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Many of these apparently high incomes are completely absorbed by high-cost upper middle class expenses.

Since the top 10% takes home 50% of all household income, it follows that this top slice has most of the discretionary cash, i.e. net income left after taxes, servicing debt and paying for essentials such as food, utilities and housing.

It also follows that the discretionary spending of the top 10% is supporting much of the economy that is dependent on discretionary spending: tourism, eating out, personal trainers, etc.

The top 10% includes the thin slice of Financial Oligarchy (top .01%) and the top 1%. This skews the income and wealth of the top 10%. But if we set aside the top 1%, the next 10% still earns the lion’s share of household income.

The top .1% can prop up Maserati sales and buy $5 million vacation homes, but there simply aren’t enough super-wealthy to support the U.S. economy. As for the top 1%, they can prop up the local Porsche dealership and pay dock fees at the yacht club, but there aren’t enough of them to support the entire economy, either: around 1.5 million qualify as top 1%.

So that leaves the upper-middle class, the roughly 12 million households that earn a disproportionate share of household income, with the task of spending enough discretionary cash to prop up an economy that depends heavily on consumer spending.

Many of these upper-middle class households are far more financially fragile than their substantial incomes suggest. The vast majority of these high-income households depend on two earners, each making substantial salaries, bonuses and benefits such as 401K retirement contributions.

Many of these apparently high incomes are completely absorbed by high-cost upper middle class expenses. $250,000 a year may look like a lot until you throw in a couple of kids attending private prep schools or college, healthcare costs that aren’t covered by insurance, an enormous mortgage and sky-high property taxes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ANOTHER NAIL IN THE U.S. EMPIRE COFFIN: Collapse Of Shale Gas Production Has Begun

January 30, 2016

ANOTHER NAIL IN THE U.S. EMPIRE COFFIN: Collapse Of Shale Gas Production Has Begun

The U.S. Empire is in serious trouble as the collapse of its domestic shale gas production has begun. This is just another nail in a series of nails that have been driven into the U.S. Empire coffin.

Unfortunately, most investors don’t pay attention to what is taking place in the U.S. Energy Industry. Without energy, the U.S. economy would grind to a halt. All the trillions of Dollars in financial assets mean nothing without oil, natural gas or coal. Energy drives the economy and finance steers it. As I stated several times before, the financial industry is driving us over the cliff.

The Great U.S. Shale Gas Boom Is Likely Over For Good

Very few Americans noticed that the top four shale gas fields combined production peaked back in July 2015. Total shale gas production from the Barnett, Eagle Ford, Haynesville and Marcellus peaked at 27.9 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in July and fell to 26.7 Bcf/d by December 2015:

Top-U.S.-Shale-Gas-Fields-Production

As we can see from the chart, the Barnett and Haynesville peaked four years ago at the end of 2011. Here are the production profiles for each shale gas field:

Barnett-Shale-Gas-Field

According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), the Barnett shale gas production peaked on November 2011 and is down 32% from its high. The Barnett produced a record 5 Bcf/d of shale gas in 2011 and is currently producing only 3.4 Bcf/d. Furthermore, the drilling rig count in the Barnett is down a stunning 84% in over the past year.

Haynesville-Shale-Gas-Field

The Haynesville was the second to peak on Jan 2012 at 7.2 Bcf/d per day and is currently producing 3.6 Bcf/d. This was a huge 50% decline from its peak. Not only is the drilling rig count in the Haynesville down 57% in a year, it fell another five rigs this past week. There are only 18 drilling rigs currently working in the Haynesville.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Presidential Crimes Then And Now — Paul Craig Roberts

January 25, 2016

Presidential Crimes Then And Now — Paul Craig Roberts

Reprinted from Paul Craig Roberts, The Neoconservative Threat to World Order (Clarity Press, 2015)

Are Nixon’s and the Reagan administration’s crimes noticable on the scale of Clinton’s, George W. Bush’s, and Obama’s?

Not much remains of the once vibrant American left-wing. Among the brainwashed remnants there is such a hatred of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan that the commitment of these two presidents to ending dangerous military rivalries is unrecognized. Whenever I write about the illegal invasions of other countries launched by Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, leftists point to Chile, Nicaragua and Grenada and say that nothing has changed. But a great deal has changed. In the 1970s and 1980s Nixon and Reagan focused on reducing Cold War tensions. Courageously, Nixon negotiated nuclear arms limitation agreements with the Soviet Union and opened to China, and Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev the end of the dangerous Cold War.

Beginning with the Clinton regime, the neoconservative doctrine of the US as the Uni-power exercising hegemony over the world has resurrected tensions between nuclear-armed powers. Clinton trashed the word of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and expanded NATO throughout Eastern Europe and brought the military alliance to Russia’s border. The George W. Bush regime withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, revised US war doctrine to permit pre-emptive nuclear attack, and negotiated with Washington’s East European vassals to put anti-ballistic missiles on Russia’s borders in an effort to neutralize Russia’s nuclear deterrent, thus bringing major security problems to Russia. The Obama regime staged a coup against a government allied with Russia in Ukraine, traditionally a part of Russia, and imposed a Russophobia government as Washington’s vassal.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

For US and Russia, All Roads Lead to China

January 25, 2016

For US and Russia, All Roads Lead to China

Recently I attended an event where the speaker referred to the interplay between economics and security in Asia as being that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll represents the positive economic growth and interaction within the region, while Mr. Hyde represents the increasing security competition between the great powers of the area, namely Japan and China.

Asia, however, does not exist within a vacuum and China in particular has been used as a hedge by Russia whenever its relations with the West have been threatened. Until fairly recently, the U.S. has historically used China as a spoiler to contain Soviet ambitions and nowadays would hope for improved U.S.-China ties contain a resurgent Russia. Both Russia and the U.S. have traditionally fixated on China as a wedge to contain the other’s ambitions, with this resultant Cold War mentality still presently accounting for the failure of their respective economies to fully take advantage of integration opportunities within Asia.

Attention Deficit Disorder

With Russia’s turn towards China in the wake of negative Western sentiment and sanctions from its Ukraine and Syria maneuvers, it’s easy to forget that this is a transparent tactic Russia has used before to try to gain political leverage with the West. Russian efforts to improve ties with China economically and politically go back at least thirty years to Gorbachev’s 1986 Vladivostok visit and 1989 Beijing visit respectively. Efforts to integrate the Russian Far East (RFE) into the Asian economic dynamic were subordinated to politics yet again with Russia’s brief partnership with the U.S. in the wake of 9/11. Only after it was apparent that Russia would not be treated as a genuine partner with its own security interests did it turn again towards the East in order to gain leverage.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why This Slump Has Legs

January 19, 2016

Why This Slump Has Legs

We’ve only really been in two weeks of trading in the new year, things are looking pretty bad to say the least, so predictably the press are asking -and often answering- questions about when the slump will be over. Rebound, recovery, the usual terminology. When will we get back to growth?

For me personally, but that’s just me, that last question sounds a bit more stupid every single time I hear and read it. Just a bit, but there’s been a lot of those bits, more than I care to remember. Luckily, the answer is easy. The slump will not be over for a very long time, there will be no rebound or recovery, and please stop talking about a return to growth unless you can explain what you want to grow into.

I’m sorry, I know that’s not what you want to hear, but life’s a bitch and so’s the economy. You’ve lived on pink fumes for a long time, most of you for their whole lives, but reality dictates that real ‘growth’ stopped decades ago, and you never figured that out because, and I quote here (see below), you and the world you’re part of became “addicted to borrowing money, spending it, and passing this off as ‘growth’”.

That you believed this was actual growth, however, is on you. You fell for a scam and you’re going to have to pay the price. If there’s one single thing people are good at, it’s lying. It’s as old as human history, and it happens every day, so you’re no exception to any rule. You’re perhaps just not particularly clever.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

(Re-)Covering Oil and War

January 15, 2016

(Re-)Covering Oil and War

The first thing that popped into our minds on Tuesday when WTI oil briefly broached $30 for its first $20 handle in many years, was that this should be triggering a Gawdawful amount of bets, $30 being such an obvious number. Which in turn would of necessity lead to a -brief- rise in prices.

Apparently even that is not so easy to see, since when prices did indeed go up after, some 3% at the ‘top’, ‘analysts’ fell over each other talking up ‘bottom’, ‘rebound’ and even ‘recovery’. We’re really addicted to that recovery idea, aren’t we? Well, sorry, but this is not about recovering, it’s about covering (wagers).

Same thing happened on Thursday after Brent hit that $20 handle, with prices up 2.5% at noon. That too, predictably, shall pass. Covering. On this early Friday morning, both WTI and Brent have resumed their fall, threatening $30 again. And those are just ‘official’ numbers, spot prices.

If as a producer you’re really squeezed by your overproduction and your credit lines and your overflowing storage, you’ll have to settle for less. And you will. Which is going to put downward pressure on oil prices for a while to come. Inventories are more than full all over the world. With oil that was largely purchased, somewhat ironically, because prices were perceived as being low.

Interestingly, people are finally waking up to the reality that this is a development that first started with falling demand. China. Told ya. And only afterwards did it turn into a supply issue as well, when every producer began pumping for their lives because demand was shrinking.

All the talk about Saudi Arabia’s ‘tactics’ being aimed at strangling US frackers never sounded very bright. By November 2014, the notorious OPEC meeting, the Saudi’s, well before most others including ‘analysts’, knew to what extent demand was plunging. They had first-hand knowledge. And they had ideas, too, about where that could lead prices. Alarm bells in the desert.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Brave New World of Bank Bail-Ins As Of January 1st

January 5, 2016

Brave New World of Bank Bail-Ins As Of January 1st

On January 1st, 2016, the new bail-in regime became law putting at risk the deposits of savers and companies in the EU.

EU countries join the UK, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand in having plans for bail-ins in the event of banks and other large financial institutions getting into difficulty. It is now the case that in the event of bank failure, personal and corporate deposits could be confiscated.

The bail-in architecture was seen in the Cyprus bank bail-ins that were seen in 2003. Then, deposits of over €100,000 were confiscated in “haircuts” in order to bail out banks in Cyprus. Now the exact same principles that were used in Cyprus – which we were told was unique and a one off – are going to apply to all of Europe.

Bail-ins and the risks they pose have largely been ignored in most of the media. In one of the very few articles on bail-ins in recent days, Hugh Dixon of Reuters Breaking Views has looked at bail-ins but has focused on the “political risks” rather than that posed to savers and indeed company depositors:

The European Union entered a brave new world of bank “bail-ins” at the start of 2016. Europe has wasted so much taxpayers’ money on bailing out bust banks in recent years that it is right to try to get investors to help foot the bills in future. However, the tough new regime carries big political risks.

The article, ‘EU enters brave new world of bank bail-ins’, is interesting despite ignoring the financial and economic risk of bail-ins – they would likely be very deflationary in a world already beset by deflation – and can be accessed here
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Protecting Your Savings In The Coming Bail-In Era

From Bail-Outs To Bail-Ins: Risks and Ramifications

Terror, climate chaos, financial crisis are the costs of ‘doing business’

December 25, 2015

Terror, climate chaos, financial crisis are the costs of ‘doing business’

The techno-narcissism of predatory neoliberal capitalism is locked into an endless war with the bastard monster of its own creation – Islamic State

Fifteen years into the 21st century, humanity has made little progress in addressing major threats to civilisation. In fact, on terrorism, climate change and the economy, we’re not making progress at all, but making things worse.

The “war on terror” has been waged for 14 years since 9/11, but far from terror being defeated, it has metastasised into a regional quasi-state occupying parts of Iraq and Syria.

Despite the much-lauded “binding” climate accord agreed in Paris, the governments most responsible for carbon emissions are still avoiding the reductions necessary to prevent us breaching crucial tipping points into dangerous climate change.

Governments have tried every neoliberal trick in the book to kick-start prosperity, but the legacy of the 2008 banking collapse lives on through tepid growth, astronomical global debt even higher than pre-crash levels, and the perpetual risk of another financial crisis.

At first glance, these failures appear unrelated.

In reality, ineffective hysteria in fighting terror, chronic inertia in tackling climate change, and impotence in the face of looming capitalist meltdown are part of the same structural problem: our civilisational paradigm.

Mind the gaps

Thanks to scientific and technological advances, information has never been so voluminous, and so accessible, to so many people.

But the epistemological gap between our perceptions of the world and how we are affecting it remains as wide as ever.

Sometimes, the gap is manufactured for political convenience. Senior US military commanders, for instance, have deliberately massaged intelligence to promote an image of victory in the war on the Islamic State (IS) – fabrications reminiscent of intelligence manipulation on weapons of mass destruction during the 2003 Iraq War.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US aimed to nuke civilian populations in enemy cities during Cold War – declassified document

December 23, 2015

US aimed to nuke civilian populations in enemy cities during Cold War – declassified document

A newly released Cold War-era list of nuclear targets shows the US planned to inflict “systematic destruction” on enemy cities and target the “population” of those areas. It is the most comprehensive Cold War nuclear target list to become declassified.

The Strategic Air Command (SAC) Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, produced in June 1956, was published by the National Security Archive on Tuesday.

Totaling almost 800 pages, the document details targets in over 1,200 cities, including Moscow, Beijing, and Warsaw. The list for each city contains details on targeting the population, along with industrial and infrastructural targets.

Moscow and Leningrad were marked as priority one and two, respectively. Moscow had 179 Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs), while Leningrad had 145, in addition to “population” targets. In both cities, the list identified air power installations such as Soviet Air Force command centers, which the US would have demolished with thermonuclear weapons early in the war.

The document also includes lists of more than 1,100 airfields in the Soviet bloc, with a priority number assigned to each base. The Soviet bomber force was the highest priority for nuclear testing, and the list labels Bykhov and Orsha airfields, both located in Belorussia, as priority one and two, respectively. Medium-range Badger (TU-16) bombers, which would have posed a threat to the US and NATO allies, were present at both bases.

Soviet airfields were to be targeted with bombs ranging from 1.7 to 9 megatons, which were capable of inflicting heavy damage. The US also hailed the necessity of a 60-megaton bomb (4,000 times larger than the Hiroshima bomb’s 15 kilotons), which was capable of delivering “significant results” in the event of war with the Soviet bloc.

The National Security Archive, based at George Washington University, obtained the nuclear target list through the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) process.

Iraq Seeks To Cancel Security Agreement With US, Will Invite Russia To Fight ISIS

December 9, 2015

Iraq Seeks To Cancel Security Agreement With US, Will Invite Russia To Fight ISIS

Most Iraqis, be they civilians, military personnel, or government officials, do not trust Americans.

At a base level, that makes all kinds of sense. After all, the US did launch what amounted to a unilateral invasion of the country just a little over a decade ago, and when it was all said and done, a dictator was deposed but it’s not entirely clear that Iraqis are better off for it.

ISIS controls key cities including the Mosul, the country’s second largest, and security is a daily concern for the populace. The Americans are still seen – rightly – as occupiers, and Washington’s unwillingness inability to effectively counter ISIS has created a culture of suspicion in which most Iraqis believe the US is in cahoots with the militants for what WaPo described as “a variety of pernicious reasons that have to do with asserting U.S. control over Iraq, the wider Middle East and, perhaps, its oil.”

Some of the distrust, the US contends, is fostered by Iran. Tehran wields considerable influence both within the Iraqi military and in political circles in Baghdad. When Ash Carter announced that the US was set to send an “expeditionary targeting force” to the country to assist in raids on Islamic State targets, PM Haider al-Abadi flatly rejected the proposal, saying that “Iraq does not need foreign ground combat forces on Iraqi land.” Abadi rejected a similar Pentagon trial balloon involving Apaches helicopters last month.

(Abadi)

Meanwhile, Tehran’s Shiite militias threatened to attack any US soldiers operating on Iraqi soil. “We will chase and fight any American force deployed in Iraq. Any such American force will become a primary target for our group. We fought them before and we are ready to resume fighting,” a spokesman for Kata’ib Hezbollah said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Fall Of America Signals The Rise Of The New World Order

December 2, 2015

The Fall Of America Signals The Rise Of The New World Order

“The contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish a concept of order within the various regions and to relate these regional orders to one another.” — Henry Kissinger, “Henry Kissinger On The Assembly Of A New World Order”

“[P]art of people’s concern is just the sense that around the world the old order isn’t holding and we’re not quite yet to where we need to be in terms of a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity, that’s based on economies that work for all people.” — Barack Obama

“We reiterate our strong commitment to the United Nations (UN) as the foremost multilateral forum entrusted with bringing about hope, peace, order and sustainable development to the world. The UN enjoys universal membership and is at the center of global governance and multilateralism.” — Fifth BRICS Summit Declaration

“We support the reform and improvement of the international monetary system, with a broad-based international reserve currency system providing stability and certainty. We welcome the discussion about the role of the SDR in the existing international monetary system including the composition of SDR’s basket of currencies. We support the IMF to make its surveillance framework more integrated and even-handed.” — Fifth BRICS Summit Declaration

Here is where many political and economic analysts go terribly wrong in their examination of current global paradigms: They tend to blindly believe the mainstream narrative rather than taking into account conflicting actions and statements by political and financial leaders. Even in the liberty movement, composed of some of the most skeptical and media savvy people on planet Earth, the cancers of assumption and bias often take hold.

Some liberty proponents are more than happy to believe in particular mainstream dynamics. They are happy to believe, for example, that the growing “conflict” between the East and West is legitimate rather than engineered.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Western firms plan to cash in on Syria’s oil and gas ‘frontier’

December 1, 2015

US-led coalition forces carry out a large-scale attack on Syria’s Omar oil field

Western firms plan to cash in on Syria’s oil and gas ‘frontier’

US, British, French, Israeli and other energy interests could be prime beneficiaries of military operations in Iraq and Syria designed to rollback the power of the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) and, potentially, the Bashar al-Assad regime.

A study for a global oil services company backed by the French government and linked to Britain’s Tory-led administration, published during the height of the Arab Spring, hailed the significant “hydrocarbon potential” of Syria’s offshore resources.

The 2011 study was printed in GeoArabia, a petroleum industry journal published by a Bahrain-based consultancy, GulfPetroLink, which is sponsored by some of the world’s biggest oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Total, and BP.

GeoArabia’s content has no open subscription system and is exclusively distributed to transnational energy corporations, corporate sponsors and related organisations, as well as some universities.

Authored by Steven A. Bowman, a Senior Geoscientist for the French energy company CGGVeritas, the study identified “three sedimentary basins, Levantine, Cyprus, and Latakia, located in offshore Syria” and highlighted “significant evidence for a working petroleum system in offshore Syria with numerous onshore oil and gas shows, DHIs (direct hydrocarbon indicators) observed on seismic, and oil seeps identified from satellite imagery.”

France’s secret affair with Assad’s Syria

At the time, when civil unrest was sweeping across Syria, CGGVeritas was contracted to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Sources.

The French company is one of the world’s largest seismic surveyors. Backed by the French government which owns 18% voting rights in the firm, CGGVeritas had acquired seismic data on offshore Syrian resources in 2005, and since then has been the main point of contact for geophysical and geological datasets on behalf of the Syrian regime.

The Master Plan For Tyranny

December 1, 2015

The Master Plan For Tyranny

In this video Luke Rudkowski talks about the latest erosion of personal liberty all around the world and how this is done by the very few people who are creating the problem. We go over the latest protests in France, the U.S response to the Paris attacks and how this security theater is a way to shut everyone up.
We Need Your Help On Patreon https://www.patreon.com/WeAreChange?a…

Sources

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/wor…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/p…

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11…

http://www.theguardian.com/environmen…

http://news.antiwar.com/2015/11/22/un…

https://theintercept.com/2015/01/30/n…

http://howthis.work/ex-tsa-agent-we-s…

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/amer…

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-poli…

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVAS5gZWI…

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVAS8a5WI…

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-u-so…

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKr6f…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mY7m…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKrmu…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSyB1…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91XZD…

http://www.globalresearch.ca/paris-at…

http://yournewswire.com/france-begin-…

http://www.trueactivist.com/france-st…

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Drudge Sends the Biggest Secret Viral: “America Has Been Arming ISIS”

November 26, 2015

Drudge Sends the Biggest Secret Viral: “America Has Been Arming ISIS”

ISIS-drudge-tweet

The biggest open secret in the world has just been tweeted by the world’s biggest news aggregator.

Matt Drudge drives so much web traffic that he basically has his own gravity, and now the often-reclusive figure has sent out a message that should be a wake-up call for those who have been broadcasting news about the threat that ISIS poses.

Following their mass murder spree in Paris, the terrorist group is supposedly planning attacking inside America, all while taking supposedly also taking on the biggest military powers in the world during their protracted struggle for an Islamic State caliphate inside Syria and Iraq.

What would the world do if it realized the truth – that ISIS is the creation of Western forces, and that the United States has in fact been arming and supporting their own worst enemy?:

A shocking truth is unfolding: America has been arming ISIS…

— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) November 24, 2015

This bombshell tweet echoes numerous reports from inside the alternative media pointing out the sick truth behind the shocking resurgence of terrorism.

Barry Donegan of Truth in Media wrote:

Influential conservative news aggregator Matt Drudge issued a tweet on Tuesday acknowledging the growing body of evidence that suggests that the U.S. has participated in arming the terror group ISIS.

Drudge’s realization follows nearly two years of Truth in Media coverage of how U.S. foreign policy is enabling terrorism in Syria and Iraq and has led to the rise of ISIS.

In September of 2013, Ben Swann reported on how U.S. efforts to arm radical Islamist rebel groups against secular Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad were empowering extremists who were planning to create what he described at the time as an “al-Qaeda ‘super state,’ comprised of Iraq and Syria.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Washington prepares for World War III

November 7, 2015

Washington prepares for World War III

The US military-intelligence complex is engaged in systematic preparations for World War III. As far as the Pentagon is concerned, a military conflict with China and/or Russia is inevitable, and this prospect has become the driving force of its tactical and strategic planning.

Three congressional hearings Tuesday demonstrated this reality. In the morning, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a lengthy hearing on cyberwarfare. In the afternoon, a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee discussed the present size and deployment of the US fleet of aircraft carriers, while another subcommittee of the same panel discussed the modernization of US nuclear weapons.

The World Socialist Web Site will provide a more detailed account of these hearings, which were attended by a WSWS reporter. But certain preliminary observations can be made.

None of the hearings discussed the broader implications of the US preparations for war, or what a major war between nuclear-armed powers would mean for the survival of the human race, and even of life on our planet. On the contrary, the hearings were examples of what might be called the routinization of World War III. A US war with China and/or Russia was taken as given, and the testimony of witnesses and questions from senators and representatives, Democrats and Republicans alike, concerned the best methods for prevailing in such a conflict.

The hearings were component parts of an ongoing process. The witnesses referred to their past writings and statements. The senators and representatives referred to previous testimony by other witnesses. In other words, the preparations for world war, using cyber weapons, aircraft carriers, bombers, missiles and the rest of a vast array of weaponry, have been under way for a protracted period of time. They are not a response to recent events, whether in the South China Sea, Ukraine, Syria or anywhere else.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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