williamson, King Juan Carlos I and most former United Nations general secretaries and high-ranking officials.

    If you go to the official UN website and read through the 17 point plan, you will rapidly discover that the Sustainable Development Goals are essentially a blueprint for global government.

    Instead of simply focusing on how to fix the environment, the Sustainable Development Goals cover just about every form of human activity imaginable.  The 17 point plan includes “solutions” for economics, healthcare, education, agriculture, gender equality, infrastructure, energy, transportation and “inclusiveness”.

    In essence, it is one of the most extensive blueprints for the New World Order that we have seen yet.

    But in order to get there, the global elite know that they have to scare us, and “climate change” is their favorite boogeyman these days.

    Just this week, Newsweek posted an article warning that if nothing is done “Earth as we know it could be transformed into an unrecognizable, alien world”…

    Within the next 100 years, Earth as we know it could be transformed into an unrecognizable, alien world, with ecosystems around the globe falling apart. After looking at over 500 ancient climate records, scientists have said current climate change is comparable to what the planet went through when it came out of the last ice age—and the seismic shift in biodiversity that took place then will likely happen again.

    Of course what they don’t tell you is that the climate of our planet has always been changing and it will always be changing even if all humans were completely removed.

    Human activity actually plays a very, very small role in the overall rate of climate change.  Primarily, changes in our climate are determined by the giant ball of fire that our planet revolves around.  Anyone that believes that we can stop climate change by altering human activity somewhat is simply being delusional.

    But that is not going to stop the elite from fearmongering.  According to this latest study that Newsweek is gushing about, the landscape of our planet will soon experience changes that are “ubiquitous and dramatic”…

    Study co-author Jonathan Overpeck, from the University of Michigan, said there will be a huge ricochet effect that will eventually threaten water and food security. “If we allow climate change to go unchecked, the vegetation of this planet is going to look completely different than it does today, and that means a huge risk to the diversity of the planet,” he said in a statement.

    “We’re talking about global landscape change that is ubiquitous and dramatic, and we’re already starting to see it in the United States, as well as around the globe. Our study provides yet another wake-up call that we need to act now to move rapidly towards an emission-free global economy.”

    If you have followed my work on a regular basis, then you already know that I believe that major Earth changes are coming.

    But absolutely nothing that these experts are proposing will stop them from happening.

    In the end, every “solution” that the global elite are proposing results in more power being transferred into their hands.

    They desperately want their “New World Order”, and they will do whatever is necessary to get it.

    So don’t fall for their propaganda no matter how good it may sound at times.  Their ultimate goal is global tyranny, and it must be resisted at every turn.

  • "It's All Gone" – New Jersey Couple Spent Homeless Vet's $400k GoFundMe Cash

    Just days after a judge ordered a Jersey couple’s assets frozen after they raised over $400,000 for a homeless veteran (who had shown them considerable kindness) to get his life back together and failed to give him the money, the case took the worst possible turn.

    Last October, Bobbitt came across Kate McClure after she had become stranded on the side of I-95 in a bad section of Philadelphia.  Even though he was living on the streets, he used his last 20 dollars to buy her some gasoline so that she could get home.

    To thank him, McClure and her boyfriend Mark D’Amico created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to help Bobbitt get off the streets.  The original goal was to raise $10,000, but the story went mega-viral and the campaign ultimately raised a total of $403,000.

    But McClure and D’Amico never gave Bobbitt the money.  Instead, they took charge of it and bought him the things that they thought he “needed”.

    Bobbitt accused the couple of fraud, alleging that the two committed fraud and conspiracy by taking large amounts of the donations to “enjoy a lifestyle they could not afford” and using the account as “their personal piggy bank,” and asked a judge to appoint a supervisor to manage the money in the fundraising account.

    And last Thursday a judge gave the South Jersey couple less than a day to hand over what’s left of the $400,000 they raised through a GoFundMe campaign for Johnny Bobbitt Jr.

    Today,  as The Inquirer reports, Bobbitt’s attorney Chris Fallon said he was told the money is all gone.

    Fallon said he learned of the missing money in a conference call Tuesday morning with lawyers for Kate McClure and Mark D’Amico, the Burlington County couple accused of mismanaging the money raised for Bobbitt.

    “It completely shocked me when I heard,” said Fallon. “It came as a complete surprise to me.”

    Word of the missing money came on the same day Bobbitt’s lawyers asked a judge to impose sanctions on the couple after the pair missed a court-ordered deadline to hand over the remaining GoFundMe money.

    The couple told  the Inquirer and Daily News last month that about $200,000 of the money remained.

    The balance, they said, had been spent to help Bobbitt.

    Bobbitt’s attorneys say he has received closer to $75,000, including the cost of the camper and an SUV, both since sold.

    D’Amico admitted spending $500 of the GoFundMe money to gamble at SugarHouse Casino, but he said he paid it back with his winnings.

    Jacqueline Promislo, one of Bobbitt’s three pro bono lawyers, said in a phone interview as they mulled further legal action: “We’re really concerned about the flight risk.” The lawyers asked the judge to issue sanctions requiring D’Amico and McClure to remain in New Jersey, surrender their passports, post a bond, and be barred from spending any money in their bank accounts.

    According to the application for sanctions, D’Amico and McClure failed to comply with the court’s 24-hour deadline “without explanation or request for extension.”

    GoFundMe spokesman Bobby Withorne said Tuesday that the company had deposited $20,000 into the escrow account created by Bobbitt’s attorneys to provide assistance for him while an investigation into the case proceeds. The Inquirer reports that Fallon said the $20,000 will be used for six months of housing and food for Bobbitt.

    “We are working with law enforcement officials to ensure Johnny receives all of the funds raised on his behalf,” Withorne said.

    “While we assist law enforcement with their ongoing investigation, GoFundMe is also working with Johnny’s legal team to ensure he’s receiving support while the remaining funds are being recovered.”

    As for donors, if GoFundMe determines that donations were misused, the company says it refunds individual contributions of up to $1,000.

    Finally, some potentially good news is that Bobbitt’s legal team says that they were able to enroll their client in a 28-day residential detox program on Monday.

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