Trump Calls Out Absurd 5th Column

BostonGlobe |  President Donald Trump mounted a vigorous defense of his presidency Thursday, pushing back against media reports that his campaign advisers had inappropriate contact with Russian officials and vowing to crack down on the leaking of classified information.

Nearly a month into his presidency, Trump said in a free-wheeling White House news conference that his new administration had made ‘‘significant progress’’ and took credit for an optimistic business climate and a soaring stock market.

The president denounced media reports of a chaotic start to his administration marked by a contentious executive order — now tied up in a legal fight — to place a ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations.

‘‘This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine,’’ Trump declared. He said he would announce a ‘‘new and very comprehensive order to protect our people.’’

The People vs. America

aljazeera |  The American people’s lack of faith in and disillusionment with the US establishment is greater now than at any other point in history. The institutions that served US citizens are increasingly regarded as self-serving and the people increasingly divided, increasingly polarised along racial and economic lines.

As new President, Donald Trump, enters the White House on a wave of populism, The Big Picture explores just how America has become so fractured, and how for many, the American Dream has been lost.

We chart the history of that mythic dream to show its power and the ways in which, throughout the last 70 years, it has been undermined by the powerful and shattered for those who still believe in it as truth.

Progressive Combatant in the Deep State's Peak Oil War?

lewrockwell |  And for those naive enough to question this basic assessment of the state’s interests in Syria, ask yourself: if the US and its owned media clique slavishly calls Assad a butcher and promoted chaos in his country for purely humanitarian reasons, why aren’t they doing the same in countries like Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, and Chad? Those countries are ruled by brutal dictators too. Yet your vacuous media guardians, those valiant watchdogs of the truth, do not tell you every day how much of a butcher they are or how we should overthrow their regimes.

The answer is clear: the financial interests that own these media puppets do not prioritize those nations’ resources, strategic locations, or financial structures. So you don’t hear every night how they’re run by butchers. Instead, you see a congresswoman like Gabbard castigated and demonized for daring to question their lying interventionist narrative.

Is that too cynical to consider? Why not hang around your local city commission for a while and see how much power jockeying, clique politics, lying and back-stabbing goes on to decide who will get the contract to build a new 2 million dollar road.

And you think humans, given access to the greatest monopoly of military leverage in the US government, will magically just act in pure humanitarian interest when trillions of dollars are at stake?

I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Aleppo.

Gabbard has criticized Assad’s role in the conflict. But she has also been vocal in denouncing the US’s one party policy of arming terrorists in Syria. She even introduced a bill in Congress to stop arming terrorists. Our government aided and weaponized ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists, the same group that attacked us on 9-11, for the pathetic, pitiful lust for power and money available in Syrian regime change.

Yet today, you’ll see headlines like these plastered all over the hegemonic leftist media: POLITICO: Gabbard won’t disclose who’s paying for secret trip to Syria

 

DAILY BEAST: Tulsi Gabbard’s Fascist Escorts to Syria The Democratic congresswoman used affiliates of a violent, anti-Semitic political party to take tea with Assad.

DAILY KOS: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has turned into a stooge for Syria’s dictator. Who will primary her?

Remember, these are the same outlets who slavishly lined up to dine with the pro-Syrian coup Clinton campaign, as Wikileaks revealed. These are the same outlets who allowed their key reporters to submit their pre-published content for approval by Clinton operatives.

These reporters are of the same state-religious clique that threatened Tulsi Gabbard’s career when she refused to bow the knee to Hillary Clinton in the primary. They want power. They love the state denomination of establishment leftism which allows them to use Syrian migrants’ fleeing desperation as a photo-op to bludgeon their rival state sect embodied in Trump.

The leftist media outlets incessantly questioning Gabbard’s call for peace and an end to US-backed terrorism in Syria don’t care if our intervention has destroyed cities and murdered and raped thousands. They only care about the social status points they get in social circles where being seen outraged at airport arrival lines is more important than stopping mass murder for profit and power.

Trump Regime Manufactured By Peak-Oil War Within the Deep State?

medium |  Trump fits into this system snugly. Among his draft executive orders is one that would open the door for US corporations to engage in secretive corrupt and criminal practices to buy conflict minerals from the Congo — which are widely used in electronic products like smartphones and laptops.

