Wednesday, May 25, 2016
The "System" Won't Survive The Robots
It’s really just a matter of time; the working man’s deal with his overseers is half dead already. But there’s still inertia in the system, and even the losers are keeping the faith. Hope dies slowly, after all.
Nonetheless, the deal is collapsing and a new wave of robots will kill it altogether. Unless the overseers can pull back on technology – very fast and very hard – the deal that held through all our lifetimes will unwind.
We All Know the Deal
We usually don’t discuss what the “working man’s deal” is, but we know it just the same. It goes like this:
If you obey authority and support the system, you’ll be able to get a decent job. And if you work hard at your job, you’ll be able to buy a house and raise a small family.
This is what we were taught in school and on TV. It’s the deal our parents and grandparents clung to, and it’s even a fairly open deal. You can fight for the political faction of your choice and you can hold any number of religious and secular alliances, just as long as you stay loyal to the system overall.
This deal has been glamorized in many ways, such as, “Our children will be better off than we are,” “home ownership for everyone,” and of course, “the American Dream.” Except that it isn’t working anymore, or at least it isn’t working well enough.
Among current 20- and 30-year-olds, only about half are able to grasp the deal’s promises. That half is working like crazy, putting up with malignant corporatism and trying to keep ahead of the curve. The other half is dejected and discouraged, taking student loans to chase degrees (there’s more status in that than working at McDonald’s), or else they’re pacified with government handouts and distracted by Facebook.
The deal is plainly unavailable to about half of the young generation, but as I noted above, hope dies slowly and young people raised on promises are still waiting for the deal to kick in. It’s all they know.
Regardless, the deal has abandoned them. It has made them superfluous.
Here’s Why
Put very simply, the deal is dying because two things can no longer coexist:
#1: New technology.
#2: A system geared to old technology.
Let’s start with new technology: New machines and methods have made so many jobs obsolete that there aren’t enough to go around. Both North America and Europe are already filled with the unemployed or underemployed children of industrial workers. But at the same time, we are suffering no shortages; we have an overflow of stuff and a double overload of inane ads trying to sell it all. And there’s something important to glean from this:
Where goods abound, additional jobs are not required.
We don’t need more workers. Machines are producing plenty of stuff for us, and this becomes truer every day.
Item #2 is the system itself; let’s confront that directly too: The system was designed to reap the incomes of industrial workers. Everything from withholding taxes to government schools was put in place to maximize the take from an industrial workforce. Whether purposely or simply by trial and error, the Western world was structured to keep industrial workers moving in a single direction and to reap from them as they went. Call it “efficient rulership” if you like, but the system is a reaping machine.
Technology, however, has advanced beyond the limits of this machine; it has eliminated too many jobs. At the same time, regulations make it almost impossible for the superfluous class to adapt. Nearly everything requires certification and starting a business is out of the question; fail to file a form you’ve never heard of and the IRS will skin you alive.
This system, however, will not change; the big corps paid for the current regulatory regime, and they still own their congressmen.
Enter the Robots
You may have seen this image (it comes from NPR’s Planet Money), but look again anyway. I count 28 states in which “truck driver” is the most common job. As inexact as this map may be, it makes a point we can’t really ignore: What happens to all these truck drivers when self-driving trucks pile on to the roads? And you may count on it that they will; automated trucks will be safer and cheaper and will use less fuel. So, millions of truck drivers will be dropped out of the deal, and probably fairly soon.
On top of that, the very last refuge for the superfluous class – fast food – is experiencing its own robot invasion. Wendy’s just ordered 6,000 self-service ordering kiosks to be installed in the second half of 2016, and KFC’s first automated restaurant went live April 25.
Is There an Answer?
“The deal” is very clearly failing. At the same time, the system is utterly unwilling to change; the people in control are making too much money and hold too much power. The impoverishment of a hundred million people in flyover country won’t move them to give it up. Their system, after all, funnels the wealth of a continent to Washington, DC, in a steady stream… and they’ve bought access to that steam. The system will be defended.
