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Boycott Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Here’s Why

October 17, 2018

Boycott Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Here’s Why

NATO — the neoconservatives, the marketeers for firms such as Lockheed Martin and BAE — has taken over the social-media giants and much of online international ‘news’-reporting, including that of virtually all independent news-sites and blogs.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google, in recent days, delivered what might be the death-blows.

NATO’s main PR agency, think-tank, and lobbying organization, is ‘non-profit’ — a legal tax-dodge that’s financed by donations from those weapons-making firms and their supporting firms and their ‘non-profits’, so that the taxes that it doesn’t pay will need to be paid instead by the general public. Billionaires know how to avoid taxes, and they hire politicians who write the laws with all the ‘right’ loopholes for them — and only for the very richest — to use. This PR agency is called “The Atlantic Council,” and it was set up in 1961, the exact same year that U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower left office warning that “the military-industrial complex” might take control of the U.S. Well, it did so, with The Atlantic Council’s help; and, now, it is finally lowering the boom against democracy itself — at least among the U.S. and its allied nations (the governments whose weapons-manufacturing firms are in, and sell to, NATO governments). The aim is to drive up the percentage of government-expenditures there that go to pay those firms, and so to reduce the percentages that go to pay everything else. The aim, in short, is the permanent-warfare-economy. After all, firms such as Lockheed Martin and BAE sell only to allied governments. They have virtually no consumers except those governments. So: their (and their ‘charities’) basic message is ‘austerity’ — except on ‘defense’ or realistically called “aggression.”

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

Beware the Common Thread that runs through War

September 24, 2018

Beware the Common Thread that runs through War

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; You seem to argue that the sanctions against Russia are unjustified with respect to their invasion of Ukraine. I understand that Kiev was the original capital of the Rus. You do not agree with the sanctions I assume because you argue they are pointless and will not work. Can you elaborate on that view?

Thank you for your insights.

ANSWER: I look for patterns and when you see the same pattern time and time again, history becomes merely a Shakespear play performed for centuries where the plot remains the same and the only difference is the actors in the performance. So let us look at this objectively and without bias.

There was the famous parting speech of President Eisenhower who warned about the risk of the growing military establishment. Most people do not know that in December 1897, Otto von Bismarck met with the last Emperor of Germany Wilhelm II. It was then when Bismarck had warned Wilhelm about the rising influence of military establishment just as Eisenhower warned the American people. He warned that especially of the admirals were pushing to construct of a battle fleet. They even named a ship after the man who warned against their aggression. In reality, you cannot have a standing army always training for a war that never comes. They get their toys and they historically always want to use them to the detriment of the people and the nation.

What does Japan, German and Austria-Hungarian Empire all have in common? In the case of Japan, World War II was instigated by its military and the Emperor was subservient to the military class. In Germany, Emperor Wilhelm II was not the instigator of World War I.

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

Towers to Heaven: The Alchemy of Prophecy, Terror, and Unity

September 9, 2018

Towers to Heaven: The Alchemy of Prophecy, Terror, and Unity

They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer).

– Revelation 9:11

At the end of last month, I read an article that claimed Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was foretold by a “20 Year Old Movie”. The film was a 1998 thriller entitled “Enemy of the State” starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman.

My curiosity aroused, I selected the show from my electronic catalog and watched it unwind; similar to the way I once queued up songs on jukeboxes in the halcyon days preceding the matrix.

In the film, Gene Hackman played an Edward Snowden-type National Security Agency (NSA) contractor gone rogue who revealed to the viewers the U.S. government’s high-tech surveillance capabilities. Two decades ago when the film was released, the surveillance grid disclosed therein would have seemed far-fetched. But not today. Now, in the aftermath of 911, the Patriot Act, and the Snowden revelations, those capabilities are not only common knowledge, but are the subjects of ongoing daily headlines.

The antagonist in the film was played by Jon Voight, a power-hungry NSA bureaucrat who assembled a team of technology experts and security agents that blackmailed Congress and even murdered a senator. The politician was killed to aid the passing of a Patriot Act-style bill that would have, in effect, drilled the final screw into the coffin of the Fourth Amendment.

The film called to mind multiple recent news stories ranging from high-tech espionage, to social media spying and censorship, to CIA programs like UMBRAGE which masquerades as computer hacks by foreign governments, to the Awan brothers and the murder of former Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich. Essentially, the plot demonstrated Senator Chuck Schumer’s warning to President Donald Trump in an MSNBC interview on January 3^rd, 2017:

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

NATO is a Goldmine for the US/Military Industrial Complex

August 4, 2018

NATO is a Goldmine for the US/Military Industrial Complex

Photo source Parker Gyokeres | CC BY 2.0

Countries of the NATO military alliance have been ordered by President Trump to increase their spending on weapons, and the reasons for his insistence they do so are becoming clearer. It’s got nothing to do with any defense rationale, because the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, has admitted that “we don’t see any imminent threat against any NATO ally” and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recorded in its 2018 World Report that “Russia’s military spending in 2017 was 20 per cent lower than in 2016.”

Even Radio Free Europe, the US government’s official broadcaster, acknowledged that “Russia, one of the world’s top military spenders, reduced its defense budget by 20 percent in 2016-2017 to $55.3 billion” compared, for example, to the $56.3 billion of France. As SIPRI records, “together, the European NATO members spent over 4 times more on the military in 2017 than Russia,” and Nato Watch summed it up by pointing out that the 29 US-NATO countries “collectively spent over 12 times more on the military in 2016 than Russia.”

There is demonstrably no threat whatever to any NATO country by Russia, but this is considered irrelevant in the context of US arms’ sales, which are flourishing and being encouraged to increase and multiply as a result of Congressional and Pentagon scare-mongering.

On July 12, the second and final day of the recent US-NATO pantomime gathering, Reuters reported Trump as saying that “the United States makes by far the best military equipment in the world: the best jets, the best missiles, the best guns, the best everything.” He went on “to list the top US arms makers, Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp by name.”

On July 11 the Nasdaq Stock Exchange listed the stock price of Lockheed Martin at $305.68. The day after Trump’s speech, it increased to $318.37.

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

Forget Trump: The Military-Industrial Complex is Still Running the Show With Russia

July 21, 2018

Forget Trump: The Military-Industrial Complex is Still Running the Show With Russia

As the media fulminates, they fail to see how Trump has kept the usual machinery running.

Katz/Shutterstock

President Donald Trump has strengthened, not weakened, American military and economic opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin. That fact has been mostly unreported and it is of the utmost importance. Irrespective of what Trump harrumphs about NATO or Vladimir Putin, the multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex (MICC) rules American-Russian relations as it has for seven decades. And the nightmare of the MICC is not to lose a friend, but to lose an enemy.

Fake news is fixated on personalities. Authentic news understands that nations have no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. The executive branch in particular has a permanent interest in exaggerating threats to augment its own power and to order up more superfluous military spending.

President Barack Obama, in opposing Russian designs, refused to provide military assistance to Ukraine. Trump has authorized the transfer of defensive military weapons.

Obama limited the U.S. military mission in Syria to defeating ISIS. Trump has expanded the mission to remain in Syria indefinitely and influence the outcome of that country’s protracted civil war.

Trump is also planning a $1.2 trillion upgrade of our nuclear arsenal, including low-yield tactical weapons, largely targeting Russia. His most recent National Security Strategy paper elaborates:

The United States will respond to the growing political, economic, and military competitions we face around the world. China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.

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

War Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore

July 20, 2018

War Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore

It’s become obsolete, the days of conquest are behind us, yet the military-industrial complex grinds on all the same.

Credit: Getmilitaryphotos/Shutterstock

America spends more on its military than all its enemies put together yet it still can’t win wars. Failed adventures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have drained America’s power and diminished its prestige. The bloated Pentagon budget actually makes us weaker.

Here’s the weird bit: nobody seems to care. If any other government department spent as much and accomplished as little, the populace would be in arms, complaining about wasteful government spending. Instead we mumble “Thank you for your service” and increase defense appropriations.

War has always been brutal and destructive, but once upon a time it had a purpose. William of Normandy invaded Britain knowing victory would make him rich beyond dreams of avarice. Soldiers followed Genghis Khan, Hernan Cortes, and Napoleon Bonaparte for the opportunity to steal gold, land, or slaves from their defeated enemies. Loot captured in war could transform a man’s life, give him the money he needed to buy land or start a business. For thousands of years, the opportunities inherent in battle gave many men their only chance to escape their impoverished origins. Success in war could turn a brigand into a king.

Today it is trade and technology, not conquest, that makes us rich. It is a cliché of the left that America went to war in Iraq to take their oil. This is a serious misreading of history. For one thing, had George W. Bush told Saddam to either share his oil wealth with ExxonMobil or face invasion, Saddam would have certainly complied. For another, Korean, Russian, Angolan, and Chinese companies all control more Iraqi oil fields today than do American firms. Had we gone to war to steal Iraqi oil, we might have done a better job of it.

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

Ike was right!

June 23, 2018

Ike was right!

POITOU, FRANCE – We wait for the world to fall apart.

The Dow is still more than 1,000 points below its high; so we presume the primary trend is down. Treasury yields – on the 10-year note – are near 3%… twice what they were two years ago. So we presume the primary trend for bonds is down, too.

If we’re right, we are at the beginning of a long slide… down, down, down… into chaos, destitution, and destruction.

Faked Out

Our working hypothesis is that General Eisenhower was right. There were two big temptations to the American Republic of the 1950s; subsequent generations gave in to both of them.

They spent their children’s and grandchildren’s money. Now, the country has a government debt of $21 trillion. That’s up from $288 billion when Ike left the White House.

And they allowed the “unwarranted influence” of the “military/industrial complex” to grow into a monster. No president, no matter how good his intentions, can stop it.

A corollary to our major hypothesis is that the rise of the Deep State (the military/industrial/social welfare/security/prison/medical care/education/bureaucrat/crony complex) was funded by the Fed’s fake-money system.

Now, investors, businesses, households, and the feds themselves have all been “faked out” by a fraudulent money system. None of them can survive a cutback in credit.

For nearly 30 years, central banks have backstopped markets and flooded the world with liquidity.

But last week, the Fed turned the screws a little further. It now targets a 2% Fed Funds Rate and claims to be on the path of “normalization.”

And the European Central Bank (ECB) made it official, too; it hasn’t quite begun tightening, but it’s got its toolbox open. And command of the ECB work crew is set to change hands next year anyway, passing on to a German engineer.

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

Confronting the money-power elite

June 21, 2018

Confronting the money-power elite

Those who control the creation and allocation of money are able to control every other aspect of society. Shouldn’t that be us?

Credit: Flickr/Liz West. CC BY 2.0.

The world today is controlled by a small elite group that has been increasingly concentrating power and wealth in their own hands. There are many observable facets to this power structure, including the military security complex that President Eisenhower warned against, the fossil fuel interests, and the neoconservatives and others that are promoting US hegemony around the world, but the most powerful and overarching force is the ‘money power’ that controls money, banking, and finance worldwide. It is clear that those who control the creation and allocation of money through the banking system are able to control virtually every other aspect of society.

What can be done to turn the tide? How can we empower ourselves to assert our desires for a more fair, humane and peaceful world order? I believe that the greatest possibility of bringing about the desired changes lies in economic and political innovation and restructuring.

The monopolization of credit.

I came to realize many years ago that the primary mechanism by which people are controlled is the system of money, banking, and finance. The power elite have long known this and have used it to enrich themselves and consolidate their grip. Though we take it for granted, money has become an utter necessity for surviving in the modern world. But unlike water, air, food, and energy, money is not a natural substance—it is a human contrivance, and it has been contrived in such a way as to centralize power and concentrate wealth.

Money today is essentially credit, and the control of our collective credit has been monopolized in the hands of a cartel comprised of huge private banks with the complicity of politicians who control central governments.

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

Yes, Virginia, There is a Deep State

May 22, 2018

Yes, Virginia, There is a Deep State

Since the “Russiagate” probe began, US president Donald Trump and his supporters have used lots of bandwidth raging against what they refer to as the “Deep State.” Does the Deep State exist? If so, what is it, and are its forces arrayed specifically against Donald Trump and his administration?

Yes, the Deep State exists — probably more so at one end of its numerous definitions and less so at the other, but to some degree at both ends.

At the seemingly more benign end, the Deep State is simply what one might think of as the “permanent government” — the army of bureaucrats and functionaries whose careers span multiple administrations. Like all career employees of large organizations as groups, they tend to fear and resist change, and their sheer mass has an inertial effect. They energetically do things the old way and drag their feet on new things.

At the end dismissed by mainstream commentators as “conspiracy theory,” the Deep State is an invisible second government which acts in a coordinated manner to protect its prerogatives and advance its interests and favored policies versus changes supposedly demanded by “the people” via their elected representatives in Congress and the presidency. The premier example of this view is the claim that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA and the military industrial complex because (in one version) he was about to get the US out of Vietnam.

If that end of the spectrum sounds crazy to you, consider:

Former FBI attorney Lisa Page and former FBI deputy counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok, while working on a pre-election investigation into alleged collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government, exchanged text messages with incendiary content such as “there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk.”

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

Oceania, ‘Tis For Thee: The World of ‘1984’ Forming Now

April 7, 2018

Oceania, ‘Tis For Thee: The World of ‘1984’ Forming Now

“Oceania” was a nation described in George Orwell’s “1984” as being comprised of Britain (called “Airstrip One,”) and the United States. There were two other superpowers, namely Eurasia and Eastasia. Other lands rich in resources were contested over, such as Africa and assumingly South America…lands never kept by any of three Super-states for any significant period. The “flux” in conquests was exactly what the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) of our time would have termed “necessary” to justify large expenditures: War as the focal purpose, rather than the exceptional event.

We see a parallel in today’s world with huge defense budgets and troop deployments keeping the contracts on the move and siphoning off a considerable amount of national revenues to keep the patriotic war machines moving…respective of each nation. The psychology: keep the population agitated and on a continual war-footing, using a “threat” (either real, created, or imagined) to accomplish this.

You are witnessing the final alignment of those spheres of influence that are almost identical to the novel that Orwell wrote. Look at the situation with the alleged Russian poisoning of an intelligence operative and his daughter in Britain. The United States showed “solidarity” with Great Britain by expelling 60 Russian diplomats and closed the Russian consulate in Seattle, Washington. Russia countered by ordering the expulsion of an equal amount of American embassy personnel.

Yet the interesting fact is that the other nations who followed suit in the “humanitarian crusade” of the alleged Russian poisoning of former FSB agent Skripal and his daughter? The poisoning may have been done by the British, not the Russians. The U.S. State Department has made several statements to the tune that the Russians do not “see eye to eye with us or share our values of freedom and democracy.”

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

Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, Buttering Up the Pentagon

February 21, 2018

Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, Buttering Up the Pentagon

Recently, the Pentagon’s top Asia official, Randall Schriver, told senators that the Afghan war would cost this country’s taxpayers $45 billion in 2018, including $5 billion for the Afghan security forces, $13 billion for U.S. forces in that country, and $780 million in economic aid. How the other $26 billion would be spent is unclear and, given the Pentagon’s record in these years, Schriver’s estimate could prove a low-ball figure. All in all, it’s just another year in this country’s endless war there. Still, if Schriver is on the mark, in Afghanistan alone the American taxpayer will spend more than a fifth of the $200 billion the Trump administration is urging Congress to put up for the rebuilding of America’s crumblinginfrastructure. (The estimated cost of the full war on terror in President Trump’s proposed 2018 budget, according to the Costs of War Project, is approximately… yep, you guessed it: $200 billion.) And, of course, all of that is next to nothing when compared to the $5.6 trillionthe Costs of War Project estimates the war on terror has already cost us (with certain future expenses added in).

Under the circumstances, isn’t it remarkable that the government has sent so many taxpayer dollars tumbling down the rabbit hole of its failed wars and the “reconstruction” scams in Afghanistan and Iraq that once passed for “nation-building”? (By 2014, the U.S. had already sunk more money into “reconstructing” Afghanistan than it had once put into the Marshall Plan to rebuild all of Western Europe — and compare the results of each of those investments!) More remarkable still, for all the bitter political disputes in these years about how government money should be spent, there has never been real disagreement here, no less significant protest, over the decision to put such staggering sums into America’s wars.

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

False Flag Potential in the Middle East: Iran, Syria, and Israel

February 16, 2018

False Flag Potential in the Middle East: Iran, Syria, and Israel

Their End Goal for We the People: “I am the State…the State is all!”

(“Quarlo” from “The Outer Limits,” episode “Soldier”)

History does repeat itself; if not identically, then in identical circumstances and events in different nations. History also does not just “happen,” as there are powerful forces at work in every nation. False flags have been used throughout human history: politicians and oligarchs initiate them to follow a hidden agenda. Too often the masses become the “True Believer” of Eric Hoffer. Worked up into a patriotic frenzy, they charge into the fray…little understanding that the great war or the great crusade is orchestrated by smiling bankers and nabobs, securely “in the rear with the gear,” sending men out to die to attain their secret objectives.

In this vein, consider that the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is not limited to American White Anglo-Saxon Protestants of the United States, but a “conglomerate” of independent nations with the ability to wage war, sustain it, and sell arms. Each independent nation has their own “MIC” but they freely exchange goods and services (what we call arms and “negotiated” conflicts). They march to their own beat but allow themselves to be “guided” by the politicians, the oligarchs (who may or may not actively own industries in the MIC), and the bankers.

The lessons learned by history with the Rothschilds banking family as an example shows how one group of bankers can leverage both sides in a war between two different nations and profit no matter what the outcome. Make no mistake: this has not changed, and if anything, it has become even more “specialized” with private contractors waging wars on behalf of governments…the business of war, sanctioned with the (un)holy “blessing” of a nation-state (or an “actor” or “partner” as they’re now ludicrously termed).

