- Globalists Want To Destroy Conservative Principles – But They Need Our Help
Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
For months now, long before the 2016 election, I have been warning about a specific social dynamic which is likely to lead to a form of civil war within the U.S.; namely, the reality that people on the left side of the political spectrum would become despondent at the inevitable loss of their candidate, Hillary Clinton, and that they would react by becoming far more militant. In my article 'Order Out Of Chaos: The Defeat Of The Left Comes With A Cost', published November post-election, I stated:
“When I mentioned in my last article the crippling of social justice, I did not mention that this could have some negative reverberations. With Trump and conservatives taking near-total power after the Left had assumed they would never lose again, their reaction has been to transform. They are stepping away from the normal activities and mindset of cultural Marxism and evolving into full blown communists. Instead of admitting that their ideology is a failure in every respect, they are doubling down.
When this evolution is complete, the Left WILL resort to direct violent action on a larger scale, and they will do so with a clear conscience because, in their minds, they are fighting fascism.”
I believed at that time that the social-justice cult would lose mainstream influence but that the existing minority would resort to even more insidious tactics and greater violence to get what they want; and, the so-called "moderate left" would cheer them on. As it turns out, I have been proven right so far.
Not that extreme Leftists have been averse to violence over the past year, but I think it is safe to say that the volume on the cultural Marxist machine has been turned up a notch. The riot at UC Berkeley over a scheduled speech by gay, conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos is a perfect example:
Then, there was the raid by SJWs at NYU on a speech by conservative journalist and comedian Gavin McInnes, in which they shouted down all discussion with mindless chants until the event had to be canceled. This was, of course, after they had already physically attacked people outside the building, including McInnes:
The social justice mantra is changing. At first, it was predominately about forming mobs to “shame” target political opponents into silence. Now, it is about forming mobs to do what they call “punching Nazis.” Leftists are now often seen regurgitating the claim — “This is only the beginning…”
I agree, this IS only the beginning. The Left is driven not only by the ideology of cultural Marxism, but also a very specific activist strategy outlined in Saul Alinsky’s 'Rules For Radicals'. The very core of Alinsky’s method revolves around one important rule in particular: the ends justify the means.
This is the key ingredient of moral relativism, and when a movement is motivated by moral relativism, there is no limit to the depths they will sink to get their way. Activists adopting the “ends justify the means” mentality are not interested in being “right,” or wise, or rational or logical or factual; they ONLY care about “winning.” This is their goal, and they will do anything to achieve it.
It is important to note, however, that all of these protests and the increase in violence is not taking place in a vacuum. As many liberty analysts have noted, Trump has hardly had time to do anything yet that would warrant national protests. Is Trump really the only catalyst? Not quite. The mainstream media and globalists like George Soros have been very effective in agitating or outright paying protesters and provocateurs to generate zombie mobs of gullible Leftists to use as a billy club for harassing conservatives.
That said, I want liberty activists and analysts to ponder on this for a moment — to what end is this being done? Why is Soros so interested in fomenting leftist rage? Is it designed to overthrow Trump? To initiate mob action and frighten conservatives into silence? Or do the globalists have a greater and more important goal in mind?
I have been writing often on the idea of 4th Generation Warfare the past month, and I think my readers are now well versed in the concept of the “three-steps-ahead” style of tactics, as well as the concept of manipulating an opponent to destroy himself, rather than fighting him directly. These are not new methods, the globalists have merely taken them to the next level.
But how do 4th Gen warfare tactics apply to the current Right vs. Left scenario in the U.S.? Well, everything is not as obvious as it seems.
As I outlined in-depth in my article Clinton Versus Trump And The Co-Option Of The Liberty Movement, globalists and the leftist media have been, in a strange way, quietly cheering for Trump, but only as a tool for absorbing the liberty movement (what they still call the “Tea Party”). This glee is made rather evident in an article published by Bloomberg in August titled The Tea Party Meets Its Maker.
There is a point I have been trying to make for most of the year that I think has been consistently missed by many in the liberty movement. That point being that the greatest danger to conservatives is NOT militant Leftists, but how we RESPOND to militant Leftists. That is to say, I believe the globalists are using the Left as a cattle prod to enrage conservatives and lure us into abandoning our principles in the name of defeating Marxists.
Consider this; the argument among most liberty analysts has been that the numerous anti-Constitutional programs put in place by the Obama administration in the past eights years would eventually be used by the political Left and the globalists as weapons to subdue and destroy conservatives and patriot groups. While Obama certainly tested the waters of tyranny over and over again, up to and including using executive orders to assassinate American citizens without trial, it is clear that those extensive powers afforded to the White House are no longer in the hands of the left; they are in the hands of Trump.
Obama even signed the “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act” into law AFTER Trump had already won the White House. Trump has now inherited this power as well, which seems to give government the authority to harass or even silence news sources they deem “fake news.” While many liberty activists cried foul and warned of a “coup” designed to shut down alternative news sites and thwart Trump’s inauguration, I warned that there was a much more dangerous scenario in play.
What will conservatives do in the face of the leftist mob funded by globalists and growing ever more vicious? Well, what do the globalists expect us to do? I think they expect us to look at all the government powers we once admonished as unConstitutional and say “hey, maybe these laws and executive orders are not so bad after all…”
I think the globalists are handing us the incredible temptation of far reaching bureaucratic power, and they expect us to abuse that power, as almost anyone would.
As an alternative analyst I am privy to trends in the liberty movement and in conservative circles that might not be immediately obvious to casual readers. Already, I am witnessing calls among conservatives to abuse government power to defeat the Left. I have seen comments such as:
“Trump should use the NDAA to imprison these leftists indefinitely…”
“The only solution is to throw the leftists into FEMA camps…”
“Trump needs to shut down the leftist media…”
“Sometimes it is okay to bend the rules of the constitution if you have the right president…”
And comments like this are popping up everywhere in liberty media boards. Now, I recognize that some of this talk is being posted by paid disinformation agents and provocateurs, but, I have heard regular conservatives and patriots, people who are long time proponents of the Constitution, echo similar sentiments.
I often use the analogy of the “One Ring” from The Lord Of The Rings to describe big government power. I really can’t find a better fictional symbol. Anyone who comes into possession of the “one ring” is eventually corrupted by it. Many good people believe that its darker energy can be contained and directed for good purposes, but they, too, are ultimately undone by it. The only answer, the only solution, is to abandon the ring, or to destroy it.
Overt government power is very much the same; it corrupts any person or group that comes in contact with it. Every group thinks that if only THEY were in possession of government that they would do things differently. This is a delusion. No person or group is benevolent enough to handle this responsibility, and this includes conservatives. Many groups would commit egregious and heinous crimes to take government for themselves, or keep it for themselves, all the while so many Saurons (globalists) laugh and smack their lips as the masses battle over numerous rings of power.
As I have noted time and time again for the past several months, Trump is the perfect tool for scapegoating conservative movements for the economic crisis the elites have already engineered. But, this is only one part of the agenda. In the midst of chaos generated by financial calamity, the morals of an entire society can become "malleable". The most important target of the globalists is not only conservatives, but the conservative philosophy. They don’t just want to annihilate conservatives today, they want to annihilate conservatives for all time.
The globalists cannot accomplish this task without our help. They NEED us to adopt an attitude of moral relativism, much like the Left. They need us to turn into totalitarians. They need us to become the monster we claim we want to defeat. Only then can conservative principles be demonized for all time. Only then will history look back on us as a stain on the human record.
This is the globalist’s long game.
While Leftists are being encouraged to mutate into wild frothing packs of rabid dogs, conservatives will be encouraged either through temptation or manipulation to respond in kind. The Left’s propaganda train asserts that we are “fascists.” Obviously, we are the furthest thing from this. But, with enough violence and aggressive censorship on their part, we might end up saying “Okay, you want to see fascism, we’ll show you fascism!”
The social justice cult has no idea what they are being led into. The globalists are going to throw them to the wolves, and WE are the wolves.
It is important to note that the Left is also not the only instigator for conservatives to turn totalitarian. Islamic terrorism is always a perfect rationale for increased government intrusion in the name of safety. The worst part is, the threats from the Left and the threats from Islamic extremism are in most cases quite legitimate, and they seem to be working hand-in-hand more each day.
The progressive interference with steps towards more rational immigration policies and their steady defense of Sharia Law leads many conservatives to see them as one in the same enemy. No foreigner is entitled to citizenship in the U.S., but leftists live in a fantasy world of open borders. The left's refusal to entertain reasonable and selective immigration will eventually push conservatives towards more drastic measures, which is the ultimate point.
Very few Americans like Communists, and very few Americans like Muslim zealotry; the justification for totalitarian measures to disrupt such threats is relatively easy for many people.
This is why I am going to make my next prediction of a major geopolitical event to close out this article — I believe there will be a large scale terrorist attack within the next three months, beyond the mob actions of the Left already in progress.
It will either be similar in scope to 9/11, or, it will be a succession of many smaller attacks occurring over the course of a few days to a couple of weeks. I believe that the current dispute over border controls and immigration denial will come immediately into play. Trump will blame Leftists for obstructing his efforts for secure immigration. Leftists and the media will blame Trump for “radicalizing” Muslims with his immigration policies, or perhaps even accuse him of staging the attacks himself. Trump will begin taking extraordinary measures beyond the Constitution to ensure immigration denial and the thwarting of the Left, and conservatives will applaud him for it.
Again, conservatives are being led by globalists into the temptations of power. The only way for us to fight back is to maintain our principles and refuse to support ANY government measure that is unConstitutional, even if it is to be used against our enemies. The only way that the heritage of liberty can be defeated is if the proponents and champions of liberty forsake it. We beat the globalists in the long run by standing by our ideals and fighting back within the bounds of the principles we hold dear. Dominance through government is never the answer.
- Decade-High $100 Billion Of Corporate Loans Refinanced In January As Companies Prepare For Higher Rates
Anyone who slipped into a coma 10 years ago and suddenly woke up today, may come to the erroneous conclusion that not much had happened in U.S. debt and equity markets over the past decade. Like in 2007, equity markets seem to surge to all new highs with each passing day, corporate credit spreads have tightened to 10-year lows and leveraged loan refinancings are soaring as all the “money on the sidelines” just can’t seem to find a home fast enough.
As the Wall Street Journal noted today, the fear of rising interest rates, which have so far largely been offset by tightening spreads for corporate levered loan borrowers, has sparked a massive wave of corporate loan refinancings, including $100 billion worth of volume in January 2017 alone. Moreover, per data from LevFin Insights, $222 billion, or nearly 25% of the entire leveraged loan market, has been refinanced since October.
Rising interest-rate expectations are fueling the biggest corporate-refinancing boom in years.
U.S. companies refinanced $100 billion of loans in January, the largest monthly total in at least a decade, according to data from S&P Global Inc. More than 110 low-rated companies, including software giant Dell Technologies Inc. and car-repair chain Service King Collision Repair Centers Inc., have refinanced loans since October, according to data from LevFin Insights LLC.
Borrowers in recent months have saved more than $1 billion in annual interest costs by renegotiating terms with their lenders, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the data.
Total repricings since the start of October amount to $222 billion, representing 24% of all outstanding leveraged loans, according to LevFin Insights. Firms negotiated an average interest reduction of 0.59 percentage point.
Of course, rising interest rates, which are feared to continue pushing higher, are sparking this latest refinancing bubble…
…as corporate borrowers have sought to offset increases in LIBOR rates with tighter spreads.
Of course, none of this madness would be possible without all that “money on the sidelines” just waiting for the next new issue from Goldman that will grant them a 5% allocation at a spread 75 bps lower than the initial pricing talk.
The wave is being propelled by outsize investor demand for bank loans, floating-rate debt investments that are prized because they tend to perform well in rising-rate environments. The red-hot loan market has enabled many corporations to demand that lenders cut rates or face losing the business to a rival, a sign of how easy financing is enabling large firms to get advantageous terms in debt markets.
Persuading lenders to cut the rate on Service King’s $609 million loan by 0.75 percentage point took just a few days. The new loan will save the company about $4.5 million in annual interest expense that can be used for acquisitions instead, said Chief Financial Officer Michelle Frymire.
“There’s a lot of pent-up investor demand,” Ms. Frymire said. The Richardson, Texas, company has 309 auto repair shops in 23 states and is owned by private-equity firm Blackstone Group LP.
But, at the end of the day, if you’re a pension or mutual fund manager you just have to keep buying because, you know, “animal spirits”…just ask Craig Russ of Eaton Vance.
Investors have poured $17 billion into loan mutual funds since Sept. 1, with $7.6 billion coming in December alone, according to data from Lipper Inc. It is the biggest such inflow since 2013, during the “Taper Tantrum” when the Fed’s plan to reduce stimulus fueled a surge into loan funds.
With few new loans to buy, fund managers who received new money from investors are scrambling to buy existing loans, pushing prices higher and spreads down. Companies and their investment bankers saw the opportunity to refinance and pounced.
“Animal spirits seem to have taken over investor appetite and the markets,” said Craig Russ, co-manager of Eaton Vance Corp.’s $7.5 billion leveraged-loan mutual fund.
While large banks still underwrite large corporate loans, they often sell the bulk of the debt to a mix of mutual funds, pensions, insurers, hedge funds and other institutional investors.
In conclusion:
- Most Government Workers Could Be Replaced By Robots, New Study Finds
Submitted by Emily Zanotti via HeatSt.com,
A study by a British think tank, Reform, says that 90% of British civil service workers have jobs so pointless, they could easily be replaced by robots, saving the government around $8 billion per year.
There are “few complex roles” in civil service, it seems, that require a human being to handle.
“Twenty percent of public-sector workers hold strategic, ‘cognitive’ roles,” Reform’s press release on the study says. “They will use data analytics to identify patterns—improving decision-making and allocating workers most efficiently.
“The NHS, for example, can focus on the highest risk patients, reducing unnecessary hospital admissions. UK police and other emergency services are already using data to predict areas of greatest risk from burglary and fire.”
The problem, Reform says, is that public sector employee unions have bloated the civil service ranks, forcing government agencies to keep on older employees, and mandating hiring quotas for new ones. The organizational chart looks like a circuit board—and there’s no incentive to streamline anything.
Unfortunately for civil service workers, it seems the study is just the latest in a series of research that won’t save their jobs. Oxford University and financial services provider Deloitte, both of whom comissioned their own studies concur with Reform‘s conclusions. The Oxford University study said that more than 850,000 public sector jobs could fall to robots over the course of the next decade.
Reform suggests that government employees should probably look into opportunities presented by the “sharing economy,” like driving for Uber – at least until robots replace those, too.
- Senate Letter Reveals Staggering Number Of Murders By Illegal Aliens With Previous Criminal Convictions
A letter written by the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2015 to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, Secretary of State John Kerry and Attorney General Loretta Lynch reveals news facts about the number and nature of crimes committed by illegal immigrants who had already been convicted of other crimes but were released back into the public either because their home country would not accept their deportation and/or because they exceeded a Supreme Court mandate prohibiting detention of deportable foreign nationals beyond six months.
According to the letter, published by the Miami Herald, statistics provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials confirm that 121 homicides were committed in the U.S. between 2010-2014 by illegal immigrants who had already been convicted of a crime but were released back into society due to limitations on their detention. In addition, ICE confirmed that of the 36,007 criminal aliens released from custody in 2013, 1,000 of them had already been convicted of new crimes as of June 2015.
“This disturbing fact follows ICE’s admission that, of the 36,007 criminal aliens it released from ICE custody in Fiscal Year 2013, 1,000 have been re-convicted of additional crimes in the short time since their release,” according to the letter, dated June 12, 2015.
The Senate Judiciary Committee letter revealed that 121 immigrant convicts were charged with homicide following their release from ICE custody between 2010 and 2014. It also noted that in 2014, ICE released 2,457 immigrant convicts because of the Supreme Court ruling prohibiting detention of deportable foreign nationals beyond six months.
Most of these immigrant convicts are nationals of 23 countries described by ICE as “recalcitrant” because they routinely refuse to take back deportables. The bulk of these immigrant convicts in 2014 — 1,183 — were from Cuba, according to the letter. The other “recalcitrant” countries include Afghanistan, Algeria, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Zimbabwe, according to ICE.
A committee spokeswoman did not provide additional information on the letter when contacted by el Nuevo Herald last week.
But in response to the letter, Sarah Saldaña, then-director of ICE, stated that 33 of the 121 immigrant convicts accused of “homicide-related offenses” had been released on bond at the discretion of immigration courts. Another 24 were released because ICE was unable to obtain approval to deport them to their countries within the 180-day deadline set by the Supreme Court in 2001.
Of course, throughout the campaign cycle Trump was very clear about his intentions to deport the ~2 million illegal aliens currently residing the country with criminal convictions on their records.
One weapon Trump has suggested he could wield to compel countries to take back their deportable nationals is halting the issuance of visas to visitors and immigrants from those nations. While this has yet to happen, and would almost certainly result in additional legal challenges from the Left, it is certainly easy to imagine a scenario in which additional non-compliant countries could simply be added to his existing temporary immigration ban.
In a speech in Phoenix during the campaign, Trump vowed to deport immigrant criminals regardless of whether their countries agreed to take them back.
“There are at least 23 countries that refuse to take their people back after they’ve been ordered to leave the United States,” Trump said. “Including large numbers of violent criminals. They won’t take them back. So we say, ‘Okay, we’ll keep them.’ Not going to happen with me, not going to happen with me.”
Of course, Trump’s appearances with the families of victims murdered at the hands of illegal immigrants was a common occurrence on the campaign trail.
In his Phoenix immigration speech Aug. 31, Trump recalled the case of 21-year-old Sarah Root of Des Moines, Iowa, whose death in January 2016 was blamed on an undocumented immigrant who had been released after having been in custody despite being in the country illegally and having failed to show up in court for prior alleged crimes. Eswin Mejía, a Honduran, was charged in connection with Root’s death in a vehicle crash, was freed on bail and fled.
Trump also cited the case of Grant Ronnebeck, a 21-year-old convenience store clerk from Mesa, Arizona, whose murder was also blamed on an undocumented immigrant who had been previously convicted of burglary and had been released from federal custody.
Ronnebeck was killed allegedly over a pack of cigarettes in January 2015, and the murder was linked to Apolinar Altamirano, a Mexican national who was in deportation proceedings but who had been released on bond by an immigration court judge.
A third case Trump mentioned was that of Kate Steinle, gunned down in San Francisco by an undocumented Mexican, Juan Francisco López Sánchez, who had been deported five times previously but had managed to cross the border again undetected.
ICE officials have told Congress that they tried to prevent López Sánchez from bonding out of jail but failed to do so because authorities in San Francisco, a so-called “sanctuary city,” ignored an immigration detainer for the defendant.
Not surprisingly, and despite the damning data provided by ICE officials, Obama’s former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2015 that he did not believe visa sanctions against recalcitrant countries was the right policy, saying “I don’t necessarily believe that we ought to suspend immigration, travel from any of these countries because of this particular issue.”
Somehow we suspect the Trump administration disagrees with the former DHS Secretary on the seriousness of this “particular issue.”
The full letter from the Senate Judiciary Committee can be read below:
- The Silent Terror Of The FBI – Could The Fourth Reich Happen Here?
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“After five years of Hitler’s dictatorship, the Nazi police had won the FBI’s seal of approval.” – Historian Robert Gellately
“Adolf Hitler is alive and well in the United States, and he is fast rising to power.” – Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, on the danger posed by the FBI to our civil liberties
Lately, there’s been a lot of rhetoric comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. The concern is that a Nazi-type regime may be rising in America.
That process, however, began a long time ago.
In fact, following the second World War, the U.S. government recruited Hitler’s employees, adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law and order, implemented his tactics in incremental steps, and began to lay the foundations for the rise of the Fourth Reich.
Sounds far-fetched? Read on. It’s all documented.
As historian Robert Gellately recounts, the Nazi police state was initially so admired for its efficiency and order by the world powers of the day that J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany’s secret police—the Gestapo.
The FBI was so impressed with the Nazi regime that, according to the New York Times, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen.
All told, thousands of Nazi collaborators—including the head of a Nazi concentration camp, among others—were given secret visas and brought to America by way of Project Paperclip. Subsequently, they were hired on as spies and informants, and then camouflaged to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler’s holocaust machine would remain unknown. All the while, thousands of Jewish refugees were refused entry visas to the U.S. on the grounds that it could threaten national security.
Adding further insult to injury, American taxpayers have been paying to keep these ex-Nazis on the U.S. government’s payroll ever since. And in true Gestapo fashion, anyone who has dared to blow the whistle on the FBI’s illicit Nazi ties has found himself spied upon, intimidated, harassed and labeled a threat to national security.
As if the government’s covert, taxpayer-funded employment of Nazis after World War II wasn’t bad enough, U.S. government agencies—the FBI, CIA and the military—have fully embraced many of the Nazi’s well-honed policing tactics, and have used them repeatedly against American citizens.
Indeed, with every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention.
These are not tactics used by constitutional republics, where the rule of law and the rights of the citizenry reign supreme. Rather, they are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, where the only law that counts comes in the form of heavy-handed, unilateral dictates from a supreme ruler who uses a secret police to control the populace.
That danger is now posed by the FBI, whose laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government; recruiting high school students to spy on and report fellow students who show signs of being future terrorists; or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.
Whatever minimal restrictions initially kept the FBI’s surveillance activities within the bounds of the law have all but disappeared post-9/11. Since then, the FBI has been transformed into a mammoth federal policing and surveillance agency that largely operates as a power unto itself, beyond the reach of established laws, court rulings and legislative mandates.
Consider the FBI’s far-reaching powers to surveil, detain, interrogate, investigate, prosecute, punish, police and generally act as a law unto themselves—much like their Nazi cousins, the Gestapo—and then try to convince yourself that the United States is still a constitutional republic.
Just like the Gestapo, the FBI has vast resources, vast investigatory powers, and vast discretion to determine who is an enemy of the state.
Today, the FBI employs more than 35,000 individuals and operates more than 56 field offices in major cities across the U.S., as well as 400 resident agencies in smaller towns, and more than 50 international offices. In addition to their “data campus,” which houses more than 96 million sets of fingerprints from across the United States and elsewhere, the FBI has also built a vast repository of “profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.” The FBI’s burgeoning databases on Americans are not only being added to and used by local police agencies, but are also being made available to employers for real-time background checks.
All of this is made possible by the agency’s nearly unlimited resources (its minimum budget alone in fiscal year 2015 was $8.3 billion), the government’s vast arsenal of technology, the interconnectedness of government intelligence agencies, and information sharing through fusion centers—data collecting intelligence agencies spread throughout the country that constantly monitor communications (including those of American citizens), everything from internet activity and web searches to text messages, phone calls and emails.
Much like the Gestapo spied on mail and phone calls, FBI agents have carte blanche access to the citizenry’s most personal information.
Working through the U.S. Post Office, the FBI has access to every piece of mail that passes through the postal system: more than 160 billion pieces are scanned and recorded annually. Moreover, the agency’s National Security Letters, one of the many illicit powers authorized by the USA Patriot Act, allows the FBI to secretly demand that banks, phone companies, and other businesses provide them with customer information and not disclose those demands to the customer. An internal audit of the agency found that the FBI practice of issuing tens of thousands of NSLs every year for sensitive information such as phone and financial records, often in non-emergency cases, is riddled with widespread constitutional violations.
Much like the Gestapo’s sophisticated surveillance programs, the FBI’s spying capabilities can delve into Americans’ most intimate details (and allow local police to do so, as well).
In addition to technology (which is shared with police agencies) that allows them to listen in on phone calls, read emails and text messages, and monitor web activities, the FBI’s surveillance boasts an invasive collection of spy tools ranging from Stingray devices that can track the location of cell phones to Triggerfish devices which allow agents to eavesdrop on phone calls. In one case, the FBI actually managed to remotely reprogram a “suspect’s” wireless internet card so that it would send “real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI.” Law enforcement agencies are also using social media tracking software to monitor Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts. Moreover, secret FBI rules also allow agents to spy on journalists without significant judicial oversight.
Much like the Gestapo’s ability to profile based on race and religion, and its assumption of guilt by association, the FBI’s approach to pre-crime allows it to profile Americans based on a broad range of characteristics including race and religion.
The agency’s biometric database has grown to massive proportions, the largest in the world, encompassing everything from fingerprints, palm, face and iris scans to DNA, and is being increasingly shared between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in an effort to target potential criminals long before they ever commit a crime. This is what’s known as pre-crime. Yet it’s not just your actions that will get you in trouble. In many cases, it’s also who you know—even minimally—and where your sympathies lie that could land you on a government watch list. Moreover, as the Intercept reports, despite anti-profiling prohibitions, the bureau “claims considerable latitude to use race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion in deciding which people and communities to investigate.”
Much like the Gestapo’s power to render anyone an enemy of the state, the FBI has the power to label anyone a domestic terrorist.
As part of the government’s so-called ongoing war on terror, the nation’s de facto secret police force has begun using the terms “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably. Moreover, the government continues to add to its growing list of characteristics that can be used to identify an individual (especially anyone who disagrees with the government) as a potential domestic terrorist. For instance, you might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you:
- express libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
- exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership)
- read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books
- show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
- fear an economic collapse
- buy gold and barter items
- subscribe to religious views concerning the book of Revelation
- voice fears about Big Brother or big government
- expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties
- believe in a New World Order conspiracy
Much like the Gestapo infiltrated communities in order to spy on the German citizenry, the FBI routinely infiltrates political and religious groups, as well as businesses.
As Cora Currier writes for the Intercept: “Using loopholes it has kept secret for years, the FBI can in certain circumstances bypass its own rules in order to send undercover agents or informants into political and religious organizations, as well as schools, clubs, and businesses…” The FBI has even been paying Geek Squad technicians at Best Buy to spy on customers’ computers without a warrant.
Just as the Gestapo united and militarized Germany’s police forces into a national police force, America’s police forces have largely been federalized and turned into a national police force.
In addition to government programs that provide the nation’s police forces with military equipment and training, the FBI also operates a National Academy that trains thousands of police chiefs every year and indoctrinates them into an agency mindset that advocates the use of surveillance technology and information sharing between local, state, federal, and international agencies.
Just as the Gestapo’s secret files on political leaders were used to intimidate and coerce, the FBI’s files on anyone suspected of “anti-government” sentiment have been similarly abused.
As countless documents make clear, the FBI has no qualms about using its extensive powers in order to blackmail politicians, spy on celebrities and high-ranking government officials, and intimidate and attempt to discredit dissidents of all stripes. For example, not only did the FBI follow Martin Luther King Jr. and bug his phones and hotel rooms, but agents also sent him anonymous letters urging him to commit suicide and pressured a Massachusetts college into dropping King as its commencement speaker.
Just as the Gestapo carried out entrapment operations, the FBI has become a master in the art of entrapment.
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the FBI has not only targeted vulnerable individuals but has also lured or blackmailed them into fake terror plots while actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing or deporting them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.” In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts. USA Today estimates that agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day. Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.
When and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America, in much the same way that the empowerment of Germany’s secret police tracked with the rise of the Nazi regime.
How did the Gestapo become the terror of the Third Reich?
It did so by creating a sophisticated surveillance and law enforcement system that relied for its success on the cooperation of the military, the police, the intelligence community, neighborhood watchdogs, government workers for the post office and railroads, ordinary civil servants, and a nation of snitches inclined to report “rumors, deviant behavior, or even just loose talk.”
In other words, ordinary citizens working with government agents helped create the monster that became Nazi Germany. Writing for the New York Times, Barry Ewen paints a particularly chilling portrait of how an entire nation becomes complicit in its own downfall by looking the other way:
In what may be his most provocative statement, [author Eric A.] Johnson says that ‘‘most Germans may not even have realized until very late in the war, if ever, that they were living in a vile dictatorship.’’ This is not to say that they were unaware of the Holocaust; Johnson demonstrates that millions of Germans must have known at least some of the truth. But, he concludes, ‘‘a tacit Faustian bargain was struck between the regime and the citizenry.’’ The government looked the other way when petty crimes were being committed. Ordinary Germans looked the other way when Jews were being rounded up and murdered; they abetted one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century not through active collaboration but through passivity, denial and indifference.
Much like the German people, “we the people” have become passive, polarized, gullible, easily manipulated, and lacking in critical thinking skills. Distracted by entertainment spectacles, politics and screen devices, we too are complicit, silent partners in creating a police state similar to the terror practiced by former regimes.
Can the Fourth Reich happen here?
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s already happening right under our noses.
- China Drains CNY715 Billion In Liquidity After Fifth Day Without Reverse Repo
What a difference three weeks makes. On January 18, heading into the Lunar New Year holidays, we reported that the PBOC had injected a record 1.04 trillion yuan into the liquidity-starved banking system in an attempt to avoid a liquidity crunch as telegraphed just days prior by dramatic surge in short-term repo rates.
Since then, however, between the end of the holidays, and the stated Chinese intention to tighten the monetary system, things have changed drastically.
First of all, last Friday, China announced an unexpected tightening of policy when it raised rates on 7, 14 and 28-day reverse repos by 10bps to 2.35%, 2.50% and 2.65% respectively. That was first increase in the 28-day contracts since 2015 and since 2013 for the other two tenors. As this was the first working day following the New Year holiday in China, it was a decent “statement of intent” by the PBoC.
At the same time, as we explained on Sunday, in a parallel tightening eipsode, the PBOC also increased Standing Lending Facility rates on overnight/7-day/1-month tenors by 35bp/10bp/10bp (to 3.10%/3.35%/3.7%), sending Chinese government bond futures sliding as fears rose that China is actually serious about tightening this time.
Then on Thursday morning, an article in China’s Securities Journal said that China may keep tightening monetary policy this year amid pressure from yuan rate stabilization, financial de-leveraging, curbs on real estate and faster inflation. In other words, China may have reached the phase where it admits it has a problem, and is ready to do something about it. What was notable is that the article hinted that while even more could be done, the economic basis and inflation situation don’t yet support China entering interest rate hike cycle.
Translation: if inflation picks up more from here, the PBOC will use the shotgun approach and hike rates. For now however, the piece concluded that the central bank is focusing more on price tools, which means “an increase in open market rates may be considered guidance.”
And sure enough, 20 days after the PBOC had injected a record CNY1+ trillion in liquidity, it is now draining it just as fast, and as the PBOC just reported, the Central Bank did not conduct any Reverse Repo open market operations for the fifth consecutive trading day “in order to maintain a stable level of liquidity in the interbank market”, the PBOC said in a statement on its website.
With CNY150 billion of reverse repos maturing today, the PBOC’s lack of action had the effect of draining CNY150 billion from the market today.
The PBOC also added that “while the central bank has started to gradually drain liquidity from the interbank market after the end of the Chinese New Year holiday, liquidity is still at an adequate level” repeating the explanation it used in the past three days.
According to Market News, the market sees the lack of open market operations as a clear signal of tighter monetary policy. Furthermore, the consecutive stops of OMOs show PBOC’s bias for a prudent tilted to neutral monetary policy in a bid to prevent risks and reduce leverage ratio, said Ming Ming, chief analyst with CITIC Securities in a research note.
In total, the PBOC has drained a total of CNY715 billion in liquidity so far this week, primarily as a result of maturing reverse repos which the central bank refuses to roll over. A total of CNY80 billion in reverse repos will mature later this week and the market will be watching the PBOC’s response closely. Should it perceive that the PBOC has withdrawn too much liquidity, another liquidity tantrum is inevitable.
- What Is Trump's Approval Rating? It Depends On Who You Ask
While we would never be the ones to question the integrity of “independent” pollsters, how could we given the amazing job they did predicting the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, we’re starting to grow a bit curious about the ever-widening gap in Trump’s approval ratings between the various polling institutions.
For example, the latest Rasmussen daily tracking poll found that 53% of likely U.S. voters approve of President Trump’s job performance while 47% disapprove.
Meanwhile, even the notorious “oversamplers” at Reuters found that Trump’s approval rating is just over 50%.
That said, the vehemently impartial folks at ABC/WaPo recently drew a very different conclusion, finding that President Trump is basically the least popular candidate to take the White House in modern history, with a 40% approval rating…
…while CNN came up with similar results finding that only 44% approve of President Trump.
And while we know what you’re thinking, we’re sure the divergent results from ABC/Wapo and CNN were in no way a disingenuous attempt to artificially manufacture a poor approval rating for President Trump, a candidate whose political views couldn’t be more divergent from their own. After all, utilizing an aggressive 8-point sampling margin for Democrats, with only 23% of respondents identifying themselves as Republicans may call into question a pollster’s credibility…
…which is probably why CNN decided to get smart by only showing a 4-point sampling advantage for Democrats while loading up their poll with independents instead...
“A total of 1,002 adults were interviewed by telephone nationwide by live interviewers calling both landline and cell phones. Among the entire sample, 29% described themselves as Democrats, 25% described themselves as Republicans, and 45% described themselves as independents or members of another party.”
Of course, as we’ve repeatedly pointed out, these sampling mixes couldn’t be further from reality.
In conclusion:
The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017
- Iranian Oil Will Not Be Stopped By Trump
Submitted by Gregory Brew via OilPrice.com,
Despite new sanctions by the Trump Administration and an escalating war of words regarding its ballistic missile program, Iran is continuing to push ahead with plans to maintain oil production at around 3.8 million bpd, the level agreed upon at the November OPEC meeting last year. In order to do so, Iran will need to attract billions in new investment, as its current production is based on aging fields and crumbling infrastructure.
To maintain the current production level while continuing to export and meet domestic demand, Iran will need at least $100 billion in new investment. New U.S. sanctions, which target 25 Iranian individuals and entities said to be associated with the country’s missile program, is being touted as an “initial step” in the administration’s plan to push back hard on Iran’s regional ambitions, with National Security Advisor Michael Flynn announcing last week that the U.S. was “putting Iran on notice.” The Iranian response to the U.S. rhetoric has been mostly dismissive, with one Iranian official characterizing the Trump Administration as “inexperienced.”
The question is how these new sanctions or future U.S. actions against Iran may inhibit the country’s recovering oil and gas industry. The announcement of the new sanctions caused a slight tremor in prices, which was offset by inventory reports and reviving U.S. output. If tensions between the U.S. and Iran were to escalate, it would place upward pressure on prices.
Iran is set to announce a round of tenders in mid-February. Originally set for January, the tenders were delayed several weeks, in part due to disagreements within the Iranian government (which oversees the National Iranian Oil Company, or NIOC) over how best to attract foreign investment. Debates over new oil contracts raged all last summer, as the question of inviting more foreign companies into Iran is beset with political significance in a country still considerably isolated from international capital, as well as one that has a long history of distrusting foreign oil companies.
According to Reuters, the first round of tenders has been repeatedly delayed, while major companies have made only hesitant inroads into Iran. Shell signed a provisional deal in December to develop three large oil and gas fields, but has yet to act on it. French company Total agreed in principle to a $2 billion deal to develop the South Pars natural gas field, with a 50.1 percent stake in the project
The new round of U.S. sanctions, though they are limited in nature, are acting to deter U.S. companies from seeking new contracts. Deputy oil minister Amirhossein Zamaninia has welcomed interest from U.S. companies, but has warned that as long as the primary sanctions remain, “U.S. firms cannot play any role in Iran’s oil and gas industry.”
Zamainnia has expressed hope that President Trump, as a “non-conventional politician,” will seek to revise U.S.-Iranian relations and seek business deals, which could potentially serve the U.S. economy. Yet Trump’s hard stance on Iran thus far, and the imposition of new sanctions, would make that appear unlikely. The Iranian press claims the new sanctions are isolating the U.S., rather than Iran, which is still free to pursue deals with European companies. “Iran has placed no limitations on American companies, but based on their own laws they are not allowed to attend oil tenders in Iran," Zamaninia told the press.
Without U.S. companies participating, Iran could probably attract the investment it needs in the short-term. The tenders to be offered in February will include twenty-nine companies, most of them Chinese or East Asian, though Total and Shell have both been permitted to participate. BP was encouraged in January to bid once contracts became available, though the company has not said one way or the other whether it will participate.
Iran remains primarily interested in attracting European capital. This makes sense, both from an economic and political perspective (and with the U.S. sanctions and new administration, politics will matter just as much as economics). Iran wants to start exporting in large quantities to Europe again, and last month it dispatched the first major tanker shipments to a European port in five years. Should U.S. antagonism towards Iran increase, to the point that President Trump considers imposing new sanctions or even backing out of the July 2015 nuclear deal, it would place no restraint on European countries like Germany, Great Britain and France, who were all parties to the deal.
Germany company BASF, along with two other German petrochemical firms, has expressed an interest in investing as much as $12 billion in Iran, according to Iranian press sources. Total, for its part, has said that it is still ready to go through with its plan, now worth $4.8 billion, to develop South Pars.
It should be noted that a lot of the enthusiasm being generated about possible investments in Iran are coming from Iran-affiliated news sources. It may take some time to see if the confidence being projected around Iran’s ability to attract ample investment accurately reflects industry confidence in the country’s ability to work with foreign companies.
Nevertheless, should the February tenders be a success, and should Iran overcome its own political divisions regarding attracting foreign investment, there’s a strong chance the country will continue to develop its untapped oil and gas fields and continue the on-going recovery of its domestic energy industry, regardless of punitive actions taken by the United States.
- Poll Finds Trump Administration Seen As More Truthful Than News Media
An Emerson College poll found that in the early days of the Trump administration, the nation remains almost evenly split on Donald Trump’s performance as President, with 48% of registered voters approving of the job Trump is doing, versus 47% who disapprove. The variance falls largely along party lines: Republicans approve of Trump 89%/5%, while Democrats disapprove of the President by a margin of 81% to 17%. What is keeping Trump’s from passing the 50% threshold in the poll is his standing among independents, who disapprove of him 52%/42%.
Yet despite the initial confusion about Trump’s approval, a more interesting observations from the same poll is that according to voters, the Trump administration was viewed as vastly more trustworthy than the news media. The Trump administration is considered truthful by 49% of voters, to 48% of voters who consider it untruthful. Meanwhile, the news media is considered untruthful by a 53% – majority of voters, to only 39% who find them truthful (a 14 – point gap).
The partisan split on this topic is clear: 89% of Republicans find the Trump administration truthful, versus 77% of Democrats who find the administration untruthful. Conversely, 69% of Democrats find the news media truthful, while a whopping 91% of Republicans consider them untruthful, which may explain the origin of the “liberal media” moniker. Meanwhile, independents consider both untruthful – the Trump administration by a margin of 42%/52% and the news media by a margin of 45%/47%.
A recent Gallup poll on the public’s trust in media revealed an even more disturbing picture: before the election, a paltry 32% of Americans trusted the fourth estate, with only 14% of Republicans.
The national Emerson College poll was conducted February 5-6 under. The sample consisted of 617 registered voters, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.9%. The full poll can be read here.
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