So, forget about orderly reform. Certainly there will be talk of reform, and plenty of it… there will be promises, plans, and a small army of state intellectuals dedicated to keeping hope alive. But the system will not reform itself. Did Rome? Did Greece?
If there is to be an answer, it will have to come from the ‘superfluous’ people… but that discussion will have to wait for another day.
Don’t Blame the Robots
One last point: Don’t make the mistake of blaming technology for all of this. Technology is doing precisely what we want it to do: It’s killing scarcity. And that’s a very, very good thing. Without technology, we all go back to low-tech farming. And if that possibility doesn’t alarm you, you really should try it for a month or two.
Technology is moving forward and should move forward. The death of scarcity is to be welcomed. Our problem is that we’re chained to an archaic hierarchy of dominance with a deeply entrenched skimming class. Either we get past it or we go back to serfdom… or worse.
Credit to Zero Hedge
THE FINAL ROMAN EMPEROR, THE ISLAMIC ANTICHRIST, AND THE VATICAN’S LAST CRUSADE Part No.4
How the Vatican Will Play Right into ISIS’ Hands
Recently at a conference hosted by the Vatican, participants called for the Catholic Church to renounce its “just war” doctrine and “for Pope Francis to write an encyclical on nonviolence and ‘just peace.’” [i] Why is this issue of rejecting “Just War” raised now? Because of a secret that we spell out convincingly in the upcoming FINAL ENTRY to our 4-year investigation—The Final Roman Emperor, the Islamic Antichrist, and The Vatican’s Last Crusade—in which readers will discover how, among some Catholic hierarchy as well as mystics within Rome, it is believed the current pope is following an ancient scheme that will soon involve “Just War” theory.Over the last few years and on more than one occasion, Pope Francis as well as top Vatican diplomats and spokespersons have argued in favor of a coordinated international force to stop so-called Islamic State (ISIS) atrocities against Christians and other minorities throughout the Middle East.
Recently this included Italian Archbishop Silvano Tomasi calling on the United Nations to “stop this kind of genocide.… Otherwise we’ll be crying out in the future about why we didn’t do something, why we allowed such a terrible tragedy to happen.”[ii] Pope Francis, himself, has tried to parse words between “stopping” ISIS and distancing himself from US-led bombing sorties, yet he, too, has used very specific language in recent days that has not gone unnoticed by this writer.
These are hermeneutical efforts undoubtedly cultivated for theologians and knowledgeable persons to encourage them to see beneath his judiciously chosen phrases to his deeper sotto voce (“under voice”) communication, which clearly expresses his and Rome’s intentions to sanction a coming war, using terms like “unjust aggressor,” “genocide,” and even the very idiom, “Just War,”[iii] which are directly connected not only to specific activities of ISIS but are particular vocabulary extracted from the “Just War” theory” and “Just War” doctrine” (the latter is derived from Catholic Church 1992 Catechism, paragraph 2309, which lists strict conditions for “legitimate defense by military force”).
Both “Just War” traditions mentioned above (thoroughly examined in The Final Roman Emperor, the Islamic Antichrist, and the Vatican’s Last Crusade as it involves definitions by theologians, policy makers, and military leaders) repeatedly employ the very terms “unjust aggressor” and “genocide” for the purposes of ratifying those doctrines whenever “war is morally justifiable through a series of criteria, all of which must be met for a war to be considered just.
Both “Just War” traditions mentioned above (thoroughly examined in The Final Roman Emperor, the Islamic Antichrist, and the Vatican’s Last Crusade as it involves definitions by theologians, policy makers, and military leaders) repeatedly employ the very terms “unjust aggressor” and “genocide” for the purposes of ratifying those doctrines whenever “war is morally justifiable through a series of criteria, all of which must be met for a war to be considered just.
The criteria are split into two groups: ‘the right to go to war’ (jus ad bellum) and ‘right conduct in war’ (jus in bello). The first concerns the morality of going to war and the second moral conduct within war,” which postulate that “war, while terrible, is not always the worst option. There may be responsibilities so important, atrocities that can be prevented or outcomes so undesirable they justify war.”[iv]
The fact that Pope Francis and other high-ranking churchmen have explicitly used precise “Just War” terms is telling and supports the predictions made in our FINAL ENTRY, a small part of which I summarize below. It also serves to clarify why Archbishop Tomasi, in his call to the UN for greater military action against ISIS, admitted his request for engagement was derived from “a doctrine that’s been developed both in the United Nations and in the social teaching of the Catholic Church.”[v] This is the dictum I believe certain power brokers at the Vatican (what Father Malachi Martin called the Masonic “Superforce”), and the pontiff will knowingly use to eventually engage the self-proclaimed caliph of the ISIS regime, who wants nothing less than a final, end-times Holy War leading to the arrival of the Islamic Mahdi (Messiah).
Once the proper balls are rolling as a result of what I predict in the upcoming final book, both ISIS and the Vatican will see themselves in the midst of specific unfolding prophecy. For their part, all the Vatican will need is the prophesied trigger events.
As detailed in The Final Roman Emperor, the Islamic State and their associates are going to use a weapon of mass destruction. It will be of such scope and impact as to raise the international outcry sufficient for Rome to play its first card, which, as noted above, has been primed by subtle references to the Just War theory in the lead-up to this predicted event. When this WMD (specific details and charts in the upcoming book) is used by ISIS, the Roman pontiff will call for the revitalization of the Christian rules for “Just War.”
When elected Pope #112, Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) immediately did several fascinating things to wrap himself in his “Peter the Roman” title:
It’s interesting, given the prediction from Fatima, that Pope Francis has also reached out to Kabbalist rabbis, whose Zohar (the most important work of the Jewish Kabbalah, which was written in medieval Aramaic over seven hundred years ago) also foretells this destruction of Rome (Vaera section, volume 3, section 34) in connection with “Messiah’s” secret arrival in the year 2013 (is this why top rabbis in Israel are saying the Messiah’s presentation to the world is imminent?). And, after this “Messiah” makes himself known to the international community, “the kings of the world will assemble in the great city of Rome, and the Holy One will shower on them fire and hail and meteoric stones until they are all destroyed.”[xii]
Even some Catholics think “illegitimate” activity may have gone on behind closed doors during the last conclave[xiv] and that, for reasons we do not yet understand, Francis was put in as a temporary “placeholder” until the real pope #112 (Petrus Romanus) could be installed. This, too, might echo the choice of St. Francis of Assisi as a namesake, as the ancient friar did predict, “a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the pontificate.” The mysterious reasons surrounding a “placeholder” pope—a false pope—is largely unknown to the public, but was foresaw by such mystics as Father Herman Bernard Kramer in his work, The Book of Destiny. During an unusual interpretation he made of the twelfth chapter of the book of Revelation concerning “the great wonder” mentioned in verse one, Father Kramer wrote:
Oh…and as you will learn more extensively in The Final Roman Emperor, nearly a decade ago, a major Islamic website set the date on which this war and its Mahdi would unfold: “Based on our numerical analysis of the Quran and Hadith,” the Muslim scholars concluded, “the official beginning of the End of Time and the coming of the Imam Mahdi will most likely be in…2016.”[xvii]
Credit to Tom Horn
The fact that Pope Francis and other high-ranking churchmen have explicitly used precise “Just War” terms is telling and supports the predictions made in our FINAL ENTRY, a small part of which I summarize below. It also serves to clarify why Archbishop Tomasi, in his call to the UN for greater military action against ISIS, admitted his request for engagement was derived from “a doctrine that’s been developed both in the United Nations and in the social teaching of the Catholic Church.”[v] This is the dictum I believe certain power brokers at the Vatican (what Father Malachi Martin called the Masonic “Superforce”), and the pontiff will knowingly use to eventually engage the self-proclaimed caliph of the ISIS regime, who wants nothing less than a final, end-times Holy War leading to the arrival of the Islamic Mahdi (Messiah).
Once the proper balls are rolling as a result of what I predict in the upcoming final book, both ISIS and the Vatican will see themselves in the midst of specific unfolding prophecy. For their part, all the Vatican will need is the prophesied trigger events.
PREDICTION #1—Weapon of Mass Destruction
As detailed in The Final Roman Emperor, the Islamic State and their associates are going to use a weapon of mass destruction. It will be of such scope and impact as to raise the international outcry sufficient for Rome to play its first card, which, as noted above, has been primed by subtle references to the Just War theory in the lead-up to this predicted event. When this WMD (specific details and charts in the upcoming book) is used by ISIS, the Roman pontiff will call for the revitalization of the Christian rules for “Just War.”
Under a new US President working with NATO and non-NATO allies, the Pope and the UN, a coalition army similar to the 2003 invasion of Iraq will be formed to seriously engage the Islamic radicals. Geopolitics aside, the jihadist will see the Vatican’s sanction of war as a new and final religious crusade—indeed, an actual fulfillment of their thirteen-hundred-year-old Hadith, which allegedly quotes the sayings of the prophet Mohammed concerning a last-days caliphate that goes up against “the army of Rome” to initiate “Malahim”—the equivalent to Armageddon in Christian teachings, a battle that ISIS believes they will ultimately win. This war will, according to ISIS, provoke the coming of Mahdi (their Messiah), the Al-Masih ad-Dajjal (Antichrist), and Isa (Jesus), who spears the Antichrist figure and fights on behalf of the Muslim army.
We will reveal how the pope likewise will view himself—and Rome—as amidst unfolding prophecy, which Francis has alluded to on several occasions, including connecting ISIS terrorism with the end of the world.[vi] This final pope on Malachy’s list has even recommended that people read Lord of the World—a related 1907 book by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson that depicts the reign of Antichrist and the Vatican’s relationship to the end of the world, which both Francis and emeritus Pope Benedict have called “prophetic.” This is not surprising, as the reigning pope is an avowed prophecy believer and knows that he is “Petrus Romanus,” the final pope (#112) from the famous “Prophecy of the Popes” attributed to St. Malachy (that is, unless Francis was notcanonically elected, which we discuss in The Final Roman Emperor, an intriguing possibility that presents additional strange and prophetic alternatives to the narrative). The best-selling work by Putnam and myself titled Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here thoroughly and critically dissected this mystical prophecy and found widespread support for the document from Catholics and even evidence that, down through the years, cardinals elected popes who could somehow be viewed as fulfilling their line in this prophecy. As it involves Pope Francis, here is what the final line in the prophecy says:
In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman [Pope #112, Petrus Romanus], who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.
When elected Pope #112, Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) immediately did several fascinating things to wrap himself in his “Peter the Roman” title:
- First, he took as his namesake St. Francis of Assisi, an Italian (Roman) friar whose original name was Giovanni but that was later changed to Francesco di Pietro (Peter) di Bernardone—a name that can literally be translated “Peter the Roman” from the final line of the Prophecy of the Popes.
- Second, Pope Francis knows that Francis of Assisi was a prophet and that he predicted this final pope would “be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavor to draw many into error and death…for in those days Jesus Christ will send them not a true Pastor, but a destroyer.” It is astonishing that Francis would pick as a namesake a man that foretold this of the final pope.
- Third, Pope Francis named Pietro Parolin as the Vatican’s new secretary of state—a man who could sit on the throne of Peter if Pope Francis retires (like Benedict did), dies, or is killed, and whose name can also be viewed as “Peter the Roman.” If Francis was not canonically elected, Pietro Parolin would actually become the real Pope #112 under that scenario.
And then there are those famous last words from the Prophecy of the Popes itself, which says: “When these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people.” As you will learn in our fourth and final book, this idea, that the city of Rome will be destroyed during the reign of pope #112 (and just ahead of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ as Judge), is a vision repeated in numerous ancient prophecies from Greek, Jewish, Catholic, and Muslim cultures! This includes what ISIS draws from their Hadith—that they will go to war against the army of Rome and destroy the Vatican’s headquarters. As mentioned in a prior online entry to this short series, ISIS has even produced a movie that depicts this apocalyptic event culminating in the destruction of Rome.[vii] In tandem with the prediction, they have threatened to kill Pope Francis,[viii] and the pontiff has responded by saying he is willing to be assassinated if that is God’s will; he just hopes it doesn’t hurt.[ix] As this narrative continues unfolding toward the conflict predicted in The Final Roman Emperor, it will become increasingly clear to the readers that both Pope Francis and ISIS believe they are engaged in an end-times scenario, making some of what Francis has said and done since his “election” understandable within a larger oracular context.
For example, in addition to what the ISIS Hadith and the Prophecy of the Popes says about the destruction of Rome, shortly after he accepted the pontificate, Pope Francis consecrated the world to “Our Lady of Fatima” during Mass in St. Peter’s Square.[x]Francis knows the prophecies and controversies connected to Fatima, including the vision of the “Holy Father” (pope) walking among a destroyed city (the Vatican) when ISIS-like fighters run in and kill him. Francis believes in this prophecy (obviously why he dedicated the world to precisely this Marian apparition), and ISIS vows to make it happen. In Petrus Romanus, we noted:
The third part of the Secret of Fatima, which was supposedly released in total by the Vatican June 26, 2000, seems to echo the visions of Pius X. A section of the material reads:
…before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way…on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions.[xi]
It’s interesting, given the prediction from Fatima, that Pope Francis has also reached out to Kabbalist rabbis, whose Zohar (the most important work of the Jewish Kabbalah, which was written in medieval Aramaic over seven hundred years ago) also foretells this destruction of Rome (Vaera section, volume 3, section 34) in connection with “Messiah’s” secret arrival in the year 2013 (is this why top rabbis in Israel are saying the Messiah’s presentation to the world is imminent?). And, after this “Messiah” makes himself known to the international community, “the kings of the world will assemble in the great city of Rome, and the Holy One will shower on them fire and hail and meteoric stones until they are all destroyed.”[xii]
The depth to which Pope Francis can be thought of as a mystic and believer in such prophecy involving the coming destruction of Rome may also be connected to his knowledge of the Cumaean Sibyl, whose prophecy about the return of the god Apollo (identified in the New Testament as the spirit that will inhabit Antichrist) is encoded on the Great Seal of the United States,[xiii] as well as in Catholic art (from altars to illustrated books and even her appearance upon the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where four other Sibyls join her [Paul cast a demon out of one such prophetesses in the New Testament]), and the Old Testament prophets in places of sacred honor. Yet this Cumaean—who sits so prominently inside Catholicism’s most celebrated chapel—gave forth another famous and forgotten prophecy, which we examine in the FINAL ENTRY to show how she was quoted by early Church Fathers and actually connected the end-times Islamic Mahdi with a “Last Roman Emperor” (who arguably developed into the “Holy Pope” legend)—an eschatological figure whose time, and whose catastrophic war, is coming very soon.
Will Pope Francis be the one to play the role of the Last Roman Emperor? Or will it be another pontiff? Was there something strange about the conclave from which Pope Francis emerged to the pontificate? Something mentioned earlier in this entry that suggests he was not actually “canonically elected?”
Even some Catholics think “illegitimate” activity may have gone on behind closed doors during the last conclave[xiv] and that, for reasons we do not yet understand, Francis was put in as a temporary “placeholder” until the real pope #112 (Petrus Romanus) could be installed. This, too, might echo the choice of St. Francis of Assisi as a namesake, as the ancient friar did predict, “a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the pontificate.” The mysterious reasons surrounding a “placeholder” pope—a false pope—is largely unknown to the public, but was foresaw by such mystics as Father Herman Bernard Kramer in his work, The Book of Destiny. During an unusual interpretation he made of the twelfth chapter of the book of Revelation concerning “the great wonder” mentioned in verse one, Father Kramer wrote:
The “sign” in heaven is that of a woman with child crying out in her travail and anguish of delivery. In that travail, she gives birth to some definite “person” who is to RULE the Church with a rod of iron (verse 5). It then points to a conflict waged within the Church to elect one who was to “rule all nations” in the manner clearly stated. In accord with the text this is unmistakably a PAPAL ELECTION, for only Christ and his Vicar have the divine right to rule ALL NATIONS… But at this time the great powers may take a menacing attitude to hinder the election of the logical and expected candidate by threats of a general apostasy, assassination or imprisonment of this candidate if elected.[xv]
Although we disagree with Kramer’s interpretation of the book of Revelation, his fear that “great powers” may have taken “a menacing attitude to hinder the election of the logical and expected candidate” echoes the sentiment of priests mentioned elsewhere in our book Petrus Romanus, who see a crises for the Church coming, and the Final Roman Emperor (Antichrist) rising as a result. As we move through 2016, Pope Francis is publically looking for a global political authority (such as the UN) to come alongside him to implement his religious and social agenda, President Barack Obama may set his eyes on becoming the UN Secretary General following the US Presidential election,[xvi]and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu is very concerned about the ramifications of both. Will the pope or ex-president step forward to fulfill the Cumaean Sibyl’s prophecy…or are there others waiting in the wings? You will learn the shocking truth to these questions and why an ISIS WMD and a call by Rome to sanction war will soon result in both Muslims and Romans engaging in their own apocalyptica.
Oh…and as you will learn more extensively in The Final Roman Emperor, nearly a decade ago, a major Islamic website set the date on which this war and its Mahdi would unfold: “Based on our numerical analysis of the Quran and Hadith,” the Muslim scholars concluded, “the official beginning of the End of Time and the coming of the Imam Mahdi will most likely be in…2016.”[xvii]
Credit to Tom Horn
Paul Craig Roberts: "Americans Are A Conquered People"
As readers know, I have seen some optimism in voters support for Trump and Sanders as neither are members of the corrupt Republican and Democratic political establishments. Members of both political establishments enrich themselves by betraying the American people and serving only the interest of the One Percent. The American people are being driven into the ground purely for the sake of more mega-billions for a handful of super-rich people.
Neither political party is capable of doing anything whatsoever about it, and neither will.
The optimism that I see is that the public’s support of outsiders is an indication that the insouciant public is waking up. But Americans will have to do more than wake up, as they cannot rescue themselves via the voting booth. In my opinion, the American people will remain serfs until they wake up to Revolution.
Today Americans exist as a conquered people. They have lost the Bill of Rights, the amendments to the Constitution that protect their liberty. Anyone, other than the One Percent and their political and legal servants, can be picked up without charges and detained indefinitely as during the Dark Ages, when government was unaccountable and no one had any rights. Only those with power were safe. In America today anyone not politically protected can be declared “associated with terrorism” and taken out by a Hellfire missile from a drone on the basis of a list of human targets drawn up by the president’s advisers. Due process, guaranteed by the US Constitution, no longer exists in the United States of America. Neither does the constitutional prohibition against the government spying on citizens without just cause and a court warrant. The First Amendment itself, whose importance was emphasized by our Founding Fathers by making it the First Amendment, is no longer protected by the corrupt Supreme Court. The Nine who comprise the Supreme Court, like the rest of the bought-and-paid-for-government, serve only the One Percent. Truth-tellers have become “an enemy of the state.” Whistleblowers are imprisoned despite their legal protection in US law.
The United States government has unaccountable power. Its power is not accountable to US statutory law, to international law, to the Congress, to the judiciary, to the American people, or to moral conscience. In the 21st century the war criminal US government has murdered, maimed, and dislocated millions of people based on lies and propaganda. Washington has destroyed seven countries in whole or part in order to enrich the American elite and comply with the neoconservative drive for US world hegemony.
Americans live in a propaganda-fabricated world in which a brutal police state is cloaked in nice words like “freedom and democracy.”“Freedom and democracy” is what Washington’s war machine brings with sanctions, bombs, no-fly zones, troops, and drones to countries that dare to cling to their independence from Washington’s hegemony.
Only two countries armed with strong military capability and nuclear weapons—Russia and China—stand between Washington and Washington’s goal of hegemony over the entire world.
If Russia or China falter, the evil ensconced in Washington will rule the world. America will be the Anti-Christ. The predictions of the Christian Evangelicals preaching “end times” will take on new meaning.
Russia is vulnerable to becoming a vassal state of Washington. Despite a legion of betrayals by Washington, the Russian government has just proposed a joint US/Russia cooperation against terrorists.
One wonders if the Russian government will ever learn from experience. Has Washington cooperated with the agreement concerning Ukraine? Of course not. Has Washington cooperated in the investigation of MH-17? Of course not. Has Washington ceased its propaganda about a Russian invasion of Crimera and Ukraine? Of course not. Has Washington kept any agreement previous US governments made with Russia? Of course not.
So why does the Russian government think Washington would keep any agreement about a joint effort against terrorism?
The Russian government and the Russian people are so unaware of the danger that they face from Washington that they let foreigners control 20 percent of their media! Is Russia unaware that Washington has Russia slated for vassalage or destruction?
China is even more absurd. According to the Chinese government itself, China has 7,000 foreign-financed NGOs operating in China! Foreign financed NGOs are what Washington used to destabilize Ukraine and overthrow the elected government.
What does the Chinese government think these NGOs are doing other than destabilizing China?
Both Russia and China are infected with Western worship that creates a vulnerability that Washington can exploit. Delusions can result in inadequate response to threat.
All of Europe, both western, eastern and southern, the British Pacific such as Australia and New Zealand, Japan and other parts of Asia are vassal states of Washington’s Empire. None of these allegedly “sovereign” countries have an independent voice or an independent foreign or economic policy. All of Latin America is subject to Washington’s control. No reformist government in Latin America has ever survived Washington’s disapproval of putting the interests of the domestic populations ahead of American corporate and financial profits. Already this year Washington has overthrown the female presidents of Argentina and Brazil. Washington is currently in the process of overthrowing the government in Venezuela, with Ecuador and Bolivia waiting in the wings. In 2009 Killary Clinton and Obama overthrew the government of Honduras, an old Washington habit.
As Washington pays the UN’s bills, the UN is compliant. No hand is ever raised against Washington. So why does anyone on the face of the earth think that an American election can change anything or mean anything?
We know that Killary is a liar, a crook, an agent for the One Percent, and a warmonger. Let’s now look at Trump.
Are there grounds for optimism about Trump? In the West “news reporting” is propaganda, so it is difficult to know. Moreover, we do know that, at least initially, the response of the Republican Establishment to Trump is to demonize him, so we do not know the veracity of the news reports about Trump.
Without belaboring the issue, two news reports struck me. One is the Washington Post report that the Zionist multi-billionaire US casino owner Sheldon Adelson has endorsed Donald Trump for President.
Other reports say that Adelson has mentioned as much as $100 million as his political campaign contribution to Trump.
Anyone who gives a political campaign $100 million dollars expect something in exchange, and the recipient is obligated to provide whatever is desired. So are we witnessing the purchase of Donald Trump? The initial Republican response to Trump, encouraged by the crazed neoconservatives, was to abandon the Republican candidate and to vote for Killary.
Is Adelson’s endorsement a signal that Trump can be bought and brought into the establishment?
Additional evidence that Trump has sold out his naive supporters is his latest statement that Wall Street should be deregulated.
It is extraordinary that Trump’s advisers have not told him that Wall Street was deregulated back in the 20th century during the Clinton regime. The repeal of Glass-Steagall deregulated Wall Street. One source of the 2008 financial crisis is the deregulated derivative market. When Brooksley Born attempted to fulfill the responsibility of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and regulate over-the-counter derivatives, she was blocked by the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury, the SEC, and the US Congress.
Nothing has been done to correct the massive mistake of financial deregulation. The Dodd-Frank legislation did not correct the massive financial concentration that produced banks too big to fail, and the legislation did not stop Wall Street’s reckless casino gambling with the US economy. Yet Trump says he will dismantle even the weak Dodd-Frank restrictions.
The American print and TV media are so corrupt that these reports could be false stories, the purpose of which is to demoralize Trump’s supporters. On the other hand, should we be surprised if a billionaire aligns with the One Percent?
Elections are an unlikely means of restoring government that is accountable to the people rather than to the One Percent. Even if Trump is legitimate, he does not have the experience in foreign and economic affairs to know who to appoint to his government in order to implement change.Moreover, even if he knew, unless Trump candidates also replace the Senate, Trump could not get his choices confirmed by a Senate accountable only to the One Percent.
Americans are a conquered people. We see this in the appeal from RootsAction to the rest of the world to come to the aid of the American people. Unable to stop the lawlessness of their own “democratic” government, Americans plea for help from abroad.
The plea from RootsAction indicates that committed activists now acknowledge that change in America cannot be produced by elections or be achieved internally through peaceful means.
Credit to Zero Hedge
Currency War Resumes - China Devalues Yuan To 5-Year Lows
After a brief hiatus from the ongoing currency wars, China fired another salvo at The Fed tonight by devaluing the Yuan fix to 6.5693 - its weakest against the USD since March 2011. After eight days higher in a row for The USD Index, it seems PBOC has turned its currency liberalization plan off, stabilizing the broad Renminbi basket (which has been steadily devalued) and turning its attention to devaluing against the USD. Having unleashed turmoil in August (pre-Sept FOMC) and January (post Dec rate-hike), it appears the rising rate-hike probabilities jawboned by The Fed are decidedly disagreeable to "authoritative persons" in China.
The Yuan Fix was driven down to March 2011 lows...
Front-running?
“It could be because the authorities want to alleviate some of the depreciation pressure before the Fed interest rate decision in June," said Christy Tan, head of markets strategy at National Australia Bank Ltd. in Hong Kong. "If there are signs of panic dollar buying, the PBOC will step in."
As it seems maintaining some 'stability' against the USD has lost its appeal as the USD surges once again...
What the chart above shows is that the Chinese currency (red) has been devaluing in an orderly and quiet manner for much of the year while maintaining the appearance of stability against the USD (blue). That appears to have changed now and the last time turmoil started to ripple through the CNHUSD markets - it didn't stop until Tom Cook lied to Jim Cramer and The PPT rescued the world.
The irony of the apparent stability in the broad-based Renminbi basket (while devaluing against the USD) is that it comes after a desperate China has reportedly given up on its liberalization goals. As The Wall Street Journal notes,
Behind closed doors in March, some of China’s most prominent economists and bankers bluntly asked the People’s Bank of China to stop fighting the financial markets and let the value of the nation’s currency fall.They got nowhere. “The primary task is to maintain stability,” said one central-bank official, according to previously undisclosed minutes of the meeting reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.The meeting left little doubt China’s top leaders have lost interest in a major policy shift announced in a surprise move just nine months ago. In August 2015, the PBOC said it would make the yuan’s value more market-based, an important step in liberalizing the world’s second-largest economy.
In reality, though, the yuan’s daily exchange rate is now back under tight government control, according to meeting minutes that detail private deliberations and interviews with Chinese officials and advisers who spoke with The Wall Street Journal about the country’s currency policy.
On Jan. 4, the central bank behind closed doors ditched the market-based mechanism, according to people close to the PBOC. The central bank hasn’t announced the reversal, but officials have essentially returned to the old way of adjusting the yuan’s daily value higher or lower based on whatever suits Beijing best.
The flip-flop is a sign of policy makers’ deepening wariness about how much money is fleeing China, a problem driven by its slowing economy.For now, at least, officials believe the benefits of freeing the yuan are outnumbered by the number of threats... though we note that a 3% depreciation of the yuan could add $25.6 billion to Chinese companies’ annual interest payments on dollar debts, according to estimates by analysts at BNP Paribas.
So the question is - will the Yuan turmoil ripple through markets enough to spook The Fed once more and dissolve what little credibility they have left or will Janet and her henchmen stand up to the foreign forces, hike rates to spit their own face, and deal with the aftermath through some more Citadel-driven VIXtermination? With VIX futures near record shorts and S&P futures at their longest in almost 2 years - there's not much easy leveraged money to squeeze there - like there was in August.
Credit to Zero Hedge
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