From this broader perspective, it’s clear that far from representing a force opposed to the Deep State, the Trump regime represents an interlocking network of powerful players across sectors which heavily intersect with the Deep State: finance, energy, military intelligence, private defense, white nationalist ‘alt-right’ media, and Deep State policy intellectuals.

According to Scott, this reflects a deepening “old division within Big Money — roughly speaking, between those Trilateral Commission progressives, many flourishing from the new technologies of the global Internet, who wish the state to do more than at present about problems like wealth disparity, racial injustice and global warming, and those Heritage Foundation conservatives, many from finance and oil, who want it to do even less.”

So rather than being a nationalist ‘insurgency’ against the corporate globalist ‘Deep State’, the Trump regime represents a white nationalist coup by a disgruntled cross-section within the Deep State itself. Rather than coming into conflict with the Deep State, we are seeing a powerful military-corporate nexus within the American Deep State come to the fore. Trump, in this context, is a tool to re-organize and restructure the Deep State in reaction to what this faction believe to be an escalating crisis in the global Deep System.

In short, the Deep State faction backing Trump is embarking on what it believes is a unique and special mission: to save the Deep State from a decline caused by the failures of successive American administrations.

However, what they are actually doing is accelerating the decline of the American Deep State and the disruption of the global Deep System.

Whatever Happened with the Awan Brothers?

frontpagemag |  Last year, eight members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a demand that their staffers be granted access to top secret classified information.

The signatories to the letter were Andre Carson, Luis Guiterez, Jim Himes, Terri Sewell, Jackie Speier, Mike Quigley, Eric Swalwell and Patrick Murphy. All the signatories were Democrats. Some had a history of attempting to undermine national security.

Two of them have been linked to an emerging security breach.

The office of Andre Carson, the second Muslim in Congress, had employed Imran Awan. As did the offices of Jackie Speier and Debbie Wasserman Schultz; to whom the letter had been addressed.

Imran Awan and his two brothers, Jamal and Abid, are at the center of an investigation that deals with, among other things, allegations of illegal access.  They have been barred from the House of Representatives network.

A member of Congress expressed concern that, “they may have stolen data from us.”

All three of the Pakistani brothers had been employed by Democrats. The offices that employed them included HPSCI minority members Speier, Carson and Joaquín Castro. Congressman Castro, who also sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, utilized the services of Jamal Moiz Awan. Speier and Carson’s offices utilized Imran Awan.

Abid A. Awan was employed by Lois Frankel and Ted Lieu: members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Also on the committee is Castro. As is Robin Kelly whose office employed Jamal Awan.  Lieu also sits on the subcommittees on National Security and Information Technology of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Tammy Duckworth’s office had also employed Abid. Before Duckworth successfully played on the sympathy of voters to become Senator Tammy Duckworth, she had been on the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces of the Armed Services Committee.

Gwen Graham, who had also been on the Armed Services Committee and on the Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee, had employed Jamal Awan. Jamal was also employed by Cedric Richmond’s office. Richmond sits on the Committee on Homeland Security and on its Terrorism and Cybersecurity subcommittee. He is a ranking member of the latter subcommittee. Also employing Jamal was Mark Takano of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Imran had worked for the office of John Sarbanes who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees, among other things, the nuclear industry. Other members of the Committee employing the brothers included Yvette Clarke, who also sits on the Bipartisan Encryption Working Group, Diana DeGette, Dave Loebsack and Tony Cardenas.

But finally there’s Andre Carson.

Trump Saw the Transcript(s) and Sacrificed a Troublesome Knight

foxnews |  As President Trump sometimes awkwardly comes to terms with being the fish in the fishbowl, he gets to observe the case of his National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn.

The main issue for Flynn is that he did not tell the truth about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. It would have been bad enough if Flynn had simply misled the press, but he also seems to have let the vice president step forward and repeat those untruths on his behalf.

Flynn, who has attributed the misstatements to poor memory and not any intent to deceive, has reportedly apologized to Pence and is doing his best to dig in against his internal foes.

The retired general’s perilous position is highlighted in a couple of different ways. We know of reports about tensions between Flynn and Defense Secretary James Mattis. Mattis has more pull inside the administration, arguably, than any other cabinet member and if he has issues with Flynn, that’s a big deal.

