Home » Posts tagged 'council on foreign relations'

Tag Archives: council on foreign relations

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

The Great Game moves on

September 26, 2021

The Great Game moves on

Following America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, her focus has switched to the Pacific with the establishment of a joint Australian and UK naval partnership.

The founder of modern geopolitical theory, Halford Mackinder, had something to say about this in his last paper, written for the Council on Foreign Relations in 1943. Mackinder anticipated this development, though the actors and their roles at that time were different. In particular, he foresaw the economic emergence of China and India and the importance of the Pacific region.

This article discusses the current situation in Mackinder’s context, taking in the consequences of green energy, the importance of trade in the Pacific region, and China’s current deflationary strategy relative to that of declining western powers aggressively pursuing asset inflation.

There is little doubt that the world is rebalancing as Mackinder described nearly eighty years ago. To appreciate it we must look beyond the West’s current economic and monetary difficulties and the loss of its hegemony over Asia, and particularly note the improving conditions of the Asia’s most populous nations.

Introduction

Following NATO’s defeat in the heart of Asia, and with Afghanistan now under the Taliban’s rule, the Chinese/Russian axis now controls the Asian continental mass. Asian nations not directly related to its joint hegemony (not being members, associates, or dialog partners of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) are increasingly dependent upon it for trade and technology. Sub-Saharan Africa is in its sphere of influence. The reality for America is that the total population in or associated with the SCO is 57% of the world population. And America’s grip on its European allies is slipping.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

From Propaganda To Ego, All Our Major Problems Are Due To Misperception

November 14, 2020

From Propaganda To Ego, All Our Major Problems Are Due To Misperception

The Biden transition team responsible for ushering in the nation’s Return to Decency™️ is as packed full of military-industrial complex lackeys and imperialist sociopaths as you’d expect, with one such manipulator being the Obama administration’s “chief propagandist” Richard Stengel.

The Grayzone‘s Ben Norton has a new write-up on TIME Magazine editor-turned State Department spinmeister-turned MSNBC pundit-turned Biden transition team official Stengel, documenting the political insider’s calls to “rethink” the First Amendment in the name of practicality and his support for the use of propaganda both at home and abroad by the US government.

“There’s another word for master narratives: it’s called history,” Stengel said at a 2018 event organized by the immensely influential think tank Council on Foreign Relations. “Basically every country creates their own narrative story. My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist. I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

“Having once been almost a First Amendment absolutist, I have really moved my position on it, because I just think for practical reasons in society, we have to kind of rethink some of those things,” Stengel said at the same event of the difficulties posed by people freely sharing information on the internet.

Think tank conferences are great, because it’s the best opportunity for ordinary people to see the thought streams of power at their most honest. Think tank denizens love showing off how much they know in front of such audiences, so they’ll often get baited into revealing a lot more than they normally would.

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

How Viral Pandemic Benefits The Globalist Agenda

January 29, 2020

How Viral Pandemic Benefits The Globalist Agenda

The world today suffers from highly fragile economic and geopolitical conditions.  This is not news to most people in the liberty movement that have been tracking the downward spiral for years, but it is news to a majority of average Americans who rarely venture to get in-depth information on any issue.  The fact of the matter is, even though there are millions of us who are aware of the danger, we are still in a minority.

This creates a serious set of frustrations.  When the common citizen is oblivious to the existence of a threat, trying to explain to them the source of that threat becomes a waste of time.  How can they see the root of the problem if they don’t even know the problem is there?

Yes, the world is on the verge of a violent sea-change, but this is not the most important issue.  The most important issue is that this precarious situation is not the product of random chance, simple greed, base human frailty or an “overly complex” system as mainstream experts will predictably claim; it is a deliberately engineered chaos box designed to serve the interests of a select few.

The globalist agenda is complicated in design but simple in its goals:  Order out of chaos.  Create or exploit every crisis to manipulate the public into consenting.  But consent for what?

As Richard N. Gardner, former deputy assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations under Kennedy and Johnson, and a member of the Trilateral Commission, wrote in the April, 1974 issue of the Council on Foreign Relation’s (CFR) journal Foreign Affairs (pg. 558) in an article titled ‘The Hard Road To World Order’: 

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

The Fed Is Tightening More Than It Realizes

November 28, 2018

The Fed Is Tightening More Than It Realizes

effects of fed balance sheet reduction

Before the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Fed’s balance sheet stood at $925 billion—mostly U.S. Treasury securities. After 59 months of asset purchases to push down longer-term interest rates, it had ballooned to a peak of $4.5 trillion, including nearly $1.8 trillion in mortgage securities, in 2014.