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

Trump Ups Defense Budget By 13% – “Can’t Have World’s Best Military On An Obama Budget”

January 26, 2018

Trump Ups Defense Budget By 13% – “Can’t Have World’s Best Military On An Obama Budget”

With Washington having seemingly turned its turret away from ‘terror’ and back to “revisionist, authoritarian” regimes like ‘Russia and China’, the Military-Industrial Complex is ‘gonna need a bigger budget’ – a 13% bigger $716 billion one by 2019.

US military spending already dwarfed the rest of the world…

But, while presenting the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS2018) of the United States on Friday at the Johns Hopkins University, Secretary of Defense James Mattis painted a picture of a dangerous world in which U.S. power – and all of the supposed “good” that it does around the world – is on the decline.

“Our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare – air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace,” he said. “And it is continually eroding.”

And now, as The Washington Post reports, President Trump is expected to ask for $716 billion in defense spending when he unveils his 2019 budget next month, a major increase that signals a shift away from concerns about rising deficits, U.S. officials said.

The proposed budget is a victory for Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who recently unveiled a strategy that proposes retooling the military to deter and, if necessary, fight a potential conflict with major powers such as China and Russia.

And it represents a setback for deficit hawks such as Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who last year pressed for an increase in defense spending that could be offset by cuts to domestic programs.

The $716 billion figure for 2019 would cover the Pentagon’s annual budget as well as spending on ongoing wars and the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It would increase Pentagon spending by more than 7 percent over the 2018 budget, which still has not passed through Congress.

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

Another Step Toward Armageddon

January 11, 2018

Another Step Toward Armageddon

The US military/security complex has taken another step toward Armageddon. The Pentagon has prepared a nuclear posture review (NPR) that gives the OK to development of smaller “useable” nuclear weapons and permits their use in response to a non-nuclear attack.

As Reagan and Gorbachev understood, but the warmongers who have taken over America do not, there are far too many nuclear weapons already. Some scientists have concluded that even the use of 10 percent of either the US or Russian arsenal would suffice to destroy life on earth.

It is reckless and irresponsible for Washington to make such a decision in the wake of years of aggressive actions taken against Russia. The Clinton criminal regime broke Washington’s promise that NATO would not move one each to the East. The George W. Bush criminal regime pulled out of the ABM Treaty and changed US war doctrine to elevate the use of nuclear weapons from retaliation to first strike. The Obama criminal regime launched a frontal propaganda attack on Russia with crazed Hillary’s denunciation of President Putin as “the new Hitler.” In an effort to evict Russia from its naval base in Crimea, the criminal Obama regime overthrew the Ukrainian government during the Sochi Olympics and installed a Washington puppet. US missile bases have been established on Russia’s border, and NATO conducts war games against Russia on Russian borders.

This is insanity. These and other gratuitous provocations have convinced the Russian military’s Operation Command that Washington is planning a surprise nuclear attack on Russia. The Russian government has replied to these provocations with the statement that Russia will never again fight a war on its own territory.

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

How Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post Became the US Military-Industrial Complex’s Chief Propagandist

January 7, 2018

How Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post Became the US Military-Industrial Complex’s Chief Propagandist

It used to be that the New York Times and the Washington Post competed against each other to be the chief propagandist for the hundred or so top firms who sell to the US federal government — the 100 top “federal contractors,” almost all of which are Pentagon contractors — mainly these are weapons-manufacturing firms, such as the biggest, Lockheed Martin. The federal government is a large part of these firms’ essential market; so, invasions by the US against other countries require lots of their goods and services; and, also, America’s foreign allies additionally buy these weapons; and, right now, US President Trump is demanding that they increase their ‘defense’ budgets to buy more of them. Wars produce corporate profits if (like in the United States) the military suppliers are private corporations instead of government-owned (socialized). Selling wars is crucial to such firms’ bottom lines. And, since there is no law against owning a ‘defense’ contractor and owning or donating to newsmedia (especially newsmedia such as the Times and Post, which publish lots of international news and so can encourage lots of invasions), a sensible business strategy for investors in ‘defense’ stocks is to also own or donate to some international-‘news’ media, in order to generate additional business for the arms-maker or other ‘defense’ firm. Not only does this business-plan relate to such newspapers as the NYT and WP, but they’ll be the focus here, because they are the most important of America’s international-news media.

Serious periodicals, such as The New Republic, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, have also been steady propagandists for ‘defense’ companies, but magazines don’t reverberate through the rest of the mass-media to the extent that the serious national (NYC & DC) newspapers do.

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

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