But more ominous for Flynn was the news over the weekend that the CIA director had nixed one of Flynn’s top deputies for failing to qualify for high-level security clearance. If Trump’s newly minted CIA boss, Mike Pompeo, feels obliged and willing to shut down the president’s closest national security adviser that’s a big deal.

Flynn or his allies seemed to make the case that the deputy got booted because of a turf war between the agencies and as retribution for Flynn’s efforts to reform U.S. intelligence.

Remember all of the drama at the time of the inauguration about Trump questioning U.S. intelligence and wondering if the Russians weren’t telling the truth and the CIA lying? That was probably Flynn’s voice coming through.

But to renew allegations of corruption against the CIA after Trump’s director is in charge is something different. It’s hard to imagine Trump would believe Pompeo is a crook so soon after selecting him and so soon after the president visited the agency to make peace.

Trump will presumably see or has already seen the transcript of Flynn’s calls and will make up his own mind about whether keeping Flynn’s counsel is worth the internal strife and external narrative.

But whatever Trump decides, he can learn one key lesson from Flynn: Somebody is always listening.

Krauthhammer: Deep State Ought Not Eavesdrop and Leak on U.S. Citizens

realclearpolitics |  Charles Krauthammer, commenting on the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, said we can not have the government eavesdrop on conversations and then leak it to the media. From Tuesday's Special Report:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Each side always wants to argue the real story is the misdeeds of the other guy. The fact that there are real big misdeeds in these leaks, but that doesn't exonerate what happened within the Trump administration. There are two stories. One is that the internal dysfunction in the Trump White House, the fact that Flynn lied internally was untrustworthy. But the other story is the scandal of these leaks.

Look, we cannot have our intelligence agencies eavesdropping on Americans and releasing it to the press. We have extremely elaborate procedures when we eavesdrop on, say, and ambassadors from other countries, which we do all the time. Everyone does. Everyone knows it. When the conversation involves an American, there are extremely strict procedures to blur the identity, to hide the identity and to protect the information coming from the American. This is the exact opposite of that and it is scary because it means everybody who communicates with a foreigner is subject to being exposed by his own government. You can't have that.

Fist tap Bro. Makeru.

Flynn an Expendable Neocon-Compromised Knight - Chess About Hiring/Firing/Negotiating

thesaker |  Less than a month ago I warned that a ‘color revolution ‘ was taking place in the USA.  My first element of proof was the so-called “investigation” which the CIA, FBI, NSA and others were conducting against President Trump’s candidate to become National Security Advisor, General Flynn.  Tonight, the plot to get rid of Flynn has finally succeeded and General Flynn had to offer his resignation.  Trump accepted it.

Now let’s immediately get one thing out of the way: Flynn was hardly a saint or a perfect wise man who would single handedly saved the world.  That he was not.  However, what Flynn was is the cornerstone of Trump’s national security policy.  For one thing, Flynn dared the unthinkable: he dared to declare that the bloated US intelligence community had to be reformed.  Flynn also tried to subordinate the CIA and the Joint Chiefs to the President via the National Security Council.  Put differently, Flynn tried to wrestle the ultimate power and authority from the CIA and the Pentagon and subordinate them back to the White House.  Flynn also wanted to work with Russia. Not because he was a Russia lover, the notion of a Director of the DIA as a Putin-fan is ridiculous, but Flynn was rational, he understood that Russia was no threat to the USA or to Europe and that Russia had the West had common interests.  That is another absolutely unforgivable crimethink in Washington DC.

The Neocon run ‘deep state’ has now forced Flynn to resign under the idiotic pretext that he had a telephone conversation, on an open, insecure and clearly monitored, line with the Russian ambassador.

And Trump accepted this resignation.

Ever since Trump made it to the White House, he has taken blow after blow from the Neocon-run Ziomedia, from Congress, from all the Hollywood doubleplusgoodthinking “stars” and even from European politicians.  And Trump took each blow without ever fighting back.  Nowhere was his famous “you are fired!” to be seen.  But I still had hope.  I wanted to hope.  I felt that it was my duty to hope.

But now Trump has betrayed us all.