In October of 2017, the Fed at last began a slow slimming-down of its balance sheet, allowing a growing amount of maturing securities to roll off monthly without reinvesting the proceeds. In former Fed chair Janet Yellen’s words, the central bank did “not have any experience in calibrating the pace and composition of asset redemptions and sales to actual prospective economic conditions.” She therefore stressed that the Fed saw its balance-sheet reduction primarily as a technical exercise separate from the pursuit of its monetary policy goals—in particular, pushing inflation back up to 2%. The Fed’s main tool for tightening monetary policy in a recovering economy would, therefore, she explained, be raising short-term market interest rates by paying banks greater interest on reserves (IOR). Since December 2015, the Fed has raised the rate on IOR by 195 basis points (1.95%), which has pushed up its short-term benchmark rate—the effective federal funds rate—in tandem.

By historical standards, the Fed’s rate hikes have been cautious. Even with inflation on target and unemployment at historic lows, the Fed has been raising short rates more gradually than in any tightening period going back to the 1950s.

We believe, however, that rate hikes understate the degree of tightening the Fed has imposed over the past year. The reason is that the Fed appears to be underestimating the impact of its balance-sheet reduction. Here is why.

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

The American Empire and its Media

June 3, 2018

The American Empire and its Media

Largely unbeknownst to the general public, executives and top journalists of almost all major US news outlets have long been members of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Established in 1921 as a private, bipartisan organization to “awaken America to its worldwide responsibilities”, the CFR and its close to 5000 elite members have for decades shaped U.S. foreign policy and public discourse about it. As a well-known Council member once explained, the goal has indeed been to establish a global Empire, albeit a “benevolent” one.

Based on official membership rosters, the following illustration for the first time depicts the extensive media network of the CFR and its two main international affiliate organizations: the Bilderberg Group(covering mainly the U.S. and Europe) and the Trilateral Commission (covering North America, Europe and East Asia), both established by Council leaders to foster elite cooperation at the international level.

CFR Media NetworkClick to enlarge 🔎

In a column entitled “Ruling Class Journalists”, former Washington Post senior editor and ombudsman Richard Harwood once described the Council and its members approvingly as “the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States”.

Harwood continued: “The membership of these journalists in the Council, however they may think of themselves, is an acknowledgment of their active and important role in public affairs and of their ascension into the American ruling class. They do not merely analyze and interpret foreign policy for the United States; they help make it. () They are part of that establishment whether they like it or not, sharing most of its values and world views.”

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

May You Live in Stupid, Corrupt and yet Fascinating Times

May 31, 2018

May You Live in Stupid, Corrupt and yet Fascinating Times

In the old days, America’s top spies would complete their tenures at the CIA or one of the other Washington puzzle palaces and segue to more ordinary pursuits. Some wrote their memoirs. One ran for president. Another died a few months after surrendering his post. But today’s national-security establishment retiree has a different game plan. After so many years of brawling in the shadows, he yearns for a second, lucrative career in the public eye. He takes a crash course in speaking in soundbites, refreshes his wardrobe and signs a TV news contract. Then, several times a week, waits for a network limousine to shuttle him to the broadcast news studios where, after a light dusting of foundation and a spritz of hairspray, he takes a supporting role in the anchors’ nighttime shows.

– Politico: The Spies Who Came in to the TV Studio

May you live in stupid, corrupt and yet fascinating times.

– Me, paraphrasing a Chinese curse

I’ve been away the past couple of weeks taking a break with my family. I paid attention to the news, but from a distance. As usual, there’s plenty to talk about.

In the last 24 hours alone, we’ve seen political chaos erupt in Italy and hordes of pundits simultaneously lose their minds over the murder of a prominent Russian journalist that never happened. Such is the world we live in. Stupid, corrupt, yet fascinating.

Of all the things I could’ve written about, you may be surprised by today’s selection. It’s a clip many of you probably saw where Richard Stengel (who was Time Magazine’s managing editor from 2006-2013) admits he approves of government propagandizing its own citizens during a Council on Foreign Relations forum. Here’s the clip.

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

Macquarie: “This Is The End Of The Liberal Order… But At Least No Wars Yet”

March 28, 2018

Macquarie: “This Is The End Of The Liberal Order… But At Least No Wars Yet”

One week after Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass wrote an op-ed in which he waved farewell to the world he helped create, saying “Goodbye, Liberal World Order.” Then overnight, one of Wall Street’s most original, if underappreciated analysts, Macquarie’s Victor Shvets, gave his own unique take on this increasingly sensitive topic, injecting a dose of his unique pragmatism, in a note that one could say has a silver lining based on the title: “The end of liberal order: De-globalization drift; but no wars, yet.” Unfortunately, in a world in which almost every analyst sounds increasingly as skeptical as this website has been for the past 9 years, that’s as far as the optimism goes, as the following note reveals.

