The chemical attack on his own citizens was all pretext, even the CIA refused to sign-off on the flimsy case for Assad’s culpability at the time.

LewRockwell.com
anti-state * anti-war * pro-market

By: David Stockman
Date: 29 August 2014

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Bombs Away Over Syria! Washington Has Gone Stark Raving Mad

America’s spanker-in-chief is at it again—threatening to bomb Syria owing to the uncivilized actions of its inhabitants. And when it comes to Syria, Washington avers that there are punishable malefactors virtually everywhere within its borders.


Exactly one year ago Obama proposed to take Bashir Assad to the woodshed because he had allegedly unleashed a vicious chemical attack on his own citizens. That was all pretext, of course, because even the CIA refused to sign-off on the flimsy case for Assad’s culpability at the time—-a reluctance corroborated since then by the considerable evidence that hundreds of Syrian civilians were murdered during a false flag operation staged by the rebels with help from Turkey. The aim of the rebels, of course, was to activate American tomahawk missiles and bombers in behalf of “regime change”, which was also the stated goal of the Obama Administration.

Now the White House is threatening to bomb Syria again, but this time its “regime change” objective has been expanded to include both sides! In 12 short months what had been the allegedly heroic Sunni opposition to the “brutal rule” of the Assad/Alawite minority has transmuted into the “greatest terrorist threat ever”, according to the Secretary of Defense.

So Obama has already unleashed the drones and surveillance apparatus to identify targets of attack that will help bring down a regime in northern and eastern Syria—the so-called Islamic State—which did not even exist a year ago. And a regime that is now armed to the teeth with America’s own latest and greatest weaponry as previously supplied to the disintegrated Iraqi army and the Syrian rebels trained by the CIA in Jordan.

Adding to this blinding farce is the warning of Syria’s Foreign Affairs minister that Obama should please to request permission before he rains destruction from the sky on the Opposition—-that is, the opposition to the very same Damascus regime which the White House has vowed to eradicate. Needless to say,  the Washington apparatus is having nothing to do with aiding the enemy of its new enemy:

White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday tried to tamp down the notion that action against the Islamic State group could bolster Assad, saying, “We’re not interested in trying to help the Assad regime.” However, he acknowledged that “there are a lot of cross pressures

In fact, there is apparently an option emerging from the bowels of the war machine that calls for an odd/even day plan to bomb both sides, thereby making clear that Washington is an equal opportunity spanker. Apparently, whether you use a 12th century sword or 20th century attack helicopter as a means of rule, you will be bombed by the “indispensable nation”, as Obama put it, adding that “no other nation can do what we do”.
Well, that involves some “doing”. According to AP, it appears that Syrian airstrikes are imminent, but could be carried out under the odd/even day plan:

“In an effort to avoid unintentionally strengthening the Syrian government, the White House could seek to balance strikes against the Islamic State with attacks on Assad regime targets.”

Is any more evidence needed that Washington has gone stark raving mad than even the possibility that such an absurd option could  be under consideration? Has not the imperial city on the Potomac become so inured to its pretensions of global hegemony and to instant resort to deployment of its war machine that any semblance of rationality and coherence has been dissolved?

Indeed, in the context of Syria’s fractured and riven tribal, religious and political splinters how could anyone in their right mind think that a bombing campaign without boots on the ground will accomplish anything other than function as a potent recruiting tool for ISIS, and a generator of jihadist blowback for years to come. By the same token, the White House’s polling machine surely documents that an outright Iraq-style invasion of the Islamic State is overwhelmingly opposed by the American people, and rightly so.

Accordingly, the silly, hapless man in the Oval Office stumbles forward, apparently unaware that he’s not merely playing video games during his sojourns in the Situation Room. Indeed, the make-believe “nuanced” bombing options that are likely to be ground out by the national security machinery are destined to fail and drag Washington ever deeper into the violent cauldron of Mesopotamia and the Levant. The trillions of treasure wasted, the millions of lives lost and the venomous tribal enmities resulting from Washington’s misbegotten ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan provide all the proof that is needed.

The fact is, the artificial states created by the Sykes-Picot map drawn up by the French and British foreign offices in 1916—- as they carved up the Ottoman empire— are now destined for the dustbin of history. The fracturing remnants of Syria and Iraq cannot be fused back together by means of lethal deposits of metal and chemicals delivered by tomahawks and F-16s.

So let the region rearrange itself without Washington’s unwelcome meddling and mayhem. If Turkey and an independent Kurdistan can make mutually acceptable political and economic arrangements, which are already well-advanced, so be it. If the Shiite south in Iraq and the  Alawite/Shiite southwest in Syria break-off from their present Europe-bequeathed boundaries and form independent regimes, how does that jeopardize the safety and security of the citizens of Lincoln NE and Spokane WA?

And, yes, if the Islamic State temporarily manages to coalesce within the Sunni lands of the Euphrates Valley and the upper Tigress why is that really a national security threat which requires launching an unwinnable war, a new round of hostility to America in the Islamic world and the blowback of legions of jihadi with a score to settle?

Now that you know about the Yazidis, did you ever hear of the Sheitaat tribe of Sunnis who inhabit the minor oil province around Deir al-Zor in northeastern Syria?  There appear to be about 100,000 members of that sect in the region and they have been declared apostates by the medieval butchers who run ISIS:

Hundreds of members of the Sheitaat clan have been executed after their tribe refused to submit to Islamic State. The entire tribe have been deemed “hostile apostates” by the group, an offshoot of al Qaeda that has declared a “caliphate” in the territory it holds.

Islamic State has declared the Sheitaat tribe “an unbelieving sect” that should be fought as if they were infidels, according to a report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence in the Syrian war.

At least 700 hundred members of the tribe have already been executed, the Observatory reported on Aug. 16.

Another 1,800 are still missing after being detained by Islamic State, according to the Observatory, which gathers information from all sides in the Syrian war. Its efforts to pledge allegiance to Islamic State have been rebuffed.

Pictures of the bodies of men apparently slain by Islamic State fighters in Sheitaat areas are surfacing every day, said Rami Abdelrahman, founder of the Observatory. “We have repeatedly expressed concerns about extermination,” he said.

“It is the first time that the Islamic State has used these (religious) concepts against an entire tribe,” he said.

Three Sheitaat villages seized by Islamic State have been designated as a military zone, the rebel and another activist from the area said. The clan’s property and livestock have also been seized, another person from the area said.

Islamic State has declared that no truce is possible with the Sheitaat, that its prisoners can be killed, and its women are unfit for marriage, according to the Observatory.

“We’re still seeing Islamic State trucks loaded up with furniture and rugs from Sheitaat homes in those villages, which are now totally abandoned,” said one person from the area contacted by internet link, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Islamic State has started to use house demolitions as a punishment. A video posted over the weekend shows what appears to be the detonation of a rural home as the narrator, who identifies himself as from Islamic State, explains that the home belongs to Sheitaat “apostates”.

Why would you believe that a viable state can be built in today’s world on the tactics of Genghis Kahn? The Islamic State, such as it is, is not rich, does not have enough oil to make a difference, will soon be bogged down in the insuperable problems of governance by the sword and will flounder on the impoverished economics of the dusty villages and desert expanse which comprise its natural territory. And it will eventually mobilize its neighbors—-Turkey, Hezbollah, the rump regime of Assad’s Alawite Syria, Kurdistan, the Shiite alliance of Iran and lower Iraq, and even Saudi Arabia and the oil sheikdoms—to contain its external ambitions.

So Washington should call off the bombers and get out of harm’s way. The American Imperium has failed and the prospect of bombing both sides of an irrelevant non-country’s ancient tribal wars ought, at last, to make that much clear.

The Best of David Stockman

While those who run America’s schools may not be deliberately attempting to raise up a generation of Hitler Youth, they are teaching young people to march in lockstep with the all-powerful government—which may be just as dangerous in the end.

LewRockwell.com
anti-state * anti-war * pro-market

By: John W. Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute
Date: 27 August 2014

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The Final Nail in the Coffin: The Death of Freedom in Our Schools

Young Alex Stone didn’t even make it past the first week of school before he became a victim of the police state. Directed by his teacher to do a creative writing assignment involving a series of fictional Facebook statuses, the 16-year-old wrote, “I killed my neighbor’s pet dinosaur. I bought the gun to take care of the business.”