Remember how Obama showed his true face when he hypocritically denounced his friend and pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.?  Today, Trump has shown us his true face.  Instead of refusing Flynn’s resignation and instead of firing those who dared cook up these ridiculous accusations against Flynn, Trump accepted the resignation

Deep State Draws First Blood - Time to Stick and Move

strategic-culture |  In an article a few weeks ago, I tried to lay the foundations for a future US administration, placing a strong focus on foreign policy and revealing a possible shift in US historic foreign relations. In a passage I wrote:

Donald Trump has emerged with in mind a precise foreign policy strategy, forged by various political thinkers of the realist world such as Waltz and Mearsheimer, trashing all recent neoconservative and neoliberal policies of foreign intervention (R2P - Right to Protect) and soft power campaigns in favor of human rights. No more UN resolutions, subtly used to bomb nations (Libya). Trump doesn’t believe in the central role of the UN and reaffirmed this repeatedly.

In general, the Trump administration intends to end the policy of regime change, interference in foreign governments, Arab springs and color revolutions. They just don’t work. They cost too much in terms of political credibility, in Ukraine the US are allied with supporters of Bandera (historical figure who collaborated with the Nazis) and in Middle East they finance or indirectly support al Qaeda and al Nusra front».

The recent meeting in Washington with Theresa May, the first official encounter with a prominent US ally, revealed, among other things, a possible dramatic change in US policy. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom expressed her desire to follow a new policy of non-intervention, in line with the isolationist strategy Trump has spoken about since running for office. In a joint press conference with the American president, May said: «The era of military intervention is over. London and Washington will not return to the failed policy in the past that has led to intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya».

During the election campaign, Trump made his intentions clear in different contexts, but always coming from the standpoint of non-interventionism inspired by the concept of isolationism. It is becoming apparent that these intentions are being put into action, though the rhetoric regarding Iran has become alarming. In typical Trump fashion (which contrasts with the Iran issue), the situation in Syria is normalizing and the initial threats directed at China appear to have been put aside. The case of Iran is a different and complex story, requiring a deeper analysis that deserves a separate article. What will gradually be important, as the Presidency progresses, is understanding the necessity to distinguish between words and actions, separating provocations from intentions. 

Stop Pussyfooting Around the Economic Devastation Wrought by the Replacement Negroe Policy and Program

The "replacement negroe" policy and program is still a forbidden topic in mainstream political discourse. That said, Chuck Todd and Stephen Miller come as close as possible to discussing it on Meet the Press yesterday.  Trump policy advisor Stephen Miller does a fine job of handling opposition media feints and jabs from Chuck Todd. 

Joy Ann Reid, Rachel Maddow, Alex Witt, Chuck Todd and the whole roster of MSNBC talking heads - are nekkid as jaybirds when it comes to their full-time, vitriolic, and deeply irritating lack of journalistic objectivity and purely oppositional stance to the Trump administration.

American Renaissance and Uncle Hotep Agree On the Replacement Negroe Problem

alhambrapartners |  Commentator Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard reignited a fierce debate this week, though it seems like he correctly surmised at the time anonymity would have been preferable. Speaking with author Charles Murray, Kristol echoed a sentiment that has been underneath a lot of what passes for analysis these past few years of the “rising dollar.” Being one prominent Never-Trumper, the most prominent, in fact, there is a fair amount of disdain that is political more than pure economic interpretation. It was the disillusionment, after all, of the working classes who delivered Mr. Trump his current Pennsylvania Avenue address.

If you google “job openings” chances are very good that in almost every one of the news articles that comes up the words “skills mismatch” are prominently placed. It has become something of an obsession in official circles, to which Kristol is apart, because how could it be any different? After massive infusions of “stimulus”, the economy never caught fire even though it was supposed to at several points along the way. The JOLTS survey of BLS configured data has been at record highs for several years, surging in 2015 as the economy fell off. Therefore it must be something wrong with workers rather than the economy the “experts” worked tirelessly to bring about with the best-designed programs in history.

Now after several more years of economic hardship, the “experts” now consider it more so lazy Americans whose communities deserve to die. To be fair, Fed officials have never expressed it in these terms, nor would I expect that they ever would. However, their analysis is in keeping with the basis for those unfortunate sentiments. Everything was supposed to be normal by now, but it isn’t. The Great “Recession” was supposed to have been a recession, but it wasn’t. What failed? The experts…or you?

