ACM OUTPOST

THE CHINESE PETRO-YUAN IS ON THE RISE, AND MAY REPLACE THE U.S. PETRO-DOLLAR FOR INTERNATIONAL OIL TRADE

By F. William Engdahl – Dec. 21, 2017

The Russian government has recently announced it will issue nearly $1 billion equivalent in state bonds, but denominated not in US dollars as is the usual case. Rather it will be the first sale of Russian bonds in China’s yuan. While $1 billion may not sound like much when compared with the Peoples’ Bank of China total holdings of US Government debt of more than $1 trillion or to the US Federal debt today of over $20 trillion, it’s significance lies beyond the nominal amount. It’s a test run by both governments of the potential for state financing of infrastructure and other projects independent of dollar risk from such events as US Treasury financial sanctions.

Russian Debt and China Yuan

Since the August 1998 sovereign default triggered by the West, Russian state finances have been prudent to almost a fault. The size of the national government debt is the lowest of any major industrial country, a mere 10.6% of GDP for the current year. This has enabled Russia to withstand the US financial warfare sanctions imposed since 2014, and forced the country to turn elsewhere for their financial stability. That “elsewhere” is increasingly called the Peoples’ Republic of China.

Now the Russian Ministry of Finance is reportedly planning the first sale of Russian debt in the form of bonds denominated in Chinese yuan currency. The size of the first offering, a testing of the market, will be 6 billion yuan or just under $1 billion. The sale is being organized by the state-owned Russian Gazprombank, the Bank of China Ltd., and China’s largest state bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China. The move is being accelerated by reports that the US Treasury is examining potential consequences of extending penalties, until now concentrated on Russian oil and gas projects, to include Russian sovereign debt in its sanctions warfare. The new yuan bond will be traded on the Moscow Exchange and will aim to sell to mainland Chinese investors as well as international and Russian borrowers at attractive interest rates.

Western sanctions or threats of sanctions are forcing Russia and China to cooperate more strategically on what is becoming the seed of a genuine alternative to the dollar system. The Russian yuan debt offerings will also give a significant boost to China’s desire to build the yuan as an accepted international currency.

China Petro-Yuan

The steps to begin issuing Russian state debt in yuan are paralleled by another major development towards broader international yuan acceptance vis a vis the US dollar. On December 13, Chinese regulators completed final testing in preparation for launch of not a dollar-backed, but rather, a yuan-backed oil futures contract to be traded on the Shanghai Futures Exchange. The implications are potentially large.

China is the world’s largest oil importing country. Control of financial oil futures markets until now has been the tightly-guarded province of Wall Street banks and the New York, London and other futures exchanges they control. Emergence of Shanghai as a major yuan-based oil futures center could significantly weaken dollar domination of oil trade.

Since the 1970’s oil shock and the 400% rise in the oil price from OPEC countries, Washington has maintained a strict regime in which the world’s most valuable commodity, oil, would be traded in US dollars alone. In December 1974, the US Treasury signed a secret agreement in Riyadh with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, “to establish a new relationship through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with the US Treasury borrowing operation” to buy US government debt with surplus petrodollars.

The Saudis agreed to enforce OPEC dollar-only oil sales in return for US sales of advanced military equipment (purchased for dollars of course) and a guarantee of protection from possible Israeli attack. This was the beginning of what then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called recycling the petro-dollar. To the present, only two oil export country leaders, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Qaddafi, have tried to change the system and sell oil for euros or gold dinars. The US government arranged to murder both Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi, and bomb their countries into the stone age for it). Now China is challenging the petro-dollar system in a different way with the petro-yuan.

The difference between Saddam Hussein or Qaddafi is that far more influential countries, Russia and now Iran, with China’s implicit support, are cooperating to avoid the dollar out of necessity forced by US pressure. That is a far stronger challenge to the US dollar than Iraq or Libya could ever manage.

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[Trump went from being a buffoon on a TV show (The Apprentice) to being a brainless puppet president ruled by the US Military Complex and by Israel. He has nothing intelligent to say, and nothing but war to offer the American people. The US Government has turned America into the most dangerous and hated nation in the world. -ed]

Paul Craig Roberts  December 19, 2017

What do we make of Trump’s national security speech? First of all, it is the military/security complex’s speech, and it is inconsistent with Trump’s intention of normalizing relations with Russia.

The military/security complex, using Trump’s position as President, has defined Russia and China as “revisionist powers,” Washington’s rivals who seek to put their own national interests ahead of Washington’s unilateralism. Russia and China are “revisionist powers” because their assertion of their national interests limits Washington’s hegemony.

In other words, Washington does not accept the validity of other countries’ interests if those interests are contrary to Washington’s interests. So, how does Trump expect to work with Russia and China when he reads a speech that Russia and China seek to “shape a world antithetical to our interests and values.”

“Our values” means, of course, Washington’s dominance.

Trump begins by honoring the military, police, Homeland Security, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In other words, “America first” means domination by Washington over the citizenry as well as over foreign countries.

Trump then cloaks himself in the American people who “voted to make America great again.”

Then Trump’s speech picks up the Israel Lobby’s line about a bad deal with Iran and asserts that previous administrations tolerated ISIS, when in fact they created it and set in upon Libya and Syria.

Then he attacks environmental protection and complains of illegal aliens, while ignoring the refugees Washington’s wars imposed on Europe.

In an era of neoconservative celebration of US world hegemony, Trump accuses his predecessors of losing confidence in America. This is extraordinary. When a country’s entire foreign policy is based on the assumption that it is the “exceptional and indispensable country,” how is this a loss of confidence? It is massive arrogance and hubris. The problem is not a loss of confidence by the rulers but an overbearing hubris.

Then Trump claims that through him, Americans again rule their nation.

He says that now Washington is serving the citizens. Looking at the tax bill, he must mean that citizens consist of the One Percent.

He next associates making America first with more money for the military.

Then he blames Iran for terrorism, something that Iran lives in fear of, but he does not mention Saudi Arabia’s support for terrorism or that of the US military/security complex’s which encourages terrorism as a weapon against Iran and Russia and as an excuse for its massive budget and power.

Trump then claims credit for the Russian/Syrian defeat of ISIS. It has been proved that ISIS is supported and financed by Washington. Trump’s claim is even more ridiculous than the previous claims of the Obama regime that the US defeated National Socialist Germany. Russia, which did defeat Germany, was not invited to the anniversary celebration.

Trump next demands that the countries we defend pay for it. Who are these countries and who do we defend them from? He can only mean Europe, Canada, Australia, Israel, and Japan. Is Washington defending them from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran or from the terrorists Washington creates, arms, and supplies to overthrow Libya, Syria and whatever countries Washington is successful siccing terrorists on. Apparently, some of these CIA-created terrorist organizations break loose from their creator and conduct operations on their own. So, Washington is a government that creates its own enemies.

Trump next brags on the sanctions he has imposed on “the North Korean regime.” He doesn’t mention, and I would bet he does not know, that Washington has withheld a peace treaty since the 1950s from North Korea. Washington has kept the war status open for 64 years. Having seen the fate of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, etc., little wonder North Korea wants nuclear weapons.

Trump, standing there threatening the world, says that Washington will take all necessary steps to prevent North Korea from threatening the world.

Trump then delivers the establishment’s propaganda that unemployment is at an all time low and the stock market at an all time high. So, what is Trump rescuing Middle America from if unemployment is at an all time low? What happened to Trump’s case against jobs offshoring?

This is nothing but feel-good talk. Trump is repeating the lies because the lies make him look good. What Trump should be doing is pointing out the meaninglessness of the unemployment rate, because it doesn’t count the unemployed, only those few who looked for a job in the last 4 weeks. He should be pointing out that the stock market is not a sign of a growing economy but a sign of massive money creation by the central banks of the US, EU, UK, and Japan. The massive printing of money has flooded into paper assets, driving up their price and further enriching the One Percent.

Trump says that one leg of the strategy is to “preserve peace through strength.” What peace is he talking about? In the past two decades Washington has destroyed in whole or part eight countries and overthrown democratic governments in others. Is Trump equating peace with Washington’s wars? No other country has initiated wars and invasions and bombings and aggressive military actions on other countries’ borders. Trump says that America is threatened by enemies and to protect us the military will be enlarged. He said he was overturning the “defense sequester,” something that clearly does not exist.

My conclusion is that Trump has surrendered to the real rulers of America—the powerful interest groups such as the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, the environmental polluters, Wall Street and the banks “too big to fail.”

America is a country in which despite the hopes flyover America had in Trump, an oligarchy rules. The American people, regardless of who they elect, have no voice, no input, no representation.

The governments of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were the last governments that were subject to any accountability. With the Clinton regime the United States entered into the age of tyranny.

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Nick Turse – December 17, 2017

“We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in October. That was in the wake of the combat deaths of four members of the Special Operations forces in the West African nation of Niger. Graham and other senators expressed shock about the deployment, but the global sweep of America’s most elite forces is, at best, an open secret.

Earlier this year before that same Senate committee — though Graham was not in attendance — General Raymond Thomas, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), offered some clues about the planetwide reach of America’s most elite troops. “We operate and fight in every corner of the world,” he boasted.  “Rather than a mere ‘break-glass-in-case-of-war’ force, we are now proactively engaged across the ‘battle space’ of the Geographic Combatant Commands… providing key integrating and enabling capabilities to support their campaigns and operations.”

In 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces, including Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets, deployed to 149 countries around the world, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command.  That’s about 75% of the nations on the planet and represents a jump from the 138 countries that saw such deployments in 2016 under the Obama administration.  It’s also a jump of nearly 150% from the last days of George W. Bush’s White House.  This record-setting number of deployments comes as American commandos are battling a plethora of terror groups in quasi-wars that stretch from Africa and the Middle East to Asia.

“Most Americans would be amazed to learn that U.S. Special Operations Forces have been deployed to three quarters of the nations on the planet,” observes William Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.  “There is little or no transparency as to what they are doing in these countries and whether their efforts are promoting security or provoking further tension and conflict.”

Growth Opportunity

America’s elite troops were deployed to 149 nations in 2017, according to U.S. Special Operations Command.  The map above displays the locations of 132 of those countries; 129 locations (in blue) were supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command; 3 locations (in red) — Syria, Yemen and Somalia — were derived from open-source information. (Nick Turse)

“Since 9/11, we expanded the size of our force by almost 75% in order to take on mission-sets that are likely to endure,” SOCOM’s Thomas told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May.  Since 2001, from the pace of operations to their geographic sweep, the activities of U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) have, in fact, grown in every conceivable way.  On any given day, about 8,000 special operators — from a command numbering roughly 70,000 — are deployed in approximately 80 countries.

“The increase in the use of Special Forces since 9/11 was part of what was then referred to as the Global War on Terror as a way to keep the United States active militarily in areas beyond its two main wars, Iraq and Afghanistan,” Hartung told TomDispatch.  “The even heavier reliance on Special Forces during the Obama years was part of a strategy of what I think of as ‘politically sustainable warfare,’ in which the deployment of tens of thousands of troops to a few key theaters of war was replaced by a ‘lighter footprint’ in more places, using drones, arms sales and training, and Special Forces.”

The Trump White House has attacked Barack Obama’s legacy on nearly all fronts.  It has undercut, renounced, or reversed actions of his ranging from trade pacts to financial and environmental regulations to rules that shielded transgender employees from workplace discrimination.  When it comes to Special Operations forces, however, the Trump administration has embraced their use in the style of the former president, while upping the ante even further.  President Trump has also provided military commanders greater authority to launch attacks in quasi-war zones like Yemen and Somalia.  According to Micah Zenko, a national security expert and Whitehead Senior Fellow at the think tank Chatham House, those forces conducted five times as many lethal counterterrorism missions in such non-battlefield countries in the Trump administration’s first six months in office as they did during Obama’s final six months.

A Wide World of War

U.S. commandos specialize in 12 core skills, from “unconventional warfare” (helping to stoke insurgencies and regime change) to “foreign internal defense” (supporting allies’ efforts to guard themselves against terrorism, insurgencies, and coups). Counterterrorism — fighting what SOCOM calls violent extremist organizations or VEOs — is, however, the specialty America’s commandos have become best known for in the post-9/11 era.

In the spring of 2002, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, SOCOM chief General Charles Holland touted efforts to “improve SOF capabilities to prosecute unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense programs to better support friends and allies. The value of these programs, demonstrated in the Afghanistan campaign,” he said, “can be particularly useful in stabilizing countries and regions vulnerable to terrorist infiltration.”

Over the last decade and a half, however, there’s been little evidence America’s commandos have excelled at “stabilizing countries and regions vulnerable to terrorist infiltration.”  This was reflected in General Thomas’s May testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The threat posed by VEOs remains the highest priority for USSOCOM in both focus and effort,” he explained.

However, unlike Holland who highlighted only one country — Afghanistan — where special operators were battling militants in 2002, Thomas listed a panoply of terrorist hot spots bedeviling America’s commandos a decade and a half later.  “Special Operations Forces,” he said, “are the main effort, or major supporting effort for U.S. VEO-focused operations in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, across the Sahel of Africa, the Philippines, and Central/South America — essentially, everywhere Al Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are to be found.”

Officially, there are about 5,300 U.S. troops in Iraq.  (The real figure is thought to be higher.)  Significant numbers of them are special operators training and advising Iraqi government forces and Kurdish troops.  Elite U.S. forces have also played a crucial role in Iraq’s recent offensive against the militants of the Islamic State, providing artillery and airpower, including SOCOM’s AC-130W Stinger II gunships with 105mm cannons that allow them to serve as flying howitzers.  In that campaign, Special Operations forces were “thrust into a new role of coordinating fire support,” wrote Linda Robinson, a senior international policy analyst with the RAND Corporation who spent seven weeks in Iraq, Syria, and neighboring countries earlier this year. “This fire support is even more important to the Syrian Democratic Forces, a far more lightly armed irregular force which constitutes the major ground force fighting ISIS in Syria.”

Special Operations forces have, in fact, played a key role in the war effort in Syria, too.  While American commandos have been killed in battle there, Kurdish and Arab proxies — known as the Syrian Democratic Forces — have done the lion’s share of the fighting and dying to take back much of the territory once held by the Islamic State.  SOCOM’s Thomas spoke about this in surprisingly frank terms at a security conference in Aspen, Colorado, this summer.  “We’re right now inside the capital of [ISIS’s] caliphate at Raqqa [Syria].  We’ll have that back soon with our proxies, a surrogate force of 50,000 people that are working for us and doing our bidding,” he said.  “So two and a half years of fighting this fight with our surrogates, they’ve lost thousands, we’ve only lost two service members. Two is too many, but it’s, you know, a relief that we haven’t had the kind of losses that we’ve had elsewhere.”

This year, U.S. special operators were killed in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and the Sahelian nations of Niger and Mali (although reports indicate that a Green Beret who died in that country was likely strangled by U.S. Navy SEALs).  In Libya, SEALs recently kidnapped a suspect in the 2012 attacks in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.  In the Philippines, U.S. Special Forces joined the months-long battle to recapture Marawi City after it was taken by Islamist militants earlier this year.

And even this growing list of counterterror hotspots is only a fraction of the story.  In Africa, the countries singled out by Thomas — Somalia, Libya, and those in the Sahel — are just a handful of the nations to which American commandos were deployed in 2017. As recently reported at Vice News, U.S. Special Operations forces were active in at least 33 nations across the continent, with troops heavily concentrated in and around countries now home to a growing number of what the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies calls “active militant Islamist groups.”  While Defense Department spokeswoman Major Audricia Harris would not provide details on the range of operations being carried out by the elite forces, it’s known that they run the gamut from conducting security assessments at U.S. embassies to combat operations.

Data provided by SOCOM also reveals a special ops presence in 33 European countries this year.  “Outside of Russia and Belarus we train with virtually every country in Europe either bilaterally or through various multinational events,” Major Michael Weisman, a spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command Europe, told TomDispatch.

For the past two years, in fact, the U.S. has maintained a Special Operations contingent in almost every nation on Russia’s western border.  “[W]e’ve had persistent presence in every country — every NATO country and others on the border with Russia doing phenomenal things with our allies, helping them prepare for their threats,” said SOCOM’s Thomas, mentioning the Baltic states as well as Romania, Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia by name.  These activities represent, in the words of General Charles Cleveland, chief of U.S. Army Special Operations Command from 2012 to 2015 and now the senior mentor to the Army War College, “undeclared campaigns” by commandos. Weisman, however, balked at that particular language.  “U.S. Special Operations forces have been deployed persistently and at the invitation of our allies in the Baltic States and Poland since 2014 as part of the broader U.S. European Command and Department of Defense European Deterrence Initiative,” he told TomDispatch.  “The persistent presence of U.S. SOF alongside our Allies sends a clear message of U.S. commitment to our allies and the defense of our NATO Alliance.”

Asia is also a crucial region for America’s elite forces.  In addition to Iran and Russia, SOCOM’s Thomas singled out China and North Korea as nations that are “becoming more aggressive in challenging U.S. interests and partners through the use of asymmetric means that often fall below the threshold of conventional conflict.”  He went on to say that the “ability of our special operators to conduct low-visibility special warfare operations in politically sensitive environments make them uniquely suited to counter the malign activities of our adversaries in this domain.”

U.S.-North Korean saber rattling has brought increased attention to Special Forces Detachment Korea (SFDK), the longest serving U.S. Special Forces unit in the world.  It would, of course, be called into action should a war ever break out on the peninsula.  In such a conflict, U.S. and South Korean elite forces would unite under the umbrella of the Combined Unconventional Warfare Task Force.  In March, commandos — including, according to some reports, members of the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 — took part in Foal Eagle, a training exercise, alongside conventional U.S. forces and their South Korean counterparts.

U.S. special operators also were involved in training exercises and operations elsewhere across Asia and the Pacific.  In June, in Okinawa, Japan, for example, airmen from the 17th Special Operations Squadron (17th SOS) carried out their annual (and oddly spelled) “Day of the Jakal,” the launch of five Air Force Special Operations MC-130J Commando II aircraft to practice, according to a military news release, “airdrops, aircraft landings, and rapid infiltration and exfiltration of equipment.”  According to Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Dube of the 17th SOS, “It shows how we can meet the emerging mission sets for both SOCKOR [Special Operations Command Korea] and SOCPAC [Special Operations Command Pacific] out here in the Pacific theater.”

At about the same time, members of the Air Force’s 353rd Special Operations Group carried out Teak Jet, a joint combined exchange training, or JCET, mission meant to improve military coordination between U.S. and Japanese forces.  In June and July, intelligence analysts from the Air Force’s 353rd Special Operations Group took part in Talisman Saber, a biennial military training exercise conducted in various locations across Australia.

More for War

The steady rise in the number of elite operators, missions, and foreign deployments since 9/11 appears in no danger of ending, despite years of worries by think-tank experts and special ops supporters about the effects of such a high operations tempo on these troops.  “Most SOF units are employed to their sustainable limit,” General Thomas said earlier this year. “Despite growing demand for SOF, we must prioritize the sourcing of these demands as we face a rapidly changing security environment.”  Yet the number of deployments still grew to a record 149 nations in 2017.  (During the Obama years, deployments reached 147 in 2015.)

At a recent conference on special operations held in Washington, D.C., influential members of the Senate and House armed services committees acknowledged that there were growing strains on the force. “I do worry about overuse of SOF,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, a Republican.  One solution offered by both Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Republican Senator Joni Ernst, a combat veteran who served in Iraq, was to bulk up Special Operations Command yet more.  “We have to increase numbers and resources,” Reed insisted.

This desire to expand Special Operations further comes at a moment when senators like Lindsey Graham continue to acknowledge how remarkably clueless they are about where those elite forces are deployed and what exactly they are doing in far-flung corners of the globe.  Experts point out just how dangerous further expansion could be, given the proliferation of terror groups and battle zones since 9/11 and the dangers of unforeseen blowback as a result of low-profile special ops missions.

“Almost by definition, the dizzying number of deployments undertaken by U.S. Special Operations forces in recent years would be hard to track.  But few in Congress seem to be even making the effort,” said William Hartung. “This is a colossal mistake if one is concerned about reining in the globe-spanning U.S. military strategy of the post-9/11 era, which has caused more harm than good and done little to curb terrorism.”

However, with special ops deployments rising above Bush and Obama administration levels to record-setting heights and the Trump administration embracing the use of commandos in quasi-wars in places like Somalia and Yemen, there appears to be little interest in the White House or on Capitol Hill in reining in the geographic scope and sweep of America’s most secretive troops.  And the results, say experts, may be dire.  “While the retreat from large ‘boots on the ground’ wars like the Bush administration’s intervention in Iraq is welcome,” said Hartung, “the proliferation of Special Operations forces is a dangerous alternative, given the prospects of getting the United States further embroiled in complex overseas conflicts.”

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by Cognitive Dissonance – Dec 17, 2017

“Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” – Oldest sales trick in the book

“Resistance is futile. You must assimilate” – The Borg

Once I discover what triggers or motivates a person, and then figure out how to activate it, I can sell anything. And it doesn’t even need to be a product or service they previously wanted.

Case in point …. life insurance.

I sold life insurance for almost ten years and made a decent living while doing so. I never forced anything on anyone and quickly canceled the policy if they decided later it was not what they wanted.

Very few did. I had the second lowest lapse/cancel rate in my region.

You want the customer to decide on their own volition, and with minimal prompting on your part, that they want; no, they need what you are selling. Once this occurs, you are simply an order taker filling the expressed need(s) of the customer.

To do so you sell the sizzle, not the steak.

I wasn’t selling life insurance. I was solving a financial ‘problem’ everyone has, but often doesn’t recognize as a problem.

I am not bragging, but rather pointing out something very few people consider. We are all heavily influenced by (psychological warfare) sales techniques deeply rooted in all sales pitches delivered by skilled practitioners. And the number one most powerful technique employed is to plant a seed of fear that leverages the customer’s own emotional triggers.

Taken to the extreme level, once a person is triggered within carefully controlled and presented parameters, anything is possible. The key is to get them to turn off the critical thinking component of the mind (while letting them believe they have not) and ramp up the emotional coefficient (while supporting their belief they have not) all while encouraging them to believe it’s their own genius idea. So…what does this have to do with Bitcoin?

In a word…everything!

Whether by design or natural evolution, and possibly a combination of the two, the Bitcoin ‘story’ pushes all the right buttons needed to ignite a stampede of exponential proportions. And what a story it is.

A small group of intrepid anarchists/libertarians/misfits/geeks/geniuses led by the mysterious and still unknown Satoshi Nakamoto created and developed Bitcoin and the supporting blockchain to thumb their noses at the global banking hierarchy/governmental control conglomerate/conspiracy, freeing the financially oppressed and liberty suppressed underclass to rebel against the new world order and bring chaos reigning down upon the Empire by undermining their control mechanisms, the insidious central banking cesspools and their worthless fiat currencies.

Or something like that.

If you take several steps back and attempt to see the big picture, it sure sounds to me like a deliciously naughty Tom Clancy novel or even an episode from Star Wars titled “The Rebels Strike Back”. What wannabe star fighter pilot wouldn’t love to stick it to the man by buying Bitcoin?

And if you just so happen to become filthy rich in the process, so much the better. Once you become the richest man on the planet you will rain itty bitty Bitcoin pieces upon the starving masses and save the world from those fat cat bankers and various sociopathic leader scum.

No feat of narcissistic imagination could get any better than this real life fairly tale of a story. Destroy the world to save it while becoming wealthy beyond imagination, all by doing little more than pushing a button and HODLing. Heck, sell the house, the car, even the wife, whatever it takes to buy more Bitcoin to fight the evil elite and save humanity from itself.

Obviously I am exaggerating a bit. But judging from the various pro Bitcoin rationalization articles I’ve read over the last few months of Bitcoin’s parabolic rise, I’m only exaggerating a little bit.

The most valuable currency in the world is belief, whether in an ideology, a physical entity or even a supreme being. If you can combine all those and more, you have on your hands a rip-your-face-off social movement that knows no upper limit … right up until it does.

This is not to say Bitcoin is fake. Down  through the ages almost every conceivable good was used as money, from sea  shells, to tobacco, to olive oil, to tulips, to metals. On the contrary, Bitcoin is as real as any other ‘currency’ simply because those who own, trade, spend and HODL (Hold On for Dear Life) Bitcoin believe it to be real. This is no different than widespread faith and belief in the almighty US Dollar, Japanese Yen or English pound, other than the official virtual currency(s) is backed by the mighty American military machine.

Which, I might delicately add, a military that’s (eventually) turned loose upon any entity, foreign or domestic, that threatens to undermine our faith and belief in the almighty US Dollar.

Let’s see what we have here.

A ‘currency’ that is rather difficult to spend at your local Five and Dime, therefore you are mostly limited to holding or trading it, is restricted to 21 million units in total of which 12 million is presently available with a viable value many orders of magnitude less, is blindly supported by a group of rabid HODLing believers who are now filthy rich if they consider holding and trading as riches.

Do I have that right? Did I miss anything?

Seen from the perspective of a veteran salesman, I’m insanely jealous I didn’t come up with this idea myself. The best I’ve ever managed was to come up with the idea of visiting pet sitters several years before it went mainstream. It was my severe allergy to cats that prevented me from taking it nationwide. Permanent post nasal drip isn’t conducive to begging Silicon Valley angel investors for funding.

Color me cynical, but I’m now old enough to recognize dirty tricks when they come around for a second, third and fourth airing. And Bitcoin stinks of reverse psychology skullduggery squared to the infinite power. But the amazing thing is this doesn’t invalidate Bitcoin in the least, and may actually lend even more sizzle to the bold Bitcoin steak.

I was hoodwinked by an unknown three letter agency and all I got was this stupid tee shirt.

How do you get someone to eat the peas they claim to hate? Dress them up as jelly beans and pay them obscene amounts of fiat to consume them. Pretty soon everyone wants to eat their peas and keep them too.

I seem to remember article after article outlining how every official fiat counterfeiter and central bank pusher in the world was proclaiming the virtues of virtual currency while decreeing physical cash, currency and coin as evil incarnate. The howls of distrust and revulsion among every single breathing human being, other than the fiat conflicted and consumed, about the loss of cold hard cash were hard to ignore.

Clearly the average Jane and Joe did not wish to part with their small cache of cash, regardless of whether the majority of their actual ‘wealth’ was little more than ones and zeros safely tucked away in the cloud, secure fluffy white cumulonimbus we can only hope.

While Bitcoin has been around since 2009/10, only in the last few months has it entered the public mind with stories of instant millionaires whose road to success was scratching off the winning lottery ticket rather than growing their wealth the old fashioned way, by lying, cheating and stealing as the elite have done.

But while Bitcoin has blazed the trail of consent to more widespread distribution via the greed button, the heavy yeoman’s psyops work is actually being done by the introduction of hundreds of competing cryptocurrencies. While many feel they have missed the Bitcoin train, there is still plenty of virtual crypto lottery tickets, freshly mined daily, that are waiting to be scratched. The once reluctant mind has turned positively manic with excitement.

Mission accomplished.

You see, Bitcoin doesn’t actually need to be fake or fatally flawed in order to act as the messenger carrying the impregnated cryptoseed stealthily implanted, then germinated, within the minds of the teaming masses. The more Bitcoin billionaires there are, the more the masses will yearn for a piece of the crypto pie. Just a few crumbs are all I want dear sir.

For those unaware of this sales technique, predictive programming is its name and cognitive leverage is its game, a fact well known on Madison Avenue, in Langley, Virginia and Fort Meade, Maryland. The CIA in particular uses this, and many other techniques, on a regular basis throughout the world to depose leaders, ignite revolutions and plant subtle memes to be used now or later.

Only the terminally naïve believe the CIA restricts its nefarious activities to foreign soil. From its perspective, the CIA sees itself as the behind-the-scenes defender of the “American Way” and it will use any and all tools at its disposal to do so. Not only will it manipulate foreign perceptions, but also domestic views and ideas that form our own reality.

Either we make our own reality or we live within someone else’s creation. The CIA and various other three letter agencies are tasked with creating our reality for us and they will use any means available to do so.

Since it is becoming increasingly obvious to anyone with two working brain cells that the almighty dollar is under increasing pressure from all points of the compass, it stands to reason this dollar assault is considered a national security issue and will be confronted, and defended, both directly and indirectly.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to. While many people love to believe all government is grossly ineffective, incompetent and wasteful (and much of it is) the CIA and others of the same breed employ delicately precise and blunt force trauma overkill to the nth degree. Combine this with a deep state presence whose only goal is to maintain or increase their power and you have a mixed cocktail of intoxicating proportions.

Even if Bitcoin in particular, and blockchain in general, were not created and/or enabled at birth by the CIA/NSA etc. doesn’t mean they remain pure as the driven snow. If Bitcoin really is such a threat to the established financial empire, as the cryptomaniacs claim it to be, why hasn’t the establishment taken direct and effective steps against it long before now? Think on that!

Regardless if the blockchain is a distributed network that cannot be stopped, all one must do is outlaw the use and/or conversion of Bitcoin to the local coin of the realm to immediately stop it. Since this has not occurred to date, one must surmise there is a reason for not doing so.

All the police state needs to do is cry national security and the curtain comes down on the Bitcoin stage. You do not need to destroy the rebel force in order to render it ineffective.

While the deep state and its minions are rarely of one mind about a multitude of issues, witness the constant infighting and jockeying for position, nothing clears the mind or clarifies its purpose like the certain knowledge of imminent demise. If Bitcoin, blockchain and the hundreds of other cryptocurrencies were the mortal danger loudly advertised by the Bitcoin ideologies, it would be squashed in a New York minute.

You don’t openly mess with the system without repercussions.

I fully and readily admit I have no crystal ball to see into the machinations of the deep state, nor any awareness of its true goals and end game. Nor need I see the skunk in the blockchain woodpile to know he is there. I can smell him.

All threats to the Empire, whether real, imagined or artificially created, are directly and/or indirectly confronted into extinction or assimilation. An aware and open-minded examination of the social revolts and uprisings of the 60’s and 70’s in the US exposes the counter intelligence programs of subversion, infiltration, control and even genesis of these threats that rendered all of them ineffective, distracted, distorted and ultimately mute.

Since Bitcoin and blockchain has not to date been significantly impeded, one must surmise it is serving the purpose of the Empire to continue to exist. As hurtful to the ideology and the ego as this thought might be, I strongly suspect Bitcoin and its ilk are not what they appear to be.

So, if you must, go for the gusto my friend, drink deep from the intoxicating waters of easy wealth. Just remember something that many will forget in their mad rush to Bitcoin/blockchain riches.

The easiest and most effective way to dull the rebel mind is to shower it with wealth and power. The catch is … you must become one with the Empire to enjoy it.

Resistance is futile. You must assimilate.

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December 15, 2017

It’s hard to overstate the historic significance this week of Syria’s victory against foreign-backed mercenaries.

We can dismiss Western official narratives that the nearly seven-year war was some kind of “pro-democracy uprising.” The conflict was nothing of the sort.

It was a classic American-led covert war for regime change, of the kind that dozens of countries around the world have been subjected to over the decades.

In Syria, the criminal enterprise involved the clandestine support from Western governments and their regional partners to a whole host of mercenary groups. These groups were not Syrian citizens fighting for freedom. Rather, they were extremist self-styled jihadists who descended on Syria from all over the world; armed, paid and directed by a US coalition of governments, to carry out the most horrific violence against civilians.

The supreme irony here is that the Americans, British and French, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel were sponsoring Al Qaeda-type terrorist mercenaries, despite their ostentatious false claims of fighting against terrorism.

[The US wanted control of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan so they could surround their real target, Iran. Putin knew this and stopped the US-backed terrorists in Syria.]

The geopolitics of Washington’s arrogant hegemonic interests meant that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad – being an ally of Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah – was targeted. For decades, in fact, the Americans had been plotting regime change in Syria, along with their trusty British accomplice.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin determined to intervene militarily in the Syria War in October 2015, the Syrian state was nearly teetering on collapse after nearly five years struggling against the Western-led assault on the country. Putin acted on request from Damascus for help. The Russian intervention dramatically turned the war. In just a little more than two years, the Syrian state was salvaged and the foreign-backed terror army has been eradicated.

Last December, Syria’s second biggest city, Aleppo, was liberated by the Syrian army and Russian air force. The residents of Aleppo were liberated from a reign of terror under the cult-like barbarians whom the West lionized as “pro-democracy rebels”.

Russia’s role in Syria’s victory is nothing short of heroic. We should acknowledge too the valiant role of Iran, Hezbollah and Iraqi militia who also rallied to support the Syrian army. But Russia takes pride of place in rescuing Syria from the US-led international criminal conspiracy to destroy that country and install a regime suited to Washington’s imperialist interests.

The celebration is bitter-sweet. It is estimated that up to 400,000 people died in the war. Nearly half the population of 24 million were displaced. The financial cost of rebuilding Syria’s obliterated infrastructure is put at $200 billion. The country is in ruins because of the US-led war for regime change. Washington, London, Paris and their cohorts should be prosecuted to pay for the reconstruction.

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by Stephen Lendman – 12-12-17

What’s euphemistically called defense spending is all about funding America’s war machine – always active, never idle, inventing enemies to attack.

No real enemies have existed since imperial Japan formally surrendered in 1945. Yet America is permanently at war directly or indirectly – at home on streets in minority communities turned into battlegrounds, abroad in multiple theaters, new ones pending.

The Washington Post (WaPo): “The Pentagon and the welfare state have been locked in brutal combat for decades, and the Pentagon has gotten clobbered.”

“Protecting the country was once the first obligation of government. No more. Welfare programs – Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and other benefits – dwarf defense spending. As a result, we have become more vulnerable.”

Fact: The neocon Washington Post is connected to America’s intelligence community, mainly the CIA, operating as its virtual house organ, promoting militarism and warmaking, deploring world peace and stability.

Mackenzie Eaglen is a resident fellow at the hard-right American Enterprise Institute’s Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies.

She works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness – earlier worked on these issues with House and Senate officials, as well as at the Pentagon’s Office of the Secretary of Defense.

WaPo quoted her saying “(t)he United States now fields a military that could not meet even the requirements of a benign Clinton-era world.”

“The services have watched their relative overmatch and capacity decline in almost every domain of warfare…for nearly two decades.”

“As rival nation-states have accelerated their force development, the Department of Defense has stalled out, creating a dangerous window of relative military advantage for potential foes.”

“While the United States continues to field the best military personnel in the world, policy makers have asked them to do too much with too little for too long.”

Fact: With all categories included, America spends over $1.5 trillion annually on militarism and warmaking, the so-called defense budget at over $600 for FY 2018 is only one part of it. Lots more goes unreported by mainstream sources, suppressing the nation’s total spending.

It’s prioritized at the expense of ordinary Americans to make corporate predators and super-rich ones richer.

Militarism is deep-rooted in America, military bases located in most nations worldwide – for offense, not defense, for advancing the nation’s imperium. Its special forces operate in over two-thirds of the world’s countries, mostly covertly.

They perform belligerent missions, little or unreported low-profile warfare, enormous amounts of money spent on their destabilizing activities, operating in what they call a “gray zone,” under-the-radar hostilities against targeted nations or groups.

Fact: America’s only enemies are invented ones – countries threatening no one. So-called defense spending should be sharply cut, not increased, warmaking ended.

A new era of peace should be fostered, but never will as long as neocons, militarists, warmakers and profiteers run America.

Analysts like Mackenzie Eaglen promote warmaking. So does WaPo. They are against world peace and stability. They oppose America’s resources being used for homeland needs benefiting Americans, not just its privileged few.

WaPo: “Sizable increases in defense spending seem warranted to compensate for past underfunding and to confront new challenges.”

“China and Russia loom as potential adversaries; North Korea could become a global menace; the Middle East remains a cauldron of conflict; global terrorism survives; and new forms of warfare – cyberattacks, drones and space-based conflict – demand new responses.”

Fact: Washington threatens China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and other countries, not the other way around.

Fact: America transformed the Middle East into a “cauldron of violence.” Endless wars weren’t waged until America showed up, along with Israeli naked aggression against Palestinians and neighboring countries.

Fact: America poses a grave threat of using “new forms of warfare,” mostly against those who are unable to strike back hard.

As long as Washington prioritizes endless wars of aggression, humanity may be consumed by its hubris, arrogance, and imperial rage for dominance.

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By Daniel Larison – Nov. 30, 2017

The U.S. military presence in Syria is set to continue indefinitely:

The Trump administration is expanding its goals in Syria beyond routing the Islamic State to include a political settlement of the country’s civil war, a daunting and potentially open-ended commitment to undermine both Syria and Iran.

The U.S. already has at least 2,000 troops in Syria, and that number is likely to keep growing as the U.S. entangles itself more deeply in that country. An open-ended deployment in the territory of an unfriendly government that is supported by Iran would seem to be a recipe for a pointless and easily avoidable conflict. At best, it is a waste of resources and manpower in a place where the U.S. has little or nothing at stake. At worst, it is the start of a steadily expanding mission that will embroil the U.S. in yet another futile war. That will do nothing to make the U.S. or its allies more secure, and it could contribute to further instability in the region.

The justification for this continued presence is bizarre:

An abrupt U.S. withdrawal could complete Assad’s sweep of Syrian territory and help guarantee his political survival — an outcome that would constitute a win for Iran, his close ally.

To avoid that outcome, U.S. officials say they plan to maintain a U.S. troop presence in northern Syria and establish new local governance, apart from the legitimate Assad government, in those areas.

In other words, the U.S. needs to keep American soldiers in harm’s way out of fear that the government of Syria might reestablish control over the rest of its own territory. That is so ridiculous that it can make sense only in the context of our warped foreign policy discourse. Other than the US intention to continue undermining and weakening the region, there is no discernible American security interest that demands that the U.S. keep part of Syria from being returned to the control of its government. It is certainly not lawful for the US military to “establish new local governance” inside Syria. The real reason for the open-ended mission seems to be to compete with Iran for influence inside the territory of its ally, and that is as illegal as it is foolish.

It goes without saying that a U.S. military presence in Syria for any purpose has no legal justification whatsoever and has not had any for the last three years. Congress has never authorized military action there against ISIS or pro-regime forces, the Syrian government has never given the U.S. permission to operate in its territory, and our military presence there has absolutely nothing to do with defending the U.S..

Keeping U.S. forces in Syria for years to come is the very definition of mission creep. Congress should insist on the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria as soon as possible.

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By Brandon Turbeville, 11-29-2017

The United States has become a laughing stock of the world as a result of its decent into neo-McCarthyism and anti-Russian hysteria. US fear mongering includes blaming Russia and Vladimir Putin personally for hacking American elections, making Hillary Clinton lose the election, trying to establish a Fourth Reich, invading Syria and Ukraine, and creating an army waiting to take over the government and burn down the country.

Russia and Putin have now taken the place of Al Qaeda and ISIS as the great bogeyman in place to scare Americans into doing whatever they’re told. Europe also has fallen in line with the American insanity proving that the virus of cultural disintegration travels both ways across the Atlantic.

But now England is attempting to leapfrog the United States in terms of the most ridiculous anti-Russian propaganda possible. This time, it is being reported by The Mirror that Russian cyber units at the behest of Vladimir Putin himself are hard at work propagandizing and attempting to convince people in Britain not to get vaccinated.

As The Mirror reports:

Russian cyber units are spreading false information about flu and measles jabs in the UK, experts warn.

Vladimir Putin is believed to want to erode trust in US and European governments.

The state-sponsored units are spreading the lies on social media to destabilise Britain, it is claimed.

The Kremlin has previously been accused of attempting to influence Brexit and Scottish independence.

Now, it is feared it is trying to create distrust over flu jabs and the MMR measles vaccine.

Chris Phillips, former National Counter Terrorism Security Office head, warned Russian cyber farms have become a threat to daily life.

He told the Mirror today: “This is all about destabilisation by external forces. War is ever changing and becoming much more cyber-based.

“For generations, governments in the UK and the West have been extremely worried about destabilisation from external forces.

No, seriously, they actually reported that. Obviously, we won’t spend time trying to debunk something that clearly does not exist since it is obvious that the real fear is that British citizens are doing more and more research on vaccination and determining that vaccines are neither safe nor effective.

Pushing collectivism and communitarian lifestyles has not accomplished what it has set out to do so the natural next step is to claim that the Russians are secretly behind a mission to ensure that U.S. and European people are under-vaccinated so that they presumably die of some sort of measles plague.

The propaganda is as stupid as it sounds, but it’s also incredibly dangerous. While many may be tempted to laugh at the “Russians are trying to destroy our way of life and anything contrary to what we tell you is Russian propaganda” position, it is actually no laughing matter. What the British government is doing is equating a personal decision and the exercise of a human right as anti-government and anti-British. It is arguing that to not vaccinate or to even question the safety of vaccinations is to fall under the sway of the Russians. Now that British citizens are being warned that distrust of vaccines is a Russian tactic of subversion one can only wonder how long it will be before refusal to vaccinate is literally considered treason.

While it is fun to make jokes about how infantile state propaganda has become, we must be aware that state propaganda is reaching a point where any behavior of which it does not approve is being equated with Russian subversion and an attempt by outside forces to destroy the country.

The Mirror continues:

The Russians have long felt that the UK, America and the European Union is a major threat to them so have developed major strategies in how to interfere with politics, policy, and now it seems the interference is impacting on vital decisions in our daily lives.”

He added: “The art of being able to exert this control over a society is arguably one of the most powerful weapons available in modern warfare.

“If the Russian government, or whoever, wishes to exert this kind of influence, is able to cause difficulty in decisions, in trusting the government of the day in that country, or otherwise trusted media and news organisations, then so much the better for them.”

Security services are so concerned over the threat to public health and security that Government departments have been ordered to monitor social media and flag up risky articles.

Health chiefs have had emergency meetings over the spread “fake news” over vaccination campaigns.

Notice that the former NCTSO Chief is literally equating lack of trust in government and media organizations as a risk to national security and an example of Russian aggression. The fact that health chiefs have had emergency meetings over those questioning vaccines demonstrates that there is no such thing as a free society in Britain.

If British citizens exercise their human rights and the result is emergency meetings, propaganda, and national security hysteria, the state is clearly reacting in a manner that seeks to control free thought and free choice. This is not freedom, this is not democracy, it is a boot stamping on a human face.

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[The US and Saudi Arabia have schemed together to control world international trade in “petrodollars” (US Dollars backed by the promise of military support from the US providing that the participating countries agree to use only the US Dollar for oil trade). This scheme gives Washington power over the oil-consuming nations. However, now China, Russia, and Iran are leading a movement to establish an alternative trade currency (the Chinese Yuan – CHY) for countries who wish to break free of slavery to the the US Petrodollar. If this succeeds it will weaken the US hold over the world, and the US will probably respond with more sanctions and larger wars to eliminate competition to their Petrodollar .  -ed.]