What followed is par for the course in schools today: students were locked down in their classrooms while armed police searched Stone’s locker and bookbag, handcuffed him, charged him with disorderly conduct, arrested him, detained him, and then he was suspended from school. No weapons or dead dinosaurs were found.

Keshana Wilson, a 14-year-old student at a Pennsylvania high school, was tasered in the groin by a police officer working as a school resource officer, allegedly because she resisted arrest for cursing, inciting a crowd of students, and walking on the highway. “The teenager had to be taken to hospital to have the taser probes removed before she was arrested and charged with aggravated assault on the officer, simple assault, riot, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, failure to disperse and walking on the highway,” noted one reporter.

Rounding out the lesson in compliance, police officers who patrol schools in Compton, Calif., are now authorized to buy semi-automatic AR-15 rifles and carry them in their patrol car trunks while on duty. A few states away, in Missouri, a new state law actually requires that all school districts participate in live-action school shooting drills, including realistic gunfire, students covered in fake blood, and bodies strewn throughout the hallways.

Now these incidents may seem light years away from the all-too-grim reality of the events that took place in Ferguson, Missouri, but they are, in fact, mere stops along the way to the American police state. As such, parents with kids returning to school would do well to consider these incidents fair warning, because today’s public schools have become microcosms of the world beyond the schoolhouse gates, and increasingly, it’s a world hostile to freedom.

Indeed, as I show in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, within America’s public schools can be found almost every aspect of the American police state that plagues those of us on the “outside”: metal detectors, surveillance cameras, militarized police, drug-sniffing dogs, tasers, cyber-surveillance, random searches, senseless arrests, jail time, the list goes on.

Whether it takes the form of draconian zero tolerance policies, overreaching anti-bullying statutes, police officers charged with tasering and arresting so-called unruly children, standardized testing with its emphasis on rote answers, political correctness, or the extensive surveillance systems cropping up in schools all over the country, young people in America are first in line to be indoctrinated into compliant citizens of the new American police state.

Zero tolerance policies, which punish all offenses severely, no matter how minor, condition young people to steer clear of doing anything that might be considered out of line, whether it’s pointing their fingers like a gun, drawing on their desks, or chewing their gum too loudly.

Surveillance technologies, used by school officials, police, NSA agents, and corporate entities to track the everyday activities of students, accustom young people to life in an electronic concentration camp, with all of their movements monitored, their interactions assessed, and their activities recorded and archived.

Metal detectors at school entrances and armed police patrolling high school, middle school and sometimes even elementary school hallways acclimatize young people to being viewed as suspects. The presence of these police officers in the schools also results in greater numbers of students being arrested or charged with crimes for nonviolent, childish behavior. All too often, these incidents remain on students’ permanent records, impacting college and job applications.

Weapons of compliance, such as tasers which deliver electrical shocks lethal enough to kill, not only teach young people to fear the police, the face of our militarized government, but teach them that torture is an accepted means of controlling the population. One high school student in Texas suffered severe brain damage and nearly died after being tasered. A 15-year-old disabled North Carolina student was tasered three times, resulting in punctured lungs. A New York student was similarly tasered for lying on the floor and crying.

Standardized testing and Common Core programs, which discourage students from thinking for themselves while rewarding them for regurgitating whatever the government dictates they should be taught, will not only create a generation of test-takers capable of little else but will also constitute massive data collection on virtually every aspect of our children’s lives which will be accessed by government agents and their corporate allies.

Overt censorship, monitoring and political correctness, which manifest themselves in a variety of ways, from Internet filters on school computers to sexual harassment policies, habituate young people to a world in which nonconformist, divergent, politically incorrect ideas and speech are treated as unacceptable or dangerous. In such an environment, a 9-year-old boy remarking that his teacher is “cute” can be suspended for sexual harassment, and those accused of engaging in frowned upon behavior on social media will have their posts and comments analyzed by a government agent.

As problematic as all of these programs are, however, what’s really unnerving are the similarities between the American system of public education and that of totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany, with their overt campaigns of educational indoctrination. And while those who run America’s schools may not be deliberately attempting to raise up a generation of Hitler Youth, they are teaching young people to march in lockstep with the all-powerful government—which may be just as dangerous in the end.

In the face of such a mechanized, bureaucratic school system that demands conformity, while punishing anyone who dares step out of line, American school children are indeed powerless. And they will remain helpless, powerless and in bondage to the police state unless “we the people” set them free.

The Best of John W. Whitehead

The rabid propaganda now being bandied about in Western media, especially with respect to Russia, is so crude and primitive that it would have even made the Nazi propaganda maestro, Dr Goebbels, blush with embarrassment.

LewRockwell.com
anti-state * anti-war * pro-market

By: Clive Maund
Date: 29 August 2014

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Will the US Succeed in Breaking Russia to Maintain Dollar Hegemony?...

In Why they are making an enemy of Russia? we looked at two of the key reasons why the US is making an enemy of Russia, namely the promotion of conflict by the powerful Defense industry lobby in order to keep its order books full, and the value of conjuring up an external enemy as a hate figure for the masses, in order to take the heat off the government. In this article we are going to look at what is arguably an even bigger reason, that was largely omitted in the earlier article, which is that Russia, in alliance with China, is threatening to bring an end to the dollar as the global reserve currency, which would mean the end of the American empire.

We are witness to the greatest struggle of our age – the battle to maintain global dollar hegemony, and with it US economic, military and political dominance of the entire planet – and this struggle is now coming to a head.

Notwithstanding its undeniably great accomplishments of the past hundred years, the relationship of the United States to the rest of the world is parasitic. This is because it creates money and debt instruments out of nothing, requiring virtually no effort, which it then swaps for goods and services with other countries. Because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, it is able to rack up astronomic deficits that would be untenable for any other country. US debts are now at such levels that if the US dollar loses its reserve currency status, the United States economy will implode and it will quickly be reduced to the status of a banana republic – hence the sense of urgency in the face of growing threats.


Any state that moves to opt out of using the dollar as a medium of exchange is dealt with, forcibly if deemed necessary. The tactics are threefold – economic blockade (sanctions), the funding of an internal revolution, perhaps assisted by US special forces, and an outright military invasion, or perhaps a combination of the three. This is what happened in Iraq and Libya, both of which planned to trade their oil in currencies other than the dollar. Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that the world’s savings, via the Treasury market, are used to fund the vast US military machine with its hundreds of bases spread across the world which forcibly makes sure they stay yoked to this system.

Enter Russia (and China), the biggest threat yet to dollar dominance. These large powerful neighbors have entered into various major currency and trade agreements in the recent past that do not involve the dollar, and therefore pose a serious threat to the dollar’s reserve currency status that left unchallenged would bring it to an end. Once you understand that you understand the reason for the recent propaganda blitz against Russia. In addition China has been busy mopping up the global gold supply for several years, as early preparation for the eventual backing of its currency by gold, which will put the final nail in the US’ coffin, as the unbacked dollar will collapse completely when this happens.


A sad irony for the American people is that even though the US has the ability to swap unlimited intrinsically worthless paper for goods and services from the the rest of the world, the infrastructure of the country is crumbling and many Americans already live in poverty on “food stamps”, and even the great US middle class is being squeezed. This is because the elites don’t care about the country or the masses – all they care about is power and the amassing of personal fortunes.


If you are any good at playing chess you should find it very easy to understand the power game as it now stands. The US wants to “deal with Russia” which has made substantial moves to operate outside the confines of the dollar based trading system. If it could attack it militarily and bomb it into submission, as it has done with various smaller states, it would, but because Russia is a big powerful country with a sizeable military of its own, and nukes, that is not an option. Efforts to subvert the Russian government from within and foment revolution probably wouldn’t work, because the Russian secret services are good at rooting out subversives, and probably as ruthless as the US black ops. That only leaves the option of an economic blockade – sanctions, in an effort to isolate and mortally weaken the Russia economy, and as we know, these sanctions are already in place. But what excuse do you use to impose sanctions? – after all, it doesn’t sound too good to go on BBC World News and say “Russia has decided to implement trade agreements that don’t involve the US dollar, so we are going to blockade it economically” – enter the Ukraine.

The US searched for a geographic doorway through which to attack Russia – the North and east routes don’t work because they are either ocean or China, countries like Poland in Europe wouldn’t do either, because they are firmly in the Western camp now, but the Ukraine was perfect for the job because of its being a large country on the SW flank of Russia that is torn in two directions, having old loyalties and blood ties to Russia, and aspirations to a closer union with Europe – the perfect place to foment a pro-Western revolution and perhaps a civil war that would draw Russia in and could then be used as an excuse to implement sanctions. That is exactly what has happened.


So now we have sanctions, but the problem for the US is this – they probably won’t work. They will cause damage, especially to the fools in Europe who have slavishly followed their orders from Washington to implement them, but they probably won’t destroy the Russian economy as the US is hoping. This is because the Russian economy is very big and can if necessary operate on a self-sufficient basis, especially as it has its own oil and gas, and an important supportive factor is that it has a big powerful neighbor in the form of China which knows it will be “in the firing line” after Russia, and is thus quite happy to enter into a mutually supportive relationship with Russia. China and Russia look set to form a “dollar free” axis and tough it out with Washington. The Chinese have worked all this out in advance, as has Putin, which is why, in addition to mopping up all the gold available on the market in recent times to later back its currency, it has been beefing up its military in readiness to counter future threats from the US military, which is already making moves to reopen bases in the Philippines, and engaging in other expansionary measures in the west Pacific.

Meanwhile, in the Mid-East, we have the Islamic State movement, which appears to have arisen spontaneously to fill the power vacuum that was created when US forces quit Iraq. We should not forget that although Iraq has existed for many decades, the country is an artificial creation of the British after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in order to control the region and its oil reserves. The US is trying to stop them with air power, but without “boots on the ground” they are unlikely to succeed. Although Israel is looking on with satisfaction as Arab kills Arab, it had better hope that the dollar doesn’t lose its reserve currency status, or they could be in big trouble as the conveyor belt of money and arms across the Atlantic from the US could grind to a halt.


The situation between the US and Russia (and in the future China) is potentially very dangerous – is already very dangerous. Are they (the US elites and NATO) crazy enough to start a World War? – World War III? Sure they are and you can see the potential for it in the continual provocation and brinksmanship that is already going on, a fine example of which being the rabid and almost hysterical reaction to the Russian aid convey that just went across the border into eastern Ukraine. What they could have said to Russia, if they were reasonable, is “Thank you for going to the trouble and expense of organizing a big relief convoy for the besieged people of the cities of eastern Ukraine, who have no electricity, food or water.” Instead their reaction was one of sanctimonious outrage – “How dare you cross the border of this sovereign state without the permission of their government? – This is a grave escalation.” etc and are using it as an excuse to crank up sanctions even more.

The situation in eastern Ukraine and involving the Russian aid convey is a classic example of how propaganda can be used to turn white into black. The way it worked is this; the humanitarian situation for countless thousands of people holed up in big cities in eastern Ukraine, like Donetsk and Luhansk, is dire. They have been relentlessly shelled and have little or no electricity, food or water. Many of these people are either Russian speaking or of Russian descent, so it is natural for Russia to want to go to their aid. So Russia went to the trouble and expense of organizing a big relief convoy. The controlled Western media have downplayed this crisis which affects countless thousands, hardly reporting on it at all, but they have had plenty of airtime – much more – for one American reporter gruesomely executed by a British Jihadist. They have done this because they don’t want people to be aware of the attacks being carried by the Ukraine government against its own people, which they back, and they don’t want people to understand the reason for the Russian aid convoy, so that they can then misrepresent the reasons for the aid convoy. The allegations by the Western media that the aid convoy has military objectives is absurd – you don’t need to be a truck driver to know that it’s very difficult to squeeze a tank or an armored troop carrier into an average sized truck. The protest that Russia is “violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity” by driving the trucks on through without permission is hypocritical cant and humbug, especially coming from a country that invaded Iraq on false pretenses, the mythical “weapons of mass destruction”. If Kiev wasn’t massacring its own citizens in eastern Ukraine, the aid convoy wouldn’t be necessary, and the reason that the trucks pressed on into Ukraine is that they were being deliberately messed about for a week at the border, when vetting the trucks should have taken 2 days maximum. So there you see a fine example of propaganda by omission, the purpose being to misrepresent the objectives of the Russian aid convoy, in order to present it as an act of aggression by Russia and therefore as a justification for a further tightening of sanctions.

Let’s go back to first principles for a moment and ask ourselves why the US is so concerned about what happens in the Ukraine, which is a country on the other side of the world from the US and therefore none of its business, unless that is it fancies itself as the new Roman Empire – perhaps Barack Obama believes himself to be a latter day Julius Caesar, which conjures up the vision of him entering Congress as if it was the Coliseum, dressed in a white robe and sandals, with a laurel wreath on his head. The US does in fact command an empire, and uses the dollar reserve currency system and its massive military to control its dominions, punishing severely any that try to break out of it. However, its dominions do not include China and Russia, which cannot be subjugated due to their big economies and their ability to physically defend themselves with nukes, if need be, and they are destined to dethrone the dollar and collapse the empire, which is completely rotted out internally, stricken as it is with massive debts and hopelessly corrupt government, as evidenced by the recent train of deplorable leaders.

It is hard to overstate the stupidity of Europe in toadying to the US and imposing sanctions on Russia (in other words starting a trade war). Russia is not some Third World banana republic, it is an important world power, and the act of imposing sanctions on it by Europe and the US is a gross insult and extreme provocation that will have disastrous consequences, particularly since it is now allied with China, with which it will now work assiduously to completely bypass the dollar. China knows that if the US succeeds in destroying Russia economically and subjugating it, then it’s next, so we can expect China and Russia to forge a very powerful alliance. Europe’s economy is already extremely fragile, and it stands to lose far more over the short to medium-term than the US by picking a fight it can’t win with its huge neighbor. Europe now faces a plunging currency and disintegration with the rise of far right political parties leading eventually to tribal wars – European countries have a long tradition of idiotic destructive attritional wars. Russia will probably get along alright, with its big internal economy and new trade agreements with China.

The rabid propaganda now being bandied about in Western media, especially with respect to Russia, is so crude and primitive that it would have even made the Nazi propaganda maestro, Dr Goebbels, blush with embarrassment, and you couldn’t accuse him of underestimating the stupidity of the masses. We haven’t seen this sort of thing since before the 2nd World War. What does it mean? – it means that the Western elites are DESPERATE, desperate in the face of a looming collapse of the dollar caused by its losing its reserve currency status – so desperate that you can practically see the perspiration running down their faces. It’s true that the dollar is rallying now temporarily because of the gathering collapse of Europe, and may continue to benefit from this for a while, and possibly soon from stockmarket liquidation too, but they are looking beyond that. Once the dollar goes their empire is finished – it will no longer be possible to maintain careening astronomic deficits, there will be no more limitless funds for the military machine many of whose bases could end up looking like the town of Pripyat near Chernobyl, no more imposing their will by force anywhere in the world, no more imposing fines on foreign banks and institutions for not doing things their way, no more money and arms for Israel, no more massive bonuses on Wall St etc. The rapid spread of destitution and poverty amongst the masses in the US means that a state of anarchy could well erupt that sees the mansions and citadels of the elites ransacked by the mob, and they are well aware of this possibility, which is the reason for the militarization of police forces across the country, as recently demonstrated in Ferguson, Missouri, and the stockpiling of vast quantities of ammo.

The biggest danger arising out of all this is that desperate people do desperate things, and the recent crude “gloves off” propaganda blitz is certainly a sign of desperation. It’s been a long time since a really big war and you can see from their increasingly reckless words and actions that they are lusting for it. It is one of the supreme ironies of this time that amidst all the maudlin sentimentality over the start of the 1st World War exactly 100 years ago, they are bringing us to the brink of another. Could it cross the line and go nuclear? – given the reckless aggression and brinksmanship already being displayed, that is certainly a possibility.

They can mass all the arms and missile batteries along Russia’s western border they like, perhaps promoting the paranoid notion that Russia wants to take back Eastern Europe, which it doesn’t, but it will never amount to anything more than a costly bluff, because if they ever dared attack Russia, then European cities would disappear under mushroom clouds. The underlying reason for such operations would probably be more lucrative contracts for the defense industry.
Remember, it wasn’t the elites who got killed in the 1st World War, it was the hapless young fools who thought they were doing the honorable thing going off to fight for their countries. So you’d better get good at seeing through the thick smog of propaganda in order that you understand what’s really going on and can take the necessary steps to protect yourself – if you don’t it could cost you and your loved ones more than just your property and investments, it could cost you your lives.

Many people suffer from vague uncertainties – they know something is wrong, but can’t put their finger on it. This is because they are not privy to “The Grand Plan” and believe the lies and misinformation carefully and skillfully served up to them by the compliant media, whose masters view the masses as sheep and treat them like mushrooms – “Feed them shit and keep them in the dark”. But once you become aware of the game plan, it is liberating, and spotting the lies and misinformation in the media becomes a kind of sport. Knowledge is power, and if you figure out that the dollar is going to collapse after its current rally – which could have quite a way to go incidentally – then you know to position yourself to escape the catastrophic effects of its eventual collapse and even profit handsomely from it – that is when gold and silver will do their moonshot of course, and it could coincide with the Chinese backing their currency with gold.
In conclusion, the answer to the question posed by this article “Will the US succeed in breaking Russia to maintain dollar hegemony?” is: “No, it won’t”, which means that the dollar is going to collapse, probably right after its swansong “death of Europe” rally, which is currently in progress.
Please note that this article may later appear on some public websites.

The Best of Clive Maund

Ten years ago, libertarian views would have been drowned out by the establishment consensus, which closes ranks whenever an issue of real importance arises.

LewRockwell.com
anti-state * anti-war * pro-market

By: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Date: 30 August 2014

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Is This the Libertarian Moment?

Earlier this month the New York Times wondered aloud if the “libertarian moment” had arrived. A good question, to be sure.

To answer it, though, Times reporter Robert Draper sought out not quite the top libertarian thinkers in the world, but instead those people most easily reached within a ten-minute walk from the Capitol or the Empire State Building.

Draper begins with an ex-MTV personality and proceeds from there. None of the people whose work and writing have shaped the libertarian movement, and who have converted so many people to our point of view, make an appearance. Ask the hordes of young kids who are devouring libertarian classics how many of them were introduced to libertarianism, or even slightly influenced, by the figures on whom the Times chooses to rely. You already know the answer.
The movement’s major thinkers have rather more intellectual heft behind them, which I suspect is why the Times would prefer to keep them from you. Far better for libertarianism to seem like an ill-focused, adolescent rebellion against authority per se, instead of a serious, intellectually exciting school of thought that challenges every last platitude about the State we were taught in its ubiquitous schools.

Economist and historian Bob Higgs shared my impression of the Times article:

Of course, it’s easy to ridicule libertarians if you focus exclusively on the lifestyle camp. Easy, too, to accuse them of inconsistency, because in truth these particular libertarians are inconsistent. Easy, too, to minimize their impact by concentrating heavily on conventional electoral politics, as if no other form of societal change were conceivable. Easy, too, to ignore completely the only ones – the anarchists – who cannot be accused of inconsistency or ridiculed for their impotence as players in the conventional political game, a game for which they have only contempt. Finally, it’s easy, too – and a great deal more interesting for general, clueless readers – to focus on the hip libertarians.

As Bob points out, the Times reporter says he finds inconsistency among libertarians, because some want to cut only this much, or abolish only those things. But this is what he gets for focusing on the political class and the Beltway brand of libertarianism. Libertarianism is about as consistent a philosophy as a Times reader is likely to encounter. We oppose aggression, period. That means we oppose the State, which amounts to institutionalized aggression.

We have zero interest in “public policy,” a term that begs every important moral question. To ask what kind of “public policy” ought to exist in such-and-such area implicitly assumes:

(1) that private property is subject to majority vote;
(2) that people can be expropriated by the State to whatever degree the State considers necessary in order to carry out the “public policy” in question;
(3) that there exists an institution with moral legitimacy that may direct our physical resources and even our lives in particular ways against our wills, even when we are causing no particular harm to anyone.

Still, I note in passing, political consultants are doing their best to make a quick buck on the rising tide of libertarianism. A fundraising email I receive from time to time urges people to get involved in the political process, since simply “educating people” (contemptuous, condescending quotation marks in original) isn’t enough. Instead. they’re told, it’s more important to spend their time supporting political candidates who occasionally give a decent speech but who otherwise deny libertarian principles on a routine basis, in the spurious hope that once in office, these candidates will throw off their conventional exteriors and announce themselves as libertarians.

The Times, too, thinks primarily about politics, of all things, when assessing whether the libertarian moment has arrived. The article is fixated on the political class. But why conceive of the question so narrowly? Why should we assess the growth and significance of libertarianism on the basis of political metrics alone?

The left understands this point. Recall Antonio Gramsci’s strategy for bringing about lasting leftist victory. He did not advocate immediate and exclusive emphasis on political activity. If the people’s minds had not been changed in the direction that a leftist government would want to take them, all their political conniving would be in vain anyway.

Vastly more important, Gramsci taught, was for their ideas to work their way through the universities, the arts, and all the other institutions of civil society. At that point, it wouldn’t matter who won the elections. The people would already be in their hands – and in all likelihood, the two competing candidates would themselves have adopted leftist language and ideas, whether they realized it or not, to boot.

Now judged by Gramsci’s standard, the libertarian moment has not arrived any more than it has in politics. These institutions are firmly in the hands of those who hold libertarian ideas in contempt, even if an exception might be found here and there.

But if we define the term “libertarian moment” more modestly, a different conclusion emerges. No, we have not reached a point at which anything like a majority of Americans have embraced our ideas. But we have reached a point at which even mainstream sources, which in the pre-Internet age could get away with ignoring us altogether, are forced to acknowledge us, if only for purposes of dismissal and ridicule.

Economic commentary can no longer pretend that our choices are either fiscal expansion or monetary expansion. A new school of thought has spoiled the party, letting Americans know that these phony choices by no means exhaust the real alternatives.


Thanks to Ron Paul, a new generation understands it’s all right to favor the free market and to oppose war. Libertarians have done more than anyone else to expose the Democrats as just another wing of the war party, and to show there’s no real debate in America over foreign policy. This is considered extremely uncouth by those who wish to maintain the pretense that open discussion of important issues takes place in the land of the free.

After decades of virtually no progress at all against the war on drugs, the prohibitionist regime is beginning to crack all around us. The standard bromides in its favor elicit only cynical chuckles from a rising generation that knows better.

Ordinarily, federal bailouts would be bipartisan and all but unanimous, with self-described supporters of the market economy solemnly informing us that just this once, it had to be done. Progressives have not distinguished themselves here as they might have; Rachel Maddow once said we wouldn’t have had an economy without the bailouts. It’s the libertarians who have stood against the establishment tide, as usual.

In other words, we are having discussions that we did not have in the past. Libertarians have staked out positions that a lot of ordinary people share, but which they never saw articulated in public, thereby giving people the confidence and courage to express dissent.


Ten years ago, these dissident views would have been drowned out by the establishment consensus, which closes ranks whenever an issue of real importance arises.

Is it too much to call this the libertarian moment? Whatever we want to call it, it’s the beginning of something never seen before in American history, and that alone is reason to celebrate.

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The real problem is that people have over-consumed, not under-saved, during the central bank sponsored debt party of the last 30 years.

LewRockwell.com
anti-state * anti-war * pro-market

By: David Stockman
Date: 30 August 2014

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Keynesian Fairy Tale Alert: Establishment Citadel—Council On Foreign Relations—-Peddles Helicopter Money Plan

Folks, take economic cover. There is already a rabid financial mania loose in the land as reflected in the irrational exuberance of the stock market, but, in fact, the fairy tale economics fueling the current financial bubble is fixing to leap into a whole new realm of lunacy. Namely, an out-and-out drop of “helicopter money” to the main street masses.

That’s right. The Keynesian brain freeze has so deeply infected the Wall Street/ Washington corridor that the grey old lady of the establishment, the Council On Foreign Relations, has lent the pages of its prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs, to the following blithering gibberish:

It’s well past time, then, for U.S. policymakers — as well as their counterparts in other developed countries — to consider a version of Friedman’s helicopter drops…..  Rather than trying to spur private-sector spending through asset purchases or interest-rate changes, central banks, such as the Fed, should hand consumers cash directly. In practice, this policy could take the form of giving central banks the ability to hand their countries’ tax-paying households a certain amount of money. The government could distribute cash equally to all households or, even better, aim for the bottom 80 percent of households in terms of income.Targeting those who earn the least would have two primary benefits. For one thing, lower-income households are more prone to consume, so they would provide a greater boost to spending. For another, the policy would offset rising income inequality.

I have actually checked, and, no, the publishing arm of the Council on Foreign Relations has not been hacked by writers from the Onion. This monetary insanity is for real!

Worse still, this sophmoric prattle is supposed to be based on economic reasoning and purported structural changes in modern economies that cause people everywhere to under-consume and over-save. Hence the need to drop fiat money from the sky so that citizens spend one afternoon per week scooping-up the new money and six-and-one-half days per week in an orgy of consumption and gluttony.

Well, that’s what the authors—a political science professor from Brown and a beltway bandit from Washington DC—actually say. Since their “under consumption” thesis completely denies every known fact about modern economies, their “analysis” needs to be quoted verbatim:

Three trends explain why. First, technological innovation has driven down consumer prices and globalization has kept wages from rising. Second, the recurring financial panics of the past few decades have encouraged many lower-income economies to increase savings — in the form of currency reserves — as a form of insurance. That means they have been spending far less than they could, starving their economies of investments in such areas as infrastructure and defense, which would provide employment and drive up prices. Finally, throughout the developed world, increased life expectancies have led some private citizens to focus on saving for the longer term (think Japan). As a result, middle-aged adults and the elderly have started spending less on goods and services.

Alrighty then, lets “think Japan” and explore the savings glut thesis. Does the chart below suggest that Japan’s robust pre-1990 growth rate—which the authors laud—-has vanished during the last two decades because the savings rate went up?

In fact, it has plummeted from north of 20% during Japan’s heyday of growth to a US style 3% at present.  Worse still, this occurred during the waning years before Japan began turning into a retirement colony. That is, instead of building up a nest egg for their greying years, Japanese households in recent times have spent nearly everything they earned.

So even though Japan’s real GDP growth rate drastically downshifted from 4-7% during the pre-1990 boom years to just 1% annually during the last two decades, it wasn’t due to a “savings glut”.  Even the most superficial examination of the data establishes that truth.



Nor is Japan an outlier among developed economies. The US picture is virtually the same over this period. The household savings rate during the pre-1980 period, and before the Greenspan-Bernanke-Yellen money printing era got fully underway, was always above 10% of disposable income. As shown below, it has tumbled into the 3-6% zone since the late 1990s.

Like in Japan, therefore, the US baby boomers were spending almost all they earned in their most productive years. Accordingly, the sharp down-shift in the US  real GDP growth rate—-from 3-4% pre-1980 to only 1.8% during the last 14 years—- is not due to a “savings glut”, either.



In a word, the entire “savings glut” theory  is upside down with respect to Japan, the US and the developed economies of Europe as well. All of these societies are now getting old, fast. The real problem is that they have over-consumed, not under-saved, during the central bank sponsored debt party of the last 30 years.  Consequently, the actual culprit weighing down real growth is “peak debt” on household, business and government balance sheets, not a perverse failure to spend.

In fact, during the several decades leading up to the financial crisis, household and business leverage ratios were steadily ratcheted-up, meaning that consumption spending was financed by currently earned income plus borrowed funds from the credit card, mortgage and consumer loan markets.  But the resulting consumption spree was a one-time economic trick that has now been exhausted.

Accordingly, the credit expansion channel of monetary stimulus is now broken and done. All of the massive balance sheet expansion by major central banks is being shunted into the financial gambling channel where it fuels asset price inflation, not main street jobs, output and enterprise.

Stated differently, the downshift in developed world growth is not due to under-consumption and insufficient “aggregate demand”. The GDP of these economies is growing at “only” 1-2% per annum because production and productivity are also languishing in this same tepid zone. But that’s a problem on the supply-side—reflecting high taxes, high debt burdens, regulatory hurdles to enterprise and the vast financialization of developed economies owing to central bank distortion of financial markets.

Self-evidently, money is flowing in a mighty tidal wave into the Wall Street casino where it is driving the price of existing financial assets skyward. In that environment, labor cannot compete with debt, and so it is is liquidated on the margin in order to generate incremental cash flow to pay the interest. Likewise, investment in productive assets cannot compete with the short-run boost to stock prices resulting from massive corporate stock repurchases.

At the end of the day, ironically, helicopter money—-the kind currently being dropped on the financial markets—-is the overarching problem. Redirecting the fleet to main street is obviously nothing more than crackpot economics.

The real problem is way too much debt—the legacy of Keynesian central banking, manipulated, sub-economic interest rates and the consequent scramble for yield which has enabled governments to borrow and spend at unsustainable rates. Now the piper has to be paid, and the phony growth that was stolen from the future during the bubble years must unavoidably be recouped.



Indeed, when the US data from the above chart is inspected more closely, the barrier of peak debt fairly screams out. And the back story only further demolishes the authors’ thesis as quoted above.

They claim that the peasants who came out of the rice paddies and into the factories of East China saved too much on the one hand, and drove down the price of labor on the other, thereby causing developed world wages to stagnate and household consumption spending in Chicago and Paris to languish.

Now that is really Keynesian gibberish. The soaring ratio of US debt to national income shown below was enabled by the Fed and its vast expansion of dollar liabilities which have financed $8 trillion of current account deficits since the late 1970s. The effect was that US exported dollar inflation, and mercantilist central banks in China, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere in Asia and the developing world bought-up this dollar inflow in order to peg their currencies and fuel their export based development policies.

Accordingly, the vaunted and massive “currency reserves” of the developing world reflected not an excess of genuine savings, but an abundance of domestic money printing. And the cheap labor which allegedly suppressed US consumption was actually nothing more than the economic blow-back from attempting to inflate domestic spending through cheap debt and the emission of a massive and continuous flow of unwanted dollars into the world market.

The Best of David Stockman

Former Congressman David A. Stockman was Reagan's OMB director, which he wrote about in his best-selling book, The Triumph of Politics. His latest book is The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America. He's the editor and publisher of the new David Stockman's Contra Corner. He was an original partner in the Blackstone Group, and reads LRC the first thing every morning.

The motto of our current gold-price fixers seems to be: “We want sound money — and plenty of it.”

LewRockwell.com
anti-state * anti-war * pro-market

By: Joseph Salerno of Mises.org
Date: 30 August 2014

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The Myth of the Unchanging Value of Gold

According to mainstream economics textbooks, one of the primary functions of money is to measure the value of goods and services exchanged on the market. A typical statement of this view is given by Frederic Mishkin in his textbook on money and banking. “[M]oney … is used to measure value in the economy,” he claims. “We measure the value of goods and services in terms of money, just as we measure weight in terms of pounds and distance in terms of miles.”

When money is conceived as a measure of value, the policy implication is that one of the primary objectives of the central bank should be to maintain a stable price level. This supposedly will remove inflationary noise from the economy and ensure that any changes in money prices that do occur tend to reflect a change in the relative values of goods and services to consumers. Thus, for mainstream economists, stabilizing a price index based on a basket of arbitrarily selected and weighted consumer goods, e.g., the CPI, the core CPI, the Personal Consumption Expenditure (CPE), etc., is a prerequisite for rendering money a more or less fixed yardstick for measuring value.

This idea — that a series of acts involving interpersonal exchange of certain sums of money for quantities of various goods by diverse agents over a given period of time somehow yields a measure of value — is another ancient fallacy that can be traced back to John Law. Law repeatedly referred to money as “the measure by which goods are valued.” This fallacy has been refuted elsewhere and rests on the assumption that the act of measurement involves the comparison of one thing to another thing that has an objective existence, and whose relevant physical dimensions and causal relationships with other physical phenomena are absolutely fixed and invariant to the passage of time, like a yardstick or a column of mercury.

In fact, the value an individual attaches to a given sum of money or to any kind of good is based on a subjective judgment and is without physical dimensions. As such the value of money varies from moment to moment and between different individuals. The price paid for a good in a concrete act of exchange does not measure the good’s value; rather it expresses the fact that the buyer and the seller value the money and the price paid in inverse order. For this reason neither money nor any other good can ever serve as a measure of value.

Unfortunately, advocates of a gold-price target wholeheartedly embrace this mainstream doctrine while giving it an odd twist. They begin with the wholly unsupported assumption that one commodity, gold, is stable in value and that, therefore it can serve as the lone guiding star — or “The Monetary Polaris” as Nathan Lewis terms it — for Fed monetary policy. According to Steve Forbes, writing in the introduction to Lewis’s Gold: The Monetary Polaris, real gold standards have one thing in common: “They use gold as a measuring rod to keep the value of money stable. Why? Because the yellow metal keeps its intrinsic value better than anything on the planet.”

Louis Woodhill, in a Forbes column, writes in a similar vein, explaining that “[t]he fundamental validity of the gold standard rests upon the premise that the real value of gold remains constant over time. … The most fundamental thing about a unit of measure is that it be constant. … Gold is not money, and it should not be money. However we can and should use gold to define the value of the dollar.” These passages reflect an almost mystical belief that the “intrinsic” or “real” value of gold is, for all practical purposes, eternally unchanging, unaffected by the continual flux of human valuations, stocks of resources (including gold itself ), technology, and entrepreneurial judgments that define the essence of the dynamic market economy. Furthermore no definition is ever given of what exactly the concept of “intrinsic value” means or in what units it is expressed.

Historical experience clearly shows that the value of gold vis-à-vis other commodities has fluctuated over the centuries, even when gold has served as the monetary standard. This was certainly the case, for example, when the US returned to the gold standard after the Civil War. From 1880 to 1896, US wholesale prices fell by about 30 percent. From 1897 to 1914 wholesale prices rose by about 2.5 percent per year or by nearly 50 percent. This rise came about mainly as the result of a nearly doubling of the global stock of gold between 1890 and 1914 due to discoveries of new gold deposits in Alaska, Colorado, and South Africa, and improvements in the technology of mining and refining gold.

Proponents of gold-price targeting thus seem to ignore both theory and history in assuming that once the dollar price of gold has been fixed, the value of money itself becomes forever stable and immune to the influence of market forces of supply and demand. Inflation and deflation are, therefore, ipso facto banished from the economy. This implies that any changes occurring in the quantity of money under a fixed-gold price regime are to be construed as benign and stabilizing adjustments of the supply of money to changes in the demand for money. Steve Forbes writes: “The fact that a foot has 12 inches doesn’t restrict the number of square feet you have in a house. The fact that a pound has 16 ounces doesn’t restrict your weight, alas — it’s a simple measurement. … The virtue of a properly constructed gold standard is that it’s both stable and flexible—stable in value and flexible in meeting the marketplace’s natural need for money. If an economy is growing rapidly such a gold-based system would allow for rapid expansion of the money supply.”

In other words Forbes’s “stable and flexible” gold standard would facilitate and camouflage an inflationary expansion of the money supply that would, according to Austrians, distort capital markets and lead to asset bubbles. The motto of our current gold-price fixers seems to be: “We want sound money — and plenty of it.”

The Best of Joseph Salerno

Where, then, has Hillary Clinton exhibited the acumen to suggest she would be a wise and savvy steward of U.S. foreign policy in a disintegrating world?

LewRockwell.com
anti-state * anti-war * pro-market

By: Patrick J. Buchanan
Date: 30 August 2014

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Has Hillary Ever Been Right?

Sen. Rand Paul raises an interesting question:

When has Hillary Clinton ever been right on foreign policy?

The valkyrie of the Democratic Party says she urged President Obama to do more to aid Syrian rebels years ago. And last summer, she supported air strikes on Bashar Assad’s regime.

Had we followed her advice and crippled Assad’s army, ISIS might be in Damascus today, butchering Christians and Alawites and aiding the Islamic State in Iraq in overrunning Baghdad.

But if the folly of attacking Assad’s army and weakening its resistance to ISIS terrorists is apparent to everyone this summer, why were Clinton, Obama and Secretary of State Kerry oblivious to this reality just a year ago?

Consider the rest of Hillary’s record. Her most crucial decision as Senator came in 2002 when she voted to invade Iraq. She now concedes it was the greatest mistake of her Senate career.

She voted against the surge in 2006, but confided to Defense Secretary Bob Gates that she did so to maintain her political viability for 2008.

This is statesmanship? Not voting your convictions about what is best for your country at war, so as not to antagonize the liberals in the Iowa caucuses?

In 2009, Hillary presented a “reset button” to Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister. In 2011, she supported U.S. air strikes to bring down Col. Gadhafi and celebrated in Tripoli when he was overthrown and lynched.

How did that work out? Libya is today a hellhole of murder and mayhem and Islamists are threatening a takeover.

Who did Hillary think would rise when Gadhafi fell?

Hillary’s failure to anticipate or prevent the Benghazi massacre and her role in the botched cover-up, all concede, are burdens she will carry into the primaries in 2016, should she run.

Where, then, has Hillary exhibited the acumen to suggest she would be a wise and savvy steward of U.S. foreign policy in a disintegrating world?

Is this a convincing argument for the Republican alternative?

Hardly. The principal GOP voices on foreign policy, who get more airtime than Wolf Blitzer, are John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

Their track record: McCain wanted to confront Putin over South Ossetia. He and Graham wanted to arm Ukrainians to fight the Russians in Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk. They wanted Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia brought into NATO, so that if war were to break out, we would be fighting the Russians alongside them.

This year, Graham was trolling around a Senate resolution to give Obama a blank check to attack Iran.

Last year, McCain and Graham were for attacking Assad’s army. This year they are for bombing ISIS, which is attacking Assad’s army.

But if Hillary, McCain and Graham have been repeatedly wrong about Syria, what do we now? Answer: Stop and think.

First, this war in Syria and Iraq, like all such wars, is eventually going to be won by soldiers, by boots on the ground, by troops who can take and hold territory. And in such wars, as Napoleon said, God is on the side of the big battalions.

America should declare to friends and allies in the Middle East, as Nixon did to our friends and allies in Asia in the Guam Doctrine of 1969, that while we will stand with them when they are attacked, they, not we, will provide the soldiers for their own defense.

No nation is less threatened by ISIS than ours. And as the Syrians, Turks, Kurds and Iraqis have the proximity and manpower to defeat ISIS, they should do this job themselves.

Turkey shares a 550-mile border with Syria and could march in and crush ISIS. But if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wishes to play games with ISIS, out of hatred of Assad, let him and the Turks live with the consequences.

As for Syria’s army and regime, which either defeats ISIS or dies, let us cease impeding their efforts by backing a Free Syrian Army that has rarely won a battle and is only bleeding the Syrian army.


Kurdistan and its ethnic cousins in Syria, Turkey and Iran are capable of defending themselves, and we should encourage any nation, including Iran, that is willing to send them the weapons to fight ISIS.

As for Baghdad, if it wants its Sunni lands back, it either should fight for them or accept their loss. We Americans are living today with the consequences, in considerable losses of blood and treasure, of fighting other people’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Yet, we are suffering not at all from having kept out of other people’s wars — in Georgia, Crimea, Donetsk, Syria and Iran.

Speaking of the debate over U.S. air strikes in Syria, the New York Times writes, “There are too many unanswered questions to make that decision now, and there has been far too little public discussion for Mr. Obama to expect Americans to rally behind what could be another costly military commitment.”

Sometimes the Times gets it right.


The Best of Patrick J. Buchanan

The Islamic State is the perfect example of Nietzche’s over-used maxim, “what does not kill us makes us stronger.” It has risen from the ruins of Iraq and Syria to challenge the American Raj.

LewRockwell.com
anti-state * anti-war * pro-market

By: Eric Margolis
Date: 30 August 2014

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The Mother of All Blowback

President Barack Obama is being lambasted by US Republicans for admitting that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for dealing with the rise of the militant group, ISIS, or Islamic State, as it’s now known.

Given that the US had made an unbelievable mess of its Mideast policies, the president is right to pause and think, something his shoot –from- the- lip Republican critics rarely do. They are demanding the US attack both Iraq and Syria without asking “what then oh brave Washington warriors?” These are the Republicans who ardently supported George Bush’s catastrophic invasion and destruction of Iraq.

The problem is that too many cooks in Washington are spoiling its Mideast soup. In his magnificent new book, “The Sleepwalkers,” Prof. Christopher Clark of Cambridge describes how World War I was in part ignited by small numbers of anti-German officials in France, Russia, Serbia and Britain who often undermined their own government’s moderate policies.

The same process occurred under President George W. Bush when cabals of neocon officials in the Pentagon, State Department, CIA and media drove the US into a calamitous war whose negative effects are still being felt.

Today, other pro-war cliques in official Washington are at it again, each trying to dominate policy. Add a bunch of pro-Israel billionaires who have bought both the Republican and Democratic parties, apparently including Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president.

President Obama has always found it extremely difficult to impose his will on all these different factions, even more now that he’s a lame duck. He has repeatedly made clear that he wants to avoid any new wars, but while allowing drone attacks to increase.

Both party politics and the need to shore up America’s shaky Mideast imperium – which I call the American Raj – are pushing Obama towards military action.

So we see small numbers of US troops being sent back to Iraq – enough men to get the nation stuck in a new conflict but not enough to make a major difference. In short, the worst of both worlds.

Now, Obama is being pressed to attack Syria, an idea so crazy it takes the breath away. Obama is largely responsible for the current disaster in Syria – nearly 200,000 dead and three million refugees. Once thriving Syria, the real heart of the Arab world, has been devastated. President Vlad Putin may not save Obama this time.

The US sponsored and armed the uprising against the Assad regime, which had brutally ruled Syria for 43 years. France, Britain, Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations backed the campaign to overthrow Assad, as a way to damage Iran, Syria’s principal ally. The result: a bloody war of attrition that is slowly being won by Damascus.

Worse, the western intervention in Syria produced what is known in the intelligence business as “blowback”- in this case the Mother of all blowback.

The Syrian jihadist supported by the western powers and, for some baffling reason, Turkey, ran amok. A previously unknown band of gunmen known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were trained and armed in Jordan by CIA, then turned lose on Syria.


ISIL became ISIS, then the by now notorious Islamic State(IS) which has been rampaging across northern and central Iraq. What makes IS so effective is that the major portion of its leaders and soldiers are veterans of President Saddam Hussein’s army, notably the Republican Guard. With IS is the last surviving Saddam insider, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri.

When the US first invaded Iraq, Saddam predicted it would face the “Mother of all battles.” Westerners laughed. Eleven years later, the laughter has been silenced. Iraq continues to fight on and it is no longer safe for foreign oil companies. Saddam’s revenge.

The Islamic State is the perfect example of Nietzche’s over-used maxim, “what does not kill us makes us stronger.” It has risen from the ruins of Iraq and Syria to challenge the American Raj.

“Light” bombing by the US in Iraq won’t stop the IS. Pentagon chiefs now say US air power and special forces must go into Syria. This is standard Obama procedure: inching forward and launching trial balloons to test public opinion. But it’s clear the American public does not want new wars no matter what the pro-war media and bought Congress may say.


The Best of Eric Margolis

Of course, Washington could easily stop the violence by ordering its puppet government in Kiev to stop the bombing and shelling of the former Russian provinces.

ALEX JONES' INFOWARS.COM BECAUSE THERE IS A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND

By: Paul Craig Roberts
Date: 29 August 2014

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Washington Piles Lie Upon Lie

The latest Washington lie, this one coming from NATO, is that Russia has invaded Ukraine with 1,000 troops and self-propelled artillery

 

 

The latest Washington lie, this one coming from NATO, is that Russia has invaded Ukraine with 1,000 troops and self-propelled artillery.

How do we know that this is a lie? Is it because we have heard nothing but lies about Russia from NATO, from US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, from assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, from Obama and his entire regime of pathological liars, and from the British, German, and French governments along with the BBC and the entirety of the Western media?

This, of course, is a good reason for knowing that the latest Western propaganda is a lie. Those who are pathological liars don’t suddenly start telling the truth.


But there are even better reasons for understanding that Russia has not invaded Ukraine with 1,000 troops.

One reason is that Putin has invested heavily in diplomacy backed by unprovocative behavior. He would not risk his bet on diplomacy by sending in troops too few in number to have a decisive effect on the outcome.

Another reason is that if Putin decides he has no alternative to sending the Russian military to protect the Russian residents in eastern and southern Ukraine, Putin will send in enough troops to do the job quickly as he did in Georgia when the American and Israeli trained Georgian army invaded South Ossetia and was destroyed in a few hours by the Russian response. If you hear that 100,000 Russian troops accompanied by air cover have invaded Ukraine, it would be a more believable claim.

A third reason is that the Russian military does not need to send troops into Ukraine in order to stop the bombing and artillery shelling of the Russian populations by Washington’s puppet government in Kiev. The Russian air force can easily and quickly destroy the Ukrainian air force and artillery and, thereby, stop the Ukrainian attack on the secessionist provinces.

It was only two weeks ago that a fabricated report spread by the UK Guardian and the BBC that a Russian armored convoy entered Ukraine and was destroyed by the Ukrainian Military. And two weeks prior to that we had the hoax of the satellite images allegedly released by the US State Department that the corrupt US ambassador in Kiev spread around the world on social media allegedly showing that Russian forces were firing into Ukraine. One or two weeks from now we will have another lie, and another a week or two after that, and so on.

The cumulative effect of lie piled upon lie for most people is to build the view that the Russians are up to no good. Once this view is established, Western governments can take more serious moves against Russia.

The alleged entry of 1,000 Russian soldiers into Ukraine has been declared by NATO Brigadier General Niko Tak to be a “significant escalation in Russia’s military interference in Ukraine.” The champion liar Samantha Power told the US Security Council that “Russia has to stop lying.” The UK ambassador to the UN said that Russia was guilty of “a clear violation of sovereign Ukrainian territory.” UK prime minister Cameron warned Russia of “further consequences.” German chancellor Merkel announced that there would be more sanctions. A German Security Council advisor declared that “war with Russia is an option.” Polish foreign minister Sikorski called it Russian aggression that required international action. French president Hollande declared Russia’s behavior to be “intolerable.” Ukraine’s security council imposed mandatory conscription.

This suicidal drive toward war with Russia by Europe’s leaders is based entirely on a transparent lie that 1,000 Russian troops crossed into Ukraine
Of course the Western media followed in lock-step. The BBC, CNN, and Die Welt are among the most reckless and irresponsible.

The mountain of lies piled up by Western governments and media has obscured the true story. The US government orchestrated the overthrow of the elected government in Ukraine and imposed a US puppet in Kiev. Washington’s puppet government began issuing threats and committing violent acts against the Russian populations in the former Russian territories that Soviet leaders attached to Ukraine. The Russian people in eastern and southern Ukraine resisted the threat brought to them by Washington’s puppet government in Kiev.

Washington continually accuses the Russian government of supporting the people in the territories who have voted their separation from Ukraine. There would be no war, Washington alleges, except for Russian support. But, of course, Washington could easily stop the violence by ordering its puppet government in Kiev to stop the bombing and shelling of the former Russian provinces. If Russia can tell the “separatists” not to fight, Washington can tell Kiev not to fight.
The only possible conclusion from the facts is that Washington is determined to involve Europe in a war with Russia or at least in an armed standoff in order to break up Europe’s political and economic relations with Russia.

Europe’s leaders are going along with this because European countries, except for Charles de Gaulle’s France, have not had independent foreign policies since the end of World War II. They follow Washington’s lead and are well paid for doing so.

The inability of Europe to produce independent leadership dooms Russian President Putin’s diplomacy to failure. If European capitals cannot make decisions independently of Washington, there is no scope for Putin’s diplomacy.

Notice that the very day after Putin met with Washington’s Ukrainian vassal in an effort to resolve the situation, the new lie of Russian invasion was issued in order to ensure that no good can come of the meeting in which Putin invested his time and energy.

Washington’s only interest is in hegemony. Washington has no interest in resolving the situation that Washington itself created in order to bring discomfort and confusion to Russia. With the caveat that the situation could be resolved by Ukrainian economic collapse, otherwise the longer Putin waits to resolve the situation by force, the more difficult the task will be.

Many Americans view the dissemination and enforcement of food safety standards as a basic function of government, and it’s difficult for them to imagine a world where food is both safe and unregulated.

Cato Institute
Cato at Liberty

By: K. William Watson
Date: 29 August 2014

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Ensuring Safe Food in a Free Market: A Lesson from China

Many Americans view the dissemination and enforcement of food safety standards as a basic function of government, and it’s difficult for them to imagine a world where food is both safe and unregulated. Libertarians can point out that the safety of a product is, just like quality and price, something that consumers directly care about and as such will be most effectively preserved in a competitive free market.  But it’s one thing to make abstract economic arguments and quite another to have real life examples.

Well, here’s an interesting story from China, as reported by Reuters last week:

A Chinese retailer is offering insurance to customers who buy infant milk powder, highlighting the lengths to which companies are going to address concerns about food safety in China.

Suning Commerce Group Ltd, which owns the Redbaby chain of stores, told Reuters it had launched the policy this week, backed by China’s second largest insurer, Ping An Insurance Group.

The policy stipulates that if a brand of milk powder is recalled, customers who bought cans from any Redbaby store or its e-commerce website would be paid up to 2,000 yuan ($325) per can, with payments capped at 100,000 yuan.

“In recent years, the milk powder market in China has been in a mess,” Suning said in an email.

“We realized that parents pay a great deal of attention to their children’s health and safety, and in particular, the safety of their infants’ foods,” it added. Insurer Ping An said Suning’s policy is the first of its kind in China.

Concerns about the safety of baby milk powder came to the fore in 2008 when thousands of infants fell sick and six died after an industrial chemical was added to raise the apparent protein content of certain products.

Personally, I doubt consumers actually want recall insurance. Parents don’t want to be compensated for buying a product that might injure their babies; they want safe products. But Suning’s providing the insurance signals to consumers that the retailer is willing to vouch for the safety of its product.

Now that the retailer is on the hook financially, it will predictably put pressure on its suppliers and manufacturers. All of this is done simply to get more business from anxious customers and make more money.

Retailers have always played an important role in bridging the gap between mysterious supply chains and consumer confidence. Even in a highly regulated market, they reliably step in when regulators fail, and they do a better job of meeting the diverse demands of consumers in a pluralistic society.

Christine Lagarde has long been suspected of corruption yet of course the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) board proclaimed they firmly stand behind her.

ArmstrongEconomics.com

The Secret Cycle (π) Upon Which Everything is Constructed

By: Martin Armstrong
Date: 29 August 2014

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Largarde under Criminal Investigation for Corruption in France

Christine Lagarde has long been suspected of corruption yet of course the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) board proclaimed they firmly stand behind her because she has raised the stature of the IMF to a world player once again thanks to Obama and their joint agenda to raise our taxes to 80% and confiscate 10% of everyone’s bank account to pay for the bankers. Christine Lagarde is facing a criminal investigation in France that is tied to a political corruption probe dating from 2008.

The allegations by French magistrates earlier in the week placed Lagarde squarely under formal investigation for “negligence” after questioning her in Paris for a fourth time. Under French law, you do not move to a formal investigation without probable cause so it is the effective step under common law (UK/USA) of a grand jury investigation.

This arises from allegations that tycoon Bernard Tapie won a large arbitration payout due to political connections when Lagarde was French Finance Minister. Anyone would normally step down to prevent any taint from impacting the IMF. The fact that she does not illustrates the power play at stake. Her lawyers intend to appeal that decision to run the close so her term expires at the IMF by July 2016.

Muhammad – the Founder of Islam – Specifically CONDEMNED AS SINNERS Anyone Who Failed to Protect Christians or Interfered with Christians’ Ability to Practice their Own Faith

Washingtons Blog.com



By:
Date: 26 August 2014

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Muslims Who Persecute Christians Are Violating a DIRECT ORDER from Muhammad

ISIS and other Muslim extremists who persecute Christians are disobeying a direct order from Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

Specifically, in 626 AD, Muhammad issued The Achtiname of Muhammad, also known as the Covenant or (Holy) Testament (Testamentum) of the Prophet Muhammad.
The Achtiname – shown above – ordered Muslims to protect and defend Christians, and condemned as sinners Muslims who mistreated Christians:

This is a letter which was issued by Mohammed, Ibn Abdullah, the Messenger, the Prophet, the Faithful, who is sent to all the people as a trust on the part of God to all His creatures, that they may have no plea against God hereafter. Verily God is the Mighty, the Wise. This letter is directed to the embracers of Islam, as a covenant given to the followers of Nazarene [i.e. Christians] in the East and West, the far and near, the Arabs and foreigners, the known and the unknown.

This letter contains the oath given unto them, and he who disobeys that which is therein will be considered a disobeyer and a transgressor to that whereunto he is commanded.  He will be regarded as one who has corrupted the oath of God, disbelieved His Testament, rejected His Authority, despised His Religion, and made himself deserving of His Curse, whether he is a Sultan or any other believer of Islam. Whenever monks, devotees and pilgrims gather together, whether in a mountain or valley, or den, or frequented place, or plain, or church, or in houses of worship, verily we are [at the] back of them and shall protect them, and their properties and their morals, by Myself, by My Friends and by My Assistants, for they are of My Subjects and under My Protection.

I shall exempt them from that which may disturb them; of the burdens which are paid by others as an oath of allegiance. They must not give anything of their income but that which pleases them—they must not be offended, or disturbed, or coerced or compelled. Their judges should not be changed or prevented from accomplishing their offices, nor the monks disturbed in exercising their religious order, or the people of seclusion be stopped from dwelling in their cells.

No one is allowed to plunder the pilgrims, or destroy or spoil any of their churches, or houses of worship, or take any of the things contained within these houses and bring it to the houses of Islam. And he who takes away anything therefrom, will be one who has corrupted the oath of God, and, in truth, disobeyed His Messenger.

Poll-taxes should not be put upon their judges, monks, and those whose occupation is the worship of God; nor is any other thing to be taken from them, whether it be a fine, a tax or any unjust right. Verily I shall keep their compact, wherever they may be, in the sea or on the land, in the East or West, in the North or South, for they are under My Protection and the testament of My Safety, against all things which they abhor.

No taxes or tithes should be received from those who devote themselves to the worship of God in the mountains, or from those who cultivate the Holy Lands. No one has the right to interfere with their affairs, or bring any action against them. Verily this is for aught else and not for them; rather, in the seasons of crops, they should be given a Kadah for each Ardab of wheat (about five bushels and a half) as provision for them, and no one has the right to say to them this is too much, or ask them to pay any tax.

As to those who possess properties, the wealthy and merchants, the poll-tax to be taken from them must not exceed twelve drachmas a head per year [according to Wikipedia, about 200 modern U.S. dollars].

They shall not be imposed upon by anyone to undertake a journey, or to be forced to go to wars or to carry arms; for the Islams have to fight for them. Do no dispute or argue with them, but deal according to the verse recorded in the Koran, to wit: ‘Do not dispute or argue with the People of the Book but in that which is best’ [29:46]. Thus they will live favored and protected from everything which may offend them by the Callers to religion (Islam), wherever they may be and in any place they may dwell.

Should any Christian woman be married to a Musulman [i.e. Muslim], such marriage must not take place except after her consent, and she must not be prevented from going to her church for prayer. Their churches must be honored and they must not be withheld from building churches or repairing convents.

They must not be forced to carry arms or stones; but the Islams must protect them and defend them against others. It is positively incumbent upon every one of the Islam nation not to contradict or disobey this oath until the Day of Resurrection and the end of the world.

(This is the Haddad translation; other, similar translations can be found here.)
ISIS and other Islamic terrorists are not true Muslims, and they have disobeyed a direct order of Muhammad.

No wonder the majority of Muslims all over the world condemn them.