Even if there wasn’t self-interest on the part of Fed officials to answer that question, as noted earlier today monetary neutrality leaves even credible and intelligent Fed members (like Tarullo, actually) to have to attribute the lack of recovery to the same absurdity of Baby Boomer retirement and skills mismatch that they rightly rejected in 2011 and after. They are prevented from arriving at common sense because common sense was renormalized out of the math, and thus out of official analysis that gets parroted by the rest of the “experts” in deciding what they will proclaim has been going on.  

Populism isn’t a dismissal of the necessary messiness of rising living standards, it realizes far more that living standards aren’t doing anything like that, where one symptom is the utter and obvious lack of opportunity. It has demonized the globalization of so-called free trade because it is the rejection of “experts” who have no idea what they are talking about. These are the same experts who make sweeping generalizations based on sophistry rather than data, the very deficiency they believe of us. As I wrote last year, we are not the barbarians. We may not have advanced degrees, but we don’t need them to know exactly who it was that has been incompetent. If the Great “Recession” wasn’t a recession, and that is now the general consensus, admitted publicly or not, it’s not my fault for being a little more than upset about it, and directing that ire at those who for years said it was, and more than that said first it wasn’t ever even possible.

Neither GOP or DNC Can Absorb Alignment of Alt-Right and Hoteps

WaPo |  A super PAC formed to reelect Barack Obama in 2012 is driving activists to congressional town halls. Veterans of Bill Clinton’s administration are joining marches and plotting bigger ones for the spring. Democratic senators who had befriended Jeff Sessions in the Senate voted — 47 to 1 — against his nomination for attorney general.

Three weeks into President Trump’s term, the Democratic Party and progressive establishment have almost entirely adopted the demands of a restive, active and aggressive base. They are hopeful that the new activism more closely resembles the tea party movement, which embraced electoral politics, than the Occupy Wall Street movement, which did not.

The pace of the activists, and the runaway-train approach of Trump’s administration, have given them little time to puzzle it out.

“He has a strategy to do so many things that he overwhelms the opposition,” Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) said of Trump, “[but] he’s creating the largest opposition movement I’ve seen in my lifetime in the United States.”

After previous defeats, the modern Democratic Party typically plunged into a discussion between a moderate wing and a liberal wing. George McGovern’s 1972 loss led to an internal party battle against the New Left. After Walter Mondale’s 1984 defeat, a group of moderate strategists formed the Democratic Leadership Council. After the 2004 defeat of John F. Kerry, a new generation of like-minded strategists launched Third Way, with a focus on lost moderate voters.

How a Breakdown in Liberal Ideology Created Trump

libertyblitzkrieg |  My typical writing style consists of taking a particular topic or train of thought and bringing it to some sort of conclusion within a single relatively short post. Today’s topic is simply too expansive for that model, so it’ll be published in at least two parts.

This post needs to be read in the context of my last two posts. If you haven’t read those, you’ll probably have a difficult time fully grasping everything I discuss below. Here are those pieces in case you missed them the first time.

Lost in the Political Wilderness 

What is Spiral Dynamics and Why Have I Become So Interested in It?

Once again, today’s article will focus on the writings of Ken Wilber. I’ve been completely blown away by the fact that his insight into a evolutionary model of human consciousness called Spiral Dynamics, almost perfectly expresses how I feel about things despite never having come into contact with the model previously. As most of you know, I view Trump as a symptom of a diseased societal, political and economic paradigm, as opposed to the disease itself. Trump was a reaction, and the way the Democrats handled the primary was the final nail in the coffin in sealing his victory. People became so fed up with the insanity of the fake left, many of those who didn’t even like Trump decided to roll the dice with him anyway.

Ken Wilber’s recent free e-book, Trump and a Post-Truth World, takes it much further in a thoroughly enlightening manner through the prism of evolutionary consciousness. In fact, he makes it clear that the election of someone like Trump was a long time coming and, in fact, the culmination of a decades-long process of “liberal” ideology gone completely off the deep-end.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Trump Makes Sense to a Grocery Store Owner

thehindu |  Economist-mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb contends that there is a global riot against pseudo-experts

After predicting the 2008 economic crisis, the Brexit vote, the U.S. presidential election and other events correctly, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the Incerto series on global uncertainties, which includes The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, is seen as something of a maverick and an oracle. Equally, the economist-mathematician has been criticised for advocating a “dumbing down” of the economic system, and his reasoning for U.S. President Donald Trump and global populist movements. In an interview in Jaipur, Taleb explains why he thinks the world is seeing a “global riot against pseudo-experts”.