* * *

The end of liberal order: De-globalization drift; but no wars, yet

Investors continue to search for order; there is none

Investors seem to be striving to find order and pattern in a world that has neither. It is only human to search for patterns as without some order, there are no investment strategies. Instead, it becomes a world dominated by noise. Whether it is Trump tariffs, CBs (incessant debate – ‘too dovish or too hawkish?’) or Facebook and the role of social media, investors embark on a fairly meaningless task of calculating likely damages while trying to rationalize these actions within confines of conventional economic theory (trade is good; lack of it is bad). As a result, there is a growing chorus of shrill voices about onset of trade wars and/or need for deep regulatory changes. Similarly, any widening of spreads (however small) is almost immediately interpreted as the onset of major liquidity contraction. In a modern world of signals, noise & AIdriven re-pricing, reality is just ‘fake news’ (or basically facts you don’t like).

De-globalization is a fact of life; both trade & capital

Amongst all the noise, it is still useful to examine the latest trade news with some degree of realism. First, de-globalization has been a fact of life for more than a decade. There are already ~50,000 cases outstanding with WTO, with members introducing various anti-dumping duties & non-tariff measures. This is more than double the case load of ’08, and it is bound to grow exponentially; the US is not even the greatest offender. The liberal trade order had died at least a decade ago. Second, global economy is no longer driven by conventional trade, with elasticity close to one (trade to incremental GDP) vs. ~2x in ‘80s-90s.

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

Eric Zuesse: America’s Secret Planned Conquest Of Russia

December 31, 2016

Eric Zuesse: America’s Secret Planned Conquest Of Russia

Submitted by investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  hey’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

America’s Secret Planned Conquest Of Russia

The U.S. government’s plan to conquer Russia is based upon a belief in, and the fundamental plan to establish, “Nuclear Primacy” against Russia — an American ability to win a nuclear war against, and so conquer, Russia.

This concept became respectable in U.S. academic and governmental policymaking circles when virtually simultaneously in 2006 a short-form and a long-form version of an article endorsing the concept, which the article’s two co-authors there named “nuclear primacy,” were published respectively in the world’s two most influential journals of international affairs, Foreign Affairs from the Council on Foreign Relations, and International Security from Harvard. (CFR got the more popular short version, titled “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy”, and Harvard got the more scholarly long version, which was titled “The End of MAD?”.)

This article claimed that the central geostrategic concept during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Mutually Assured Destruction or “MAD” — in which there is no such thing as the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. conquering the other, because the first of the two to attack will itself also be destroyed by the surviving nuclear forces of the one responding to that attack — will soon be merely past history (like the Soviet Union itself already is); and, so, as the short form of the article said, “nuclear primacy remains a goal of the United States”; and, as the long form said, “the United States now stands on the cusp of nuclear primacy.” In other words: arms-control or no, the U.S. should, and soon will, be able to grab Russia (the largest land-mass of any country, and also the one richest in natural resources).

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

President Obama Threatens President Putin with Nuclear War

October 16, 2016

President Obama Threatens President Putin with Nuclear War

“It’ll be at a time of our choosing,” says U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, on NBC’’s “Meet the Press,” to be aired on Sunday, October 16th.

Interviewer Chuck Todd had asked him, “Why would he [Obama] send a message out to Putin?” Biden pursed his lips, paused, and said, with a grim look on his face, “We sent him the message.” Of course that didn’t answer Todd’s question, which was “Why?” Biden and Todd both remained silent for another tense moment. Then, Biden picked up again: “We have the capacity to do it, and, uh,” and Todd interrupted him there with “He’ll know it?” Biden replied: “He’ll know it, and it’ll be at a time of our choosing, and under circumstances that have the greatest impact. Uh, the capacity to do, to fundamentally alter the election, is not what people think; and, uh, I tell you what: to the extent that they do [‘do’ presumably meaning: fundamentally alter the election], we will be proportionate in what we do. And, uh,” Todd again interrupted his interviewee, and said, “So, a message is going to be sent. Will the public know?” Biden replied, “Hope not.”

Of course, that “Hope not” could mean many things. It might mean: A blitz nuclear attack in line with our government’s belief that we now enjoy Nuclear Primacy (an idea that was first published by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2006, and which has never yet been renounced by the U.S. government, during the decade since). That would be very much a public response, which Biden would “hope not” to be ’necessary’. In other words: Biden might have meant, there: “I hope it won’t have to be that.” 

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

In Praise Of Ignorant Politicians…..Unschooled In Beltway Delusions

June 21, 2016

In Praise Of Ignorant Politicians…..Unschooled In Beltway Delusions

The Imperial City deserves to be sacked by insurgent politicians of the very ignorant kind. That is, outsiders unschooled in its specious groupthink and destructive delusions of grandeur.

That’s why Donald Trump’s challenge to the beltway’s permanent bipartisan ruling class is so welcome. He is largely ignorant of the neocon and war hawk catechisms and sophistries propounded by joints like the Council on Foreign Relations.

But owing to his overweening self-confidence, he doesn’t hesitate to lob foreign policy audibles, as it were, from the Presidential campaign’s line of scrimmage.

It is these unpredictable outbursts of truth and common sense, not his bombast, bad manners and bigotry, that has the Acela Corridor in high dudgeon. The Donald’s establishment bettors are deathly afraid that he might confirm to the unwashed electorate of Flyover America what it already suspects.

Namely, that Washington’s hyper-interventionism and ungodly expensive imperial footprint all around the globe has nothing at all to do with their security and safety, even as it saddles them with massive public debts and the threat of jihadist blowback to the homeland.

For Trump’s part, the fact is that most of his wild pitches——the Mexican Wall, the Muslim ban, waterboarding—-are basically excesses of campaign rhetoric that would likely get fashioned into something far more palatable if he were ever in a position to govern. By contrast, the fundamental consensus of our bipartisan rulers is a mortal threat to peace, prosperity and democratic rule.

Worse still, the beltway consensus is so entombed in groupthink that the machinery grinds forward from one folly to the next with hardly a peep of dissent. Nothing could better illustrate that deleterious dynamic, in fact, than the NATO warships currently trolling around the Black Sea.

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

Interview With Dr. Benn Steil, Director of International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations

February 9, 2016

INTERVIEW WITH DR BENN STEIL, DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS AT THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Dr. Benn Steil is senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.  He is also the founding editor of International Finance, a top scholarly economics journal, and lead writer of the Council’s Geo-Graphics economics blog.  Prior to his joining the Council in 1999, he was director of the International Economics Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.  He came to the Institute in 1992 from a Lloyd’s of London Tercentenary Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he received his MPhil and DPhil (PhD) in economics.  He also holds a BSc in economics summa cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Steil has written and spoken widely on international finance, monetary policy, financial markets, and economic history.  He has testified before the U.S. House, Senate, and CFTC on financial market and monetary issues.  He is a regular op-ed contributor at the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.  His latest book, The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order, won the 2013 Spear’s Book Award in Financial History, took third prize in CFR’s 2014 Arthur Ross Book Award competition, was shortlisted for the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize (“the world’s most important prize for non-fiction,” according to The Economist), and was the top book-of-the-year choice in Bloomberg’s 2013 poll of global policymakers and CEOs.  The book has been called “a triumph of economic and diplomatic history” by the Financial Times, “a superb history” by the Wall Street Journal, “the gold standard on its subject” by the New York Times, and “the publishing event of the season” by Bloomberg’s Tom Keene.

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

Soros and CFR Exploit Refugee Crisis for New World Order

February 2, 2016

Soros and CFR Exploit Refugee Crisis for New World Order

Soros and CFR Exploit Refugee Crisis for New World Order

After having literally created the refugee crisis from start to finish — destroying multiple Middle Eastern nations and then demanding that Europe accept the millions of displaced victims — the internationalist establishment is now exploiting the chaos it unleashed to push more globalism and statism. Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are all in the cross-hairs of billionaire George Soros (shown), the global government-promoting Council on Foreign Relations, and other key globalist forces. Among other efforts, the refugee-crisis instigators are using the horror they unleashed as a pretext to erode what remains of national sovereignty in those regions — all while further empowering supranational institutions such as the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, and even a globalist-backed “Middle East Union” yet to be formally unveiled. A new “Marshall Plan” and even an EU paramilitary force with unprecedented powers are also on the agenda, all on the road toward what establishment voices regularly refer to as a “New World Order.”

With the refugee situation quickly spiraling out of control across parts of the continent — the mass sexual assaults on New Year across Germany and beyond, the implosion of law and order around Calais in France, the widely reported overrunning of Stockholm’s central station by refugee youths, and more — the public is now growing increasingly outraged. Indeed, as The New Americanreported last week, even the establishment forces responsible for unleashing the chaos are now loudly denouncing it. The New York Times, an establishment mouthpiece that dutifully promoted the globalist wars that sparked the refugee crisis, and then the subsequent flooding of the West with the victims of those wars, ran an op-ed pointing out that Germany was “on the brink” due to the crisis. Top European political bosses have also been sounding the alarm.

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

Negative Interest Rates Already in Fed’s Official Scenario

February 2, 2016

Negative Interest Rates Already in Fed’s Official Scenario

But forget QE-4.

The Germans, with Teutonic precision, call them “Punishment Interest.” Negative interest rates are spreading from the ECB’s negative deposit rate across the bond market and to some savings accounts in the Eurozone. The idea is to enrich existing bond holders and flog savers until their mood improves. Stock prices are allowed to get crushed by reality.

Negative interest rates destroy one of the most essential mechanisms in an economy: the pricing of risk. Investors end up taking huge risks with no reward. Many of them will get cleaned out down the road.

In Switzerland, punishment interest already causes “perverse unpredictable effects,” as mortgage rates have started to soar. It’s wreaking havoc in Denmark and Sweden. Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz let the idea float that he’d unleash punishment interest to destroy the Canadian dollar. The Bank of Japan announced Friday morning – timed for maximum market effect – that it too would inflict negative interest rates on its subjects.

In the US, Ben Bernanke has been out there preaching to the choir about them. Over-indebted corporate America, except for the banks, would love this absurdity; it would allow them to actually make money off their mountain of debt.

“Potentially anything – including negative interest rates – would be on the table,” Fed Chair Janet Yellen told a House of Representatives committee in early November.

Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer has been publicly obsessing about them for a while. Monday, during the Q&A after his speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, he said that negative interest rates are “working more than I can say I expected in 2012.”

It seems to be just talk. But negative interest rates are already baked into the official scenario for 2016.

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

The Global Economic Reset Has Begun

December 9, 2015

The Global Economic Reset Has Begun

In my last article, I outlined the deliberately engineered trend toward the forced “harmonization” of national economies and monetary policies, as well as the ultimate end goal of globalists: a single world currency system controlled by the International Monetary Fund and, by extension, global governance, which internationalists sometimes refer to in their more honest public moments as the “new world order.”

The schematic for the new world order, according to the admissions of the internationalists, cannot possibly include the continued existence of U.S. geopolitical and economic dominance. The plan, in fact, requires the destabilization and reformation of America into a shell of its former glory. The most important element of this plan demands the removal of the U.S. dollar as the de facto world reserve currency, a change that would devastate our current financial structure.

I outlined with undeniable evidence the reality that major governments, including the BRICS governments of the East, are fully on board with the globalist agenda. There is no way around it; the BRICS, including Russia and China, have openly called for a global monetary system centralized and dictated by the IMF using the SDR basket. This same plan was outlined decades ago in the Rothschild-owned magazine The Economist. We are witnessing that plan being implemented in front of our very eyes today.

For the past couple of years, the current head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, has used the phrase “global economic reset” often in her speeches and interviews. There is some (deliberate) ambiguity to this notion, but after sitting through hours upon hours of her most boring and repetitive discussions in globalist think tanks such as the Council On Foreign Relations, the consistent message is pretty straightforward. If anyone can stand to listen to this woman’s carefully crafted prattle and well-vetted half-truths for more than five minutes, I suggest they watch this particular speech given in January at the CFR:

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

CFR Says China Must Be Defeated And TPP Is Essential To That

May 6, 2015

CFR Says China Must Be Defeated And TPP Is Essential To That

Wall Street’s Council on Foreign Relations has issued a major report, alleging that China must be defeated because it threatens to become a bigger power in the world than the U.S.

This report, which is titled “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China,” is introduced by Richard Haass, the CFR’s President, who affirms the report’s view that, “no relationship will matter more when it comes to defining the twenty-first century than the one between the United States and China.”

Haass gives this report his personal imprimatur by saying that it “deserves to become an important part of the debate about U.S. foreign policy and the pivotal U.S.-China relationship.” He acknowledges that some people won’t agree with the views it expresses.

The report itself then opens by saying: “Since its founding, the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and maintaining preeminent power over various rivals, first on the North American continent, then in the Western hemisphere, and finally globally.” It praises “the American victory in the Cold War.” It then lavishes praise on America’s imperialistic dominance: “The Department of Defense during the George H.W. Bush administration presciently contended that its ‘strategy must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor’—thereby consciously pursuing the strategy of primacy that the United States successfully employed to outlast the Soviet Union.”

The rest of the report is likewise concerned with the international dominance of America’s aristocracy or the people who control this country’s international corporations, rather than with the welfare of the public or as the U.S. Constitution described the objective of the American Government: “the general welfare.”

 

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

Post navigation

← Older posts

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress