Tuesday, January 31, 2017

American Holy War

Honest Agnostics,

Hubert in Kohala sent this article in reply to the War Of The Worlds news compilation. It gives a clear conceptual framework for America's current deep-state-regime-change struggle.

"The Blue Church should expect to meet the Red Religion in war. And in this conflict the Red Religion has the advantage. In the nature of every movement that has endured the crucible of selection, the Red Religion is much more coherent and focused than the dominant Church which is criss-crossed with internal conflict and in-fighting. The Red Religion was born into and optimized for new media (e.g, optimized for memes rather than films) and as the balance of power shifts from 20th Century media to 21st Century media, this inures to the advantage of the Reds. Going deeper, even as the Red Religion has developed an immunity to most of the primary techniques of the Blue Church, it has simultaneously developed its own memetic/values structure connected with deep human values that stem from ancient “tribal selection” and are highly attractive to the portions of the human family (men and women) who are focused on protecting and defending their tribe (hence the Red Religions’ intrinsic focus on Nationalism). In other words, over the short to mid term, most of the humans who are best prepared to wage war — who are most attuned to and psychologically ready for war — will be attracted to the Red Religion. They will be focused, almost entirely immune to the entire portfolio of Blue weapons and they will be armed with and optimized for 21st Century techniques of waging culture war."  

OODA-Loop refers to Observe-Orient-Decide-Act, a military conceptual structure that pertains to the adaptive behavior in a dogfight, on a battlefield, or in any theater of conventional or unconventional war. It was expounded by the designer of the F-16 Tomcat, fighter plane. It is broadly applicable. It's part of the analysis presented above. Advantages in battle go to the nimble fighter.

Pick One:
"Tulsi Gabbard speaks the truth on Syria; gets smeared by the mainstream media"  https://sputniknews.com/politics/201701291050132024-gabbard-smeared-over-syria/

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard says: The reality is, Jake – and I’m glad you bought up that point – every place that I went, every person I spoke to, I asked this question to them. And without hesitation, they said ‘there are no moderate rebels, who are these moderate rebels that people keep speaking of?’
“Regardless of the name of these groups, the strongest fighting force on the ground in Syria is Al-Nusra or Al-Qaeda and ISIS. That is a fact. There are a number of different other groups, all of them are fighting alongside, with or under the command of the strongest group on the ground that is trying to overthrow Assad.”  http://yournewswire.com/congresswoman-obama-funded-isis/
Paul Craig Roberts sees the "Left Self-Destructing". I think that's how this weird secret war for control of the deep-state looks from one angle, but I think the real left took a nap 40 years ago, and is still snoring.    http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/01/30/left-self-destructing-paul-craig-roberts/
 Dog In Some Fight

Sunday, January 29, 2017

War Of The Worlds

Conquered Peoples,

Fourth Generation Warfare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_warfare
I think there is a war-by-other-means power contest being fought in America and Europe right now between the faction that has been in power since JFKs murder in Dallas, the military-industrial-complex-new-world-order crowd, and ... somebody...
I'm not the only one who can't name "somebody". 
"Rationalist faction" is one name, but that doesn't really say how a group came to have enough power to unfix elections in the US and UK, when the fix was supposedly in. How can a faction arise when the NWO (via NSA & CIA) is in everybody's email and smart phone, and with the data-processing capacity to actually robo-read it all? 
Only military and organized crime are trained to operate in these conditions. Other people who share this power-contest outlook seem to believe it is military. 
It sure looks like a military assault in concept. Attacks on established vested interest in the political arena are coming from any direction, rapid fire. The Trump transition team should be tied down under partisan fire from Republicans and Democrats, but instead, even John McCain and Lindsay Graham are finding themselves on the defensive, as well as the offensive. This looks like Hitler's preposterous blitzkrieg on France, which just ignored the impenetrable Maginot Line. 
I think the "military-industrial-complex" that Eisenhower knew, evolved into the spook-global-financial-complex, and now national military and national industry are carrying out a coup d'etat against the omnipotent puppeteers, just as they have attained total-information-awareness(almost).
That's my story, and I'm happy to be argued out of it, if I can just hear a better explanation.

Trump and Putin make counter-terror the first order of business. (Terrorism is the bogeyman we have been made to fear, in order to be compliant. They want to just slay it. How will we be manipulated? Is NWO their common enemy?) They will speak regularly and a meeting will be set up to do business.

Senator Rand Paul points out that nobody knows how many secret wars the CIA is currently waging, except 8 members of Congress on intelligence committees. That's not the constitutional separation of powers.

Trump's crusade on drug pricing puts both (prostituted) parties on the spot. (heh, heh, heh...)

Here are the latest updates on the refugee ban. It'll be different by the time you read it. Hell, it probably already is. What's next?

North Korean defector says Kim Jong-Un would nuke LA if he believed he were about to lose power (his life, same thing). This seems just like the Israeli Samson-Option, to nuke everything/everybody, friend-and-foe, if Israel is about to fall. It is quite protective to have everybody believe such a thing, so we can ignore it as a clever-ruse, I guess...
Thae, formerly deputy ambassador for the DPRK to the UK, and the longest-serving official in that embassy before fleeing to Seoul with his family in August 2016, is one of a slew of high-ranking officials who have defected from Pyongyang recently. He said the obstinate Kim "knows that if he loses the power then it is his last day so he may do anything, even to attack Los Angeles, because once people know that in any way you will be killed, then you will do anything. That is the human being's normal reaction." 

Atheist-in-Foxhole

Friday, January 27, 2017

Negotiating Chaos

Nonlinear Extrapolations,

"How America Could Collapse", by Matt Stoller, looks at one breakdown mode of global capitalism, the interruption of fragile supply chains, which rely one a single global source.
In the cold war era, there was no question that critical components of American products needed to be made in America, and that supplies of components and spare-parts were held at manufacturing sites, to prevent interruptions of production, and to allow quick production increases, if need arose. 
Japan's just-in-time model of production, where the factories hummed along in unison, avoided the costs of holding inventory, and was appealing in the post-cold-war 1990s. "Hey, nothing can disrupt supply lines. We are the unipolar power."
By the 2000s, there was a massive move of industrial production to wherever it was cheapest, and all in one big cheap factory. "Intellectual property rights", enforced by the Unipower, made this very attractive for global multinationals. Profits were maximized by using the cheapest labor, cheapest fuel and dirtiest factories they could build, and selling into the most expensive markets. Chinese production and US/EU consumption resulted Chinese workers got screwed with cheap wages and toxic air/water, and western workers got to watch daytime TV forever.
All of the vitamin-C (ascorbic acid) in America comes from China. Some recent examples of industrial shortages that affected us are given. I didn't know about them. 
There are more political threats to global supply chains, and a political movement underway to bring production back to the US. I expect turbulence.

Donald Trumps' strategy for negotiating with China is to be unpredictable, which is officially announced by the White House. Chinese are premier-negotiators, says President Donald, so he needs to keep them off-guard and more nervous. This is effectively a statement that the US will do the unpredictable. The only way to back a declared strategy of appearing unpredictable is to be unpredictable. This is possible in trade, because the producing country has investments in manufacturing that require steady flow of profit to avoid bankruptcy. The certainty of ongoing trade has led to over-leveraging of Chinese debt by any standard. China is exceedingly vulnerable, and financial reset of Chinese shadow banking can only be delayed or hastened, not avoided. (Guess what! Now, guess how...)

Global trade and economic activity peaked forever in 2014, around mid year, and fell fairly hard in early 2015, never again to rise. We got peak CO2 production in 2014, as a result. Mish Shedlock correlates the price of oil to global exports and finds that it is a tight correlation. 
(I will point out that it's not one causing the other, but that both reflect global economy. A booming economy can pay more for oil, but a strangled economy can't. High oil prices strangle economy, which was built on cheap oil for 100 years. The implication going forward is that only cheap/easy oil can support the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed, and the lifestyle is now in terminal decline, along with the easy oil.)

"What Would a Labor-Centered Economy Look Like?" Charles Hugh Smith
Charles explores all of the forms of "capital" which come together to create "economy", which is the meeting of societal needs. Only some of the meeting of societal needs is profitable, the rest "loses money". That's why rich neighborhoods are nicely kept and poor neighborhoods are not. The wealthy people can lose money, obtained through "profitable" activities, to keep up appearances which please them. This structure exists right now, because easy-money is created and provided to the wealthiest 1% of society. It is possible to provide this created money directly to the bottom half of the wealth pyramid, in return for work that will benefit society, and to leave the top half to be funded by profitable industry. Public works projects, which have been funded for thousands of years, in most civilizations, have supported western and eastern societies in hard times.

"Trade War Threat Grows" (Yeah, duh...)

A German writer, Holger Stark, writing for Der Spiegel, observes a big change in America, which he did not notice until the election process last year. He had been living in American cities, seeing the urban life. He sees that the loss of jobs to global capitalism has deprived Americans of identity and livelihood. Good observations from the baffled.

"Outrage Dilution", is the assessment of Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, observing the Trump-Transition. What he sees is that 30 abrupt changes in one week is intellectually paralyzing to the human mind. The mind organizes well to resist one abrupt change in a week. With 30 changes in a week, the mind says, "he's sure doing a lot, let's see how it works out". (What I would like to point out is that a lot of what appears to be one thing, is not actually a specifically defined thing at all. Media portrays it as a certain thing, but it may really be able to take a variety of forms. That's complicated. An example is the Keystone-XL and Dakota-access pipelines. The media presents these as done-deals, but they are merely a re-opening of negotiations, with much pro-business fanfare. The price of oil is way too low to support either venture with actual profit. Those who bet against them play the safer hand. Trump is shifting the cost/benefit equation, by saying that all the pipe for these lines (not most) should be made in America (not Canada). The societies that have blocked these pipelines, to protect their land and water, have not rolled over to play dead. Trump creates an impression for his constituencies, which they like the looks of. He gets credit now, but actually sets up a political process, where any eventual outcome will be on terms he has set. This is skilled negotiation. We don't know the ultimate intent.)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looks at the protected vaccine monopoly corporation called the CDC. Really. This is exactly what we are not supposed to think.

Lurching Towards the New Paradigm: Don't look for any conclusive answers here, but it is eloquently composed observation of our path into the world of fake reality, away from our broader-senses. We are slapped in the faces with certain facts and conclusions now. 
Engage the real world. Death may lie in the comfort-zone. It may go "poof". It's not real It requires vast, unseen support structures and energetic inputs to look simple.

Eleni sends this article, suggesting that Donald Trump represents a faction of Global Capitalism, which includes Rothschild family interests. Rockefeller interests reportedly backed the Clinton-Neocon faction. The currently ascendant faction accepts global-economic-collapse, as modeled in The Limits to Growth, and seeks to rapidly retrench going into it.
Fortress-America is a moderately good bet.
Unipolar world empire is unsupportable without vast cheap energy and other cheap resources.

Wile-E-Coyote

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Tulsi Tells Truth

Dangerously Honest,

Hawaiian Congresswoman and Army National Guard officer, Tulsi Gababrd, who resigned from the DNC over election rigging against Bernie Sanders, and who visited President-Elect Trump to counsel against Neocon influence and aggressive foreign wars, visited Syria last week, along with former Congressman, Dennis Kucinich.
Tulsi met with Syrian widows of both sides, and representatives of all sides, and heads of state of neighboring countries. Syrian President Assad offered a meeting, and Tulsi met with him, too. 
The people of Syria and surrounding countries report the horrors of this war, and want the outside funding and supply of the anti-government forces to stop. There are no distinctions, moderate-rape-murderers change names conveniently,
I rarely send money to politicians, but I just sent Tulsi Gabbard a high-five contribution for this. It's a political risk. The Democratic and Republican parties are still largely run by Neocons. Most of the news stories I found were disparaging of Congresswoman Gabbard, with varying degrees of sneer implied. Huffington Post was notably that way. Here is her press release, and local coverage from Hawaii.

Details are provided here of US military supporting ISIS ground operations for years.
The US-led “anti-ISIS” coalition airstrike of  17th September 2016 struck a key Syrian military position in the Thardeh mountains, which protected the Syrian forces’ key air base in the area.  It killed 83 Syrian soldiers and destroyed vehicles, weapons stores, radar stations, tanks, and other armoured vehicles. The air strike was immediately followed by an ISIS attack which overran the position, enabling ISIS to break through to the road leading through the Al- Therdah Mountain which the terrorists had been trying – until then unsuccessful – to reach since 2014.  http://theduran.com/us-isis-deir-el-zour/
Moon of Alabama has a confusing update on ("our") confusing Syrian war:  Further east the fighting in Deir Ezzor continues. The city is besieged by ISIS and a large attack recently managed to split the Syrian army garrison from the living quarters of the 100,000 inhabitants under government protection. Air supplies were impossible. A large Russian air campaign has helped to push ISIS back. Up to a 100 strikes per day have disabled ISIS artillery in the area and helicopter landings to bring in supply and reinforcements are now again possible. Food supplies for the population are again being dropped from large transport planes. During the last three days the Russian airforce flew strategic bombers from Russian territory to Deir Ezzor and intensely bombed ISIS held positions. ISIS reinforcements coming from Raqqa and Palmyra were interdicted before they could reach the area. Deir Ezzor already looked lost but it now may survive the latest ISIS attempt to storm it. In various areas of Syria different configurations of enemies and allies are fighting each other. The situation seems to get more complicate by the day as Turkey and the U.S. are permanently changing their positions and intentions. While U.S. supported "moderates" in the north fight the former allied al-Qaeda, the "moderates" in the south receive resupplies despite their intimate local alliance with al-Qaeda. ISIS is fought by the U.S. in coalition with the Kurds but not in coalition with its NATO ally Turkey. Meanwhile ISIS is supported by the U.S. in its campaigns against the Syrian army.  http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/01/syria-rebel-infighting-and-turkish-losses-help-the-government-and-its-allies.html
"Safe zones" in Syria, for internal refugees? What does that mean from President Trump? More US troops? How could that not suck for everybody?  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-26/trump-proposal-syria-safe-zones-escalate-us-military-involvement-region
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the army will stop at nothing to defeat the enemy in conflicts to come, and they won’t stop until the adversary “waves a white flag.” “If a quarter of the Strip is needed, then we occupy a quarter of the Strip. If more, then more,” he said, according to Haaretz. “The over-involvement of the world powers, especially Europe, is only disrupting. They don’t contribute anything to the problem’s solution, they only complicate things,” he said, as cited by The Times of Israel, while advising “whoever wants to help solve” the conflict, “first forget it.” (Nukes, then?)  https://www.rt.com/news/374990-israeli-army-full-force-lieberman/
The US military leadership was never on board with the policy of relying on those armed groups to advance US interests in Syria in the first place. It recognised that, despite the serious faults of the Assad regime, the Syrian army was the only Syrian institution committed to resisting both al-Qaeda and Islamic State. It seems likely that the Trump administration will now return to that point as it tries to rebuild a policy from the ashes of the failed policy of the Obama administration.  http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/23/us-intervention-in-syria-not-under-trump/
Eleni sends this assessment from Thierry Meyssan. Donald Trump's appointment of Generals Michael Flynn, James Mattis, and  John Kelly to key positions implies realignment of military and intelligence services under a more unified and patriotic command structure. These generals have pulled together before, and exercised prudent military judgement, but were overridden by neocon-political-elements. (There is a broad constituency within the military which is deeply disgusted by what has been done to this country from the inside since 9/11/01.)  http://www.voltairenet.org/article195017.html
Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller wrote the Trump Inaugural Address (not Trump himself, as stated above).  http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/315464-bannon-miller-wrote-trumps-inauguration-address-report
"Why the corrupt, worker-hating, New Democrats must be purged", Bill Black  http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/bill-black-not-4-sale-corrupt-worker-hating-new-democrats-must-purged.html
"The real issue is that the social contract between citizens and governments in the West are being broken. There is always a deal between citizens and their governments. But now governments are defaulting on their citizens because of the debt problem. They can’t deliver retirement at 65...They can’t deliver the healthcare that had been expected. Frankly they can’t deliver police, fire departments or roads without potholes."  http://www.sldinfo.com/pippa-malmgren-on-brexit-and-shaping-the-way-ahead-the-next-phase-of-european-development/
The IMF officially refutes IMF official policy of enforcing neoliberal-austerity in IMF Bailouts. http://www.globaldashboard.org/2017/01/26/austerity-economics-just-smashed-imf/
InfoWars IN. Alex Jones' show is offered White House Press Corps position. (CNN out?)  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-26/alex-jones-infowars-offered-white-house-credentials
"If we bombed you, we ban you" policy to avoid importing radicalized Muslims into the US. "Anti-blowback feature", you could call it.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/trumps-muslim-immigration-executive-order-if-we-bombed-you-we-ban-you/5570949
The entire senior management team at the State Department just (unexpectedly) resigned. This is a brain-trust of protocols, procedures and personality-knowledge that can't be readily replaced. It makes the State Department much less effective in performance of any task for the next few years.  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-26/entire-senior-management-team-state-department-just-resigned 
Secretary of State Tillerson, recently CEO of Exxon, is expected to normalize relations with Russia and get oil flowing from the now-less-frozen Arctic. "In their very first effort on the Russian Arctic shelf, where Exxon is believed to have invested around $1 billion, the companies struck oil in a reserve estimated to hold some 750 million barrels of oil, with a market value of some $40 billion, at today’s oil prices... He also responded that he would not attempt to ease U.S. sanctions against Russia. Yet, observers are also suspicious that he may never have to do so since the sanctions are due to expire in March. There is little expectation of sanctions renewal by the Trump Administration." http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-Tillerson-Could-Fuel-A-Russian-Arctic-Drilling-Boom.html
Proposed oil-taxation changes could raise the wellhead price of domestic US oil above global average, from current position below global average, which would increase pumping of oil within the US in the next few years. This would be a tax break for US oil that would be exported. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/25/us-tax-reforms-could-transform-global-oil-market-goldman-sachs.html
Kyle Bass looks at moderate US protectionist policies under Trump administration "throwing gasoline on Chinese fire" of smoldering bad-debt. This is a push toward a huge, inevitable bad-debt-writedown, an unwelcome one.  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-25/kyle-bass-calls-trump-gasoline-on-smoldering-fire-in-china
"Trump Loves Debt, but It Won't Love Him Back" (Bloomberg) about spending on American infrastructure.  https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-01-25/trump-may-love-debt-but-it-won-t-ever-love-him-back
"Trump and the Debate on America's Infrastructure: How to Cut Infrastructure Costs in Half", Ellen Brown again points out the waste in paying financiers to conjure your money at interest, when the government can do it and all benefits accrue to the public interest, instead.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-and-the-debate-on-americas-infrastructure-how-to-cut-infrastructure-costs-in-half/5570974
Revolting Debt Slave

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

New Loyalties

Choosing Partners,

Political alliances are reorganizing fast, as President Trump wins over labor union support by ditching TPP, and vowing to renegotiate NAFTA.

Trump signs executive orders to renegotiate Keystone-XL and Dakota Access Pipelines. (I think this looks like something, more than it actually is something. Both negotiations mean back-to-the-drawing-board and hinge on complex financial and political relationships. Negotiations could go anywhere or nowhere. The headlines make an impression that something is happening.)

I was a bit baffled by President Trump's first visit after inauguration looking so fumbled. 
He went to the CIA HQ, to mend fences, was unpolished, griped about the news media, and made an oblique reference to "getting rid of the columns". Links to stories about that have been disappearing, but not this one on Russia Today. The nice talk to the workers was salted with a slap to the deep-state-bosses. "Fifth Column" refers to traitors in our government, doesn't it? Thanks Eleni.

The Protected, Privileged Establishment vs. the Working Class, Charles Hugh Smith looks more at who-lost-the-workers, and where that is going.
"What will it take to shift the balance of power decisively in favor of labor? My guess is the downward mobility of another 10 or 20 million people who currently reckon themselves "middle class" into the unprotected, disenfranchised ranks of the Working Class will do it."

Pat Buchanan, who ran for President himself, and served under Reagan, writes "Trump: America for the Americans" and calls the inauguration speech "Jacksonian" with a fair helping of FDR's second inaugural address, to boot. There are "two America's" described, and it's clearly time to choose sides. (Right populism can decay to overt fascism, as left populism can decay to communist totalitarianism. It depends on how the economy does, I think.)

China deploys highly advanced mobile ICBM system to target-position against the US. Just making a point...

China sends warships to Persian Gulf for first time in 7 years, too. This is Chinese national interest. They get critical oil here.

The headline here is that Asian nations try to salvage TPP after the US exits, but Japan needs to stay with the US. Australia is considering replacing the US with China in the deal, but that was never the deal, and Japan won't sign up, either. It's over and Australia feels exposed. Who will buy the output of Australian mines?

Brexit needs Parliamentary consultation and consent, and a lot of laws reformulated, and that will take awhile, before article-2 can be presented to the EU, if it still exists by then.

The EU ("Belgium" and we do not really know what that means.)  is the biggest holder of US Treasury debt, not China or Japan.

Don't want a self driving electric car and payment? IKEA comes out with a one-size-fits-most cargo bike with 2 speed automatic shifter, and a really good price this August. Taking orders online already.
ikea sladda utility bike for urban commuting
Choosing Pedals

Monday, January 23, 2017

Climbing The Avalanche

Abruptly Unsupported,

Charles Hugh Smith nails it. Excellent analysis here. (Thanks Eleni.)
The Left is not just in disarray--it is in complete collapse because the working class has awakened to the Left's betrayal and abandonment of the working class in favor of building personal wealth and power.

Robert Reich presents 7 points the Democratic Party must address, or it can finish dying. (Trump already notices the jobs thing, which is the main thing.)
It’s not enough for Democrats to be “against Trump,” and defend the status quo. Democrats have to fight like hell against regressive policies Trump wants to put in place, but Democrats also need to fight for a bold vision of what the nation must achieve—like expanding Social Security, and financing the expansion by raising the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes; Medicare for all; and world-class free public education for all.
The Party must change from being a giant fundraising machine to a movement. It needs to unite the poor, working class, and middle class, black and white—who haven’t had a raise in 30 years, and who feel angry, powerless, and disenfranchised.

Brandon Smith has done fairly well with recent predictions. He gives pointers. "How to Predict the Behavior of Globalists"
Globalists like to use the strategy of forced sacrifice, in which they threaten two targets simultaneously, or kill two birds with one stone. I realized at the beginning of 2016 that all the rhetoric by globalists in their own publications on the “rise of populism” was staging the groundwork for the success of the Brexit and the success of Trump. What better strategy for the establishment than to allow conservative movements to take the helm of the political and economic ship just as that ship is about to sink? In this way, the globalists can have the crisis they need, while at the same time scapegoating conservatives and avoiding blame, and, destroying the image of conservative ideals.

David Stockman is also of the opinion that Trump has little to work with, has inherited a fiscal crisis, which is about to roll over, won the poisoned chalice, etc.

Jim Kunstler paints Trump's position in living color: " The disassembly of such a vast matrix of rackets is unlikely to be managed without generating a lot of dangerous friction. Such a tall order would require, at least, some finesse. Virtually all the powers of the Deep State are arrayed against him, and he can’t resist taunting them, a dangerous game."

Theresa May will meet in Washington this Friday, to discuss post-Brexit trade deal with the US (not a negotiation). May is in an even less enviable position than Trump. British courts are still deciding who gets to invoke Article-2 and set the 2 year Brexit clock ticking. How "hard" of a Brexit, with how much hurt, and to whom? Nobody knows; history will tell.

The new U.S. administration of President Donald Trump said on Friday its trade strategy to protect American jobs would start with withdrawal from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact. The statement said Trump was committed to renegotiating another trade deal, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was signed in 1994 by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

European Central Bank Director, Mario Draghi, changes his position. 
It is now possible for a country to exit the Eurozone, but it must pay all debts to the Eurozone first. (That's his public opinion today.)

Marine Le Pen says the EU is dead, but doesn't know it yet, at a meeting of populists leaders which the EU doesn't see or hear.

Russia announces first joint air-strike mission against ISIS in Syria, involving Russian and US-led-coalition aircraft. 
Pentagon says "US didn't fly with Russia, just shared information to avoid collisions". 
Russia and Turkey say "that isn't what Russia said". 
Russian and Turkish fighters flew together over Syria, near the Turkish border, to attack ISIS/Daesh around the town of Al-Bab. 
Turkey wants ISIS out, but doesn't want Syrian Kurds to kick ISIS out, and join their two Kurdish enclaves` in the middle.

The last time the oceans got this warm, sea levels were 20 to 30 feet higher than they are now.

Waking Up Dead

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Year Of Resets

Seeking Clarification,

Eleni sends this assessment of how Donald Trump came to be President of the US, from Moon of Alabama, which is a German writer, as I understand it.
[T]he power elite can be best described as a “triangle of power,” linking the corporate, executive government, and military factions: “There is a political economy numerously linked with military order and decision. This triangle of power is now a structural fact, and it is the key to any understanding of the higher circles in America today.” The 2016 US election, like all other US elections, featured a gallery of pre-selected candidates that represented the three factions and their interests within the power elite. The 2016 US election, however, was vastly different from previous elections. As the election dragged on the power elite became bitterly divided, with the majority supporting Hilary Clinton, the candidate pre-selected by the political and corporate factions, while the military faction rallied around their choice of Donald Trump.

Pepe Escobar has this article, titled "How the Trump Presidency will play out", but it is not that, just as nothing ever really predicts what is to come. 
It does give the view of "X", a denizen of the deep-state, who cannot otherwise be named. 
The perspective of how Donald Trump came to be President is complimentary to the one above, dovetails with it, and I don't take either, or any of the others, to be "true", nor false. Eleni and I both found this article. It now seems marginally permissible to talk a bit about the deep-state running the show in Amerika. We'll see how that develops as we go forward.

What did President Trump do to the Affordable Care Act on Day #1? 
He seems to have asked that people not be forced to pay the income tax levy/fine if they have not bought insurance. 
This is the most unpopular part of the bill, and is a tax-by-another-name. Without this fine, people who are young, healthy and just getting by, will not purchase insurance they do not need. The "low" costs of insurance the first couple of years were always expected to rise in subsequent years, and were not cheap to start. They are going up about 140% this year, for new enrolees. There won't be that many. 
The insurance companies at all levels are dragging their heels on payments of all kinda already. 
It's a crappy, corrupt and amazingly wasteful "system", and it employs a lot of middle managers who will be out of jobs without it. It's a parasitic profit center for retirement plans. 
Canada, France, Australia, Japan, Germany and the UK all have way better and pay about 40% what we do as a nation. "Obamacare" will likely get more rank, rotten and unpopular all year.
I sure don't know what these clowns will put together to replace it. They will get blamed when they do. They know that.

If the federal government buys the companies that make the most expensive drugs, they can lower the prices, and everybody will be happy. 
(Perfect plans like this always turn out to be booby-trapped, right?)

New Year's Resolution: I'll stop eating stuff that tricks me into getting fat, and I'll sleep more, too.
Artificial sweeteners make your brain hungrier, inducing weight gain. Nutra-Sweet worsens diabetes through an additional mechanism, also.
I'll read labels (bring reading glasses) and avoid high-fructose-corn-syrup/"corn-sweetener/etc.
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Moss goes inside the world of processed and packaged foods. Selling to teens in an attempt to hook them for life. Scientifically tweaking ratios of salt, sugar and fat to optimize consumer bliss. ("No-one can eat just one.")
Health-Journalist, Bill Sardi gives good explanations and refers to serious scientific papers in this article about how melatonin (the sleep hormone) derivation leads to weight gain and forgetfulness. There are multiple causes, like lights at night, changes of ageing, and calcification of the pineal gland. Taking 1-3 milligrams of cheap, over the counter melatonin cut fat by a couple of kilos and increased lean body mass by about the same in a Danish study. Placebo did nada. (We started 3 mg of melatonin at 9:00PM in December. It seems nice. I'm smarter and stronger and more youthful already. YMMV)

Violence: The Language Of A Jewish State In One Image
Who is this gentle man, and why was he just shot in the face with a rubber-covered-steel bullet? Thanks Eleni. You are much closer to this, where you live.

Robbed at Gunpoint

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Gauntlet Is Cast

Witnesses,

Stated objectives going into Trump Inaugural address:
  1. "The speech is an attempt to address the deep structural problems facing American society. … We're talking here about decades-long problems."
  2. The speech is "not ideological": "It's a rejection of ideological thinking. Ideological thinking is always looking at the world through a strictly dogmatic prism. It's having a set of beliefs that are uncompromising."
  3. The speech will convey "that a nation and its people and its affairs are like a family and you need to take care of them."  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-20/trump-speech-preview-three-big-ideas

President Trump's Inauguration speech transcript: 
"I will fight for you with every breath in my body, and I will never, ever let you down." (He says he won't be intimidated by death-threats, right?)

"Trump's speech was different from any previous inaugural address. He spoke directly to his political base. He did not try to pull the country together in some kind of vague, pie-in-the-sky, common-ground political rhetoric. He threw down the gauntlet from the very beginning. Standing in front of the Capitol building, surrounded by former Presidents and politicians, he said that everything they had done in the past has been a way to extract power from the American people and to feather their own nests. This, of course, is exactly what they have done. Nobody had ever said this before in an inaugural address... The implication is obvious: previous Presidents have all betrayed them. And they have. Four of them were standing behind him when he said it. This was a breach of etiquette." Thanks Eleni.


Declaration of War in America. Paul Craig Roberts analyzes the Inaugural Address: Thanks Bill.
So along with the globalists, the CIA, the offshoring corporations, the armaments industries, the NATO establishment in Europe, and foreign politicians accustomed to being well paid for supporting Washington's interventionist foreign policy, Trump will have arrayed against him the leaders of the victimized peoples, the blacks, the hispanics, the feminists, the illegals, the homosexuals and transgendered. This long list, of course, includes the white liberals as well, as they are convinced that flyover America is the habitat of white racists, misogynists, homophobes, and gun nuts. As far as they are concerned, this 84% of geographical US should be quarantined or interred. 

Premier German Financial Publication, Handelsblatt, also described Trump Inaugural Address as "declaration of war".

USMC Generals Mattis and Kelly are approved as Secretaries of Defense and Director of Homeland Security.
Transition of Director of Central Intelligence is being politically delayed.

Women march across America, and the world against Donald Trump's rude sexist remarks. 
(This is a chance for Trump to make peace through public apology and vow to do better. Let's see if he does.)

2017 Global Geopolitics in 4 Useful Maps (clarifying):

The US is bombing ISIS in Syria, but mostly just oil tankers and refineries, not the troops laying siege to Der ez Zor, where the USAF infamously destroyed the Syrian army position commanding the heights above the city last September. https://www.rt.com/news/359678-us-strikes-syrian-army/  Thanks Eleni.

China Censors Trump Inauguration, News Blackout (That'll teach him!)

Outgoing President Obama casually clarified that there is no evidence of Russia hacking the DNC, that emails were "leaked", which is what insiders with access do...

Exiting Stage Left