I’d like to start by asking about your next book, Skin in the Game, the fifth of the Incerto series. You do something unusual with your books: before you launch, you put chapters out on your website. Why is that?

Putting my work online motivates me to go deeper into a subject. I put it online and it gives some structure to my thought. The only way to judge a book is by something called the Lindy effect, and that is its survival. My books have survived. I noticed that The Black Swan did well because it was picked up early online, long before the launch. I also prefer social media to interviews in the mainstream media as many journalists don’t do their research, and ‘zeitgeist’ updates [Top Ten lists] pass for journalism.

The media is not one organisation or a monolithic entity.

Well, I’m talking about the United States where I get more credible news from the social media than the mainstream media. But I am very impressed with the Indian media that seems to present both sides of the story. In the U.S., you only get either the official, bureaucratic or the academic side of the story.

In Skin in the Game, you seem to build on theories from The Black Swan that give a sense of foreboding about the world economy. Do you see another crisis coming?

Oh, absolutely! The last crisis [2008] hasn’t ended yet because they just delayed it. [Barack] Obama is an actor. He looks good, he raises good children, he is respectable. But he didn’t fix the economic system, he put novocaine [local anaesthetic] in the system. He delayed the problem by working with the bankers whom he should have prosecuted. And now we have double the deficit, adjusted for GDP, to create six million jobs, with a massive debt and the system isn’t cured. We retained zero interest rates, and that hasn’t helped. Basically we shifted the problem from the private corporates to the government in the U.S. So, the system remains very fragile.

In Purchasing Power Parity - America is a Third World Country

sprottmoney |  What metric does PricewaterhouseCooper rely upon as the basis for its economic projection? It uses an economic term called “purchasing power parity”. It is the total purchasing power of that population.

PWC argues that this produces a clearer picture of actual economic strength because it cancels out price differentials between economies. In general, prices are much higher in Western economies than in the Emerging Market countries (and even BRICS nations), thus having higher nominal amounts of wealth circulating in Western economies can be deceiving, since it can buy less stuff.

What makes this metric and report so interesting is that PWC is essentially projecting the real wealth levels of these populations. This projection is about a lot more than just evening out price differentials.

Canada’s GDP is more than four times as much as that of Egypt, and more than five times as much as that of Pakistan. Even by 2050; PWC estimates that Canada will still have GDP greater than either nation. But Egypt and Pakistan will have stronger economies, because their populations will have more real wealth circulating in those economies.

We’re not dealing with a small differential here. Note that PWC is talking about Egypt and Pakistan having much stronger economies than Canada. By 2050, measured in purchasing power parity, both Egypt and Pakistan will have economies more than 1/3 stronger than Canada.

This seems to be incongruous. If Canada will still have the larger economy by 2050 (as measured in GDP), why will Egypt and Pakistan both have stronger economies, as measured in the real wealth circulating within that economy? We get a large clue by looking at a chart which is familiar to regular readers.

For the past 8+ years; the bankers of the Federal Reserve and the bankers of Wall Street have been boasting about all the “wealth” that has been created in the United States during the mythical U.S. recovery. Yes, lots and lots of wealth.

Regular readers know that B.S. Bernanke conjured more than $3 trillion of new U.S. funny-money into existence during the infamous Bernanke Helicopter Drop, quintupling the entire U.S. money supply in less than five years. And every, single dollar was handed to the Big Banks of Wall Street – for free. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Thanks to the magic of “fractional-reserve banking”, where U.S. banks are allowed to lend $35 for every $1 they receive. The $3+ trillion which B.S. Bernanke handed to them became well over $100 trillion in new liquidity. That works out to more than $300,000 per American.

So why are there roughly 50 million permanently unemployed Americans? Why are more than 40 million forced to rely upon food stamps to survive? Because when the bankers conjured their $100+ trillion into existence (for free), they kept it all – kept it all for their Masters, the oligarchs. What did the oligarchs do with that extra $100+ trillion?

As the chart above clearly shows, the oligarchs stuffed most of that $100+ trillion into their own hoards, spending virtually nothing. Of course that’s not entirely true either. They gambled with much of their funny money, in the bankers’ private, unregulated, rigged casino – the derivatives market. The derivatives market is a hoard of private wealth which never circulates in the real economy that is somewhere in the magnitude of $1.5 quadrillion ($1,500 trillion).

We’re no longer sure how large the rigged casino has swollen, since in 2010 the bankers changed their “definition” of the casino, and overnight the derivatives market (supposedly) shrunk by 50%. This financial cesspool is the most gigantic repository of dark pool liquidity the world has ever seen.

The gambling done in the derivatives market is used to manipulate the real economy, but none of the “wealth” in that rigged casino ever circulates within the real economy. The chart above, the heartbeat of the U.S. economy, shows what happens when most of the wealth/liquidity in an economy is hoarded: the economy withers and dies.

Globalist Plantation Economy - Why No Walmart in Russia?

washingtonsblog |  One of the themes I’ve been addressing since 2008 is the neocolonial-plantation structure of the U.S. economy. The old models of colonial exploitation that optimized plantations worked by cheap imported labor (or situated in peripheral nations with plenty of cheap labor) have, beneath the surface, been adapted to advanced capitalist democracies.

The adaptations have been so successful that not only do we not even recognize the Plantation structure–we love our servitude within it.

As noted yesterday, the current mode of production optimizes the commoditization of everything: computer chips, fish and chips, labor, expertise, everything.

This commoditization optimizes the Plantation Model of integrated production, global supply chains and distribution to global marketplaces, a hierarchical management focused on maximizing profits to send back to the owners, a ruthless focus on lowering costs via labor arbitrage (commoditize the work so it can be performed anywhere labor is cheaper/more desperate) and a fanatical desire to eliminate competition or fix prices via cartels to ensure high profits.

Global capital has optimized the Plantation Model in the form of global corporations. Wal-Mart is the quintessential example. Like a classic agricultural plantation, Wal-Mart enters a region with a diverse, employment-rich ecology of small businesses and supply chains of local and regional manufacturers and distributors, and it bulldozes the entire “forest” of businesses, suppliers and distributors with the irresistible blade of integrated global supply chains and “lower prices, always.”

 

Wal-Mart replaces the localized economy with a low-pay, highly efficient plantation economy in which the townpeople’s only choice is to work for Wal-Mart or scrape out a living feeding the Wal-Mart workers, doing their laundry, etc.–exactly as on a classic plantation.

On a classic plantation, the wages are low and the “company store” offers easy credit, binding the workers to the corporation not just for wages but for credit.

Those few who manage to save up enough capital to start small service businesses– laundry, cafes, etc.–must do so in the shadow of the Company, which can always drive them out of business should they speak against their corporate overlords.

A once-diverse landscape is reduced to a monoculture wasteland dependent on subsidies, either implicit or explicit. Wal-Mart’s low wages leave many of its workers’ families on state aid or food stamps to survive, and so it prospers on the backs of taxpayers who subsidize its low wages.

Do Try and Keep Up

Why it's not possible for an IQ-116 to fathom the strategy of an IQ-160+ player...,

oilprice |  Former Secretary of State, Condaleeza Rice, who also sits on the BoD, along with Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, both listed as an Exxon consultant, also were strong backers of Tillerson to Trump.

It’s hardly a coincidence that Henry Kissinger, for decades, the Rockefeller Family’s chief foreign policy advisor, with strong personal connections to Russian President Putin, has emerged as a chief foreign policy advisor to the Trump Administration.

Nor is it surprising that published reports of Kissinger’s advice to Trump is to seek to normalize US/Russian relations, diametrically opposed to the Obama/Clinton policies of confrontation with Russia.

It is also part of a broader strategy to tempt Russia towards closer relations with the US/EU while sacrificing its growing close relations with China, viewed by Trump, as it was by Obama and Clinton, as the chief obstacle to the U.S. dominant global leadership. As a critical part of the deal, Russia is expected to accede to sacrifice its budding alliance with Iran.

Now the human drama watch begins; will Putin cave in to the demands of the West to renounce his allies in exchange for the improved relation and the dropping of sanctions?

The West has in hand some very powerful means of persuasion, including increased Russian access to the huge European energy market, restored western financial credit, access to Western technology, and a seat at the global decision-making table, all of which Russia badly needs and wants. Consider that three Russian proposed natural gas pipelines to Europe have been stalled since sanctions were imposed over Ukraine, leaving billions of dollars on the table.

