Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Eye Openers

Court Reporters,

Bill sent this letter from Susan Lindauer to President Trump. 
Susan had been privy to the surveillance network that was flashing red in spring 2001, for an attack on New York the fall.
Mr. President, 
Though it's impossible for most Americans to grasp to this day, without question US Intelligence possessed advance knowledge of the 9/11 attack in its precise configuration. Sworn civilian testimony in the Southern District of New York Federal Court in June, 2018 by Dr. Parke Godfrey, professor of Computer Technology at York University in Toronto and Kelly O'Meara former Chief of Staff for GOP Rep. Andrew Forbes of Long Island, has confirmed the following: 
1. Godfrey testified under oath that in April, 2001, I shared a message from my CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz. In precise detail, I told Godfrey, my closest friend in Washington, that the CIA expected a major terrorist attack involving airplane hijackings and/or airplane bombings to strike the World Trade Center, as a known target in New York. The attack - according to the CIA's advance knowledge that was shared with me - could possibly include a mini-nuclear device to bring down the Towers. He testified that I told him the attack was expected in late summer or early fall of 2001.

Craig Murray, on The Ubiquity of Evil: ​ 
The truth, of which I am certain, is this. If there genuinely was the claimed existential threat to Jews in Britain, of the type which engulfed Europe’s Jews in the 1930’s, Jeremy Corbyn, Billy Bragg, Roger Waters
​,​
 and I may humbly add myself
​,​
 would be among the few who would die alongside them on the barricades, resisting. Yet these are today loudly called “anti-semites” for supporting the right to oppose the oppression of the Palestinians. The journalists currently promoting those accusations, if it came to the crunch, would be polishing state propaganda and the civil servants writing railway dockets. That is how it works. I have seen it. Close up.

​This US/Saudi attack on Iran meme just won't go away!
​ A war with Iran might sound far-fetched and may indeed lead to some unfathomable consequences, but the groundwork for such a confrontation is being laid right before our very eyes and the corporate media is almost all but completely silent. Whether or not a missile strike on Iran is looming on the horizon, Washington’s war with Iran has already begun in more ways than one, and appears to be set to escalate until the US can achieve the collapse of the Iranian regime through direct or indirect means.

Imran Khan has been elected PM of Pakistan, and he is of a different cut from either of the entrenched corrupt parties or the military. He is an actual, practicing populist, who presents a practical and populist and compassionate Islam for the working people, not the elites. Pakistanis have not had much wool over their eyes for a long time, for lots of reasons. they have had to do the hard and dirty work from the oilfields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, to their own slums, and US military bases in Afghanistan. He's an intelligent man, who has traveled the world, speaks Oxford English, and is not a globalist.
There was no logical or rational reason for the New York Times to label Imran Khan as “unpredictable,” as if he’s some Kim Jong-un, or going one notch higher on the level of unpredictably, Trump the con-man himself. But in fact that headline aptly captured the fundamental anxieties of an empire in decline, that knows precisely how predictable leaders, movements, and countries are – but despise it.

​Ray, a worldly-socialist, sends this article from the World Socialist Website, about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refusing to answer any substantive questions about policy from WSW reporters. Ocasio-Cortez is suddenly good for DNC marketing to leftist youth, and is being treated like a star, even before her own race is run. She has to be careful. Many would attack her on substantive policy statements. She's bound to be coached to avoid saying anything specific, and to speak glowingly of "the people working together". She's doing all of that well. Ocasio-Cortez is exactly the kind of brand the Democorporate Party desperately needs right now. If she will do as she is coached, and stick to her lines, and smile and glow, she will be an asset to the party and it's backers.​

​Koch Brothers funded research on Medicare for All, did not pitch any softball assumptions for this "socialized medicine", which the rest of the world calls "medicine". 
The total bill for 10 years is a staggering $32.6 trillion (something like a New York City block of $100 bills stacked most of the way up the Statue of Liberty, as I recall.). Buried in the fine print is the news that despite covering ALL Americans, this would cost $2 trillion less than the current arrangement.

Ruh-Roh! 
Emphasizing "racial-diversity" as a good thing leads to a formation of concepts that race is a real and fairly solid thing, that one should speak pleasantly of, but cannot actually change for the better. 
Xenophobia is a human tendency to distinguish groups and react against "other". Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland point out the level of biological and cultural difference necessary to trigger xenophobia. 
"Race" is primarily a concept used to activate xenophobia so our masters can keep us divided and conquered. It became politically important in the Americas during the period where (died too quick) white slaves were being phased out for (more durable and malaria-tolerant) black slaves. These slave cohorts were teaming up and escaping together. 
Xenophobia was called into action to place the black slaves one full social-notch beneath the white slave-class, who became their "keepers". 
This worked swimmingly for our wealthy owners. (Later, debt-slavery became cheaper and more profitable.)
The researchers report that the students who had been thinking about the concept of multiculturalism and how it pertains to their campus reported higher levels of racial essentialism. Thinking about racial and cultural differences fed the idea that they are somehow determinative.
This finding was replicated in a second study featuring 150 American adults recruited online. Once again, those who read an essay "valuing differences between diverse groups" had greater racial essentialist beliefs than those who read a different essay "emphasizing similarities among diverse groups."
Even more problematically, "participants expressing greater racial essentialist beliefs were less likely to believe racial inequality is a problem in need of change." As the researchers note, this makes sense, in that if "inequalities are rooted in real, unchangeable differences in racial groups," there's no point in addressing them.
"We do not mean to imply that multiculturalism should be universally discarded," the researchers stress. "Neither multiculturalism nor color blindness offers a simple panacea for improving diversity."

​Gringo​

Monday, July 30, 2018

Feeding Insurrection

Planting Beans,

I was thinking of regime change this morning as I tended the vegetable garden. Purely hypothetical, mind you. 
I thought of Henry Kissinger's strategic views, "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people."   http://www.investmentwatchblog.com/kissinger-control-oil-and-you-control-nations-control-food-and-you-control-the-people-us-strategy-deliberately-destroyed-family-farming-in-the-us-and-abroad-and-led-to-95-of-all-grain-reserves/
I thought that "an army travels on it's stomach". Supposedly all successful revolutions are bourgeois, but they have to include farmers and enforcers. Supposedly, it's over for the old regime when the police swap loyalties. 
With 6 American global multinational corporations controlling the global grain business, having systematically destroyed all small farms everywhere for 45 years  there can't really be any over threat to any regime that controls the flow of staple grains from far away. It's all far away, for everybody, even farmers. There can be no farmers supporting any revolution against the corporate order for the foreseeable future.
Growing vegetables is not "a revolutionary act". Everybody, everywhere, through all of recorded history grew vegetables, with or without revolutions. Local, distributed solar powered agriculture was the basis for all economy until coal and steel, then oil and gas shifted the production of food from being primarily solar, to primarily diesel powered. With the isolation of millions of square miles of fertile farmland, and oil-powered tractors, harvesters, trucks, trains and ships,the corporate world order was able to control the supply of food to each and every human. You just can't afford to grow your own food. Control of food supplies precludes actual revolt against the corporate power structure. Unless everybody, everywhere saves up a year of beans, rice, oil and salt, which would be detected and prevented.
I'm really focusing on surviving whatever happens as global corporatism goes through whatever failure mode it trips upon. 
Big, complex things, that require constant, high inputs of energy and resources never seem to last (at least not yet)

Want to Delete Facebook? Read What Happened to These People First. (Scratch Facebook off the list of revolutionary-organizing tools.)

China, home of The Cultural Revolution, is actually a vast land empire, which has only been consolidated since WW-2, so not completely. Han Chinese were moved to all corners of the empire, and given jobs controlling the markets, industry, resources and local peoples. Local peoples usually had to become impoverished minorities in this imperial expansion. China has not finished winning hearts and minds in the western "province" of Xinjiang, where Turkic, Muslim Uighur people still shop sometimes, though they no longer attend Friday prayers. Many are "off to school somewhere". 
Artificial intelligence with 2 remote-controlled cameras in every taxi, creates a total surveillance society. Still, the personal touch of being stopped and questioned by police frequently remains pervasive. 
Good horror-story from Der Spiegel. ("It can't happen heeere...")

Charles Hugh Smith looks at what we, in America, have lost in the past 10 years (Ugh, so maybe something similar is already gradually developing here?)

"Henry Kissinger Still Calls The Shots" (according to some disgruntled non-native Engrish speaker who is probably a Muslim or something)
Still, parts of it are worth a read. Has he shaped our post WW-2 world more than any other person? Naaah, prob'ly not... right?

Does Trump have a grand strategy" to lead the world into a tripolar arrangement, like Russia and China decided about 20 years ago? Wow, diabolical! Gimme those blue pills, NOW!

Moon of Alabama believes the US is negotiating retreat from Afghanistan. No official US statements, though...
The Taliban are ready to accept a peaceful retreat of the U.S. forces. That is their only offer. They may agree to keep foreign Islamist fighters out of their country. The U.S. has no choice but to accept. It is currently retreating to the cities and large bases. The outlying areas will fall to the Taliban. Sooner or later the U.S. supply lines will be cut. Its bases will come under fire.
There is no staying in Afghanistan. A retreat is the only issue the U.S. can negotiate about. It is not a question of "if" but of "when".


You probably heard that President Trump let himself be overheard, speaking to the Italian PM, that he would be open to talking to Iranian President Rouhani "any time", but doesn't know if the Iranians "are ready yet". Iranian government sources report telling him "no" 8 times in secret communications. 
Manners are apparently an absolute in Persia. Also, why negotiate if you'll just be knifed from behind, anyway?​ 
This story is not about that, but about the further leaks about contingencies to bomb Iran this year, now coming from inside Washington, and involving initial strikes on Iran by Saudi forces, followed by American support and kicking Iran's ass. (What could go wrong? The Saudi army has lots of experience by now.)

Syrian Kurds reach a deal with government in Damascus to end their part of the fighting.

Why will the US leave Syria soon? The Kurds are waking up. (The writing is on the wall for Turkish forces in Idlib. Syrian Kurds know they can co-exist with Damascus. The US is prone to leaving suddenly.)

Los Angeles considers using Hoover Dam as a giant electric battery by using wind and solar to pump water 20 miles uphill to the dam, to be used for electric generation when there is no wind and sun. There's only one problem, of course. There's already not enough water.

Physicians are not "burning out" we are suffering "moral injury". 
Good diagnosis. I sure can't see a fix for it in our current political economy. Don't hold your breath.

Walking Wounded

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Escape Through Magic

​Just Notified,​

Eleni sends this from Dmitri Orlov: ​
Unbeknownst to most, World War III has been raging for very close to four decades now—ever since the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It was preceded by the Cold War, which ended when Mikhail Gorbachev capitulated to the West, causing the Warsaw Pact to dissolve in confusion...  While pretending to battle Russia, the West has been attacking and destroying countries around the world—mostly quite successfully, but with a few exceptions. Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya now lay in ruins...  But all good things must come to an end eventually, and even World War III can’t go on forever. This realization is slowly sinking in, resulting in treasonous behavior within the Western camp as various recently conquered states turn restive and start looking toward Moscow...  It is gradually sinking in that Russia’s new defensive and offensive weapons systems have made most Western armaments obsolete and will preclude Western forces from operating in areas where these new weapons are deployed...  World War III must end with the West declaring a resounding victory… over itself. How exactly this is to be done is a question of propaganda, but since in the West most media organizations are in very few hands and largely under the control of the CIA, the script-writing effort should be easy to organize...  But since the West has been fighting World War III against itself, its victory will also be its defeat. Indeed, not only is it losing, but it is also being invaded—by mobs of migrants from the various countries it has destroyed, having used them as surrogate enemies in its notional battle against Russia.

​John Michael Greer, The Kek Wars, Part 1, Thanks Charles  (It's about magical thinking, instead of changing the system from the top or the bottom.) 
Every aristocracy begins as a set of tough, capable individuals who come to terms with some reality the previous ruling elite has ignored too long, and use that reality as a battering ram to break down the doors of the status quo and take power from the overly delicate hands that previously held it. As long as the new aristocracy stays in touch with the world outside its own circles, and provides the people it rules with effective ways to seek redress of grievances and communicate their wants and needs, it retains power—but when it retreats from that necessary interaction and closes its ears to the needs of those under it, it writes its own death warrant.
​..​

The policies in question? There were a galaxy of them, but the threefold core was metastatic centralism, economic globalism, and unrestricted illegal immigration. The fantastic proliferation of federal regulations since 1932 choked out small businesses and transferred wealth and power to big corporations and government bureaucracies; the elimination of trade barriers encouraged the offshoring of millions of working class jobs that, despite endless claims in the mainstream media, were never replaced, and were never intended to be replaced; the tacit encouragement of unlimited illegal immigration created a vast underclass of noncitizens who had no rights worth mentioning, and were employed at starvation wages under inhuman conditions, thus driving down wages and working conditions across the whole range of working class jobs.
I’ve discussed the consequences of these policies more than once in the past, but they bear repeating. In 1960, an American family of four with one working class income could afford a home, a car, three square meals a day, and all the other requirements of a decent lifestyle. In 2010, fifty years later, an American family of four with one working class income was struggling to avoid living on the street if they weren’t already there. This didn’t happen by accident, nor was it the product of impersonal economic forces. It was the result of specific, easily identifiable policies carried out by a bipartisan consensus and backed to the hilt by the privileged classes across the political spectrum.
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-kek-wars-part-one-aristocracy-and-its-discontents/

There are, at a global level, two “mainstream” forms of hegemonic politics, each with their own oligarchical backing. One of these is the Clintonian-Merkelist-Obamist-Sorosian politics that is a confluence of at least overt social-liberalism and a variety of economic neoliberalism. The other one is a Trumpian-Putinian-Bannonite-Orbánist instrumentalization of parochial nationalism… A just, free, non-oligarchic world is presently not on offer, for whatever reason.  

Steve Bannon throws down the gauntlet to George Soros in Europe (as above).
Bannon is convinced that the coming years will see a drastic break from decades of European integration. “Right-wing populist nationalism is what will happen. That’s what will govern,” he told The Daily Beast. “You're going to have individual nation states with their own identities, their own borders.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-bannons-plan-to-hijack-europe-for-the-far-right

A new poll released Wednesday by YouGov showed that a majority of Democrats want candidates in 2018 to be more like the independent, democratic socialist candidate Bernie Sanders).

Chris Martensen says that we are not at the end of a business cycle, but the end of a credit (belief) cycle. the debts outstanding in America, and the world, are not just vastly beyond what can be paid, but beyond what can keep being serviced by borrowing more. It's the realization that makes the shockwave of panic destroy the casino. Who takes the losses? That's the question. Pension plans take losses. That's for sure, but it's not enough. Who else takes losses? Bankers can take superficial losses, and your credit union can be sacrificed. Some peripheral politicians can be sacrificed. That's still not enough. All "paper assets" are claims on physical wealth, already in existence, or projected in the future. Scratch off projected-in-future... There are still competing claims on existing physical wealth. Mortgage payers will lose to banks again. What happens to stockholders? Huge write downs of asset value, or company bankruptcy are usual. Martensen advocates physical assets, like land and gold, but it is important to consider the defensibility of your claim. (You might be able to defend a few scattered low rent properties that you maintain yourself, or maybe not. History shows that the more income a property generates, or the more value it has on liquidation, the more the "owner" will be a target. Small growers of vegetables may keep their plots... I'm not sure, though.)

American Society would Collapse, if it weren't for These Eight Myths: 
Myth #8 We Have a Democracy (or something)...

Peter Koenig:  
But what I really suspect is that Trump wants to discourage the world from using the Yuan as a reserve currency, since as such, it lowers not only the value of the US dollar, but it replaces the US dollar as the de facto reserve currency in the world.
Only 20 years ago, or so, the US dollar figured to 90% as reserve currency in treasuries around the globe. Today that percentage has shrunk to below 60%.
As you know, the Yuan has become an official IMF reserve currency about a year ago. That established worldwide trust in the Chinese currency, especially since the Yuan is backed by the Chinese economy plus by gold. Whereas the US dollar has no backing whatsoever.  
(There's the military...)

Secretary of Defense Mattis specifically rejects Australian military-insider report that the US plans to bomb Iran as soon as August. (I feel calm now...)

New  poll finds that Americans overwhelmingly reject war with Iran (but since when did that matter?) 
Just 23 percent of the public say they’d support the U.S. deciding to declare war on Iran, while the majority, 53 percent, oppose the idea. Just 9 percent would strongly support declaring war, while 37 percent are strongly opposed. 

[I sure don't know how this will play out, but we have seen Trump repudiate the Iran deal, and prepare sanctions against Iran, which will hurt "allies", and constitute an act of war against Iran. In turn, Iran has said that if Iranian oil cannot pass the strait of Hormuz, then no oil will pass the strait. Trump tweets the same death-and-destruction he threatened North Korea with. Americans react against these bellicose threats, and Trump does what next...? I don't know, but I doubt it is really Trump's decision to make. He serves masters. He may be overly enthusiastic, or skillfully sabotaging them. How would I tell?]

The All Pervasive Military Security Complex, Joan Roelofs, via Paul Craig Roberts:
The article is long but very important and is worth a careful read. It shows that the military/security complex has woven itself so tightly into the American social, economic, and political fabric as to be untouchable. President Trump is an extremely brave or foolhardy person to take on this most powerful and pervasive of all US institutions by trying to normalize US relations with Russia, chosen by the military/security complex as the “enemy” that justifies its enormous budget and power.
​.It is a delusion that a mere President of the United States can bring such a powerful, all-pervasive institution to heel and deprive it of its necessary enemy.
"Much of what is left of organized industrial labor is in weapons manufacture. Its PACs fund the few “progressive” candidates in our political system, who tend to be silent about war and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Unlike other factories, the armaments makers do not suddenly move overseas, although they do use subcontractors worldwide."

There are 2 billion GPS receivers in use around the world, a number that Europe’s satellite navigation agency estimates will hit 7 billion by 2022. Along with the telecommunications industry, banks, airlines, electric utilities, cloud computing businesses, and TV broadcasters require constantly precise GPS timing. Emergency services do, too, as do military forces. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has designated 16 sectors of infrastructure as “critical,” and 14 of them depend on GPS.
“GPS is the single point of failure for the entire modern economy,” says Representative John Garamendi, a California Democrat who’s been warning about the hazards for years as a member of the House committees on armed services and on transportation and infrastructure. “No cellphone, no ATM machine will work.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-25/the-world-economy-runs-on-gps-it-needs-a-backup-plan

North Korean officials are frustrated about the delay of an official declaration ending the Korean war, and China will need to join peace talks to stabilize the denuclearization process, according to a son of a former South Korean president.
“North Korean officials said they are frustrated about the delay and asked whether there is a valid reason for such slow progress,” Kim said, noting Pyongyang seemed to believe it had made significant concessions and expected reciprocal action.
“The North Koreans initially wanted a peace treaty but they are now asking for an end-of-war declaration,” he said, adding that they wanted the declaration to come first to speed up the denuclearization process.


Yemen; look...  
If you want to be saddened to the point of nausea, look at these images, in which weeping mothers can be seen holding their malnourished babies and saying things like, “I’m losing my son and there’s nothing I can do about it!”
“The missiles that kill us, American-made. The planes that kill us, American-made. The tanks … American-made. You are saying to me, where is America? America is the whole thing.”

Every victory for Western-supported ISIS is a victory for the West in its publicly-declared regime change war against Syria and Syrians.
So, when Israel shot down a Syrian warplane on 24 July, as the plane was attacking ISIS near the occupied Golan Heights1, it was a victory not only for ISIS, but for the West and its allies who seek regime change.  ISIS is good for Regime Change.
Separately, but related, ISIS and the West also scored a “victory” in the province of Sweida, Syria, on 25 July, 2018. What did the “victory” look like?” ISIS terrorists emerged from areas near the illegal U.S military base at Al-Tanf. They murdered about 240 Syrians, and wounded about 170.


An analysis of students in the US has found that those who have a certain type of brain parasite are more likely to be majoring in business studies. Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite carried by cats. It can infect people through contact with cat faeces, poorly cooked meat, or contaminated water, and as many as one-third of the world’s population may be infected… Now an assessment of almost 1300 US students has found that those who had been exposed to the parasite were 1.7 times more likely to be majoring in business. In particular, they were more likely to be focusing on management and entrepreneurship than other business-related areas… The team behind the study say their data suggests that the parasite may be involved in reducing a person’s fear of failure and high-risk, high-reward ventures. Rodents infected with T. gondii are known to become less fearful of encountering cats.  

An Oregon woman who found a mountain lion in her living room says she relied on "frequency and attunement," "feline-speak eye blinking," and telepathy to calm the animal and safely guide it out after it took a six-hour nap behind the couch.   

Dr Dolittle

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Look Both Ways

VIPs,

"White Helmets" (nice former-terrorist, who save people) are evacuated from Syria, into Israeli-held Golan, and transferred to special sealed-shelter areas in Jordan. 
A total of 422 people (the White Helmets and the members of their families) were pulled out, according to official figures.  Now they are being held in a secret shelter inside Jordan, and in three months they will be resettled in Britain, Canada, and Germany. Far from the cameras. And since the data on their subsequent whereabouts will be strictly classified, no one will be able to stop the West from quietly killing off the most important and most dangerous of them. Just to be on the safe side.

​Trump's "Tweet of Mass Destruction" about Iran. Pepe Escobar has the story. Some high points include: 
Trump proactively dominates news and looks tough for Republican voters. 
Iranian people and government become completely united against Trump and commit to closing Strait of Hormuz if sanctions prevent Iran from shipping oil to the world. They can do it. Really. They cannot be stopped from closing the strait to tankers for as long as they want. 
That would crash the global economy. 
Israelis, Saudis and Emiris are dancing.​
http://www.atimes.com/article/tweet-of-mass-destruction-ratchets-up-tension-on-iran/

54% of Americans think it's a good idea for President Putin to come to Washington to talk to President Trump about stressful-world things.

This money trail to the Steele Dossier, Magnitsky Act, dummy Gazprom holdings, and $150 million in evaded taxes leads to one mysterious billionaire, who dropped American citizenship and became a subject of the British Crown after doing business in Russia for 10 years on a tourist visa. He still has a lot of engagement in American politics (behind the scenes). Thanks Eleni.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article202140.html

​More: ​ Bill Browder, who benefited enormously from Russian corruption, has expertly repackaged himself as a paragon among businessmen, endearing himself to the Russia-haters in Washington and the media. Curiously, however, he has proven reluctant to testify in cases regarding his own business dealings. He has, for example, repeatedly run away, literally, from attempts to subpoena him so he would have to testify under oath.
http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/is-bill-browder-the-most-dangerous-man-in-the-world/


Trump Tweet Decries Twitter Shadow Banning Republicans (not missing a beat)​
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-26/trump-blasts-twitter-shadow-banning

​Goldman Sachs: "Ceasefire with Europe will Make Trump's Trade War with China Even Worse"

Gold has been taking​ a beating from the Fed-and-Friends for the past month, beginning with 3 days in a row of being knocked down deep and hard at New York COMEX open (clear signal from "masters"). It had been toying with breaking through $1300 to the upside, just before that. Mish Shedlock is getting close to buying some bottom soon. (I'm nobody, but physical gold in-possession looks like a good investment, especially if it gets under $1200/oz.)

In a brief statement from Ambassador John Bolton, The White House has confirmed that the next meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin will take place after the completion of the Mueller Russia probe.
“The President believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year.”
2019 seems a bit optimistic for the end of that 'watch hunt'...although obviously that will be after the MidTerms.

In one year MSNBC covered "Stormy Daniels" 455 times, "War in Yemen" 0 times...
On July 2, a year had passed since the cable network’s last segment mentioning US participation in the war on Yemen, which has killed in excess of 15,000 people and resulted in over a million cases of cholera. The US is backing a Saudi-led bombing campaign with intelligence, refueling, political cover, military hardware and, as of March, ground troops.

Really Excellent Sex Dolls may depopulate Japan, like those sterile male flies and mosquitoes are designed to do. Seems like China might be at the same risk, too.

Permanently Distracted

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Casting Shadows

Target Audience,

If I may summarize the current American societal narrative being presented by our "free press" for mass belief: 
"Trump is the problem with America and Vladimir Putin is Satan."
It looks like part #1 is being contested, and part #2 is still hanging-in.

Politics is the profession of delivering emotionally-willing people to the business strategies of the oligarchs. Political systems are big, and have a lot of inertia, since the oligarchs are slow to change with the times. They are quite protected from the times, and slow to notice. Politicians, as a class, can turn on a dime, but not individual politicians. Individual politicians usually have to be traded in for a new model, when their schtick starts losing the audience.
Neither a good nor a bad thing about Trump-the-politician is that he can turn on a dime his own self. Of course he is lying; his lips are moving. Most living American politicians are serial liars. It's their actions that are differently good and bad for society. It's hard to see what agenda they need to deliver us to, because that's secret.

There are power struggles among our owners. I think we are going through one, now. It's a secret, too. 
Trump is not the operative of the Clinton-Bush-neocon camp, is he? What are the actual interests of his oligarchic consortium? 
Hell, who are his oligarchs? Who are their Dick Cheneys and Carl Roves?
All I can see is the shadows the puppets are casting from behind the sheet.
Some people around me are pretty excited by the show. Some are yawning.

Instead of acknowledging their own responsibility for the angst in America, the Democrats have countered the demagogue in chief’s long list of scapegoats to blame for our problems, beginning with immigrants, with an even more absurd and much shorter “list” of their own: Putin did it!
Thus was born the red-baiting revival of the Cold War—but without a Red to attack, desperately offering up Putin, a born-again Russian Orthodox and Peter the Great clone, to explain away the Democratic leadership’s own well-deserved repudiation in the last election. Trump ruthlessly exploited the pain in America; the Clintonistas blindly ignored it. End of story.
Except it isn’t. The Democrats are now the party of warmongers, and no clearer evidence is needed than the tweet from their Senate leader, Charles Schumer, issued as Donald Trump was en route for his eventual meeting with Putin, saying Trump “is more loyal to President Putin than to our NATO allies … his duty is to protect the American people from foreign threats, not to sell out our democracy to Putin.”


One thing that’s not receiving enough attention in the respective Assange and Russia coverage is to what extent both protagonists are needed in each other’s narratives to keep each of these alive. Without explicitly linking Assange to Russia, allegations against him lose a lot, if not most, of their credibility. Likewise, if Assange is not put straight in the middle of the Russia story, it too loses much. Linking them is the gift that keeps on giving for the US intelligence community and the Democratic party...
Julian Assange is a journalist, and a damn good one at that. The silence in the Anglo -and international- media about his case is shameful and deafening. So is the smear campaign that’s been going on for over a decade. How many women have been turned against the man by the false Swedish rape charges? Condemning someone to isolation without access to daylight or medical care goes way beyond shameful.
It’s time to end this horror show, not prolong or deepen it. But the power of international intelligence services is at stake, and they’re going to go to great lengths to impose that power. The US has already even claimed that freedom of speech, i.e. its entire Constitution, does not apply to non-Americans.


A source close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the president’s office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to The Intercept that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already finalized, an agreement to hand over Assange to the U.K. within the next several weeks. The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of Assange could come as early as this week.


​Ray sends this article from Pepe Escobar about the Russian big-stick. Russia is still speaking softly, but have you looked at that big stick lately?
(Trump and Putin should talk. Really. Let's all be reasonable. This is expensive and it is going to hurt everybody.)
Yet now this is a whole new ball game as the US faces a formidable adversary that, as Martyanov carefully details, deploys five crucial capabilities.
Command, control, communications, computers, intel, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities equal to or better than the US.
Electronic warfare capabilities equal to or better than the US.
New weapons systems equal to or better than the US.
Air defense systems that are more than a match for US airpower.
Long-range subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles that threaten the US Empire of Bases and even the entire US mainland.

​Here are videos of some Russian missiles, like their new 15,000 mile per hour ICBM that can't be shot down, and their hypersonic battleship-sinkers. 
You know they can shoot down our "invisible" stealth fighters and bombers, right?​ 
They just made our bazooka into a  double-suicide vest. They still hope we don't push that button.

Russia quietly sold almost all of it's holdings of US Treasuries in April and May. That was a move based on reduction of total financial-sector risk to Russia. What is Russia replacing those T-bills with, to minimize risk exposure?

Eleni sends: Lunatic Politics Part 2: It's Impossible to Have a Conversation, by Mike Kreiger
When Gallup recently asked Americans what the most important (non-economic) problem facing the country today is, the
​fraction
 of people saying
​"
Russia
​"​
 was so low they couldn’t even attribute a number to it.
Think about that. We’re being divided into two camps of increasingly insane and angry people because of hysteria surrounding an issue nobody even cares about. As usual, we can thank mass media for turning this topic into its singular obsession as well as promoting an environment of cultural insanity and stupidity.
​ ​
As a result, people aren’t having intelligent conversations with one another. They’re just yelling at each other. The dialogue feels more like a political hunger games where people see everything as a linguistic competition of kill or be killed. Language itself has become debased as individuals try to one up each other with name calling and hyperbole... A major problem with today’s charged political environment is too many people have become too attached to outcomes. Whether that outcome is removing Trump from office, or reelecting him. If you’ll do anything to achieve your goals, anything to grab power, or deploy any tactics to prove your point then you will become the monsters you claim to be fighting. Too many of us are becoming passionate, engaged monsters and it won’t lead to anything good.
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/07/19/lunatic-politics-part-2-its-becoming-impossible-to-have-a-conversation/

​The Kremlin announces receipt of an invitation of President Putin to visit President Trump in Washington DC later this year.​
In the meantime, Ushakov hinted that Trump and Putin could potentially meet at the G20 summit in Argentina this November.

Donald Trump "may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretenses."
"I think we are in a very, very grave period for the world," Kissinger added.

 (Henry K. is always meticulous with his words. What does he know?)​
https://sputniknews.com/world/201807201066554344-kissinger-trump-putin-summit/

​Yesterday's news: ​ 
Israel has rejected a Russian proposal to keep Iranian forces in Syria at least 100 kilometers from the Syrian-Israeli recognized ceasefire line along the Golan Heights, Reuters reports, while Israeli leadership has further threatened to hold Assad responsible "for any Iranian aggression".
According to the breaking report, which cites an unnamed Israeli official, the issue came up during a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a visiting Russian delegation led by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov:
The official said that Netanyahu told Lavrov "we will not allow the Iranians to establish themselves even 100 kilometres from the border."
And crucially, the official paraphrased the following exchange from the closed door meeting: "Netanyahu told Lavrov Israel will maintain freedom of operation against Iranian entrenchment in all of Syria and will see Assad responsible for any Iranian aggression against Israel from Syrian territory because Assad is the one hosting the Iranians."

Today's update:
Russia had rejected such Israeli claims last fall. It again rejected similar claims in May. It will also debunk the current nonsense. No such offer was made. Israel 'rejected' something it invented itself and has the chutzpah to make even more lunatic demands:
According to the Israeli official, Netanyahu gave Lavrov a list of demands regarding Iranian military presence in Syria:
Iran needs to take all of its long range missiles and weapons out of Syria.
Iran needs to stop the production of precision munitions in Syria.
Iran needs to take all its air defense systems out of Syria.
The border crossings between Syria and Lebanon needs to be monitored to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah from Syria.
The border crossings between Iraq and Syria needs to be monitored to prevent infiltration of Shiite militias into Syria from Iraq.
Netanyahoo also asked for a pink pony.
China announces fleet of Artificially Intelligent Submarines 
(Whoa! The Terminator as a Submarine! Totally Cool, and INTELLIGENT, too.)
The AI has no soul. It is perfect for this kind of job,” the researcher added...  They station in dock as conventional submarines. Their cargo bay is reconfigurable and large enough to accommodate a wide range of freight, from powerful surveillance equipment to missiles or torpedoes 

Aqualung

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Differing Viewpoints

Entertaining Perspectives,

Member of House of Commons almost 30 years, truthy George Galloway reflects on the #treasonsummit "liberal" outcry in the US, as Trump's bad manners are seen to be worse than nuclear annihilation.

Sister Caitlin in Oz:
The last few days have been truly amazing. I didn’t even write an article yesterday; I’ve just been staring transfixed by my social media feeds watching liberal Americans completely lose their minds. I can’t look away. It’s like watching a slow motion train wreck, and everyone on the train is being really homophobic.
I’ve been writing about Russiagate since it started, and I can honestly say this is the worst it’s ever been, by far. The most hysterical, the most shrill, the most emotional, the most cartoonishly over-the-top and hyperbolic.
The fact that Trump met with Putin in private and then publicly expressed doubt about the establishment Russia narrative has sent some political factions of America into an emotional state that is indistinguishable from what you’d expect if Russia had bombed New York City.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagate-is-like-9-11-except-its-made-of-pure-narrative-ab96fa38ee48

​Mueller Reveals Russia Investigation Just Elaborate Sting To Nail Clinton Child-Sex-Slavery Ring (The Onion speaks the unspeakable)​
https://politics.theonion.com/mueller-reveals-russia-investigation-just-elaborate-sti-1827696431

FBI Chief Christopher Wray dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin's offer for US law enforcement agents to travel to Russia and interview the subjects of last week's DOJ indictment, saying "that's not high on our list of investigative techniques"during a Q&A with CNN's Lester Holt at the Aspen Security Forum.
He also threatened to quit if President Trump were to override him and insist on indulging Putin's request to have Russian agents interview Michael McFaul, the ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration - after Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the administration was open to the request.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-19/fbi-chief-threatens-quit-if-trump-invites-russian-agents-us

It's not Putin who "owns" Trump; never was. Putin just has things the US really needs right now.
On Tuesday an Israeli television channel aired leaked video footage it obtained exclusively showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasting that he had personally convinced President Trump to abandon the Iran nuclear deal. The statements were made at a small dinner event where he addressed senior members of his Likud party. The video, aired by Israel's Kan News shows Netanyahu enthusiastically praising his and Likud leadership's efforts, saying “We convinced the US president [to exit the deal] and I had to stand up against the whole world and come out against this agreement." He added, "And we didn't give up."

​The Israeli Knesset officially declares Israel to be an Apartheid State.
The Knesset passed early Thursday a controversial bill that officially defines Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people and asserts that "the realization of the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people," with 62 lawmakers voting in favor of the legislation and 55 opposing it.

Washington "will consider waivers" on (illegal, unilaterally imposed) Iran sanctions, Treasury Secretary Mnuchen.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets jumped on for correctly referring to Israeli  (illegal, military) occupation of Palestinian territory (which all but 2 countries in the world agree upon, and it used to be all but one).

"Uncle Joe" Lieberman says Joe Crowley, trounced by Ocasio-Cortez in the primary, is still a viable candidate and people should vote for him. Through a New York election fluke, he will remain on the ballot as candidate of a third party. No Democrat (or Republican) dares speak the truth about Israel. That's going too far!

The American media are “almost unanimously endorsing the idea that we have to have an enemy,” declares International peace and trade advocate Ron Paul, warning that "at this point, especially for the last 20 years, they’ve been working very hard to make Russia the enemy, and I think this is wrong." 
​Charles Hugh Smith looks at the egalitarian societal-organizing caacity of distributed ledgers, without the massive computational (electrical  waste) workload of blockchain technology. We will have to organize somehow, and paying less for more and not supporting parasitic classes, is a recipe for success.

Keeping Track

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Deal With Vlad

Artful Dealers,

Eleni sends this about Putin's meeting with Netanyahu, before his meeting with Trump
Sources within the Syrian leadership said the Russian President "was clear with the Israeli Prime Minister that discussion of his concerns are postponed until the dossier related to terrorism is closed". "If terrorists hide in an Israeli controlled area (the occupied Golan Heights) we (Russia and its allies) will eliminate them one by one", said the source. 
Putin reminded Netanyahu that "allied forces are fighting side by side with the Russian forces spread over the entire Syrian territory. Therefore, Moscow is not in a position to ask Damascus's allies to fulfil Israel's demands and look after its concerns, particularly when it is common knowledge that Tel Aviv helped al-Qaeda and other jihadists, and supported the 'regime change' but failed to achieve it"... 
President Bashar al-Assad didn't limit his provocation to ask from Hezbollah to increase its military formation in the south of Syria, but he gave it a substantial gift: two full containers carrying US 60,000$/each TOW's anti-tank guided missiles, Milan French anti-tank guided missile, and other "spoils of war" collected in the south of Syria battle as a token of gratitude to his allies who had shared the same fate during the long years of the war. The west and the Gulf countries supplied significant quantities of weapons to jihadists and rebels throughout the years of the war. These have changed hands from al-Qaeda, to ISIS, and now to Hezbollah.
Putin, on the same day, received at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow the Iranian special envoy of the Leader of the Revolution Ali Akbar Velayati who announced a $50 billion investment in oil and gas. A real slap in the face to Trump, who had revoked the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran's Nuclear Deal (JCPOA). It shows how solid is the Russian commitment to Iran and the fact that its presence in Syria represents a strategic relationship. It is a clear message to Netanyahu that he is not Putin's "Golden Boy" even though he understands the close US-Israeli ties and how important Israel is to the United States.  

Netanyahu thanks Trump and Putin "for discussing Israel's security", whatever that means...

Russia dumped US treasuries for TWO months, going from $96 billion holdings in March, down to $9 billion by end of May. (Russia is very conservative and just fired off all of that gunpowder. Something new is happening.)

Donald Trump had to reverse himself and say that Russians "did interfere in the 2016 election" so that Democrats (neocons?) could claim that was an act of war, and that cyber-warfare against Russian banks is what the US must now press to teach them varmints a lesson! (Closing barn door after...)

Here’s the Trump process: 1) Identify a big goal (tax cuts, balanced trade, the wall, etc.). 2) Identify your leverage points versus anyone who stands in your way (elections, tariffs, jobs, etc.). 3) Announce some extreme threat against your opponent that uses your leverage. 4) If the opponent backs down, mitigate the threat, declare victory and go home with a win. 5) If the opponent fires back, double down. If Trump declares tariffs on $50 billion of good from China,and China shoots back with tariffs on $50 billion of goods from the U.S., Trump doubles down with tariffs on $100 billion of goods, etc. Trump will keep escalating until he wins. 6) Eventually, the escalation process can lead to negotiations with at least the perception of a victory for Trump (North Korea)

The Vlad and Donald show, A Glorious Blow for Peace! David Stockman; fun and informative. Thanks Wigs.

Another Reagan-veteran, Paul Craig Roberts points out the half-assed coup attempt underway ("Treason").
To be clear, the Democratic Minority Leader of the US House of Representatives has accused Donald Trump of high treason against the United States. There is no outcry against this blatantly false accusation, totally devoid of evidence. The presstitute media instead of protesting this attempt at a coup against the President of the United States, trumpet the accusation as self-evident truth. Trump is a traitor because he wants peace with Russia. 

Smooothe... Putin strikes back at Democratic witch-hunters' glass-jaw.
After offering to allow special counsel Robert Mueller's team to come to Russia for their investigation - as long as there was a reciprocal arrangement for Russian intelligence to investigate in the U.S., Putin said this:
"For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder, in this particular case.  Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia and never paid any taxes neither in Russia or the United States and yet the money escaped the country. They were transferred to the United States. They sent [a] huge amount of money, $400,000,000, as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton.  Well that’s their personal case.  It might have been legal, the contribution itself but the way the money was earned was illegal.  So we have solid reason to believe that some [US] intelligence officers accompanied and guided these transactions.  So we have an interest in questioning them." (What's good for the goose...)

Jim Kunstler summarizes some American partisan warfare, what we can see of the deeper power struggle:
Mr. Trump’s visit to confer with Russian President Putin in Helsinki seems to have provoked a kind of last-gasp effort to keep the increasingly idiotic Russian election meddling story alive — with Robert Mueller’s ballyhooed indictment of twelve “Russian intel agents” alleged to have “hacked” emails and computer files of the DNC and Hillary’s campaign chairman John Podesta. The gaping holes in that part of the tale have long been unearthed so I’ll summarize as briefly as possible: 
1) the bandwidth required to transfer the files has been proven to be greater than an internet hack might have conceivably managed in the time allowed and points rather to a direct download into a flash drive device. 2) the DNC computer hard drives, said to be the source of the alleged hacking, disappeared while in the custody of the US Intel Community (including the FBI). 3) the authenticity of the purloined emails by Mr. Podesta and others has never been disputed, and they revealed a lot of potentially criminal behavior by them. 4) Mr. Mueller must know he will never get twelve Russian intel agents into a US courtroom, so the entire exercise is a joke and a fraud. In effect, he’s indicted twelve ham sandwiches with Russian dressing. 

James Comey: "Anybody voting Republican (psst, "russian") this fall is UN-AMERICAN".

Certainly NOT a model for the UK, due to City of London Banking Interests:
The deal eliminates about 99 percent of the tariffs on Japanese goods sold to the EU. About 94 percent of the tariffs on European exports to Japan will be lifted, rising to 99 percent in the future. The difference reflects exceptions on such products as rice, which enjoys strong political protection from imports in Japan.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/17/japan-eu-sign-trade-deal-to-eliminate-nearly-all-tariffs.html

5G wireless internet is coming to Austin! The short wavelengths don't pass through solid object (like human cells) well, dumping their energy into the solid stuff, so "towers" have to be close, every few houses, but that can probably be worked out by making the "internet of things", present in every appliance, in every house, do double duty as towers. There will be a whole environment bathed in this millimeter band radiation, all hard at work for your convenience!
The immense expansion of radiation emissions from the current wireless EMF frequency band and 5G about to be perpetrated on an unsuspecting American public should be criminal.  Developed by the US military as non lethal perimeter and crowd control, the Active Denial System emits a high density, high frequency wireless radiation comparable to 5G and emits radiation in the neighborhood of 90 GHz.   The current Pre 5G, frequency band emissions used in today’s commercial wireless range is from 300 Mhz to 3 GHZ as 5G will become the first wireless system to utilize millimeter waves with frequencies ranging from 30 to 300 GHz. One example of the differential is that a current LANS (local area network system) uses 2.4 GHz.

M
​onitoring Events​