Global stocks are falling precipitously once again, and banking stocks are leading the way.  If this reminds you of 2008, it should, because that is precisely what we witnessed back then.  Banking stocks collapsed as fear gripped the marketplace, and ultimately many large global banks had to be bailed out either directly or indirectly by their national governments as they failed one after another.  The health of the banking system is absolutely paramount, because the flow of money is our economic lifeblood.  When the flow of money tightens up during a credit crunch, the consequences can be rapid and dramatic just like we witnessed in 2008.

[Trump’s sanctions and trade embargoes are sniffling the flow of currency. – editor]

So let’s keep a very close eye on banking stocks.  Global systemically important bank stocks surged in the aftermath of Trump’s victory in 2016, but now they are absolutely plunging.  Global banking stocks are now down a whopping 27 percent from the peak, and that puts them solidly in bear market territory.

In the U.S., banking stocks are not officially in bear market territory yet, but they are getting close.  At this point, they are now down 17 percent from the peak…

Of course European banking stocks are doing much worse.  Right now they are down 27 percent from the peak and 23 percent from a year ago.  The following comes from Wolf Richter…

I wish that we didn’t have a global economic system that was so dependent on the “too big to fail” banks, but we do.

If they aren’t healthy, nobody is going to be healthy for long, and it is starting to look and feel a whole lot like 2008.

But unlike 2008, we also have a global trade war to contend with.  The CEO of one yacht company recently told USA Today that tariffs have had a “catastrophic” effect on his company…

I have previously warned my readers that the damage caused by this trade war would get progressively worse the longer that it lasts.

Many companies have been trying to ride it out, but eventually the money runs out and layoffs start happening…

Anyone who thought that this trade war would not have very serious consequences was just fooling themselves.  According to one source, tariffs paid by U.S. businesses are up 45 percent compared to a year ago…

And it doesn’t look like this trade war is going to end any time soon.  In fact, one key Chinese official recently made it very clear that China is not afraid of a long trade war…

We are entering a time when the economy was likely to slow down anyway, but if stocks continue to crash and global banking woes escalate, that is going to spread fear and panic like wildfire.

And when there is fear and panic in the air, lending tends to really tighten up, and a major credit crunch is just about the last thing that we need right now.

It’s been a really bad October for global markets so far, and more trouble is brewing.  Hold on to your hats, because it looks like it is going to be a bumpy ride ahead.

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By Mac Slavo

Every year, Chapman University conducts a Survey of American Fears. The annual survey provides an in-depth examination into the concerns of average Americans, tracking changes and trends over the years.

The survey asks participants about topics including government, health, environmental concerns, disaster preparedness, the paranormal, and personal anxieties.

What’s the number one thing Americans fear?

For the fourth year in a row, that dishonor goes to government corruption. That fear far exceeds any other that was asked about in the survey. In 2018, 73.6% said they fear corrupt government officials. In 2017, it was 74.5%, and in 2016, 60.6%.

[editor’s note: The question at hand is NOT whether the US should put US interests first, but rather how will the loss of international trade, caused by Trump’s sanctions, affect the US domestic economy. As the US dollar diminishes internationally the effect will undermine the US economy by causing a depletion of dollars in circulation and thus creating a national depression. Fewer dollars in circulation means fewer jobs, fewer loans, fewer purchases, and fewer business transactions in general. This creates hard times, and the bankers and politicians know it.]

As it’s been pointed out by a multitude of experts from both the US and other regions of the world that the energy trading market will be one of the main battlefields where the future of America’s economic dominance will be decided.

Against this backdrop it’s only logical that countries are seeking ways to turn their backs to the dollar or in the very least diminish their dependence on the ever-looming US currency. It argues that this trend was triggered by the outright protectionist practices by the Trump administration that were introduced by Washington that starst trade wars left and right.

The United States is currently waging economic warfare against one-tenth of the world’s countries with cumulative population of nearly 2 billion people and combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than 15 trillion dollars.

Additionally, in recent months it seems that America’s unwavering commitment to promoting the world’s scourges has brought governments and the wealthy individuals who support them to a critical mass, joining forces to create a parallel financial system which would be out of America’s reach. Should they succeed, the impact on America’s global posture will be devastating.

American policymakers don’t seem to care that at least 25% of the world’s population are now committed to putting an end to the global dominance of the US dollar.

As the infamous green bills are gradually losing their status of the world’s reserve currency, regular Americans will inevitably feel additional financial strain being put on their households. To make the matters worse, the global depolarization effort is being led by Russia and China that have emerged as full-fledged international players in recent decades, and they seem to have little tolerance for being pushed around. Further still, even the fact that Euro was established as a currency by Brussels can be regarded as a part of the same effort. For sure, de-dollarization is a slow process, but at this point it seems to be irreversible as there’s no chance that an emerging multi-polar world is going put up with the US dollar primacy.

However, there’s no arguing that this process, no matter how natural it is, is being accelerated considerably by the sitting American president. By pursuing policies loosely described as “America first,” Donald Trump has got the US into a number of trade wars, along with re-introducing protectionist practices to the US foreign policy. However, the more the Trump administration tries to negotiate favorable terms for American elites exclusively, the more countries are getting alienated by Washington.

For instance, Moody’s Investors Service has come to the conclusion that the ever-growing number of regional trade agreements along with the adoption of new reserve currencies, such as the yuan, can result in countries growing reluctant to rely on the currencies of geographically distant states. As a result, the role that the US dollar plays on international markets will decrease, with international players decreasing its share in their reserve currencies basket, thus changing the global distribution of reserve currencies. As Europe grows increasingly aware of the dangers associated with its dependency on the US dollar, local politicians are now just devising ways that would allow them to get away from it. But they are doing it at a rapid pace, as the rapid decline of the dollar transforms what would otherwise be a gradual transition in a geopolitical reincarnation of the hot potato game.

Further still, now Washington’s allies are pushing for an alternative to SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, headquartered in Belgium) to be created. In particular, this call was voiced by German foreign minister Heiko Maas and a number of other high-profile figures. The proposal is a response to Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. In an article published by Handelsblatt, Mass wrote that Europe should not allow the US to act “over our heads and at our expense.”

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to come to grips with the fact that why sovereign countries would want to limit their exposure to SWIFT, and more broadly the US dollar. And many countries are making moves in that direction. For instance, the Russians, together with China, have been busy dumping US Treasuries while buying massive amounts of gold.  Both Russia and China have developed their own versions of SWIFT. Both countries are also urging their trading partners to ditch the dollar in their bilateral trade in favor of indigenous currencies. China has already established that it can be looking at massive profits when it chooses to process its settlements with Russia in rubles.

It’s been rightfully pointed that the US uses dollar-dominance as a tool of keeping other countries in line. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the rest of the world is growing weary of the United States holding an economic hammer over its head. Therefore, the pace of the irreversible process of de-dollarization is closely tied to the policies that the Trump administration will be pursuing in the future. If Donald Trump carries on swinging its sanctions club left and right, the US will inevitably find itself in a world of trouble.

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Edward Curtin – 10, 13, 2018

“The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.” – Karl Kraus, Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” – Mark Twain

If believability is your gauge for discerning truth, you are living in a fantasy world.  But that is the reality of life in the United States today. This is the land of make-believe in which actors and audiences are engaged in a vast folie à deux full of sound and fury signifying a nothingness that passes for intelligence.  Assertions made convincingly enough are the new facts for a population hypnotized by a stage-managed reality show.

The recently closed Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford Show that mercifully had a short run at the National Comedic Congressional Theater is the latest case in point.  The believability of the actors was said to be the key issue.  In other words, who seemed to be telling the truth.  Demeanor was determinative.  Facial expressions evidence.  The mass media, those paragons of truth-telling, entertained their audiences for a few weeks by marching out their puerile pundits to tell audiences who of the two primary actors was more believable, while the politicians, not willing to allow their media accomplices to outdo them in truthfulness, donned their masks and performed their usual public service of moral outrage and did the same in their unbiased ways.

There was no child to yell and tell the world that all the king’s sycophants, like the king, were naked – naked  liars whose jobs depended on disinformation and deceptions meant to amuse an entertainment-besotted and bored public hungry for a bit of truth in a society drowning in agitprop and propaganda.  A public watching the wrong show.

The words the real Frank Serpico, the honest and brave cop, not the actor, Al Pacino, who played him in the movie Serpico, come to my mind.  He told me that when he was lying in a pool of his own blood on the night of February 3, 1971, having been shot in the face in a set-up carried out by fellow cops, he heard a voice that said, “It’s all a lie.”

“It’s all a lie.”

Those words sum up the spectacle that is American society today.  And while lies are nothing new – didn’t Aletheia, the Greek goddess of truth, flee into the wilderness just last week and say to a wandering searcher, “Among the people of old, lies were found among only a few, but now they have spread throughout all of human society”? – we are living in a time of unprecedented technological media mind manipulation difficult to penetrate.  Harold Pinter called it “a tapestry of lies” in which facts don’t matter.  What happened never happened; what never happened happened.  It’s all about believability in the national media’s hypnotic show, whose purpose Russell Baker described 25 years ago as being to “provide a manageably small cast for a national sitcom, or soap opera, or docudrama, making it easy for media people to persuade themselves they are covering the news while mostly just entertaining us.”

I know something about believability.  When I was a young teenager I appeared on a famous game show called “To Tell the Truth.”  Of course I lied, since lying was the name of the game then, as now.  I was not who I said I was.  When I walked out in front of millions of television viewers and the celebrities who would question my veracity, I knew (although I was an impostor and not the real Robert McGee – son of a U.S. Senator, by the way) how to put on a face to fool the faces that would scrutinize my smallest expressions for any sign of feigning.  Although these celebrities knew the game well, I beat them at the believability game, I am sorry to say.  My demeanor or mien (facial expression) was in sync with my words, an ability to act that I didn’t know I had.  I was an all-American boy – a student at an elite Jesuit boys’ prep school, the captain of the basketball team, my father (Edward) a lawyer – learning the national pastime of seemingly being “perfectly honest” as I lied.  And it worked, and the $250 that I won – I almost said earned – set me on a path that led to a fork in the road that I took.  When I picked this fork up, it hissed and tried to bite me with its poisonous forked tongue. So I quickly threw it down.  It was then I realized that my thirty pieces of silver ($250) were a betrayal that would haunt me forever if I didn’t try to become a genuine actor.

Soon I would come to realize that my Jesuit schooling was preparing me to be “a man for all seasons.” It had nothing to do with beer and girls. It was all about becoming a member of the ruling class.  In other words, a man with a forked tongue who could speak out of both sides of his mouth to suit the occasion.  Learning this skill would lead me to the social heights where I could smoothly move among Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, elites and regular people, defense attorneys and prosecutors, actors and audiences, alleged victims and alleged victimizers, etc.  Nothing would be foreign to me, except myself, for I could become a perfect hypocrite, a double-man, my own doppelganger without a shadow.

I could become another judge-penitent like Albert Camus’ Jean-Baptiste Clamence in his novel, The Fall, and take up a double profession, become double-faced and rich in the process.  Perhaps I could join the CIA and “sincerely” follow its motto: “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

I could become a professor with nothing to profess but my innocence.  I could become a psychologist and specialize in lie detector tests.  I could learn how to lie while sincerely telling the truth while hooked up to one.  I could be confused and act confused and not know the difference

I could denounce torture while justifying it.  I could pretend impartiality while being partial.  I could claim independence while playing the puppet. I could remember to forget and forget to remember and remember that I forgot the details of what I remembered.

And no matter how I acted or what I did I could always remain a “nice guy.”

I could even say with Clamence that I am 100 % innocent, my case is exceptional, as I played the parts of victim and victimizer; could say:

As I told you, it’s a matter of dodging judgment.  Since it is hard to dodge it, tricky to get one’s nature simultaneously admired and excused, they [we] all strive to be rich.  Why?  Did you ever ask yourself?  For power, of course.  But especially because wealth shields from immediate judgment, takes you out of the subway crowd to enclose you in a chromium-platted automobile, isolates you in huge protected lawns, Pullmans, first-class cabins.  Wealth, cher ami, is not quite acquittal, but reprieve, and that’s always worth taking.

I could become such a celebrated actor that I could make you believe my believability when I put on a tearful face or a devastated face or a confused face or an angry face. I could confess my vulnerability and make you my ally, and I could plead with you in a halting way to sympathize with how I was victimized so long ago or yesterday.  But even if you didn’t believe me, I could feel justified in knowing that I was playing my part in ShowTime in America, keeping you amused, and doing my part to advance the interests of those who accepted me for the role.  And I could always deny that I had been selected, and could always maintain I entered center stage of my own volition because I wished to fulfill my civic duty to see justice done.

But I promise, like Clamence I would never reveal who stole the painting of “The Just Judges” that I keep hidden in my cupboard.  Some things must remain hidden.  After all, who wants to know the truth?

But I digress.  I’ll be quiet, and stop with the what-could-have-beens.  The show must go on.  We both know that.  It is what is.  I look forward to reading what will no doubt be a best-selling and most truthful exposé of the Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford Show.  I imagine contracts have been signed, and the mini-series shouldn’t be far behind.

In the meantime, I would like to leave you laughing with a quote that has been disturbing me since I first read it after writing it:

Until we see through the charade of social life and realize the masked performers are not just the politicians and celebrities, not only the professional actors and the corporate media performers, but us, we won’t grasp the problem.  Lying is the leading cause of living death in the United States.  We live in a society built of lies; lying and dishonesty are the norm.  They are built into the fabric of all our institutions, into our psyches.  In America, there’s no business but show business, and we are sham actors, amusing ourselves to death while we spread death and destruction in our war theaters all around the world.  Theaters in which the tragic plays we direct hold no interest for us.  We prefer our Idiots’ Delight.

“It’s All a Lie.”  Maybe that should be the title of the next show.

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US Military Presence in Africa: All Over Continent and Still Expanding

Arkady SAVITSKY – Strategic Culture Foundation  8-30-2018

Around 200,000 US troops are stationed in 177 countries throughout the world. Those forces utilize several hundred military installations. Africa is no exemption. On August 2, Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier took command of US Army Africa, promising to “hit the ground running.”

The US is not waging any wars in Africa but it has a significant presence on the continent. Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and other special ops are currently conducting nearly 100 missions across 20 African countries at any given time, waging secret, limited-scale operations. According to the magazine Vice, US troops are now conducting 3,500 exercises and military engagements throughout Africa per year, an average of 10 per day — an astounding 1,900% increase since the command rolled out 10 years ago. Many activities described as “advise and assist” are actually indistinguishable from combat by any basic definition.

There are currently roughly 7,500 US military personnel, including 1,000 contractors, deployed in Africa. For comparison, that figure was only 6,000 just a year ago. The troops are strung throughout the continent spread across 53 countries. There are 54 countries on the “Dark Continent.” More than 4,000 service members have converged on East Africa. The US troop count in Somalia doubled last year.

When AFRICOM was created there were no plans to establish bases or put boots on the ground. Today, a network of small staging bases or stations have cropped up. According to investigative journalist Nick Turse, “US military bases (including forward operating sites, cooperative security locations, and contingency locations) in Africa number around fifty, at least.” US troops in harm’s way in Algeria, Burundi, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan Tunisia, and Uganda qualify for extra pay.

The US African Command (AFRICOM) runs drone surveillance programs, cross-border raids, and intelligence. AFRICOM has claimed responsibility for development, public health, professional and security training, and other humanitarian tasks. Officials from the Departments of State, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Energy, Commerce, and Justice, among other agencies, are involved in AFRICOM activities. Military attachés outnumber diplomats at many embassies across Africa.

Last October, four US soldiers lost their lives in Niger. The vast majority of Americans probably had no idea that the US even had troops participating in combat missions in Africa before the incident took place. One serviceman was reported dead in Somalia in June. The Defense Department is mulling plans to “right-size” special operations missions in Africa and reassign troops to other regions, aligning the efforts with the security priorities defined by the 2018 National Defense Strategy. That document prioritizes great power competition over defeating terrorist groups in remote corners of the globe. Roughly 1,200 special ops troops on missions in Africa are looking at a drawdown. But it has nothing to do with leaving or significantly cutting back. And the right to unilaterally return will be reserved. The infrastructure is being expanded enough to make it capable of accommodating substantial reinforcements. The construction work is in progress. The bases will remain operational and their numbers keep on rising.

A large drone base in Agadez, the largest city in central Niger, is reported to be under construction. The facility will host armed MQ-9 Reaper drones which will finally take flight in 2019. The MQ-9 Reaper has a range of 1,150 miles, allowing it to provide strike support and intelligence-gathering capabilities across West and North Africa from this new base outside of Agadez. It can carry GBU-12 Paveway II bombs. The aircraft features synthetic aperture radar for integrating GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munitions. The armament suite can include four Hellfire air-to-ground anti-armor and anti-personnel missiles. There are an estimated 800 US troops on the ground in Niger, along with one drone base and the base in Agadez that is being built. The Hill called it “the largest US Air Force-led construction project of all time.”

According to Business Insider, “The US military presence here is the second largest in Africa behind the sole permanent US base on the continent, in the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti.” Four thousand American servicemen are stationed at Camp Lemonnier (the US base located near Djibouti City) — a critical strategic base for the American military because of its port and its proximity to the Middle East.

Officially, the camp is the only US base on the continent or, as AFRICOM calls it, “a forward operating site,” — the others are “cooperative security locations” or “non-enduring contingency locations.” Camp Lemonnier is the hub of a network of American drone bases in Africa that are used for aerial attacks against insurgents in Yemen, Nigeria, and Somalia, as well as for exercising control over the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. In 2014, the US signed a new 20-year lease on the base with the Djiboutian government, and committed over $1.4 billion to modernize and expand the facility in the years to come.

In March, the US and Ghana signed a military agreement outlining the conditions of the US military presence in that nation, including its construction activities. The news was met with protests inside the country.

It should be noted that the drone attacks that are regularly launched in Africa are in violation of US law. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), adopted after Sept. 11, 2001, states that the president is authorized to use force against the planners of those attacks and those who harbor them. But that act does not apply to the rebel groups operating in Africa.

It’s hard to believe that the US presence will be really diminished, and there is no way to know, as too many aspects of it are shrouded in secrecy with nothing but “leaks” emerging from time to time. It should be noted that the documents obtained by TomDispatch under the United States Freedom of Information Act contradict AFRICOM’s official statements about the scale of US military bases around the world, including 36 AFRICOM bases in 24 African countries that have not been previously disclosed in official reports.

The US foothold in Africa is strong. It’s almost ubiquitous. Some large sites under construction will provide the US with the ability to host large aircraft and accommodate substantial forces and their hardware. This all prompts the still-unanswered question — “Where does the US have troops in Africa, and why?” One thing is certain — while waging an intensive drone war, the US is building a vast military infrastructure for a large-scale ground war on the continent.

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Paul Craig Roberts – 10, 5, 2018

An Israeli expert on terrorism and covert assassination procedures explains that the alleged Russian GRU attack on the Skripals with a supposedly deadly nerve agent is a completely obvious hoax to anyone who knows anything at all. https://russia-insider.com/en/skripals-are-mi6-hoax-not-worthy-ladies-detective-novels-israeli-expert-demolishes-uk-case/ri24912

The official story, says the expert, is “stupidity on stupidity.”

I agree with him.

The question is: Why did the British government think that they could get away with such an obvious hoax? The answer is that the people in Western countries don’t know anything about anything. They live in a world in which their reality is a product of the propaganda fed to them by “news organizations” and Hollywood movies. They only receive controlled explanations. Therefore, they know nothing about how anything really functions. Read the account by the Israeli expert to understand the vast difference between the British government’s hoax and the reality of how an assassination is conducted.

The Israeli expert got me to wondering why the British government thought anyone would fall for such a transparently false story. Having just read David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth’s new book, 9/11 Unmasked, and David Ray Griffin’s 2017 book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World, the answer became obvious. The British government had watched the idiot Western populations fall for the official 9/11 conspiracy story in which a few Saudi Arabians, who could not fly airplanes and without the support of any intelligence agency, caused the entire security apparatus of the United States to fail utterly, and no one was held responsible for the total failure. The British government concluded that anyone who could possibly believe such an obviously false story would believe anything.

I remember coming to that conclusion years ago before the official conspiracy theory in the 9/11 Commission Report was blown to pieces by thousands of scientists, structural engineers, high-rise architects, military and civilian pilots, first responders on the scene, and a large number of former high government officials both in the US and abroad.

At first I did not connect the zionist neoconservatives’ plot, outlined in their public writings (for example, Norman Podhorttz in Commentary) to destroy 7 Middle Eastern countries in five years (also described by General Wesley Clark) and their statement that they needed a “new Pearl Harbor” to implement their plan, with the attack on the World Trade Center. But as I watched the twin towers blow up floor by floor it was completely obvious that these were not buildings falling down due to asymmetrical structural damage and limited, low temperature office fires that probably did not even warm the massive steel structure to the point of being warm to the touch. When you watch the videos you see buildings blowing up. It is as clear as day. You see each floor blow. You see steel beams and other debris fly out the sides as projectiles. It is amazing that any human is so completely stupid as to think what he is seeing with his own eyes are buildings falling down from structural damage. But it required many years before half of the American people realized that the official account was fake.

Today polls indicate that a majority of people do not believe the official 9/11 propaganda any more than they believe the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the alleged Gulf of Tonkin attack, or the report from Admiral McCain (father of John) erasing Israel’s responsibility for the destruction of the USS Liberty and its crew during LBJ’s administration, or that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, or Iran had nukes, or the many lies about Syria, Libya’s Gaddafi, or Somalia, or Yemen, or the “Russian invasion of Georgia,” the “Russian invasion of Ukraine.” But at each time the idiot population, no matter how many times they had learned that the governments lied to them initially believed the next lie, thereby permitting the lie to become fact. Thus, the idiot Western populations created their own world of controlled explanations.

Only a deranged person could believe anything any Western government says. But the Western world has a huge number of deranged people. There are plenty of them to validate the next official lie. The ignorant fools make it possible for Western governments to continue their policy of lies that are driving the world to extinction in a war with Russia and China.

It seems certain that Israel was involved. We have the fact of the Mossad agents caught celebrating as they filmed the collalpse of the WTC towers. Obviously, they knew in advance and were set up ready to film. Later they were shown on Israeli TV where they stated that they had been sent to film the destruction of the buildings.

We also have the fact of the large profits made by someone that the US government continues to protect on shorting the stock of the airlines, the planes of which were allegely hijacked.

In other words, the 9/11 attack was known in advance, as was the destruction of WTC building 7 as evidenced by the BBC reporter standing in front of the still standing building accouncing its destruction about a half hour before it occurred.

Unz and Bollyn’s case against Israel is powerful. I agree with Unz that George W. Bush was not part of the plot. If he had been, he would have been on the scene directing America’s heroic response to the first, and only, terrorist attack on America. lnstead, Bush was moved out of the way, and kept out of the way, while Cheney handled the situation.

I understand what Unz is doing by focusing attention on the main beneficiary of the hoax 9/11 story. However Cheney and his corporation, Halliburton, also benefitted. Halliburton received large municifient US government contracts for services in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cheney, as David Ray Griffen proves, achieved his aim of elevating the executive branch above the US Constitution and statutory US law.

Moreover, it was impossible for Mossad to pull off such an attack without high level support in the US government. Only a US official could have ordered the numerous simulations of the attack underway in order to confuse the air traffic controllers and the US Air Force.

The Israeli government could not have ordered the destruction of the crime scene, opposed by the New York fire marshall as a felony. This required US government authority. The steel beams, which showed all sorts of distortions that could only have been caused by nano-thermite were quickly sent to Asia for reprocessing. The intense fires and molten rubble in the buildings’ remains six weeks after their collapse never received an official explanation. To this day, no one has explained how low-temperature, smothered office fires that burned for one hour or less melted or weakened massive steel beams and produced molten steel six weeks afterward.

Unz is correct that Israel made out like a bandit. Israel as a result of 9/11 got rid of half of the constraints on its expansion. Only Syria and Iran remain, and the Trump regime is pushing hard for Israel, even against Russia, a government that at its will can completely destroy the United States and Israel, something that much of the world wishes would happen.

Right now the totally evil and corrupt US and Israeli governments have the entire world on the path to extinction. The utter insouciance of the American people do not show enough intelligence or awareness to warrant their survival.

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Paul Atwood 10-8-2018

The claim that the national security of the United States requires that more than half the nation’s discretionary budget must be devoted to the maintenance of armies, global strategic bases and massive armaments is false. Until we can convince the majority of the public of this fiction, and surmount the wall of disinformation, nothing will change and we will continue down the road to a hellish future.

This statement of course contradicts the incessant indoctrination emanating from Washington and the corporate media that U.S. foreign policy is devoted to the maintenance of global peace and a “liberal” and just world order in the face of enemies who wish to destroy that order. The facts controvert such declarations yet to emphasize them is to be accused of disloyalty, a lack of patriotism, and conspiracy mongering.

The U.S. propaganda system relentlessly broadcasts the malevolent machinations of Russia, Iran or North Korea or Syria and China as well as of armed gangs like ISIS, al Qaeda and the Taliban. The drumbeat that mortal danger is on our doorstep is so ceaseless and all-encompassing that the public either accepts the claims as true or remains blind to very real dangers posed by our government’s own militarized policies that call forth various forms of opposition to those policies.

The reality is that all of the wars, assassinations, and coups carried out by Washington of the last half century have been matters of choice based not on genuine threats to our national security but on jeopardy to the profits of giant arms manufacturers and their allies- the so-called military industrial complex that extends its tentacles into every major institution in American life–Congress, the CIA, the media and universities. The complex requires at the very least the implied threat of war to ensure its existence.

How many citizens are aware that at the end of World War II the chief of wartime production exclaimed that the country needed a “permanent war economy.” His rationale centered on the fact that in the absence of massive war production, and the guaranteed profits that flowed from war contracts, numerous corporations that had grown to gargantuan proportions would suddenly be bankrupted. There was also the problem of millions of returning veterans who would be in no mood to stand in bread lines again. Since a permanent war economy required a permanent enemy Washington hawks duly asserted that the nation needed a “national security state” and a renamed Department of War to contain the new purported threat to global peace and security, namely the Soviet Union and international communism. The reality was that the USSR was extremely weakened by its overwhelming losses in the war and posed no military threat anywhere and was relatively easily contained. So unthreatening was the world environment in reality that Washington deliberately chose war in Korea to set the permanent warfare state in motion. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was even heard to exclaim “Thank God, Korea came along” in gratitude that he could then salvage the tripling of the so-called defense budget.

Understand that both world wars were emerging well before widespread and all-out conflict erupted. The Great Game was the same then as it is now and always revolves around the issue of which nation and which national oligarchy is to profit most from the control of resources, markets and access to the cheapest sources of labor at the expense of rivals. Massive arms races co-evolved with this economic competition and soon led to worldwide conflagration. As the world fractures into ultra-nationalism yet again, and mutual distrust and suspicion intensifies, it is no exaggeration to warn that our very species is at stake

Total defense spending since 9-11 has more than doubled almost to a trillion dollars annually. Thus as accelerated arms spending has coupled with bellicose policies masquerading as “defense,” we witness that alleged adversaries and enemies have quadrupled. Since 9-11 military operations employing the latest and most expensive high-tech weapons began in Afghanistan and have since spread to Iraq to Libya to Syria to Yemen and to various nations in Africa. The U.S. maintains more than 800 military bases around the world, American naval fleets patrol all oceans, and U.S. troops and missiles are now in many eastern European nations including on the very  borders of Russia itself. Only the other day Kay Bailey Hutchison, ambassador to NATO, declared that the U.S. should “take out” certain missiles in Russia. Last week reports surfaced that American B-52 bombers are overflying areas in the South China Sea claimed by China. This week a U.S. Navy destroyer entered the same area, thereby deliberately increasing tensions with that growing superpower. Meanwhile the beneficiaries of investments in the arms industries, like Massachusetts own Raytheon corporation, enjoy ever fast-tracked profits from missiles rained down on Yemen. They quite literally are making a killing from killing.

Mounting public pressure against Washington’s support for the illegal Saudi war against Yemen almost led to the de-certification of the pending sale of 120,000 precision-guided missiles by Raytheon to the Saudis and United Arab Emirates. The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that the Acting Assistant Secretary of State, was a longtime lobbyist for Raytheon, and played a key role in salvaging this two billion dollar arms deal for the company.

In the aftermath of the depression of 2008 the Federal Reserve Bank injected trillions of dollars fabricated out of thin air into the largest banks including those that had caused the financial breakdown, and which then refused to loan it to ordinary Americans who had been ruined by the crisis and who needed it most. How much of the nation’s $13.2 trillion of household debt could have been remedied with such a sum or the $1.5 trillion in unsustainable student debt? Such an amount could have financed free college, universal health care, federal jobs programs, aid for underwater mortgages, and clean energy and many more socially necessary projects. The reprehensible existence of mass homelessness and hungry children could be resolved.

A government dominated by the merchants of death drains the lifeblood of civil society, and portends another economic collapse, and ultimately threatens all with global war.

Until we can persuade the public to face these harsh facts honestly nothing will change. The stakes are nothing less than critical.

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Last week Washington threatened Iran, Syria, China, Venezuela, and Russia

by Philip Giraldi  –  10, 2, 2018

The nuclear war doomsday clock maintained on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists website has advanced to two minutes before midnight, the closest point to possible atomic apocalypse since the end of the Cold War. In 1995 the clock was at fourteen minutes to midnight, but the opportunity to set it back even further was lost as the United States and its European allies took advantage of a weakened Russia to advance NATO into Eastern Europe, setting the stage for a new cold war, which is now underway.

It is difficult to imagine how the United States might avoid a new war in the Middle East given the recent statements that have come out of Washington, and, given that the Russians are also active in the region, a rapid and massive escalation of something that starts out as a minor incident should not be ruled out.

President Donald Trump set the tone when he harangued the United Nations last Tuesday, warning that the United States would go it alone in defense of its perceived interests, with no regard for international bodies that exist to limit armed conflict and punish those who commit war crimes.

Trump’s 35-minute speech featured an anticipated long section targeting Iran. He commented that:

“Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death, and destruction. They do not respect their neighbors or borders, or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran’s leaders plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond… We cannot allow the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism to possess the planet’s most dangerous weapons. We cannot allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America,’ and that threatens Israel with annihilation, to possess the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth.”

There are a number of things exaggerated or incorrect in Trump’s description of Iran as well as in the conclusions he draws. The Middle East and other adjacent Muslim countries are in chaos because the United States has destabilized the region starting with the empowering of the Islamist Mujadeddin in the war against Soviet Afghanistan in the 1980s. It then invaded Afghanistan in 2001 followed by Iraq in 2003, enabling the rise of ISIS and giving local al-Qaeda affiliates a new lease on life, before turning on Damascus with the Syria Accountability Act later in the same year and then destroying the Libyan government under Barack Obama. These were, not coincidentally, policies promoted by Israel that received, as a result, bipartisan support in Congress.

The emotional description of disrespecting “neighbors, borders and sovereign rights” fits the U.S. and Israel to a “T” rather than Iran. The U.S. has soldiers stationed illegally in Syria while Israel bombs the country on an almost daily basis, so who is doing the disrespecting? Washington and Tel Aviv, not Iran, are the principal supporters of terrorists in the Middle East – arming them, training them, hospitalizing them when they are injured, and making sure that they continue their work in attacking Syria’s legitimate government.

And as for “most dangerous weapons,” Iran doesn’t have any and is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Israel and the U.S. have not signed. Nor would Iran have any such weapons in the future but for the fact that Trump has backed out of the agreement to monitor and inspect Iranian nuclear research and development, which will, if anything, motivate Tehran to develop weapons to protect itself.

Trump also elaborated on the following day regarding Iran’s alleged but demonstrably non-existent nuclear program when he indicated to the Security Council that Washington would go after countries that violate the rules on nuclear proliferation. He clearly meant Iran but the comment was ironic in the extreme, as Israel is the world’s leading nuclear rogue nation with an arsenal of two hundred nuclear devices, having stolen the uranium and key elements of the technology from the United States in the 1960s.

Trump’s new appraisal of the state of the Middle East is somewhat a turnaround. Five months ago he said that he wanted to “get out” of Syria and bring the soldiers home. But in early September, the secretary of state’s special representative for Syria engagement, James Jeffrey, indicated that the U.S. would stay to counter Iranian activities.

And John Bolton has also recently had a lot to say about Iran, Syria and Russia. Last Monday he confirmed that Washington intends to keep a military presence in Syria until Iran withdraws all its forces from the country. “We’re not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders, and that includes Iranian proxies and militias.” On the following day, speaking at a Sheldon Adelson funded United Against Nuclear Iran Summit, he said the “murderous regime” of “mullahs in Tehran” would face serious consequences if they persist in their willingness to “lie, cheat and deceive. If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens there will indeed be hell to pay. Let my message today be clear: We are watching, and we will come after you.”

John Bolton also warned the Russians about their decision to upgrade the air defenses in Syria in the wake of the recent Israeli bombing raid that led to the shooting down of a Russian intelligence plane. He said absurdly and inaccurately “The Israelis have a legitimate right to self-defense against this Iranian aggressive behavior, and what we’re all trying to do is reduce tensions, reduce the possibility of major new hostilities. That’s why the president has spoken to this issue and why we would regard introducing the S-300 as a major mistake.”

Bolton then elaborated that “We think introducing the S-300s to the Syrian government would be a significant escalation by the Russians and something that we hope, if these press reports are accurate, they would reconsider.” And regarding who was responsible for the deaths of the Russian airmen, Bolton also has a suitable explanation “There shouldn’t be any misunderstanding here… The party responsible for the attacks in Syria and Lebanon and really the party responsible for the shooting down of the Russian plane is Iran.”

Bolton’s desire to exonerate Israel and always blame Iran is inevitably on display. He is curiously objecting to the placement of missiles that are defensive in nature, presumably because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked him to do so. The only way one can be threatened by the S-300 is if you are attacking Syria, but that might be a fine point that Bolton fails to grasp as he was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War and has since that time not placed himself personally at risk in support of any of the wars he has been promoting.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also spoke on Monday, at the Pentagon. His spin on Iran was slightly different but his message was the same. “As part of this overarching problem, we have to address Iran. Everywhere you go in the Middle East where there’s instability you will find Iran. So in terms of getting to the end state of the Geneva [negotiations] process, Iran, too, has a role to play, which is to stop fomenting trouble.”

To complete the onslaught, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking at the same United Against Nuclear Iran Summit as Bolton, accused European nations seeking to avoid U.S. sanctions over the purchase of Iranian oil as “solidifying Iran’s ranking as the number-one state sponsor of terrorism. I imagine the corrupt ayatollahs and IGRC [Revolutionary Guards] were laughing this morning.”

Even the U.S. Congress has figured out that something is afoot. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, who were carefully briefed on what to think by the Israeli government, warned after a trip to the Middle East that war between the United States and Iranian proxies is “imminent.”

Iran is fun to kick around but China has also been on the receiving end of late. Last Wednesday the U.N. Security Council meeting was presided over by Donald Trump, who warned that Beijing is “meddling” in U.S. elections against him personally. It is a bizarre claim, particularly as the only country up until now demonstrated as having actually interfered in American politics in any serious way is Israel. The accusation comes on top of Washington’s latest foray into the world of sanctions, directed against the Chinese government-run Equipment Development Department of the Chinese Central Military Commission and its director Li Shangfu for “engaging in significant transactions” with a Russian weapons manufacturer that is on a list of U.S. sanctioned companies.

The Chinese sanctions are serious business as they forbid conducting any transactions that go through the U.S. financial system. It is the most powerful weapon Washington has at its disposal. As most international transactions are conducted in dollars and pass through American banks that means that it will be impossible for the Chinese government to make weapons purchases from many foreign sources. If foreign banks attempt to collaborate with China to evade the restrictions, they too will be sanctioned.

So if you’re paying attention to Trump, Bolton, Mattis, Pompeo and Haley you are probably digging a new bomb shelter right now. We have told Iran that it cannot send its soldiers and “proxies” outside its own borders while Syria cannot have advanced missiles to defend its airspace, which Russia is “on notice” for providing. China also cannot buy weapons from Russia while Venezuela is also being threatened because it has what is generally believed to be a terrible government. Meanwhile, America is in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to stay while nearly all agree a war with Iran is coming soon. Everyone is the enemy and everyone hates the United States, mostly for good reasons. If this is Making America Great Again, I think I would settle for just making America “good” so we could possibly have that doomsday clock go back a couple of minutes.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50364.htm

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New Vehicle Sales “Collapse” And Pending Home Sales “Plunge” As America’s Economic Slowdown Accelerates

Michael Snyder – 9-28-2018

In late 2018, the bad economic news just keeps rolling in. At a time when consumer confidence is absolutely soaring, the underlying economic numbers are clearly telling us that enormous problems are right around the corner. Of course this is usually what happens just before a major economic downturn. Most people in the general population feel like the party can go on for quite a while longer, but meanwhile the warning signs just keep becoming more and more obvious. I have been hearing from people that truly believe that the economy is “strong”, but if the U.S. economy really was in good shape would new vehicle sales be “collapsing”?…

According to the latest estimates released by Edmunds, new vehicle sales for September are expected to collapse both on a monthly basis and year-over-year basis. The company predicted that 1,392,434 new cars and trucks will be sold in the U.S. in September, which makes for a estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 17 million. This will be a 5.4% decrease from last month and an 8.3% drop from September of last year.

Those are absolutely terrible numbers.

And this news comes after all of the major automakers had already revised earnings guidance lower. The following comes from Zero Hedge…

The drop in sales capped another rough month for the auto industry during which Detroit’s carmakers all revised their earnings guidance lower and Ford embarked on a five-year restructuring plan. Earlier this week, we reported that Ford’s CEO claimed that President Trump’s auto tariffs had cost the company $1 billion in profits.

Sadly, this may just be the very beginning of the auto industry’s troubles.

It is now being projected that if this trade war with China continues, U.S. automakers could see total sales fall “by 2 million vehicles per year”…

Retaliation by China to tariffs already in place have made some American auto exports uncompetitive, and could collapse US auto sales by 2 million vehicles per year, resulting in the loss of up to 715,000 American jobs and a devastating hit of as much as $62 billion to the US GDP.

As per NBC News, the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) warns that the auto industry could receive a devastating blow if Section 232 declares foreign-made cars and car parts a threat to national security.

Kristin Dziczek, a vice president and senior economist at CAR, said if Section 232 is enacted, it could trigger a “downward cycle” in the auto industry – not seen since the last great recession.

And needless to say, the thousands of companies that do business with those large automakers would also lose sales and jobs.

Once these downturns get rolling, the domino effect can be absolutely devastating.

On Thursday, we also learned that pending home sales “plunged in August”…

Pending home sales plunged in August, dropping 1.8% MoM (almost four times worse than expected) to its lowest since Oct 2014 (and fell 2.5% YoY) – the fourth month of annual declines in a row…

If the U.S. economy truly is “strong”, then why have we seen four monthly declines in a row?

And it isn’t just one part of the nation that is experiencing a downturn. According to Bloomberg, all four major regions of the country showed a decline…

As Bloomberg notes, the decline, which was broad-based across all four regions, shows that higher mortgage rates, rising prices and a shortage of affordable homes continue to squeeze buyers. Existing-home sales in August matched the lowest in more than two years, while revisions to new-home sales showed a slower market than thought, according to previously released figures.

Homes are not selling like they once were. There is a reason why one out of every four home sellers in America slashed their prices in August. Demand is way down, and that strongly indicates that an economic slowdown is here.

When it looks like the economy is headed for a major downturn, a lot of people go out and stock up on gold, and it turns out that is precisely what global central banks have been doing…

Central banks have emerged as some of the biggest buyers of gold this year, buying a total of 264 metric tons this year to reach the highest level in six years, according to analysts at Macquarie.

Of course the Federal Reserve and other central banks are trying to assure us that everything is going to be okay, but meanwhile their actions are telling us a different story.

Much of the world is already in the midst of a crippling economic crisis, and every indicator seems to be pointing to the fact that the U.S. is headed down the same path.

Even without any extenuating circumstances, the truth is that we are way overdue for a recession.  But when you throw in political chaos, exploding debt levels, an emerging market currency crisis and a trade war between the two largest economies on the entire planet, you definitely have a recipe for a perfect storm.

If you do not believe that this trade war is a big deal, you should consider the words of former Reagan administration official David Stockman…

Folks, it’s not a “skirmish”. On the scale of trade warfare we are now at DEFCON 2.

At this very moment, the US is taxing $250 billion of Chinese imports or nearly half the total flow; and China is taxing $110 billion of its imports from the US or 85% of the flow.

And it’s soon going full monte. The Donald has repeatedly threatened to tariff the remaining $267 billion of Chinese imports if Beijing retaliates against his $200 billion, but, self-evidently, they already have.

The U.S. economy has found a way to muddle through for the past couple of years, and we should all hope that the economy can find a way to navigate through these current problems.

But the storm clouds are growing more ominous with each passing day, and at some point time will run out.

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[As Trump tries to push China toward war through sanctions and tariffs, China responds intelligently in ways to nullify Trump’s warmongering.  – Ben]

Mac Slavo – 9, 26, 2018

China has decided to come out swinging against president Donald Trump’s trade war.  In a recent move, the Communist country has elected to cut tariffs on imports that come from anywhere other than the United States.

This simple yet effective step taken in the combat that has become a trade war shows that China is not backing down and will be in it for the long haul.  China’s government announced Wednesday that the country would cut import tariffs on a slew of goods to lessen the impact of the trade war with the US. Duties on textiles, construction equipment, and more than 1,500 other goods will drop on November 1, according to the Chinese government. Chinese state media said the move was expected to save consumers in the country 60 billion yuan, about $8.7 billion.

Communist China understands tariffs are paid by consumers. Attempting to ease the financial burden on their citizens, China took steps to help while the US continues to punish everyday Americans and push the cost of the trade war off onto their backs.  According to Business Insider, all indications have pointed to a protracted trade war as China canceled talks following President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs; and the US is already threatening another round of restrictions.

Wednesday’s move also shows that Beijing is also trying to tweak economic conditions in the country to weather a drawn-out fight. Cutting tariffs makes a lot of sense. If you’re worried about strengthening China’s position in the supply chain if you cut tariffs — especially on intermediate goods — that helps the competitiveness of companies within China and it helps keep down consumer costs at a time the tariff war is driving them up.

Cutting tariffs on non-US goods was a smart move on China’s part, and most economists agree, it’ll help ease up the consumer’s pain. This will essentially act as a release valve for some of the pressure from the trade war. Businesses and consumers in China won’t see as dramatic of an increase in the cost of goods, which decreases public pressure on the government to come to an agreement with the US. Additionally, the cut is likely to increase the pain for US manufacturers as Chinese consumers shift away from more expensive American goods toward cheaper alternatives from other countries, reported Business Insider. 

“In principle, these tariff cuts should apply to all imports, including those from the United States,” Scott Kennedy, a Chinese economic expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Business Insider. “But China is still likely to leave in place its retaliatory tariffs, meaning the benefits of these tariff cuts will go to other countries.”

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Prior plans to deliver the system, which is considered vastly more effective and can strike at a greater range than Syria’s current S-200 and others, were nixed after Israeli threats that delivery would constitute a “red line” for which Israel must act.

The Russian MoD acknowledged this and said the situation has “changed” upon announcing its intent to follow through on what Syria has already purchased: “In 2013 on a request from the Israeli side we suspended the delivery to Syria of the S-300 system, which was ready to be sent with its Syrian crews trained to use it,” the MoD statement said.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said early Monday, “A modern S-300 air defense missile system will be supplied to the Syrian Armed Forces within two weeks. It is capable of intercepting air assault weapons at a distance of more than 250 kilometers and hit simultaneously several air targets.”

Significantly, Syria’s systems will be integrated with Russian systems via the S-300, in order to prevent instances of “blind” firing (or failure to have friend or foe identification capabilities).

Russia had in previous statements blamed Israel for the last Tuesday incident in which a Russian Ilyushin-20 reconnaissance plane was accidentally brought down by an aging Syrian S-200 defense system after Russia had scrambled its jets to respond to an attack by four Israeli F-16s on Syrian government targets.

Shoigu said the S-300 system will prevent such future mishaps: “The command posts of Syrian air defense forces and units will be equipped with automated control systems only supplied to the Russian armed forces. This will facilitate centralized control over all forces and resources of the Syrian air defense, monitor the situation in the air, and ensure operative issuance of orders.”

He added that, “Most importantly, we will guarantee the identification of all Russian aircrafts by the Syrian air defense systems,” according to TASS.

Russian MoD presented a detailed 3D timeline of Il-20 downing in Syria on September 17. pic.twitter.com/efaJZnqmYB

— Military Advisor (@miladvisor) September 23, 2018

The Russian-made S-300s are widely acknowledged to be far superior in their capability and reach than Syria’s current S-200 system. If installed — something which Russia has promised will happen in two weeks time — Syria might very well become nearly untouchable.

Israel has long claimed to be acting primarily against Iran inside Syria, often firing from over “neutral” Lebanese airspace, but additional new electronic countermeasures to be erected along with the S-300 system will hinder this, per RT:

The third measure announced by the Russian defense ministry is a blanket of electronic countermeasures over Syrian coastline, which would “suppress satellite navigation, onboard radar systems and communications of warplanes attacking targets on Syrian territory.”Shoigu said the measures are meant to “cool down ‘hotheads’ and prevent misjudged actions posing a risk to our service members.” He added that if such a development fails to materialize, the Russian military “would act in accordance to the situation.”

All of this is precisely the game-changer that Israel’s leadership has long worried about as they’ve sought to maintain “freedom of action” in Syria, according to prior statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As a Haaretz report noted previously, the range of the new defense system will give Damascus the ability to detect potentially hostile aircraft from point of origin: “With Putin’s S-300, Assad’s army could even ‘lock-on’ IAF aircraft as they take off from bases within Israel.” And as one Israeli defense analyst put it, “Israel should be worried.”

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She has spent 25 years in health care where she has observed the medical industry at first hand from the inside. She also wrote The biggest medicine recall in history about the PAN-TGA Recall, posted on the Project SafeCom website here.

It was a short visit to the US, but already I was getting used to standing in endlessly long airline boarding lines. I am a white middle-aged woman in amongst people of all colours, waved into a special line destined for special attention because of my “foreign” ID. Once American, I have long ago adopted and been adopted by Australia, the “Lucky Country”.

We waited, all of us stockinged or barefoot, looking pained and embarrassed. Surrounded by black suited unfriendly paramilitary looking men and officials with rubber gloves. Up ahead an Hispanic child of barely three, was being searched, her teddy bear falling to the ground. Rough hands retrieve it and probe the bear deeply for contraband. None is found. The child cries.

The line is painfully slow. The linoleum chills my feet. My facial expression must betray my distaste. People talk in whispers. People glance around to spot the camera, careful to hide their mouth from the prying lens. A black man helps me to understand; “nine eleven” he whispers barely audibly. Others join in. Stories cautiously seep out whenever I stand in line with others. We begin an impromptu sociology lesson 101.

Somebody’s friend with an Arabic name was arrested and disappeared for weeks, but never charged. Somebody else knew of a teacher who taught the Constitution in her classroom, and was censured. A student shared his political views in a classroom and was visited by the FBI. A person was detained for reading an airport novel that featured a gun on its cover. While somebody’s sister was in jail for a minor offence her child was taken to a foster home by the authorities.

“Surely that can’t be right,” I say from my white middle-aged Australian perspective. Laughs all round. “You got no money, you go to jail, man. It’s da rules,” explains a brown man with dreadlocks. I later discover that of the 80,000 women now in US jails, about 70 percent are nonviolent offenders. And 75 percent of them have children.

Entire archipelagos of prisons all over the world are owned by private corporations. Business is booming. Their share prices are going through the roof, a good investment for the rich. Multinational prison corporations have built and operated Australian detention centers where we, in the once lucky country, incarcerate refugees from the third world.

There are two million people in US prisons: the highest prison population in the world. More than in Russia. (6) Of those; 70% are illiterate, 50% are African Americans, 80% are drug users and alcoholics mixed in with the homeless, the mentally ill and non-violent offenders. The prison corporations offer no treatment for the sick or help for the homeless. On the contrary, the sick and poor are mixed in with a genuine assortment of sociopaths.

My boarding call is announced. I am relieved when the line shortens. It is my turn. I am waved up to a table by two rubber gloved uniformed persons. I notice that rubber gloves are very popular these days. I am motioned to stand with legs wide apart, my arms extended. The large male spills my bag’s contents onto a nearby table. My money purse bursts open. Coins spill out. A dime rolls and stops at my bare feet. On it I see the word “Liberty”. I reflexively reach out to prevent the contents of my bag from scattering on the floor. The large male shoots out his hand motioning me to stop. His other hand dives toward his belt, which bristles with some kind of paraphernalia.

I stand to attention again. The trigger-happy moment is over. The female begins her search. She pats me down thoroughly, pausing at my crotch to ensure I haven’t stashed a weapon of mass destruction there. After she is satisfied, the female produces a cotton swab, the kind used to remove women’s makeup. She swabs carefully around the perimeter edge of my rucksack and places the swab into a machine nearby. I am told to stand there. No one explains what is happening. I wonder what they’re looking for.

I take a brief inventory. Had I visited a botanical garden recently? Could I have traces of fertilizer on my bag? Could my bag have been contaminated by someone else’s? What happens to the millions of passengers that are now driving instead of flying? Will roadblocks and barricades be erected? Will grandmothers and little girls be frisked at the roadside?

Still standing to attention, I wondered what had happened to the America of my childhood and teenage years. Family picnics in the park. There was terrorism in the world then. But Kennedy presided over a Whitehouse without barricades. 9/11 is now the answer to all questions. But no one yet has satisfactorily answered the question about who really caused it. One thing is for sure. It has unleashed a global siege.

I pondered on my rights and wondered by whose authority I was required to stand here in a hostage position when I had done nothing wrong. I had boarded scores of flights before 2001, but suddenly everything changed. Now I was treated like a suspect and so was the little three year old girl ahead of me and her teddy bear.

Then I remembered that barely 45 days after 9/11 the 350-page Patriot Act had been written and passed by Congress without anyone but Ron Paul and a few African American Congressional representatives reading it. Politicians might be exempted from reading laws, however citizens are required to memorize the 100,000 new laws passed each year in the US, because “ignorance of the law is no defense”. The long arms of the Patriot Act claims to have powers over not just Americans but over all people in all countries of the world. The people of the world need to start reading. As for me, now seemed a good opportunity to recap the legislation.

I remembered that the Patriot Act required me to refrain from attacking, setting fire to or disabling mass transportation systems, and spreading toxins or biological or radioactive weapons of mass destruction. The Act states that I must also refrain from attacking nuclear facilities and carrying a weapon, including a nail clipper onto an airplane.

So far that wasn’t going to be difficult for me. The Patriot Act 2 however, exempts corporations from the penalties of those very acts. And they are not required to disclose information about toxins, biological or radioactive substances.

Furthermore, any person interfering, even unintentionally with any supply, computer or pipeline to US facilities in or around any of the thousands of US bases (or US corporations) stationed around the world on the sovereign soil of other countries would be classed as an “enemy combatant” and deemed guilty of terrorism. They may be indefinitely detained, without charges, trial, or reasonable cause. That also includes people being in the wrong place at the wrong time such as the captured children under the age of 16 who find themselves indefinitely captive in Guantanamo Bay.

It was dawning on me that the networks of prisons around the globe for “enemy combatants”, just like Guantanamo, were courtesy of the Patriot Act. It seems there are no more prisoners-of-war under the Geneva Convention. And torture is now allowed.

The Patriot Act also requires me to report anyone I know who might be intending to do anything “intimidating” to the US Government, or even thinking about it. This requires special clairvoyant skills, but the penalty for not knowing what others are thinking is a stiff 10 years in a US federal penitentiary.

In addition, if anyone in any other country in the world thinks about those things, I am required to report them to the US authorities. They can then be spied on in their own country with the aid of local version Anti-terrorist legislation which many countries have now passed through their Parliaments. It is designed to dovetail perfectly with the Patriot Act, empowering it over the peoples of other countries without anyone having discussed it, voted for it or consented to its powers.

It seems that the sovereign nations of the world are deemed to be ruled under a foreign power. Perhaps it’s time for a referendum to find out what the people say-while it’s still legal to vote.

Suspects under the Act can be removed from their own country to the US or to any unknown whereabouts, and have their assets seized. (Echoes of Guantanamo again. Creating a prison planet for thought crimes. Foretold by Orwell.)

If I should reveal the location where persons are secretly held without a trial, I will also be deemed a terrorist, and the penalty can be death. If I fail to report anyone thinking or talking about “intimidating” the US, I can have my own assets seized under section 806 of the Patriot Act, no matter where I live in the world. I have a demanding day job, but suddenly I realized we have all been recruited as part of the global police. This includes any action that “could result in a foreseeable risk”, anytime before the Act became law.

I’m beginning to realize, as I stand barefoot in the airport, how high maintenance this law really is. I have to think back 40 years or so. It’ll take some time. Oh but wait there’s more; a DNA sample from anyone thinking about conspiring. That means a person is guilty of a crime by the mere thought of it. That’s a lot of samples.

Then there’s the ban on “domestic terrorism”. That is any act that “appears intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population”. (I wondered whether that search of my groin was classed as “intimidating”.) The Act also prohibited influencing government policy by “intimidation”. Theoretically, that included the activities of Greenpeace. However, it was still legal for corporate lobby groups to “influence Government policy” by buying politicians.

“Domestic terrorism” is also defined as “affecting government conduct by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping”. I wondered whether the invasion of Iraq was in breach of the Patriot Act. Patriot 2, the horror sequel to Patriot 1, expands in SECTION 403 the definition of “weapons of mass destruction” as including any activity that affects US interstate commerce or US exports. Looks like corporations had moved into the seat of government when nobody was looking.

The machine gave my swab a green light and I was free to gather the disheveled contents of my rucksack and board the aircraft. Thanks to the Patriot Act, my fellow travelers and all Americans could feel so much safer now that my groin was searched.

——————————————————————————————————————-

The commercial flight was full and heavy, but the pilot executed a perfect takeoff.

I sat next to a terse looking man in his early 40’s with a slightly grown out US military buzz-cut. We were in it for the long haul. Before too long I realized he knew more about the effects of flying on the human body than even a commercial pilot. The hours ticked by. He consumed a bottle of Aussie Red. He seemed familiar with Australia. Not Sydney or Melbourne. But the remote terrain of central Australia, near the bases. We talked about the Iraq invasion. “The liberation? It’s good for the Aussies … we don’t buy French wines anymore”. It was the first time he’d laughed. “But polls show that the Australian public doesn’t want the war.”

I argued. But I knew by now, that we spoke a different language. He gave another brittle laugh as though I’d just made a joke. It was clear he considered the concept of electors as ludicrous and irrelevant. To his view there was no connection between what the voters want and what the government does.

“What’s the problem?” he asked, “we (the US) paid for the Aussie planes anyway and they (the Aussies) get the reconstruction contracts.” Silence. We retreated into our corners for a while pretending to sleep. Both of us had already quite accurately sized the other up.

He asked me where my ultimate destination was. I lied. And he knew it. I told him I was invited to give a talk. That part was true. He asked me about my work. I told him. “A writer on the politics of the health care industry, among other things; exploding the myths.” “What do you mean?” His interest was sparked.

Briefly overcome by the pointlessness of sharing my views with him, I continued anyway. “How strange is it that ‘they’ tell us that the world population is still growing out of control when the west has had close to zero population growth for many years now and up to 80% of Africa and Asia are infected with HIV and dying of AIDS, famine and war?”

He pretended disinterest but cocked his head toward me. I continued. “How strange is it that ‘they’ tell us that our life expectancy is increasing because of good health care, when cancer is raging in epidemic proportions, nearly 42% of Americans will die of heart disease and western medical care has moved up to being the number one killer in the west. [8 9] Asthma, allergies, autoimmune disorders have risen by 40%, AIDS, and other epidemics old and new rage out of control. Obesity, mental illness, Alzheimer’s, addiction and suicides are epidemic, a quarter of children in the west and most in the third world now live in poverty without basic necessities and medical care. Doesn’t anyone die from these? In addition 86% of US children cannot pass a standard fitness test. Isn’t it manifestly obvious that neither the US nor the world’s life expectancy is increasing?”

He had developed a slight facial twitch. “You’re wrong”. He said, “dead wrong”.

“I’m right,” I said stubbornly. “No you’re not,” he said. “I was an analyst for the Pentagon. I analyze information.” There, he’d actually said it. I stopped a while to take it in. “What do you do to the information?” I asked, not expecting a reply.

“Where did you get your information from?” he asked ignoring my question. “It’s out there in the public domain.” I quoted a few studies. “Since big Pharma and corporations took over health care, it’s been killing people. Millions.” I said defiantly.

Are you out there saying that in public? He demanded. “Sure, “I said. “You can’t go out there and say that,” he repeated. “But it’s true,” I insisted.

“You’ve got no proof,” he challenged.

“Consider some proven facts about US health care and join the dots”, I said. I quoted sources that the US, whose health care system is monopolized by corporations, has the worst infant mortality rate compared to 23 other wealthy countries whose health care system is still in partly in public hands.

“US health care corporations are a powerful lobby and generous financial benefactors to politicians on Capitol Hill, and with this flood of cash, the US has nearly the lowest life expectancy of 23 other wealthy countries. The US has 5% of the world’s population and it spends 45% of the world’s health dollars. Despite this, Americans’ life expectancies are the lowest of 23 other wealthy nations’ and lower than some third world countries like Costa Rica [1 2 4 5]. “But not for long,” I speculated, “globalization is exporting this model to the rest of the world.”

He seemed agitated, but I had to finish. “This can only mean that corporate health care creates sickness, disability and death and profits from it,” I said.

“You can’t say that”, he hissed.
“Yes I can”, I answered.
“No you can’t”, he repeated more grimly.
“Why not?”
“Because”, he hesitated, searching for the right words, “It’s classified.”

A long silence came between us. He sipped the last drop of red from his plastic airline cup. I sat back in my seat trying to look relaxed. Perhaps it was foolish of me, I thought. But at least I found out who “they” are.

Each day the silent global epidemic of official brutality escalates. Such crimes are seldom reported, but citzen’s groups now track their numbers.

On my return from overseas I was determined to track the people’s response to the emerging global police state and its volumes of oppressive statute legislation.

I soon discovered a rising tide of activism that already far exceeds the 60’s decade; citizen’s grass roots activism, social justice and human rights activism, student activism, scientist activism, consumer activism, democracy in action, truth in media, truth in medicine, corporate watch, even Islamic activism.

The global trend is steeply on the rise. And it is changing to suit the times. There has been an increasing shift to personal empowerment whereby ordinary persons create the changes they would like to see in the world. Surprising numbers are emboldened because the level of systemic corruption has become blindingly obvious and almost all voters now know that politicians undemocratically pass laws without their consent. Increasingly more people find repugnant laws that deny human rights, impossible to acquiesce to.

Increasingly, Social Justice Groups are rediscovering the principles of Natural Law and the community traditions of Common Law, (as defined by the Oxford Dictionary as that which derives its force and authority from the universal consent and immemorial practice of the community). Common Law movements gather around the world, addressing social, political and judicial injustice. One such trend has been started in Australia by various common law advocates who give regular seminars. Their students frequently challenge statute laws successfully. The movement has found kindred spirits in the thousands who have subsequently been emboldened to stand up for their rights in many diverse areas.

Mental Health vs. Mental Hell

An outbreak of repressive mental health laws around the world reduce accountability and transparency, seemingly empowering the corporate state to incarcerate individuals indefinitely in order to force drugs and treatments upon them that can cause permanent brain damage.[12]

Mandatory mental health screening has recently been introduced in some US States, which activists fear will also lead to more involuntary drug treatments.[10 11] Increasingly, more health conditions are now included under the “mental health” umbrella, where statute laws abound. The result has been a shocking betrayal of trust. Increasingly, children and teenagers who once merely needed drug and alcohol treatment are now funnelled into the mental health system and often end up on long-term psychiatric drugs instead of the recreational drugs they were attempting to withdraw from. Citizen watchdogs and groups supporting victims of psychiatric violations of human rights all report a significant increase in complaints of psychiatric abuse.

A 17-year-old Australian boy had been smoking marijuana on a regular basis during his final year of school. He had been a well-liked straight-A student. The boy and his mother sought help from staff at a nearby drug and alcohol centre who told them that pot “won’t hurt him”. Still concerned, the mother took her son to the local doctor. The GP referred him to a visiting psychiatrist, who began to prescribe psychiatric drugs to the boy.

Within weeks the psychiatrist placed the boy into the mental health system. Once there, he was heavily drugged. Within 2 years the boy was permanently institutionalised and given dozens of shock treatments, without his mother’s consent. Later he had paddle shaped electrical burns on his upper abdomen from the shock treatment. For the past 7 years he has been institutionalised and drugged into a stupor with strong psychiatric drugs. The boy, now a man of 24, remains imprisoned in the mental health system while his general health has deteriorated appallingly.

Mostly heavily drugged, he shakes and trembles between rigid spasms. Effectively unable to communicate, he shuffles unsteadily when on his feet. The remaining time he sleeps stuporously for hours on end. The psychiatric facility has refused to allow outside medical treatment for him. In his GPs opinion, the young man may now be irreparably brain damaged. His mother has now taken Common Law steps to address her son’s psychiatric abuse, and to provide the necessary medical measures required to treat the damage done to her son.

The Common Law Power of withholding Consent

An 18-year-old Sydney boy had been smoking marijuana on a regular basis since he’d left his parent’s home to live independently. After a year he found it increasingly difficult to hold down a job and agreed to get help. His parents were fully medically insured, and encouraged their son to enter a private clinic rather than a state run drug rehab, assuming that the treatment would be better. The clinic was part of a multinational chain of medical and psychiatric facilities. In an extraordinary display of motivation the young man had already abstained from drugs for four days prior to the day of his admission. He entered the facility clean, sober and motivated to stay that way.

On the mother’s subsequent visits she was disturbed that her son had been so heavily drugged he was barely rouseable. On questioning him, she learnt the staff had insisted he take the drugs. The mother, a registered nurse, discovered he was receiving tranquillisers and a strong antipsychotic drug, in addition to extra “sleeping” medication the psychiatrist had prescribed. Since her son had never had a psychiatric illness and because of his other physical allergies she contacted her GP who wrote a letter to the psychiatrist stating that the boy had numerous chemical sensitivities and could not tolerate large amounts of drugs or unnecessary ones. He reiterated that the purpose of the boy’s admission was detoxification and that the boy was clean of drugs when he entered the facility.

1. (The boy’s mother also inquired into the protocols of two other public detoxification/rehabilitation centres. Off the record she was told that doctors employed by the corporate hospital chains were known to prescribe large amounts of drugs to insured persons who often ended up on more drugs than the ones they were dependent on at the time of admission. On the other hand public hospital rehabs used drugs sparingly, only to assist with severe withdrawals whereas charity run centres on a shoe string budget used no drugs at all.)

The mother arranged for a conference with the facility’s psychiatrist, herself, and her son, wherein she presented the GP’s letter. The psychiatrist disregarded the doctor’s letter. Appearing resentful of the mother’s presence, he reminded her that the son was now 18, the age of majority. However the son himself requested no more drugs be prescribed for him, as he was motivated to get clean. A few days later the couple took their son out to lunch on leave from the clinic to a nearby restaurant.

The young man was drowsy and slurringly related that the staff frequently brought him medication and insisted they had the right to medicate him, anytime they considered it necessary, with any drug they deemed necessary. Moreover, the son told them that the psychiatrist had presented him with a written agreement to that effect earlier that morning, which the young man had had the presence of mind not to sign, even in his drug addled state. His parents were familiar with Common Law rights and informed their son that they considered he was in clear danger of being forcibly drugged and hospitalised if he signed such a document in that treatment facility. The mother urged her son to leave the facility immediately and return home with them. To the parent’s dismay their son refused at that time, telling them he wanted to “handle it myself”. Later that evening the boy left the treatment facility and travelled home on public transport.

He had not signed any documents giving his own consent to possible involuntary incarceration at the mental “health” facility. The parents were able to convey to their son that his consent was a powerful legal instrument not to be given lightly, and not without consulting with a trusted advisor first. The boy recovered and remains well. Scores of others are not so lucky. Many psychiatric abuses begin after voluntary consent is given without consulting a legal adviser. It then continues by the mental “health” system’s statute provisions. Most health consumers are still unaware of the system’s capability to betray and abuse human rights. It is now more important than ever to investigate health care facilities thoroughly before entrusting a loved one to their care.

School System

If the upsurge in parent activist internet sites is anything to go by, then parents are increasingly disturbed by a school system that resembles a prison; a system that pushes junk food and soda, political propaganda and social conditioning onto their children. Increasingly parents note the absence of freedom of thought at schools. Also lacking are Constitutional studies, which would inform children of their inalienble rights and of the fact that in a democracy, government is at the service of the people and not the other way around.

Stealing Our Children

Stories abound of children dying in the care of abusive parents after child welfare authorities were notified and failed to take action. However, the darker side of government child welfare authorities is rarely publicized. Australian authorities made an 11 year-old-girl a ward of the Court after an oncologist called in the authorities when the family was still deciding whether to consent to chemotherapy.

The child had chemo forcibly administered while being confined and guarded in a hospital for two months. A Supreme Court Judge ordered this forced treatment on the strength of the oncologist’s opinion. However the doctor could not show any evidence supporting the validity of his treatment. The family made several efforts to stop the forced treatment, which they considered medical abuse, but they were unsuccessful in this despite having spent their savings on lawyer’s fees.

The child’s father became educated on the principles of Common Law and represented the child’s interests in Court himself, where he successfully reinstated some of his parental rights.[24]

Sickness Industry Abusing Practitioners through Regulators

The Pharmaceutical industry lobby has increasingly infiltrated government policy.[25] Since then there has been an unprecedented attack on the use of natural, non-drug based therapies, as well as on its providers. New health care laws give powers of search and seizure to medical boards and health care watchdogs. This might be understandable if the police-state powers were being used to ferret out sleazy or quack doctors and incompetent practitioners. Perhaps not surprisingly, however, the power of these laws is now arbitrarily used to harass and abuse qualified doctors and other health professionals practicing natural, alternative or integrative health care.[14]

The internet abounds with Health Freedom activists who are now tracking this official abuse of practitioners. However, Tim Bolen, one such advocate publicises the increasing numbers of practitioners who successfully stand up to authorities.[18] Though abuses still abound, some success stories are emerging.

Last year an Australian naturopath was allegedly raided by a government team who searched the practitioner’s private belongings. The quiet, elderly health professional was overwhelmed and devastated by the raid allegedly conducted by 18 uniformed goons.[15]

Most recently another notable Australian physician who’d achieved excellent clinical results treating patients with nutrient supplements and dietary measures was targeted by the medical regulators in his state. He had been officially harassed for several years. But when confronted by the Board’s police-type powers he “voluntarily” consented to his retirement instead of mounting what he anticipated would be a costly and stressful legal action.[16]

Another Australian doctor who was harassed by authorities for including osteopathy in his general practice won some concessions when he took his case to the High Court where he eloquently represented himself.

Police or Army?

Since 9/11, law enforcement, using non-lethal weapons and riot paraphernalia has now acquired the militaristic image of an occupying army. Even in developed countries the police, once employed to uphold community rights and safety, now attempt to use brutality to suppress lawful activities such as the right to dissent. Each day in the world the silent epidemic of official brutality escalates.

Most such crimes are never reported, but citizen’s groups are closely tracking their numbers. And as the lyrics go, it appears that growing numbers of ordinary folk are; “mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore”.

The principles of Common Law are being applied to many settings. In July 2004 police attempted to herd demonstrators protesting against repression of civil liberties at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, into an area enclosed by netting, chain link fence and barbed wire. With 5000 police, army reservists and Feds prowling the vicinity and helicopters circling overhead, many demonstrators said the area looked like a concentration camp. By all accounts, the city of Boston made its début as a police state. Some demonstrators refused to enter the area that authorities had ironically called the “free speech zone”.[19]

Many demonstrators acquiesced to being herded into the barbed wire enclosure and vocally complained about it afterwards. However, a large number did not consent. They powerfully exercised their simple Common Law right to withhold consent to an injustice. The importance of that event eclipsed the other events of the day.

Free People Zones

By all accounts there are staggering social justice movements afoot which are starting to change the current trend of corporatization, political oppression and corruption.

Increasingly institutions and corporations are being held to account. More health care consumers now require doctors to provide accurate information about vaccinations, drugs and medical procedures. Increasingly, Class Actions are gathering; on behalf of vaccine-damaged children, persons suffering adverse effects from prescribed drugs and inappropriate medical treatments.

With the help of a compliant mainstream media, governments blindly continue to create reams of laws that seek to enslave humanity in “free trade” zones. Meanwhile however, the world’s people reside in communities and are creating a thick global network of Free People Zones; where millions of people are joined by the spirit of their collective values. They create their own community-based media, literature, food, conservation projects, healing centers, technology and politics. In the US, over 300 cities and four States have passed resolutions to have the patriot act repealed.

Around the world, individual persons, entire communities, fellowships and emerging sweeping movements have put the government on notice that Constitutional Laws and Human rights will not be violated in their area.

References