Foreshadowing all of this was a news leak late last year in Germany’s Bild Zeitung, that Kissinger has drafted a plan to officially recognize Crimea as part of Russia and lift the Obama administration’s economic sanctions.

What this means for Russia, just now emerging from nearly two years of recession, is a possible return to prosperity, an offer that any national leader would find hard to resist. 

Chess Not Checkers...,

theburningplatform |  First, we can all agree that Trump, if nothing else, throws a lot of punches. We really saw this in the primaries where barely a day could go by without some scandal that would supposedly end his presidential bid. His opponents and the press erroneously thought that responding to each and every “outrage” was the correct thing to do without ever taking the time to think whether or not they had just walked into a trap. They would use their turn to block his Twitter attack but he wouldn’t move that piece again once that was in play but, instead, brought on the next outrage – just like my coach instructed me to do.

Second, Trump is very vocal in what he is going to do. Just like I had my students announced to each other their plans, Trump has been nothing but transparent about what he intends to do. After all, announcing your plans only works if your position is unassailable. It demoralizes your opponent. You rub their face in it. Another benefit to being vocal is that it encourages your opponent to bring out his favorite piece to deal with said announced plans. This is a big mistake as any good chess player will quickly recognize which piece his opponent favors and then go take them.

Time has been the one area that our president is having problems. Executive Orders and Twitter Wars have pushed the opposition off balance but he has not been able to use this time to get all of his pieces into play. The Justice Department (his Queen) is still stuck behind a wall of pawns. 

Furthermore, only 5 of his 15 Cabinet picks have been confirmed as of this writing. Without control over these departments, the president can fight a war of attrition but he really can’t go on the offensive. In chess, I will gladly trade a piece for a piece if it means you have to waste your turn dealing with it. It isn’t a long term strategy if you do not have all of your pieces ready to go.

In the end it would appear that Trump is playing the kind of game that I was taught to play by my coach. His opponents are never given time to mount an attack. Their queen – the MSM has been removed from the board and their favorite piece – the Celebrities are locked in a war of attrition while Trump gets the rest of his pieces on the board. Remember, these are all Tactics but Strategy flows from Tactics. Sooner or later the Left will find itself in some terrible position and the Strategy to drain the swamp will present itself.

Duterte Tells Globalist Gaviria That Methamphetamine Is Not Marijuana or Cocaine...,

NYTimes |  The war on drugs is essentially a war on people. But old habits die hard. Many countries are still addicted to waging this war. As Colombia’s current president, Juan Manuel Santos, said, “We are still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the last 40 years.” Fortunately, more and more governments also concede that a new approach is needed, one that strips out the profits that accompany drug sales while ensuring the basic human rights and public health of all citizens.

If we are going to get drugs under control, we need to have an honest conversation. The Global Commission on Drug Policy — of which I am a founding member — has supported an open, evidence-based debate on drugs since 2011. We strongly support reducing drug supply and demand, but differ fundamentally with hard-liners about how this should be achieved. We are not soft on drugs. Far from it.

What do we propose? Well, for one, we do not believe that military hardware, repressive policing and bigger prisons are the answer. Real reductions in drug supply and demand will come through improving public health and safety, strengthening anticorruption measures — especially those that combat money laundering — and investing in sustainable development. We also believe that the smartest pathway to tackling drugs is decriminalizing consumption and ensuring that governments regulate certain drugs, including for medical and recreational purposes.

The Corporate Colonization of Local-Business Main Street

charleshughsmith | An insightful correspondent recently remarked on the striking transition of American neighborhoods from commercial districts dominated by locally owned businesses to streets lined with look-alike outlets of Corporate America. This transition is so obvious that few even comment on it, much less ask if this wholesale replacement is in the best interests of residents and consumers.

I have long suggested starting any inquiry with a simple question: cui bono-- to whose benefit? Let's add a second essential question: what does the system optimize?

By this I mean: what is optimized by the infrastructure, regulations, political structure, etc.--what we call the mode of production.

I think it's abundantly clear that our mode of production optimizes large-scale global corporations, which have access to the capital and expertise needed to optimize production, management, employee training and discipline, supply chains and the purchase of political influence. 

tonyskansascity |  ANOTHER KANSAS CITY COUNTRY CLUB PLAZA BIZ CALLS IT QUITS!!!

Higher crime and generic competition didn't inspire this local biz to remain in this town's most embattled entertainment district. Take a look: