The damage done to Afghanistan by the U.S. Empire will last generations.

Image provided by LuceMentis

On September 11th 2001 the United States was victim to the worse terrorist attack in history. Nearly three thousand innocent civilians lost their lives to this horrific act of violence and hatred. Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization allegedly responsible for the destruction, had been operating out of remote parts of Afghanistan. Even though not a single hijacker from any of the planes was from Afghanistan (most were from Saudi Arabia and Egypt), the Bush administration quickly mobilized the armed forces, obtained the politically dubious AUMF from a jingoistic Congress, and invaded the country in October with it’s NATO allies. These events rapidly transpired in a political and social climate of despair, rage, fear and feverish nationalism. What began as a counter-terrorism operation to hunt down those who orchestrated 9-11 became a “global war on terror” that engulfed much of the Middle East and parts of Africa. Now, after 20 years of military occupation, the U.S. government has finally negotiated an end to the war with the Taliban, and has withdrawn it’s soldiers. The recent evacuations have been predictably chaotic, with hundreds of thousands desperately trying to escape.This entirely preventable tragedy deserves critical examination and moral reflection. Not only for the damage already done, but for the suffering that will inevitably endure. Both Afghanistan and the United States will never be the same again.

During the 1980’s, the CIA backed the mujahideen insurgents against the Soviet Union, who had intervened in Afghanistan to support it’s recently formed socialist government, first under Nur Muhammad Taraki. According to former Secretary of Defense and CIA director Robert Gates, the agency was supporting the rebels six months before the Kremlin sent it’s army to Afghanistan [1]. By his own admission, this was a deliberate effort to lure Russia into the territory. This claim was again substantiated by former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Billions of dollars, in addition to weapons, logistics, and even training, was channeled into supporting these “holy warriors” during the proxy war. The strategy was to create a Vietnam like quagmire for the USSR, bleeding it dry by exhausting its military and economic resources. Thus Afghanistan became another staging ground for a cold-war conflict between two foreign super-powers, the U.S. and the USSR. For Afghan’s, it was a brutal civil war, between the socialist central government and Islamic fundamentalist rebels. By 1988 President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to withdraw the soviet troops. By 1989, the Berlin wall between East and West Germany had fallen. By 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. Back in Afghanistan, many of the former members of the mujahideen would be recruited to Al-Qaeda, or splinter off to join the Taliban. Among their ranks was a man from a wealthy family who had close connections to Saudi Arabia’s royalty. His name was Osama Bin Laden.

The astonishing irony here bears repeating. This colossal miscalculation was made with incredible hubris, and the eventual tragedy on 9-11 was made all the more painful for it. The intelligence community have coined a term for this. Its known as “blowback”, which describes unintended consequences occurring from clandestine U.S. foreign policy. While the U.S.G (might) have been blindsided by Al-Qaeda’s attacks on American soil, Bin Laden’s motivations were perfectly understood. Throughout the 1990’s, Osama Bin Laden explicitly stated his reasons for escalating hostilities against the United States. He opposed the U.S. governments support for Israel, and the continued military presence in Saudi Arabia following the Gulf War. Nevertheless, his Fatawā was effectively ignored. It began with the 1993 bombing of the world trade center. This was followed by coordinated assaults on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In 1999, President Clinton imposed sanctions against Afghanistan, in hopes they would turn over Bin Laden to U.S. authorities for prosecution. Like virtually all sanctions of this kind, it did nothing to achieve its goals, and only made life harder for the average Afghan, the majority who lived in poverty. In October of 2000, suicide bombers attacked the USS Cole that was anchored in the Yemeni port of Aden. The most powerful, technologically sophisticated intelligence community in the world was either incapable or unwilling to properly address this growing threat to national security. At the turn of the 21st century, their failure played out in New York City and Washington D.C.

An important part of the official mythology around the Afghanistan war needs to be corrected in the public’s consciousness. While the terrorist attack on September 11th was the catalyst of the invasion, it was not it’s genesis. In 2004, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified (skip to 1:35.00) before the the 9-11 commission that the plan to pursue regime change in Afghanistan was made long in advance. He cited national security presidential directive nine (NSPD9, for short) as being drafted in the spring of the same year and awaiting the presidents signature by summer. The directive was modified after the attacks, and the framework for a new national security state came into existence shortly after. Another persistent deception that was solidified into official orthodoxy was the inevitability of war against the Taliban, who was accused of offering sanctuary to Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network. It has created the impression that the only remaining option was a full-scale military campaign. This is an incontrovertible falsehood. The Taliban had offered to capture and extradite Bin Laden to a third-party to stand trial if U.S. authorities could provide evidence of his guilt in the September 11th attacks. The Bush administration refused. After the bombing campaign began, the Taliban again tried to negotiate, offering Osama Bin Laden so long as the bombing ceased. Again, the Bush administration and his Neo-conservative cohorts rejected any deal. In December of 2001, then leader of the Taliban, Mohammed Omar, offered to surrender to the U.S. and NATO forces. His offer was denied, and the war continued. The mission of apprehending the terrorists behind 9-11 and destroying Al-Qaeda was immediately changed to overthrowing the government of Afghanistan and creating a regime that would be subservient to Washington. This was no longer merely about retribution, or justice for the victims. It was about expanding the U.S. empire into a geopolitically strategic territory, sharing a border with Iran, and numerous former states of the Soviet Union. The initial authority granted to the military under the AUMF for the limited purpose of assassinating or detaining Osama Bin Laden and destroying his international network was manipulated into a carte blanche to serve a greater imperialistic agenda.

The psychotic appetite for violence, arrogance, or simple vacuity of the politicians and war planners behind the occupation of Afghanistan is extraordinary. Yet their monomaniacal quest to transform the country into a colony under U.S. control came at a horrifying cost. While there is no way to quantify the profound suffering of the Afghan people, there have been credible studies to calculate the casualties of the war. According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, more than 241,000 people have been murdered in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Approximately 71,000 have been civilians. Then there are the millions of refugees who have been forced out of their homes, their cities and villages obliterated by U.S and NATO airstrikes. Additionally, nearly 2,500 U.S. soldiers, and nearly 4,000 U.S. contractors were killed. Roughly 20,000 have been wounded. For all of the blood spilled, and the human lives needlessly sacrificed, the war also came at a staggering economic cost. It is estimated that the U.S. government has spent around $2 trillion. In 2015, Wikileaks published “The Wikileaks Files: The world according to US Empire” , based off of tens of thousands of secret documents. On the chapter concerning Afghanistan, they report ” Since October of 2001, US taxpayers have paid about $715 billion for the war in Afghanistan alone. That translates into more than $10 million every hour- every day, every year since 2001″ (pg. 387). And that was six years ago. More recently, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report (abbreviated SIGAR) “A 2021 SIGAR report found that the United States has spent nearly $7.8 billion on capital assets in Afghanistan, including buildings, transmission lines and substations, roads and bridges, motor vehicles and aircraft. Of that total, nearly 31 percent- $2.4 billion, was spent on assets that were not being used as intended, remain unused, or have been abandoned or destroyed” (pg. 39). It should come as no surprise there was widespread fraud. One can only imagine how that money could have instead been used to improve the standard of living for the American citizenry. While it might have been an egregious waste of money for the public, a small number of U.S. defense contractors saw massive profits. This was a once in a generation opportunity, and the military industrial complex thrived like never before. For corporations like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and others, the war in Afghanistan was unfathomably good business. Many of their executives are likely disappointed at the withdrawal.

It wasn’t just the defense contractors who were building vast fortunes from the occupation. The land was torn apart and left vulnerable to plunder and lucrative exploitation. One of the largest scale projects was the ambitious TAPI pipeline.The $7.6 Billion pipeline would carry natural gas through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. The energy industries in each participating country, along with their bureaucratic agencies, could anticipate windfall gains. But the abundance of natural resources in ancient Afghanistan go even deeper. The Department of Defense discovered potentially trillions of dollars worth of mineral deposits in the earth. For the legions of covetous foreign investors, vast quantities of gold, iron, copper, aluminum are tremendous temptations. But the greatest prize of all might be the significant veins of lithium, which is used to manufacture many consumer electronics, including rechargeable batteries. Of particular interest to the political elite in the U.S, it can be used in the development of rocket fuel and thermonuclear weapons. The rapacious looting of Afghanistan by the United States and it’s allies can only be compared to the old conquests of the Holy Roman Empire.

So now the United States is ostensibly ending it’s longest war, being decidedly defeated by an enemy is helped create 40 years ago. It remains to be seen to what extent the CIA’s lethal drone program continues. Another matter of concern is possible covert Special Forces launching assaults from bases in neighboring countries. Still, it is the complete withdrawal of the U.S. military that seems to signal the long overdue end of occupation. During the course of the war, the United States was fundamentally transformed. It massively expanded it’s surveillance apparatus, which systematically violates the privacy of millions of people, at home and abroad. It implemented a secret “enhanced interrogation” program, which is just the Deep State’s euphemism for torture. It should be noted that torture is both unconstitutional (Amendment VIII) and illegal under multiple treaties within international law, which the U.S. government is a signatory to. The national security state harnessed the war on terror and used it to greatly diminish civil liberties domestically, while creating entirely new agencies and departments like the TSA and DHS. All of this resulted in enormous increases to defense spending, while subsequently adding trillions of dollars to the unsustainable national debt.

Afghanistan now lays in complete ruins. The vaunted Afghan security forces were effortlessly routed by the Taliban. President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as they quickly advanced upon Kabul. The U.S. has left some $90 billion dollars worth of military equipment during it’s humiliating retreat in the hands of the victorious Taliban. Now the populace will be once again subjected to the oppressive rule of this fanatical, theocratic militaristic organization. It goes without saying these advocates of Sharia law despise western liberalism, human rights, and more generally anything that can be attributed to modernity. No amount of reparations will be able to repair the damage inflicted upon society in Afghanistan as a direct result of U.S. foreign policy.

Ten years after the enigmatic [2] assassination of Osama Bin Laden, it is only fair, believing in the principle everyone should be treated equally before the law, that the world now turn it’s attention to those in power who are responsible for the complete destruction of Afghanistan. These morally reprehensible crimes must be answered for. And time is running out. Many of the chief architects of the war in Afghanistan are getting on in age. Many effusively adoring obituaries were written in the mainstream press after former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld passed away in June. But there is an ethical obligation in society to bring these warmongers to justice. The victims of the war, both in the Middle East and the United States, deserve as much. A shortlist of the perpetrators would include President George W. Bush (he can continue his painting hobby in prison). Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and his successor Condoleezza Rice, Director of the CIA George Tenet, Director of the NSA Michael Hayden, Director of the FBI Robert Mueller, Chairman of Joint Chief of Staff Richard Myers, and their British co-conspirator Prime Minister Tony Blair. While their prosecutions cannot reverse the catastrophic consequences of their malevolent decisions, it would prove to the international community that no one, not even those who plot to rule over the world, are above the law. It wouldn’t be enough to dismantle the U.S. empire’s military and economic hegemony, but it would be an inspiring beginning.

“War is the faro table of governments, the nations the dupes of the games” -Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

To contact the author of this article, please write to Quinctius1991@protonmail.com

[1] “Blowback: The costs and consequences of American Empire” . Second edition, 2004. Chalmers Johnson.

[2] The legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claims the circumstances surrounding Bin Laden’s death are quite different from the official narrative that was pushed by the Obama administration. You can watch an insightful interview he gives on the subject here.

The battle against Bio-security segregation

In March of 2020 I released a two part article about the Covid-19 pandemic. The first article focused on the economic devastation. The second article focused on the political consequences which, with the benefit of hindsight, were only beginning. At the time of those articles publication, the approximate death toll in the U.S. was 27,000. Today, it stands at roughly 600,000. The global death toll sits at roughly four million. Even when considering the plethora of complications from calculating these figures, such as countries under-reporting, or over-reporting fatalities (there are benefits to both), or individuals who died directly because of a covid-19 infection or different medical reasons who happened to test positive at the time of death, there can be no disputing that the pandemic has resulted in a staggering loss of life. Valid and important debates will continue into the future about the methodologies used to more accurately differentiate between correlation and causation in reported deaths. These are not trivial concerns and should be studied objectively. Nevertheless, over the past year and four months the tragic death toll has been significant in magnitude, to say nothing of the profound emotional experience for those who have lost family and friends. I feel obligated to preface this article with the aforementioned facts, because it is not my intention to trivialize the many deaths from COVID-19.

Equally important, but not nearly as covered in mainstream journalism (a reoccurring issue, here at TMR), is the political nightmare that has grown out of the pandemic. Alternative, independent corners of news have reported on this admirably, but it has faced intense criticism and increasing censorship. To question the prevailing narratives around the pandemic is often conflated with the denial of it’s existence, or at the very least it’s severity. It would seem that every cynical and ominous prediction I made more than a year ago, has come true. I have taken no pleasure in watching how these initial conjectures have been proven painfully correct, and how these trends have only accelerated in recent weeks. I wish more than anything that I could have been embarrassingly and unequivocally mistaken in my political and economic forecasts. But that is not the state of the world, or the ongoing response to the pandemic. The title to this article may seem like click-bait hyperbole, but it is not. Citizens throughout the world are witnessing a particularly dangerous phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, not by the new “Delta variant”, but by rapacious, power hungry political authorities, and their corporate accomplices.

The extraordinary speed in which the vaccines were produced is, by all measures, a great scientific accomplishment, and a gift to humanity. The expediency of its research, development, and it’s mass production, has no historical parallel. But there is already, invariably, nefarious political machinations being deployed with the vaccine. It has been transformed into a tool of social control, and there can be, once again, no historical precedent. There is no elaborate conspiracy behind this, as its being done quite transparently, with little attempt to conceal itself. It can best be described as the construction of a “Bio-Security state”, which in many respects shares characteristics of the “national security state” which manifested at the turn of the century, and the U.S. empire’s “War on Terror” following 9/11.

In the United states, this pernicious form of authoritarianism began with the draconian lock-downs. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of small businesses going bankrupt, and tens of millions of people losing their jobs. We can only hope that one day, many generations from now, we’ll have the clarity to understand this for what it was: a deeply unethical, misguided disaster of our own making. The prodigious amount of suffering it unnecessarily caused should not be forgotten. Heart wrenching increases in attempted suicides among the adolescent , drug overdoses, and diagnosed cases of anxiety and depression. Children deprived of their education. Individuals cruelly denied their right to comfort dying family members in hospitals. Callously regulated funerals. This was a venomous assault on human dignity itself. During these restrictions on peoples freedom of movement and association, we witnessed one story after the next of self-righteous, hypocritical politicians violating the very rules they imposed upon their electorate. It was truly an illuminating moment of “rules for thee but not for me”. Which begs the question- do these elected officials not believe Covid-19 is as dangerous as they repeatedly lecture the public it is, or do they merely have a cavalier attitude towards their own health and safety? All of this has been made far worse by an aggressive attack on freedom of speech. Censorship against unpopular opinions regarding various aspects of the pandemic, theories of it’s origin, and the governments response to it, has been implemented on a scale quite inconceivable until recently. These egregious infringements on open discourse have been justified as judicious curtailments on “misinformation”. The only problem of course, as many have pointed out, is the very term “misinformation” is so nebulous, so malleable, and open to interpretation, that it can be easily manipulated by whoever wields power. None of this censorship would be possible however if it were not for the corrupt alliance between powerful Silicon Valley tech monopolies and the government which they dutifully serve. While criticism of the state, and international NGO’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis is continuing to be suppressed, the Biden administration recently made an even more chilling declaration. According to the graceless spin doctor and official white house propagandist, press secretary Jen Psaki recently remarked “You shouldn’t be banned from one platform, and not others, if you are providing misinformation out there“. What does this insinuate, exactly? Will there be a centralized government agency that works (read: colludes) directly with social media companies? We already know, because of Edward Snowden, that the largest tech companies in the world, including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple, (and many others) are part of the NSA’s notorious PRISM program, which shares astronomical volumes of private data on their users. Is it so hard to imagine something similar being arranged, outside of the public’s view, to quell “misinformation” about the virus, and the vaccines? And what are the implications of a recent article by Politico, claiming “Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages”. It continues, saying “The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely“. But is that really the goal? After everything that has happened, how could anyone dismiss skepticism?

The most powerful tool in the nascent Bio-security state’s arsenal is undoubtedly the vaccine itself. It seems like only yesterday that the Biden administration was assuring a weary and demoralized public that vaccines would not be mandatory. Consider that, according to the CDC itself, 93% of all COVID-19 deaths are from people age 50 years old and over. Of the remaining 7%, 3.1 % are people age 40-49. Leaving only 4% of all Covid-19 related deaths to people under the age of 40, and with a complex variety of potential comorbidities. Knowing these facts, is it really reasonable to expect everyone, even people who are statistically at extremely low risk, to get the vaccine? This was originally the prevailing belief. People who had a higher chance of dying from COVID-19 were strongly encouraged to get the vaccine. This made sense. But the idea of universal, mandatory vaccinations was beyond question. It was preposterous. But much has changed since Biden and his handlers took office. The message has become dramatically different. As the servile presstitutes at the New York Times have reported, mandatory vaccines are coming into full force. Google, Facebook, Morgan Stanley, and the Washington Post have all started requiring their employees to get the vaccine. More than 600 universities are following suit. State governments are now doing the same, such as New York. President Biden has just announced all federal employees must obtain the vaccine, or they will be required to continue to wear a face mask, and be regularly (up to twice a week) tested. Amazon, one of the largest employers in the U.S, has so far refrained from forcing their workers to get the vaccine, instead trying to bribe them . The trend is clear. While the U.S. government has (as of yet) not issued any absolute dictates to the public to get vaccinated, they are pursuing a different strategy. They will circumvent their original pledge by applying maximum pressure on the private sector, and allow state governments to create their own policies for their workforce. Delegating the more overtly coercive tactics to other parties keeps their hands ostensibly clean. But in the end, the results would be the same.

In parts of Europe, there have been dystopian developments. The Bio-Security state is evolving far more rapidly, in many ways. One example is the emergence of “Covid-19 passes”. Until recently it was derided as the delusional nonsense of fringe conspiracy theorists. Now, its become a frightening reality. In France, Premier consul Macron has had a change of heart on the matter. In his estimation, the unruly Sans-culottes cannot be trusted to take care of their own health during the pandemic. A new law, passed by parliament, will require all public spaces, such as restaurants, bars, and even public transportation, to require proof of vaccination. Failure to present the Covid-19 pass will prohibit people from accessing such services. In the U.K, despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s original, seemingly pertinacious claims that Covid-19 passes would not be used in public life, similar plans are now being implemented. As of now, they will not be required by law. But this could very well change, under the current political climate. Italy has created their own version of a Covid-19 pass (known as a green-pass), which will go into effect beginning August 12th. And yet despite these repressive, Orwellian measures, there are inspiring signs of popular resistance. Over the past week, some 161,000 people protested throughout France. In England, thousands defiantly marched in London. Even more protests erupted in Germany, Spain, Greece and Italy. Many Europeans are collectively fighting against the Bio-Security state, realizing that their way of life, and above all, their liberty, is being stolen from them by technocrats and the political elite under the guise of protecting them from the virus. They now apprehend this modern Trojan horse for what it truly is. They are no longer willing to passively tolerate such reprehensible abuses of power.

Returning to the United States, the situation is, as of this writing, the antithesis to Europe. In addition to being inflicted by COVID-19, a significant portion of the population also suffers from another dangerous ailment. A collective, psychological one. Namely, stockholm syndrome. It’s difficult to diagnose the exact cause, in the American context. Is it simply a general shift in broader culture that’s occurred over the years, towards political apathy and indifference? But that doesn’t explain the deference, the eager conformity to rules that are often patently absurd or pointless. Anyone with their finger on the the pulse of today’s political and cultural current can detect something deeper. The root cause might be that ever since the beginning of the pandemic, many millions of nervous news consumers have been mentally traumatized by the constant, hysterical, grotesquely exaggerated mainstream media’s coverage on the virus. For many corporate news outlets, particularly on television, peddling a horrifying narrative around the virus day after day is immensely profitable. Simultaneously, it enabled the establishment to psychologically terrorize people into submission around new Covid-19 guidelines. This ceaseless media coverage, carefully crafted to maximize peoples fear, has instilled in many peoples minds a distorted understanding of the pandemic and how to evaluate the circumstances. Because of this conditioning, they lacked the ability to rationally put the danger into perspective. But even this theory cannot account for the pseudo-cultish reverence for individuals like the Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Anthony Fauci. Still, many Americans seem to take an almost masochistic satisfaction in repeating new pandemic-era rituals. Joggers who refuse to remove their face mask, even while they are outdoors, in the sweltering summer heat, no one within multiple meters of their proximity. People who rigidly maintain ridiculously wide distance from others while standing in line at the supermarket. Those who make it their civic duty to chastise people on Twitter and Facebook for not properly practicing social distancing. What makes this behavior even more inexplicable is a great number of these people have already received the vaccine! And yet, they persist, like old habits they can’t seem to stop. All the while, many clamor for the state to exert greater restrictions on social life, perhaps believing the authorities can purify the spaces they once occupied and make them clean and safe again. They dare not return to pre-pandemic life. They have become neurotic, paranoid, germaphobe’s who are seeking an artificially safe existence.

It is regrettable that this requires stating, but nothing here should be misconstrued as “anti-vaccine“. This is not a screed against the vaccine itself, by any means. There is an abundance of evidence that shows the vaccine is safe and efficacious, for the overwhelming majority of people who receive it. If you are elderly or immunocompromised, in other words, people who are most at risk from the virus, it would be prudent to take the vaccine for your own protection. But it must be your choice, and yours alone. It cannot be done under coercion or duress. If you believe in individual autonomy, and by logical extension, self-ownership over ones body and mind, you cannot justify the state forcing the vaccine on people against their conscience.

It’s not that COVID-19 isn’t a real threat to many people. It’s that governments, NGO’s, and powerful corporations have capitalized on the health crisis to serve their own agendas. In the emerging Bio-Security state, a new kind of caste system is being socially engineered. The population will be divided into two groups: those who have taken the vaccine, and follow the new regimes rules, and those who have not. The latter group will be reduced to a second-class citizen, who face institutionalized discrimination. They will be cast out of public life, with no ethical recourse. The establishment will arrogantly present them with a false choice. Either submit to their authority, and take the vaccine, or be isolated and ostracized. Take the vaccine, or be deprived of their livelihood, and be driven into poverty. And that’s no choice at all. It’s immoral manipulation. It’s predatory blackmail. And it’s no ultimatum anyone should be forced to accept in a free society.

The only solution to such authoritarianism is widespread noncompliance. Europe now leads the way. Hopefully the rest of the world will follow, before it’s too late.

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power, corrupts absolutely”– Lord Acton

The post-election analysis

Good luck, America

With the smoldering ashes still glowing from the national conflagration better known as the presidential election, The Mowgli Report will endeavor to present an analysis of the sordid affair, and look at the future consequences from this historic moment in the divided states of America.

Shortly after the AP declared Joe Biden the winner, securing the necessary 270 electoral votes needed for victory, the #Resistance, and millions of Democratic party loyalists flooded the streets and celebrated in a spontaneous wave of ecstasy. Packed shoulder to shoulder, the revelry was exhibited from coast to coast (also being the primary territories of liberal support). From New York City to Seattle, people danced, smashed pots and pans together from their balconies, waved Biden-Harris flags, and started wailing and hollering in rapture. At last, the Neo-nazi dictator, who according to one CNN guest was going to kill more people than Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong combined, has been dethroned! Despite the massive crowds of people gathered, resembling evening commuters in a Tokyo train station- there was little concern about the spread of COVID-19 in the mainstream media. Indeed, there seems to be a rather strange pattern. With Black Lives Matter protests (and sometimes riots), there was little concern for COVID-19 spreading, (which has now killed roughly 239,000 people in the US). But when anti-lockdown protests emerged, mostly working class conservatives who desperately needed their jobs back to survive, they were met with condemnation. Or when people across the political spectrum who were deeply disturbed by the growing infringement on civil liberties during the government’s response to the pandemic tried sounding the alarm, there was condemnation. Or when Trump decided to hold large rallies with his adoring MAGA followers, there was caustic condemnation. The mainstream media was quick to portray these events as major risks to public health, labeling them “superspreaders”. These were acts of social irresponsibility, of narrow-minded selfishness. It’s almost as if, when politically left-leaning/progressive causes, which align with most of the mainstream media’s biases, organizes itself in the streets, the threat of transmitting the virus magically disappears. One does not need to be a particularly shrewd political observer to see the blatant double standards and glaring hypocrisy. COVID-19 has been exploitatively politicized, as the mainstream media’s own reporting has undeniably shown.

Outside of the political theater, one might begin to wonder where all of this is headed. According to the most recent numbers (and these are likely to change, as recounts might be initiated in several states) it seems the nation is paralyzed in political and cultural opposition. Biden pulled together, by some miracle, 75 million votes. Trump scraped together 71. As the New York Times, and others, have pointed out, that would mean Biden broke a historic record for number of votes, followed only by Trump. This perfectly illustrates the astonishing level of polarization in the U.S. today. A number of reports, alleging a wide range of misconduct, manipulation, fraud, or other suspicious activities, will only further inflame the passions of those who feel they’ve been swindled. To name only a few- you have the United States Postal Service whistleblower Richard Hopkins in Pennsylvania, who alleges his supervisor was discussing backdating mail-in ballots so they could be counted. You have a number of software glitches in voting machines, across the country (although you have the establishment friendly Snopes, “the fact checking” website, reassuring us such glitches were remedied and the correct votes properly given to their respective candidates). Then there was the rather dubious sight of windows being covered up at a Detroit ballot counting center. Whatever their reason (poll workers claimed to be protecting private voter information) it does not inspire confidence in the transparency of our election system.

And yet, all of that might be immaterial. The nightmare scenario would probably play out something like this: the media has claimed Biden the clear victor. Millions of Americans begin to celebrate their newly anointed leader. Millions more refuse to accept the election results. The geriatric Biden and his opportunistic, charlatan vice president, quickly assemble their transition team, and make preparations for their inauguration. Meanwhile, in a desperate attempt to stay in power, Trump assembles a team of lawyers to investigate alleged fraud, and a long, protracted legal battle ensues, which could make its way to the supreme court. This would be something of a Bush vs Gore redux from the distant 2000 election. Except that the United States is a very different place today than it was twenty years ago. Democrats would accuse Trump of rigging the courts in his favor, with his recent supreme court appointments. Trump and many of his more raucous acolytes would perceive the election as nothing short of a treacherous Coup d’état, orchestrated by liberal elites. While the litigation was ongoing, violent left-wing groups (such as ANTIFA) and right-wing groups (such as the Proud Boys, and Patriot Prayers) would clash in the street. Whether or not this social unrest could manifest itself into a total civil war is uncertain, but given the extreme political polarization of the population, the prevalent distrust with our public institutions, political authority, and even the legitimacy of our elections, the possibility cannot be entirely dismissed. Of course, a second civil war in the United States would look absolutely nothing like the first one. There would be no great fracturing of the union, with state secession and the formation of new sovereign nations. Rather, it would be radical, militant left-wing and right-wing groups, both dedicated to their ideological agendas, carrying out acts of domestic terrorism. It would appear more like The Troubles in Ireland, or the many internal conflicts in Latin America, such as the contra’s war (backed by the U.S) against the Sandinista government and its supporters in Nicaragua. While this may seem like hyperbole, and inconceivable to many Americans, especially those who do not follow politics closely, its important to remember many people in the aforementioned places in the world also felt the same way. War, they thought, was impossible. And it was. Until it happened.

Of course, that’s the worst outcome. While a second American civil war is only hypothetical, what is certain is the continued imperialistic wars being fought abroad. The Democrats will successfully remove one warmonger from office, only to replace him with another, more politically correct one. Joe Biden has supported virtually every single war the U.S. government has been involved in since he began his political career 44 years ago. As vice president in the Obama administration, the U.S. government bombed seven countries. He will likely continue the “Pivot towards Asia policy” established by his predecessor- by encircling China with U.S. military bases, and holding provocative military exercises in neighboring nations. He has already claimed that he intends to leave U.S. troops in Afghanistan– America’s longest war. In the same interview, Biden claimed, not unsurprisingly, he would maintain troops in Iraq and Syria. The Iraqi government recently passed a resolution demanding a complete withdraw of occupying U.S. forces. But Biden seems to only care about democracy in his own country. As for Syria, one might think of this dangerous, destabilizing, and certainly criminal proxy war against Bashar al-Assad as a failed policy under the Obama administration. This bloody disaster, fueled to a great extent by U.S. interference, has brought Syria to the brink of collapse. But Biden is, if anything, persistent, and will be hoping to finish what they started back in 2011. Crushing one of the only remaining Middle Eastern regimes allied with Russia is worth any cost, it would seem. Biden has claimed, to his credit, he would end the U.S. government’s support of Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen, which has been described as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisises. But talk is cheap, especially for Biden, who is known to lie, plagiarize, and fabricate stories, or simply “misremember” things as they were. Unless he acts upon his promise to end the tragic role the U.S. has played in the war in Yemen, one should remain skeptical, at best. As for Trump, his foreign policy legacy will be a tangled web, one that journalists and historians may spend years trying to make sense of. On one hand, he was beholden to the deep state, ordering the assassination of Iranian military general Qassem Soleimani, which could have ignited a war between the two nations. He helped destabilize, and support a coup against the regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. In an act of astonishing cruelty and cold Realpolitik, he vetoed a congressional resolution that would have ended the U.S. governments role in Yemen. On the other hand, he did not start any new wars, unlike Obama, Bush, and Clinton before him. And he deserves credit for trying to negotiate a peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan, no matter how fragile it might be. His administration also brokered historic peace agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. No matter how suicidal, immoral, or unconstitutional the rest of Trump’s foreign policy record might be, he deserves some credit for these achievements. Peace should not be a partisan issue.

What will become of America now? In the vanishingly unlikely event Trump succeeds in mounting a legal victory, flipping the various key states to lock in his missing electoral votes, a large segment of the public, to say nothing of the mainstream media, will fall into mass hysteria. Of course, depending on the legitimacy of the case against suspected wrongdoing, and the material evidence presented, one can hope that the right judgement would be made, irrespective of the destructive and perpetually outraged #Resistance brigade. Their monomaniacal crusade to remove Trump from the white house, and excommunicate Trump’s allies “from polite society”, will surely only sow deeper divisions. And what of the 71 million MAGA supporters, many of which believe they have been cheated out of a fair election? Do you think they will quietly accept their idolized strongman, with his bravado and stand-up comedy acts in football stadiums, to shuffle out of the white house? Will they even offer him the courtesy of a helicopter departure, as they did the disgraced Nixon, following his resignation?

The real tragedy of course, is that this election, like so many others in recent history, made a mockery of democracy itself. The real tragedy is that whoever wins, there will be very little change, at least on matters of consequence. It is true, of course, that there are policy differences between the two candidates. Trump wants to build a wall on the southern border. Biden wants to spend billions on notoriously unreliable renewable energy infrastructure (naturally, there will be preferential treatment for those green tech companies that made campaign donations). Corporate boondoggles will run rampant on both projects. Biden wants to make four-year public universities free, at least for students whose parents make less than 125K a year. Trump has essentially done nothing to make college more affordable. Trump has made negligible tax cuts. Biden wants to implement tax increases. Both candidates will continue to add trillions of dollars to the unsustainable national debt, for different programs that will most likely appease their electorates, and political allies alike. Trump is certainly more nationalistic, at least in rhetoric. However, the uncomfortable reality is there is no fundamental difference in policies, at least in matters of foreign relations or economics, which are arguably the most important issues any country faces. What many voters see are differences in cultural values, and this can certainly serve as a driving force in modern politics. Trump is defiantly chauvinistic, and is proud of America’s history, traditions, and achievements. Biden claims, somewhat tentatively, America is a great nation, but we are still plagued by racial and economic injustices, which he and so many other progressives perceive as permeating every aspect of society. The last two elections have shown the intensifying culture wars playing a significantly greater role in voter’s decisions. But should it occupy the political sphere to the degree that it does? Should our presidents be avatars of these cultural wars, constantly fighting for, or antagonizing against the social values, attitudes and behaviors of various demographic groups? Only the voters can pass such a verdict.

The true tragedy is that so many Americans exist within the illusion of democracy. The true centers of power in the United States, specifically the military-industrial complex, the Orwellian surveillance apparatus, the intelligence agencies, the State Department, a network of well funded establishment think tanks, The Federal Reserve, Wall Street banks, and Silicon Valley tech companies will go unchallenged and unchanged. So while you can expect a President Biden to offer regular doses of banal virtue signalling to the public, business as usual will continue in the background.

So what can America expect then, from either of these politicians? What does the future look like? Under a continued Trump presidency- more of what we have seen over these past four tumultuous years. The Durham investigation will likely produce a number of indictments for the colossal level of corruption and duplicity during Russiagate. Nevertheless, many high ranking officials, particularly from the Department of Justice and the FBI, will probably be granted immunity, despite their complicity. As is the nature of our two-tiered justice system. Trump will remain characteristically uncouth, bombastic, ribald, and show a proclivity towards breaking political orthodoxies. He will delight in trolling and provoking his rivals, and pretend to engage in a superficial form of populism. Under a Biden administration, we can expect to see the cult of wokeness, with their deranged dogma of toxic, divisive identity politics to begin creeping into the lower layers of federal bureaucracy. This morally bankrupt ideology, which aims to construct a social hierarchy of competing classes, based upon the fictitious categories of the oppressors and their victims, is determined by race, gender, and sexual orientation. This will continue to breed illiberal intolerance, and if left unchecked, the cult of wokeness and their poisonous fanaticism will begin to tear at the very social fabric that somehow still holds the diverse American population together. President Biden will either try to placate these elements of his government, or he will succumb to the pressure of various activist groups and incorporate many of their policy propositions into his legislative agenda. Or he may remain completely oblivious to the threat they pose, seeing as he presents clear signs of mental deterioration and cognitive decline. Vice president Harris however will be more then willing to indulge in their demands, and Biden could be placed on the executive back burner, a symbolic leader left to the occasional speech with a teleprompter. If he becomes incapable of fulling even his most basic duties, there is always the twenty-fifth amendment.

In the end, whoever becomes president, you can be certain the Empire will win. Whatever chance the U.S. might have had of moving toward a more peaceful, prosperous, and stable future died with the aborted campaigns of Tulsi Gabbard of the Democratic Party or Jo Jorgensen of the Libertarian party. Both candidates were ruthlessly libeled and slandered in the pusillanimous, establishment worshiping, mainstream press. While the mainstream corporate media has become fragmented into hyper-partisan echo chambers- CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, etc. for Democrats, and Fox News, Breitbart, the Drudge Report, etc. for Republicans, they all remain obsequious to the establishment and its imperialistic propaganda. They have found the perfect formula for keeping their audiences trapped in soothing confirmation bias, demonizing the “other side”, shamelessly running defense for their respective political and cultural tribes, while never truly upsetting the real power structures inside society. It is a truly remarkable strategy, and astonishingly effective in maintaining the status quo. While the bitterly contested election is slowly left to a pile of pitiful coals and each side either celebrates victory or laments defeat, you can be certain the U.S. empire will be safely untouched, continuing to protect its military and economic hegemony at any cost. This will be to the detriment of the American public, and citizens throughout the world. But that is not the story of the 2020 election you hear about. A cold, bleak winter is falling across North America, and the well oiled war machine continues to operate in the dark, unabated.

“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it“

-John Lennon

CORRECTION: 11/13/2020: The USPS whistleblower in Pennsylvania, named Richard Hopkins, who alleged voting fraud, has reportedly confessed to fabricating his testimony about supervisors backdating mail-in ballots. He later contradicted the report that he had recanted to investigators in a Youtube video. As such, there is little credibility to the original accusations made.

See here for more.

To contact the author, please write to Quinctius1991@protonmail.com

Special thanks to the conscientious editing services provided by Lucementis.

Political lessons from a pandemic, part 2

 

                                                      Photo by Gilbert Ortega on Unsplash

 

 

Its frightening how quickly people will embrace authoritarianism, and show willingness to forfeit their hard earned civil liberties, during a crisis.  Governments have wasted no time in vastly expanding their powers and subverting the peoples rights, all done in the name of protecting public health and slowing the disease’s spread. Less than a month ago, medical martial law was inconceivable throughout the west. Now, it’s becoming a nightmarish reality. As COVID-19 continues to disperse death and despair in it’s wake,  a hysterical public subjugates itself to the state, pleading for physical and economic security in a time of turmoil. But how far will it go? To what end will these emergency measures lead us.  In desperation, society might end up making a dangerous deal in which there is no return.

 

Billions of people around the world are now under some form of quarantine, or  restricted in their movement because of stay at home orders, by the political authorities. In India, a nation with 1.3 billion people, where more than 70 million live in extreme poverty, citizens who violate the three week lockdown rules are attacked by police with batons, forced to squat down in small circles drawn on the ground with chalk, and perform various humiliating exercises as punishment under police supervision. In West Bengal, a man was beaten to death by police after he attempted to leave his house to buy milk during the lockdown. In Kolkata, a woman has been arrested for spreading “fake news” about the coronavirus on social media.  Thousands of migrant workers are left stranded after the sudden announcement, and face continuous harassment by law enforcement.

In the United Kingdom, PM Boris Johnson (who himself has now tested positive for COVID-19) made the ominous announcement that the entire country was to shut down, instructing all citizens to stay home, or face legal penalties. The U.K. has been drifting into an insufferable police state for some time now, demonstrated by the disturbing fact that approximately 3,000 people are arrested each year for offensive comments posted online. In response to the pandemic, parliament has hastily passed the “Coronavirus Bill”, which threatens the rights of every citizen living in the U.K. Of particular concern, the legislation describes how authorities can detain anyone who may be “potentially” infected with COVID-19, forcibly extract biological samples from individuals for testing, and shut down events and gatherings.  The bill stipulates these extraordinary new powers could last for a period of up to two years, with a “government review” every six months. Meanwhile, the Derbyshire police, oblivious to the Big Brother comparisons it would naturally produce, has taken to filming innocent hikers with a drone, and using the footage to publicly shame people for violating the lockdown. Many in the British press, like elsewhere in the world, have enthusiastically supported these authoritarian actions, with a few dissenting voices such as Peter Hitchens and Brendan O’Neill.

Across the English Channel, France is making all of the same mistakes, only on a higher order. President Emmanuel Macron, who perhaps sees himself as a noble reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte, has issued orders for all citizens to practice self-isolation. During the national lockdown, citizens are required to fill out an official form, explaining their reason for leaving home. Like many other countries, the narrowly accepted justifications for leaving include purchasing food, seeking medical attention, or solitary exercise. Failing to present these government required papers to the authorities will result in fines. It almost appears as if Macron and Édouard Philippe are trying to imitate the GDR, but they reassure us their motives are virtuous. Conveniently, the states ban on public gathering of more than 100 people will make it difficult for the gilets jaunes, now on their 70th consecutive weekend of protest, to organize. Unsurprisingly, the military has been mobilized to assist in containing the virus (or was it the population?), in what Chef des Armées Macron has called“Operation Resilience”.

In the American empire, the situation has gone from bad to worse.  With roughly 100,000 thousand COVID-19 cases confirmed, more than half of the United States has been placed under stay at home orders. The vicissitude of the viral outbreak has created perfect opportunities for the political class, and the coronavirus crisis is rapidly becoming a constitutional crisis. A number of reports are showing how personal data is being harvested and used by the ubiquitous, Orwellian surveillance apparatus, in an effort to allegedly “combat the spread of COVID-19”. The plutocratic, technocratic, masters of Silicon Valley have vowed to more carefully monitor and control content on their platforms. This is nothing more than an euphemism for greater levels of censorship. In the background, the Trump administration is quietly acquiring authoritarian emergency powers, such as invoking the Defense Production Act, and petitioning congress to enable the Department of Justice to indefinitely detain citizens, without a trial, “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.” And yet, ending habeas corpus seems to be gaining some popularity in these troubled times, with law professors pleading for the Federal government to relinquish it. All in the name of stopping the coronavirus, and only temporarily, of course. Between the aforementioned changes to U.S. law, the Patriot Act, and the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, what would be left of the bill of rights?

In the U.S, well established foreign policy agenda’s are being advanced, under the cover of the pandemic. With all of the media’s attention on the contagious COVID-19 infection numbers, or a constant update on the current death toll,  insidious Deep state objectives are being pushed forward, with scarcely any scrutiny. For example, the United States Government has indicted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on charges of narco-terrorism. This is a clear escalation in its committed campaign of regime change, where the final step is removing Maduro from power, and installing in his place the puppet politician Juan Guaidó. The U.S. has also ramped up it’s sanctions against Iran, hoping to maximize the pressure while their medical system is tested by the spread of the disease. The Trump administration is also taking every chance it gets to explicitly remind the public that COVID-19 originated in China, subtly shifting blame, and incorporating this message into their information warfare stratagem. All of this can be contextually understood in the U.S. governments longstanding “pivot to Asia”.

 

The novel coronavirus poses a major public health challenge, around the world. As of this writing, there are more then half a million confirmed cases, with approximately 27,000 deaths.  People should understand the severity of this new disease, and act responsibly, to protect their, and the communities, health. Nevertheless, we should not lose sight to how governments around the world are directly benefiting from the crisis, and its surrounding hysteria. It allows the state to cast themselves as benevolent saviors, while imposing draconian, authoritarian, “emergency measures” which will be used to obtain new power and control over society. In the tempest of this global pandemic, we should be vigilant against the pernicious political plays that are being taken. One of the greatest threats societies will be confronted with is how during this pandemic pandemonium, our world, both politically, and economically, could be fundamentally transformed, and it could occur without enough people noticing. Humanity will finally recover from the COVID-19 outbreak, and not notice the precious few liberties we still had, have been stolen. It will be as if nothing had changed, when in reality, everything had.  Do not underestimate the malicious opportunism from those in power. You have been warned.

 

 

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”

Benjamin Franklin

 

 

 

To contact the author, write to Quinctius1991@protonmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

Economic and political lessons from a global pandemic

 

 

 

The world is entering into strange, uncertain times.  As COVID-19 spreads across the planet, bringing modern civilization to a sudden halt, people are beginning to wonder what will be the long term consequences of this viral outbreak, and how society will  recover from the damage. Many are bracing themselves for the worst, and anxiety is permeating entire populations, who seem paralyzed in disbelief and paranoia.  Perhaps what we’re really witnessing is a slow collapse of an entire system which, for far too long, we collectively refused to acknowledge was structurally vulnerable and liable to come apart. We built sand castles too close to the shore, and had little regard for the rising tide. Perhaps we’re preparing for extreme social unrest, disorder and distrust, and political projects that will quickly aim to capitalize on the chaos. Perhaps we’re preparing for a transformation of society itself, where we are forced to cast out the old perceptions of our institutions and ways of living, and look towards the future in a radically new way.  No one is capable of knowing what the future holds, or exactly how all of this is going to play out in the coming months, and years. Political pundits in the mainstream media lost their credibility years ago. The wizards of wall st, the policy makers at think tanks, and the monetary scientists at central banks are blinded by their arrogance, just as they were leading up to the great recession.  Nevertheless, there are many important economic and political lessons from the ongoing crisis. Examining them now might better give us the knowledge needed to survive the storm.

 

In alternative media, two emerging theories are being pushed forward, and it’s hard to predict which one will ultimately unfold.  One is that the coronavirus will mark the beginning of the end for globalism.  There is some merit to this belief, and it’s hard to argue with it’s premise. For decades, imperial powers like the United States outsourced a significant amount of labor to countries such as China, India,the Philippines, and Mexico. For large corporations, the benefits of cheap labor, without the hindrances of minimum wages, expensive regulatory compliance, and organized unions reaped lucrative rewards. Establishing their factories or corporate head quarters in foreign countries also enabled them to circumvent other financial burdens, such as high taxes, and government required worker compensations. Cutting costs and maximizing profits under these Neo-liberal economic policies created unfathomable amounts of  wealth. But this couldn’t last forever. While the dividends were good, and the bonuses better, underneath it all, there were major problems brewing, and they couldn’t be wished away. Economic laws are immutable, a natural part of the world we all inhabit. The U.S. was growing increasingly dependent on foreign countries, such as China, for valuable commodities, ones that modern life can’t function without. Agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, electronics, building materials such as steel, and cheap plastic goods were flowing in one direction. State brokered “Free trade agreements” (a contradictory term), the bedrock of neo liberalism and globalism, kept these arrangements in place, while hollowing out the domestic manufacturing bases in western nations that cut the checks.  Skyrocketing liabilities on the balance books were raising red flags, no matter how much academic Keynesian economists tried to downplay it. The United States trade deficit is growing, and it isn’t going to disappear under the status quo. The U.S. government, and the Federal Reserve, are under the delusion it can somehow manage it’s 23 trillion dollar debt, which now exceeds the nations GDP. Other countries, like Japan, have an even greater debt to GDP ratio, putting them on the pathway to default, and finally collapse. The inherent fragility of globalism, that is to say, how supply chains can be jeopardized for a myriad of reasons, is now on full display. If your nation grows entirely dependent on foreign imports, and they abruptly come crashing down, your economy is going to get burned. Maybe it’s geopolitical, as new politicians take to office and lay out unexpected regulations (or even nationalization of entire industries) threatening your operations and in turn, your companies bottom line. Maybe it’s civil unrest, protests, a new labor movement, boycotts, or war. Or perhaps, it’s an extremely contagious virus. It doesn’t require supernatural vision to see the potential hazards. But under the current world order, that is to say, within the conditions of globalism, these disruptions can be devastating. Banks must keep credit rolling, loans, with accumulating interest, must be repaid. Large shipments of products are guaranteed under elaborate contracts, drafted long in advance, long before they reach their destinations, long before they are put on semi-trucks, and planes, and trains, and long before they are unloaded and finally put on store shelves. The machine keeps chugging along, and it relies on cheap, easy credit (central banks keep interest rates artificially low), stable petroleum prices, and honored contracts from buyers and sellers. What happens when this entire intricate system, this global network, is faced with an pandemic that crosses borders, and freezes everything in motion? The systemic vulnerabilities of globalism are now out in the open, and there’s no turning back. This is a fundamentally unsustainable economic model, and we’re going to see exactly why in the coming days. It won’t be theoretical anymore, it’s coming to the real world, with all of its painful consequences.

 

The second theory, is that globalism will be more deeply entrenched, and empowered, by COVID-19. After all,  who could ask for a better opportunity? The most influential, capitalized corporations, can take advantage of emergency responses in the market. For smaller competitors, their fate looks dismal. If you thought the $700 billion dollar bailouts from 2008 was insane, then you’re in for a shock. In response to the carnage being unleashed on equity markets, the Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates to zero, and announced more than $700 billion in quantitative easing, claiming that it will increase to $1.5 trillion (with a T) as needed. For perspective, this is the largest, single day rate cut in the Federal Reserve’s 107 years. These historic actions reveal the money managers increasing desperation, and their attempts to regain control. The stock markets triggered it’s fourth circuit breaker in trading over the past two weeks. On March 12th, the Dow Jones recorded it’s worse plunge since the notorious 1987 stock crash. Do central bankers truly believe they can rescue the economy by merely printing billions of dollars out of thin air and injecting it into the financial system? The fact that U.S. corporations (especially those on the S&P 500) are massively over-leveraged (somewhere in the range of $10 trillion, assuming the accounting numbers are clean) is enough to raise serious doubts about the prudence, and effectiveness, of further bailouts. Compound this slow moving avalanche of corporate debt, with billions of dollars in stock-buy backs, which was done to juice up the companies share prices, and you have a recipe for total mayhem unlike anything the world has seen in decades.  And yet, despite all of this, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin makes the astonishing claim, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that there will be no recession at all! What sort of alternative universe is the secretary living in, to believe in such preposterous, illogical, magical thinking? Is it a career politician trying to save his skin, telling the public a bald faced lie, or could he really be so ignorant?  In any case, the worlds most powerful corporations have played this game before, they know the rules, and they understand the loopholes.  The economy can be crushed, or more specifically, small to medium size businesses, the middle class, etc, but the system of globalism might stay intact (if not a little bruised) so long as it has central banks to fall back on. The financialization of the economy has produced a strange realm of distorted, fake values, debt instruments, inflated assets, and complex trading algorithms which exist only to boost investor portfolios and share prices. Meanwhile, we’ve witnessed the slow decay of traditional capitalism which derived it’s value (and stability) from the creation of real goods and services. The future of globalism can go either way at this critical crossroads, but the establishment already has designs for it’s continuation. Whether or not they succeed is yet to be determined.

Other major developments from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis deserve equal attention,  because they could potentially be a greater threat to society than economic recession, or perhaps even the disease itself…

 

Part 2 of this article will be published next week. Stay tuned..

 

To contact the author, email Quinctius1991@protonmail.com

 

 

 

Whatever your opinion of Maduro, or socialism, a U.S. coup in Venezuela is wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The U.S. empire has been interfering in Latin American politics for over a century, and the latest machinations against Venezuela by the foreign policy elite only serves to continue this sordid legacy. Outside of the establishments propaganda machine, and lost in the ideological battlefield between capitalism and socialism, the fundamental issue regarding Venezuelan sovereignty is often either being misinterpreted or intentionally misrepresented.  We (especially non- Venezuelan’s in the West) cannot frame the Venezuelan political crisis as President Maduro vs. some hypothetical, potentially more virtuous, leader, or whether the country should adopt globalism vs a closed off, centrally planned socialist economy. These questions can only be answered by the people of Venezuela themselves, either through the ballot box or in grass-roots public protests. The only question that should then concern Americans is whether their government should intervene in domestic Venezuelan politics, and as the following argument will demonstrate, doing so would be morally unjustifiable and disastrous in consequence. If the last one hundred years of U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America can serve as any lesson, we know what to expect, and why it must be prevented.

 

In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson invaded Haiti, essentially turning it into a colony under U.S. imperialism. In 1954, under the administration of Dwight Eisenhower,  the CIA orchestrated a coup d’état in Guatemala, and installed a military-backed oligarchy friendly to U.S. corporate interests. In 1961 John F. Kennedy authorized the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba, which subsequently created the Cuban Missile Crisis, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. In the early 1970’s, Nixon and then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used the covert powers of the intelligence agencies to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and installed the right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile, which resulted in thousands being murdered, tortured, or imprisoned (as for Kissinger’s role in these war crimes, he has remained reticent). During the brutally violent civil war of El Salvador (1980-1992), the Reagan administration provided financial and military aid to the authoritarian government, who was widely known to be slaughtering it’s own citizens. By the time the conflict had come to an end, approximately 75,000 had been killed. Also during the golden years of “It’s morning again in America”, the CIA was complicit in secretly facilitating cocaine trafficking operations, in order to finance the Contra’s guerilla war against the Sandinista controlled government of Nicaragua (for an astoundingly well researched exposition on the subject, read Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance“. At the time of publication, the story was extremely controversial, and it eventually cost the author his life). In 1989, George H.W. Bush instigated “Operation Just Cause” and sent 25,000 troops to Panama, allegedly to hunt down and bring to justice the narco-terrorist Manuel Noriega, who coincidentally used to be a CIA asset and was paid generously for his espionage. The Panamanian Human Rights Committee and the Center for Investigation of Human Rights and Legal Aid estimate that 500 to 700 Panamanians died during the U.S. attack, while thousands more lost their homes and were displaced.

By understanding even the broad strokes of the historical relationship between the United States and Latin America, it’s not difficult to see why any pronouncements by the Trump administration of wanting to spread “freedom and democracy” to Venezuela is instantly suspicious. Adding to the already well grounded reasons for incredulity against Washington’s objectives is political events that’s took place during the early 2000’s, when the Marxist President Hugo Chávez was still in power. Taken from “The Wikileaks Files: The World According to U.S. Empire” in section two, the chapter on Venezuela (p.515-516)  ” Nevertheless, Chávez was popular and democratically elected. As the cables show, the US worked to bolster the Venezuelan opposition, which would engage in a series of attempts- some constitutional, some not- to oust Chávez: a military coup d’état (2002, overturned by mass public opposition just two days later); an economically damaging oil strike (2002-03) and a recall referendum (2004). US support for these efforts- especially the coup- would poison relations between the two countries. The US provided funds to groups and individuals involved in the coup,  and after the coup had occurred encouraged other countries to recognize the the coup government.”.  Many Americans might have forgotten, but you be certain the Venezuelans have not.

And so it seems history is repeating itself. Everything unfolding today is strikingly similar to past events, but now it is between the administrations of Donald Trump and Nicolás Maduro.

Arguing against U.S. organized regime change in Venezuela should not be conflated with a denial of Venezuela’s economic nightmare. Decades of socialism has brought the resource rich South American countries economy to complete ruin. Through bureaucratic ineptitude, malfeasance, and corruption, entire sectors of the economy were nationalized and driven into bankruptcy.  When this is combined with the economically suicidal monetary policies of the centralized bank with fiat currency, we are confronted with a tragic contemporary example of what socialism inevitably produces wherever it is tried.  No matter how hard Abby Martin and state funded teleSUR may try to spin the narrative, the current failing Venezuelan economy is directly correlated to the economic policies that were pushed by the socialist regimes of Hugo Chávez and now Nicolás Maduro. The country has faced hyperinflation for years, with it’s central bank trying to print it’s way out of it’s black-hole of national debt, while simultaneously maintaining it’s unsustainable and grossly mismanaged welfare programs. At the end of 2018, the bolívar had reached an annual inflation rate of 80,000% . The precipitous drop in purchasing power from the nations currency has made buying the most basic commodities increasing difficult. A remarkable piece by Reuters in August of 2018 showed pictures of everyday items next to the quantity of paper money needed to buy them. 1 kilogram of rice for 2,500,000 bolivars. A package of diapers for 8,000,000 bolivars. A bar of hand soap for 3,500,000 bolivars.  The list goes on. In an attempt to contain this inflation train wreck, the BCV has started issuing as new currency, the “sovereign bolivar” which is pegged to the fraudulent “Petro“, a state-backed imitation of cryptocurrency.

While the Venezuelan government is mostly responsible for the widespread poverty the people are suffering from, U.S. sanctions have been strategically used to exacerbate the current conditions, in hopes of exerting pressure on the current regime and forcing it’s leadership to change it’s ways. These “starvation sanctions”, as they have been called, serve a malicious, political purpose. The more desperate the underfed, malnourished, despairing population becomes, the more likely they are to mobilize into resistance groups and protest against Maduro. This is an old, cruel tactic from the playbook of Empires- using the people’s lives as pawns in a geopolitical game to depose of undesirable foreign leaders. When food becomes scarce, and the cost of available food is unaffordable due to market manipulation, larceny becomes more common, which can snowball into looting and rioting. Economic sanctions is often defined as a kind of “soft power” instrument for aggressive diplomacy, but the real world ramifications could not be more serious. Consider the comments made by former Secretary of State Madeleine Alright, who when asked in a “60 minutes” interview if she believed the sanctions against Iraq during the Clinton administration was worth the human cost replied “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it“. These sanctions resulted in approximately half a million Iraqi children dying, and had no effect on Saddam Hussein’s regime.

It seems however that the U.S. Deep State is growing impatient with the “soft power” methods employed so far. The crushing sanctions against Venezuela, which only accomplished punishing the beleaguered citizenry and not the state, is now just one strategy of many being actively used to bring about regime change. Real, authentic mass protests by Venezuelans have taken to the streets, a manifestation of their disenfranchisement and growing contempt for their government. Maduro’s regime has responded by becoming more authoritarian, and it’s oppressive measures are dismantling the last remnants of civil liberties from society. From violating freedom of the press, to the attempted dissolution of the National Assembly, and deliberate violence by government forces against civilian protestors, the nations turmoil is reaching a breaking point. Which is exactly what the deep state has been waiting for. The U.S. State Department, and the security/surveillance apparatus, has been closely monitoring the development of Venezuela’s civil unrest for years, and see’s opportunity where others only see tragedy. And then, from seemingly nowhere, a previously unknown, charismatic, young politician takes to the stage, and declares the Maduro regime illegitimate, and himself the new “interim” President.

So who is Juan Guaidó, the man which claims to be the savior of democracy in Venezuela? He was until January 23rd 2019 a relatively obscure politician in the National Assembly, and was virtually unknown to the international community. He was, however, a close and trusted contact to a number of powerful Washington insiders and Western institutions. A recent report by Consortium News pieces together Guaidó’s background, and in the process builds a persuasive theory asserting Guaidó to be a product of the Deep States controlled opposition, trained for the position over years and waiting in the wings should the opportunity arise. While Guaidó might publicly present himself as a man of the people, ready to restore peace and stability to a fractured nation, the real question remains who are his “people”, and where do his loyalties lie? His close association with the non-profit NGO “CANVAS” (Center for Applied Non-Violent Action), is funded through the notorious National Endowment for Democracy, which itself has deep ties to the CIA. In the absence of incontrovertible, substantiated evidence (as of this writing), the mystery of Guaidó and his motives remain unclear. It is feasible, like some have claimed, that he is a Manchurian candidate, selected by the U.S. intelligence community to play a role advantageous to foreign powers interests. It is also feasible, however, that Guaidó  is nothing more than an opportunistic politician, capitalizing on the political instability to advance his own private ambitions. In any case, it remains to be seen if Guaidó is capable of leading an anti-government revolution and dethroning Maduro, because as of now the population is sharply divided for their support for two separate individuals who both claim to be the President.  Maduro still maintains control over the military, while Guaidó has the official support of the U.S., Canada, and many European countries. Juan Guaidó’s suspicious past, along with his sudden and inexplicable political ascendancy,  deserves both skepticism and scrutiny, and any claims he’s made thus far on the presidency lack credibility.

For those who still suffer from delusions of American exceptionalism, and a misguided belief in Washington’s benevolence towards the Venezuelan people, consider the recent appointment of Neo-conservative Elliott Abrams as special U.S. envoy to Venezuela. Elliot Abrams has a long history in elite foreign policy circles, working to ensure USG national security objectives are accomplished at any cost. In 1981, as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Abrams would attempt to cover-up atrocities committed by the El Salvadoran government death squads. This was a duplicitous, but necessary act of public image management, because the Reagan administration considered the authoritarian regime in El Salvador a key ally in Central America. In 1991 Abrams pled guilty to withholding critical information about the Iran-Contra scandal, and was subsequently convicted, but graciously pardoned under George H.W. Bush. He would later go on to serve several important positions for George W. Bush’s administration(unlikely a coincidence), where he was accused of having foreknowledge of the 2002 coup d’état against President Hugo Chávez, and implicitly signally the White Houses approval.

If Elliot Abrams involvement in crafting the U.S. governments policy towards Venezuela isn’t enough to make you question any official noble intentions, then National Security Advisor and veteran warmonger John Bolton’s recent interview on Fox News is refreshingly forthright. After several minutes of establishment propaganda, Bolton candidly reveals the true motives behind the U.S.G’s push for regime change “We’re looking at the oil assets, the single most important income to the government of Venezuela- we’re looking at what to do with that..and we want everyone to know, we’re looking at all of this very seriously, we don’t want any American businesses or investors to caught by surprise” followed by “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we can have American oil companies invest in and produce oil capabilities in Venezuela”. Straight from the walruses mouth, such unabashedly honest realpolitik is seldom found on cable news.

Again, a more nuanced, careful analysis of the Venezuelan crisis is needed. It is myopic to say, as many journalists from left-wing outlets who are sympathetic to socialism might suggest, that the entire crisis has been precipitated by Washington. On the other side of the ideological divide, many want to paint a one-dimensional narrative that all of Venezuela’s problems were created by Marxists who gained control of the government and seized the means of production. A more objective, but less appealing to the ideologues, explanation would take into account the profound effects of both influences. Conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals throughout the West should reject the U.S. policy of subversion and hostility towards Venezuela, not because they support the political philosophy of socialism, but because the people of Venezuela must have control over their countries destiny. Cutting through the quagmire of misinformation, the U.S. empire’s concerted destabilization efforts in Venezuela is for all of the old reasons- to expand and preserve global military and economic hegemony. Let the psychopathic war planners in the hallowed halls of Washington D.C. know- hands off the República Bolivariana de Venezuela.

 

To contact the author of this article, write to Quinctius1991@protonmail.com

 

 

 

 

The Tragedy of Julian Assange and the Future of Journalism

 

 

 

For almost seven years, Julian Assange, the founder and editor of Wikileaks, has been trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. In the summer of 2012, the government of Ecuador, at the time under the administration of President Rafael Correa, granted Assange political asylum.  Being marked as public enemy number one by the U.S power establishment, the reliably obsequious British government issued a warrant for his arrest after he failed to meet the conditions of his bail. Fearing that his extradition to Sweden (wanted for questioning under highly suspicious circumstances) would result in his extradition to the U.S. , where he would likely be sentenced to life in prison, or face capital punishment, Assange took refuge in the embassy. The story of how the most influential journalist of our time has been forced into solitary confinement (tantamount to imprisonment) is one of tremendous importance, and also emblematic of how modern, ostensibly constitutional democracies operate when their hold on power is threatened.  The legal and ethical predicament of Assange should concern anyone who claims to believe in freedom of speech, holding those in positions of authority accountable, and the future of journalism itself. Recent developments paint a bleak outlook for the fate of Julian Assange and Wikileaks, and these ominous events deserve close examination.

The purpose of this TMR article is not to present a meticulous chronology of every publication by Wikileaks, or to enumerate all of their greatest leaks. However, in order to better understand the context of Assange’s plight, and also for it’s heuristic value,  a condensed history is necessary.

One way you can be certain Wikileaks has been an exceedingly effective organization is by how it has gained fierce enemies in both major political parties. Back during the Bush era, Democrats celebrated Wikileaks mission of transparency, praising it’s courageous and important publications. In 2007 Wikileaks published the Kroll report, presenting evidence of how the former President of Kenya Daniel arap Moi and his administration had illegally misused billions of dollars from public coffers. In November of that same year Wikileaks published the Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures of Guantanamo Bay, exposing shocking human rights violations. Other publications around this period included the Minton Report, a secretly commissioned analysis by the multinational company Trafigura, which showed various toxic pollutants being dumped off  the Ivory Coast of Africa. Trafigura hired a team of lawyers to obtain a super-injunction against the BBC and other British news outlets to prevent them from reporting on the incriminating document, but Wikileaks circumvented their attempts of censorship by releasing the entire Minton Report online.  Sarah Palin’s private email being used for official business (something of a precursor for another high profile politician many years later), fraudulent and illegal activities by banks such as Julius Bär  and Kaupthing (the later serving as a contributing factor to major protests in Iceland, and the eventual criminal prosecution of many banking executives) were all critically important sources of information which made Wikileaks famous. At the time, all of this material gained the enthusiastic support of liberals throughout the west. For many conservatives, opinion was mixed, although Assange was regularly labeled as a “traitor” and a threat to American “national security” by Neo-conservatives and particularly chauvinistic Republicans.

 

But it wasn’t very long until a new administration came into power with the promises of “hope and change”, and with it more leaks revealing their own corruption and criminal behavior. The most valuable leaks and subsequent publications during the Obama years included the notorious “Collateral Murder” video of an Apache helicopter killing over a dozen people in Iraq, including innocent civilians and two Reuters news journalists. This was followed by Cablegate, over 250,000 classified diplomatic cables from the U.S. state department, which not only showed wrongdoing on the part of the U.S, but nearly every government on the planet. These leaked documents had the immediate effect of contributing to sociopolitical conditions in Tunisia that resulted in the 2011 revolution and the removal of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In 2013, secret drafts of the international trade agreements TPP (Trans-pacific Partnership) TTIP (The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership ) and TISA (Trade in Services Agreement) were published by Wikileaks, shining light on the rapid development of globalism and powerful international financial and corporate networks. In July of 2015, Wikileaks published a number of leaked classified documents originating from the NSA, showing how the intelligence agency had been spying on members of the Japanese government, and several Japanese corporations such as Mitsubishi (presumably for economic espionage purposes).

 

Needless to say, these leaked documents and the media’s coverage of them had a profound effect on political discourse in the U.S and throughout the world, and changed the dynamics of international diplomacy. At the time of Cablegate’s release, Hillary Clinton was serving as Secretary of State, and her reputation, along with the entire national security establishment, was severely damaged by the unfiltered and illuminating truth of real American foreign policy. In response to the deluge of classified documents entering the public domain and stories from said documents dominating news headlines, Hillary Clinton asked her staff “Can’t we just drone this guy?”. Bipartisan outrage ensued, with Bob Beckel on Fox News saying “Dead men can’t leak stuff. This guy’s a traitor, treasonous, and he’s broken every law in the United States. The guy ought to be- and I’m not for the death penalty,  so if I’m not for the death penalty, the only way to do it is illegally shoot the son of a bitch“. Both Vice President Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell described Assange as “a high-tech terrorist“. During an interview on CBC, political science Professor Tom Flanagan casually remarked “Well I think Assange should be assassinated“.

 

But it wasn’t until the American presidential election of 2016 that a significant number of liberal sentiment would be turned against Wikileaks, while conversely gaining support by a surprising percentage of conservatives. Whatever wrath that had been percolating but restrained against Wikileaks during the Obama years would be unleashed as soon as the Podesta emails were published, along with a massive database of over 30,000 from Hillary Clinton’s private (and illegal) email server. Suddenly, the virtues of political transparency were forgotten and met with contempt by millions of Democratic voters. Wikileaks, who was once a force for justice, was now a treacherous adversary of democracy. The scandal hit the election like a hurricane, but lost in the unhinged outrage was the actual contents of the emails, and their indispensable value to the public. Buried within thousands of emails were some of the most incriminating and damning revelations of modern U.S. politics, certainly deserving comparisons to Watergate. Incontrovertible evidence revealed deeply rooted corruption within the DNC, and how high ranking democratic operatives worked tirelessly to sabotage Bernie Sanders. As a result, the acting chairperson of the DNC Debbie Wasserman Shultz was forced to resign. But even more pervasive and disturbing was the close relationship between the Clinton campaign and many mainstream news organizations. An internal list of media allies included the New York Times, The Wallstreet Journal, the Washington Post,  CNN, The Huffington Post, Vox, and others.

 

A more detailed record of how the DNC had become an immensely anti-democratic cesspool, and the unethical relationships between Clinton loyalists in the MSM and her campaign (which came as very little surprise) , was already generating uncontrollable levels of controversy. But none of that would be able to match the far more extraordinary and sinister truths to come out of the published leaks. According to a number of private communications, while serving as Secretary of State, Clinton acknowledged that the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar were secretly bankrolling the terrorist organization known as ISIS/ISIL, while at the same time donating millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Furthermore, it shows how Saudi Arabia started pouring money into the Clinton Foundation, and in a blatant quid pro quo, using her position in the state department, authorized the largest arms deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in history – which was worth approximately $80 billion. Hillary Clinton’s love for war was no secret, but emails from the leaked collection demonstrate how she became the primary force behind the invasion of Libya. Communications explicitly reveal how Clinton calculated regime change in Libya, and eliminating the refractory Muammar Gaddafi, could be used as a method of bolstering her reputation on foreign policy (therefore playing to her advantage in a future presidential bid). In a more equitable society, these incredible facts would have not only have decimated Clinton’s political career, but also led to criminal prosecution.  Clinton may have lost the presidential election, but she remains a wealthy, socially popular, free woman, despite her reprehensible, untenable actions. Meanwhile, the man who revealed her crimes to the world continues to languish in state-coerced confinement, his freedom, physical health, and financial means diminished to ruins.

 

The sexual assault accusations against Assange, which have been used to galvanize his opponents, shouldn’t be ignored. However, the circumstances remain so dubious, and the legal process which was implemented so questionable, that any reasoning individual should view them with extreme skepticism. The MSM has successfully spun an entirely misleading account of the Swedish investigation, and this necessitates dispelling a number of misconceptions. Firstly, Mr. Assange was never charged with any crime. In fact, Swedish prosecutors have officially dropped the investigation. The premise of the investigation alleged that Mr Assange had two separate intimate affairs with women, who have chosen to remain anonymous, but complained to authorities that Assange refused to take a STD test after having unprotected sex. Both Assange and the alleged victims maintain that intercourse was consensual, something that is often omitted in the MSM (or deceitfully replaced with sensationalistic headlines insinuating Assange is guilty of rape). Considering that Assange and Wikileaks has made enemies with the worlds more powerful, and dangerous, institutions, it is not unfeasible that the entire scandal was actually a carefully planned honey trap operation to discredit him.  The U.S. intelligence agencies, along with the British, Russian, Chinese, etc, all have a well documented history of using these types of “dirty tricks” in their clandestine activities. But with an absence of evidence, this can only be taken as speculation. A far more likely scenario is Assange’s promiscuous personal life ran into number of emotionally charged conflicts, and the dispute was then picked up and manipulated by those who wish to see him and his organization destroyed.

 

Recent developments do not bode well for Assange. Mike Pompeo, then director of the CIA, arrogantly denounced Wikileaks as “a non-state hostile intelligence service”. Attorney general Jeff Sessions claims Assange’s arrest is a “priority” of the Department of Justice. On November 15th 2018 it was confirmed through court filings that U.S. prosecutors have obtained a sealed indictment against Assange. Less serious threats, but nevertheless detrimental to his situation, are emerging from unexpected places. With old colleagues publishing thinly veiled attacks on his integrity, and prominent documentary film director Laura Poitras releasing a film to denigrate Assange’s public image, it seems his allies are few in number, and his detractors multiply. More troubling than his negative perception in the court of public opinion is the libelous hit piece recently published by the Guardian, aiming to embroil Assange in a controversy which would carry grave implications.

 

On November 27th 2018 the Guardian released the “bombshell” story of how Paul Manafort, formerly Donald Trump’s campaign manager, secretly met with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy.  The problem with this story becomes abundantly clear after reading it. The three authors, Luke Harding, Dan Collyns, and Fernando Villavicencio offer absolutely no evidence. But the article is fraught with even more problems which should raise serious concerns. It has been pointed out by various observant individuals, of a seemingly inexplicable discrepancy between the printed copy of the article, and the digital one. On the Guardians website, the story makes no mention of the third author, Fernando Villavicencio. After various investigative journalist did some digging, it turns out Fernando Villavicencio has a history of duplicitous activities, such as secretly passing doctored documents to the Guardian, attempting to portray the administration of Rafael Correa in an unflattering light regarding  multilateral trade negotiations. Once the Guardian piece became viral on social media, both Manafort and Assange issued vehement denials, followed by statements from the former consul and first secretary at the Ecuadorian Embassy Fidel Narváez, who asserts no meetings ever took place. Wikileaks has launched a public fund to file a lawsuit against the Guardian, and Manafort, who is facing his own legal woes, is considering similar actions. Whether there will be any repercussions for the Guardians fabrications remains to be seen, but because the paper has consistently aligned themselves with the establishments narrative in recent years, and thus served their agenda,  the chances are unlikely. Such breaches in journalistic standards stop being problematic when you devote your fealty to the political class. They always take care of their own, so long as you remain faithful.

 

Wikileaks is unequivocally the single most important political publisher in the world today. Since 2007 the organization has published over 10 million secret documents, far surpassing all of the traditional mainstream press combined. From the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs, exposing war crimes committed by the U.S. military and NATO forces, to Vault 7, revealing sophisticated hacking tools developed by the CIA, Wikileaks is an invaluable source of information not only to journalists and scholars, but the public. The organizations immaculate record speaks for itself- of the millions upon millions of documents published, not a single one was ever found to be false or inaccurate. There has never been a single case where their material’s authenticity was challenged, and this has given them a level of credibility without peer. It has also has earned the reputation of being the most secure platform on the internet for whistleblowers, never once violating their sources anonymity (Chelsea Manning’s identity was revealed to authorities by ex-hacker Adrian Lamo, not Wikileaks). The publishers unyielding, uncompromising commitment to truth, and it’s mission of bringing political transparency to the public, has changed the world we live in. No amount of propaganda, or self-serving political theater can change this new reality. Despite the onslaught of defamatory stories by the MSM, who once richly benefited from Wikileaks material and willingness to collaborate, no honest argument can claim Wikileaks hasn’t fundamentally changed how people perceive political power in the modern era.

 

On December 4th 2015 a human rights group from the United Nations officially declared Julian Assange was being arbitrarily detained, and has been deprived of his civil liberties. In their assessment, they found the Swedish and British governments to be responsible for his predicament, and that he is entitled to compensation for the unjust treatment he has been subjected to. The UK government has chosen to ignore their evaluation, showing no signs of complying with international law and ending their malicious siege. Since Assange entered the embassy in 2012 and was granted political asylum, the police have been patrolling outside the property around the clock (at the taxpayers expense), and maintaining continuous, heavy surveillance of the building.

Since May of 2017, Ecuadorian leadership under Lenín Moreno has been interpreted as far less accommodating than his predecessor, and the tension between Assange and the government is rising. After having his internet access disconnected, and thus being completely cut off from the outside world, Assange appointed his confidant and long time Wikileaks associate Kristinn Hrafnsson as editor in chief. These desperate measures makes clear the perilous conditions Wikileaks has to struggle against are only escalating. The fate of the world’s most influential journalist has become increasingly uncertain, and no amount of protest or public outcry has made any discernible difference to those who have stolen his freedom.

If Assange is prosecuted, it will represent the modern day trial of Socrates. Assange, like the ancient Athenian philosopher, is an iconoclastic idealist, who has challenged the status quo. Assange is a revolutionary, but let us pray not a martyr. We must demand justice for Julian Assange, lest he be forced to drink from a chalice of hemlock.

 

 

“Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth”

Gautama Buddha

 

 

 

Correction: The original TMR article, published 1-11-2019, inaccurately stated the two women at the center of the sexual misconduct investigation have remained anonymous. The Swedish press have identified the individuals in question as Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen.

 

 

 

To contact the author of this article, write to Quinctius1991@protonmail.com

 

 

 

Infowars and the Age of Silicon Valley Censorship

 

 

Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of all constitutional democratic nations. It is the invaluable foundation in which every free society is built upon, where the government might conceivably be accountable to the people. In the case of the United States, the 1st amendment is required to protect all other rights that are enshrined in the supreme law of the land, passed onto our nation from the founding fathers. Without freedom of speech, a society cannot challenge power, it cannot challenge prevailing beliefs and dogma, it cannot change traditions and culture, it cannot protect private property, it cannot protect privacy. In the absence of freedom of speech, individuals cannot pursue the truth and disprove falsehoods, superstitions, and myths. Dangerous ideologies and philosophies remain outside of scrutiny and criticism. Because of this, the battle for freedom of speech is the battle for freedom itself. Democracy cannot exist without freedom of speech. History has shown that when a nations citizenry loses it’s freedom of speech, it’s liberty is soon to follow.

 

Alex Jones, the fiery and pugnacious host of the right-wing political website Infowars, has become the public face of a rebellious brand of alternative news that is rapidly  growing on the internet and drawing the public away from the mainstream media. The website is famous for it’s  radical and unfiltered views with highly editorialized articles. Alex Jones himself has become something of an internet legend over the years, both by his loyal supporters and staunch detractors. Between endless memes, parodies, and thousands of supporters on different forums, Infowars has undoubtedly made it’s mark in the chronicles of cyberspace. Mr. Jones is well known for his long, passionate diatribes which often become explosive (sometimes incoherent) and tirades against the New World Order, evil globalist, geoengineering/chem trails, and other such subjects that are regularly labeled “conspiracy theories”. Like a raging bull set on destruction, Alex throws himself against any who would oppose him, whether it be Piers Morgan on gun control, or Cenk Uygur during the Young Turks coverage of the Republican National Convention. Even for the most objective observer, it can be difficult to take Mr. Jones seriously at times. In one episode he may be discussing legitimate issues like U.S. foreign policy, and in the next he could be dressed as the Joker from Batman, or shouting about how the government is secretly using chemical concoctions on the civilian population and turning the frogs gay. It can often be hard to find where the line is drawn between theatrics and authenticity, and Jone’s makes no attempt to delineate for his audience.

 

Some may think the websites naked hyperbole, combined with it’s occasional demonstrable falsehoods would make for a negligible following. Quite the contrary. Infowars website has on average (as of the writing of this report) some 260,000 unique daily visitors, it’s Youtube channel had 2.4 million subscribers, and some sources estimate it’s videos have been watched more than 1 billion times. Paul Joseph Watson, a top editor at Infowars, later launched his own successful Youtube channel, and although his content differs greatly from Jones, he currently has gained 1.3 million subscribers of his own. While at first on the fringe (Infowars was launched in 1999) and almost completely obscure to the average American, Infowars has grown extraordinarily popular, and what started as a modestly funded radio show has evolved into a lucrative business. Other than revenues from advertisers, the Infowars shop sells “male vitality pills”, vitamin supplements, pre prepared dehydrated food supplies for emergencies, and an assortment of equipment for the coming apocalypse such as gas masks and potassium lodide tablets for radiation contamination. Mr. Jones found a sweet spot for his talents- marketing prepper products and serving as the messenger of impending doom by the parasitic political elites.

 

Whether you believe Alex Jones is a hyper-paranoid lunatic, or a paragon of truth who is threatening the Deep State, is irrelevant to the fact that he has the right to say whatever he wants, no matter how preposterous or offensive it might be. That was true, until August 5th of 2018. Within 24 hours, the Silicon Tech giants Apple, Facebook, Youtube (owned by Google) and Spotify banned Infowars and Alex Jones from their platforms. The fact that all these bans happened within a single day strongly suggests  it was not a coincidence, but a coordinated attack among the corporations. Twitter resisted the siren call, but eventually capitulated on Aug 15th. It was later reported that the radio station hosting Infowars is being shut-down and fined by the FCC. Equally important, but less publicized, was how a number of others were banned during the purge, including the Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute Daniel McAdams, Antiwar.com editorial director Scott Horton, and former U.S. diplomat and Iraq War whistleblower Peter van Buren (an excellent interview with all three of them can be seen here) Caitlin Johnstone, a blogger and political commentator on Medium, also had her Twitter account temporarily banned after she expressed her contempt for the warmonger Senator John McCain. All of this was justified by claiming “violations” to the suspiciously ambiguous company “terms of service” policies.

These shameless acts of censorship were immediately met with a firestorm of controversy, with the mainstream media and liberal press mostly defending it, while independent/ alternative media from a diverse political & ideological spectrum vehemently denouncing it. For anyone who proclaims to believe in freedom of speech,  this sudden purge by powerful corporations against Infowars should serve as an ominous red flag, and raise profound questions about modern censorship in the digital age. To fully understand this threat, it’s necessary to place into context the influence and soft power these global tech institutions wield.

Technology mega corporations such as Google and Facebook once had an obsequious relationship with formal U.S. power. In more recent years, that has changed. There can no longer be any facade about the true nature of these corporations. They have become important extensions to the establishment. With constant lobbying efforts, these companies haven’t simply placed themselves within comfortable proximity to political systems of power, they have been successfully integrated into them. Their interests are now aligned with the governments interests, and they operate together in mutually beneficial harmony. It has only been because of the courageous and heroic leaks from whistle blowers like Edward Snowden, William Binney, and Thomas Drake, that we have incontrovertible evidence of how Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Verizon, and others programmed hidden backdoor access to their servers. The U.S. intelligence agencies developed program “PRISM” so it could gather unimaginable amounts of personal information on innocent citizens and ultimately construct an Orwellian surveillance apparatus. While is is possible that the NSA, GCHQ, CIA, and others could have done this without the assistance of the tech industry, it is telling that they did not reluctantly surrender, but rather enthusiastically collaborated, knowing very well the rewards that would inevitably come with their complicity.  For the right price, violating the privacy rights of millions of Americans (and people across the world) was a minor concern to the visionaries in Silicon Valley.

 

Google has become a particular concern for those who cherish a free internet. In 2017, Google spent $18 million in lobbying the U.S. government, which exceeded more spending than any other corporation (Facebook spent $11 million). Take a moment to contemplate this sobering fact. Google channeled more money into lobbying than Exxon Mobil , Monsanto, and the nefarious actors that make up the military-industrial complex such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Even more alarming is the close ties Google has established with U.S government circles. Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Alphabet inc, worked closely with the Clinton campaign in 2016. He also served as a member in the Obama administrations “Council of Advisors on Science and Technology”. Then there is Jared Cohen, who serves as the CEO of Jigsaw (formerly Google Ideas), and previously was a member of the State Departments policy planning staff and an advisor to Condolezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Looking further back, in the book “when Google met Wikileaks”, published in 2014, Julian Assange writes “In 2004, after taking over Keyhole, a mapping tech startup cofunded by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the CIA, Google developed the technology into Google Maps, an enterprise version of which it has since shopped to the Pentagon and associated federal and state agencies on multi-million dollar contracts. In 2008, Google helped launch an NGA spy satellite, the GeoEye-1, into space. Google shares the photographs from the satellite with the U.S. military and intelligence communities. In 2010 NGA awarded Google a $27 million contract for “geospatial visualization services“.  Through 2017 and 2018, many left-wing websites, such as Truthdig.com, Alternet.org and the World Socialist Website experienced enormous decreases in traffic after Google implemented changes to their search engine algorithms. Not content to restrict speech only in the West, Google has it’s eyes on more transnational ambitions. Recently is was discovered that it is quietly at work designing a highly censored version of it’s search engine for the Chinese market. The secretive program, internally referred to by it’s code-name DragonFly will be in dutiful compliance with the Communist Parties draconian regulations. The Chinese government currently maintains one of the most censored and surveilled internet regimes in the world, and it has grown to be known as the “Great Firewall” . The 50 cent party works tirelessly to whitewash the corruption of Chinese authorities, scrub clean any online content that is perceived by the Politburo as subversive, and produce propaganda. It seems they may now have a powerful ally in Google.

 

According to Facebook, the social network has 1.47 billion daily active users and 2.23 billion monthly active users as of June 30, 2018. To put this in perspective, the entire Earths population is currently 7.63 billion. It’s current market capitalization is $500 billion (as of this writing). For comparisons sake, the GDP of Greece is approximately $200 billion.  In recent years Mr. Zuckerburg’s company has swallowed up a number of acquisitions, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Oculus VR. They have invested considerable amounts of resources into Artificial Intelligence research, which now has it’s own dedicated department called FAIR. Like Google, Facebook allocates significant amounts of capital in influencing lawmakers decisions towards regulations, while they curry favor with the political elite in Washington. During and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the faux panic over “fake news”, which was manufactured by presstitutes inside the MSM and political forces, Facebook was targeted for its alleged lack of vigilance. As the journalist Glenn Greenwald accurately explained at The Intercept “Complaints about Fake News are typically accompanied by calls for “solutions” that involve censorship and suppression, either by the government or tech giants such as Facebook. But until there is a clear definition of “Fake News,” and until it’s recognized that Fake News is being aggressively spread by the very people most loudly complaining about it, the dangers posed by these solutions will be at least as great as the problem itself” . This was followed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. All of these events served as a perfect pretext for further integration between the ostensibly independent and conscience driven Facebook and the U.S. national security state. Facebook announced that in order to better “combat the proliferation of fake news”  they would be starting a unique partnership with CNN, Fox News and Univision (the irony is prima facie).  Even more disturbing however is the recently announced partnership with the Atlantic Council, a notorious geopolitical think-tank which is the back-bone to NATO’s global public relations strategy. The Atlantic council functions an important actor in the global arms trade and greases the wheels for international defense contractors to make millions from NATO members. To give a better profile of this duplicitous organization, consider some of its prestigious board members; elder statesman and war criminal Henry Kissinger, former director of the CIA and Director of the National Security Agency Michael Hayden (now a national security analyst for CNN) Michael Chertoff who served as Bush’s secretary of homeland security, and Reuben Jeffery III who also served in Bush’s administration in the position of Under Secretary for Economic Growth,  Energy and the Environment.  Then consider it’s generous donors, which, to highlight only a few, include NATO (surprise) Lockheed Martin, JPMorgan Chase & Co, The Blackstone Group L.P, Google Inc, Microsoft Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation, The United States Army, and more (the full list is here) . It should go without saying that putting the Atlantic Council is charge of purifying Facebook of “fake news” presents a massive conflict of interest. Or, it might be more accurate to say it is a perfect convergence of interests. Facebook today has become an invaluable asset to American imperialism .

 

And somehow all of this makes full circle with Infowars recent expulsion from these tech behemoths services. Its not easy for most people to sympathize for Alex Jones predicament. He certainly doesn’t have a Mr Rogers demeanor. When he makes deeply offensive, reprehensible claims such as how the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, and the survivors were paid actors, it’s a predictable response for many people to immediately despise him. Yet we must resist any attempts to silence him, because the implications to freedom of speech are far too important. We cannot allow Silicon Valley plutocrats to erase someone from the internet, simply because their idea’s are offensive in the court of public opinion. Whether suppression of speech comes from totalitarian governments, intolerant social justice warrior mobs, or monopolistic corporations who share power with the state, it poses an equally dangerous threat to democracy. Many people foolishly believe they are immune to censorship, because they hold  all of the “right” opinions on controversial subjects, and their convictions rest on the “right” side of history. They believe, in ignorance and self-righteousness,  their beliefs and world-view are beyond rebuke, and as such whatever they say or write is beyond the possible realm of censorship. But these same people fail to understand how over the course of time, society, politics, and culture changes in fundamental way. Idea’s that are permissible today may one day be deemed anachronistic, politically incorrect, or even subversive. Old idea’s have a way of resurfacing to the present, capturing societies consciousness, while contemporary idea’s that might seem permanent are just as liable to falling out of “intellectual fashion”. If you give the state the license to suppress someone else’s speech, you are giving them the power to one day suppress yours. As many constitutional scholars, philosophers, and political theorist have pointed out, popular speech doesn’t require protection. This logically makes sense, when given any serious consideration. Instead, it is the iconoclastic, revolutionary, offensive, and unorthodox speech that will always be vulnerable to censorship. As Noam Chomsky once said “If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of speech for precisely ideas you despise, otherwise you’re not in favor of  freedom of speech“. The state cannot selectively choose whose speech deserves to be protected, and whose will not. It must be applied universally or it becomes meaningless. U.S. courts have consistently ruled an individual can only be criminally prosecuted if the speech in question meets the criteria of 1) speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and 2) The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.” For example, gathering a large mob outside of someone’s house with guns and knives and chanting “It’s time to murder the bastard inside!” would constitute speech that is not protected under the first amendment. Outside of these narrow and extreme circumstances, freedom of speech is nearly unconditional.

If we allow these tech industry mega-corporation leviathans to supersede an individuals first amendment rights with their arbitrary “terms of service” polices, we will be creating a dangerous precedent. In such a dystopian world, the government will be granted plausible deniability, while the Silicon Valley plutocrats conduct the censoring on their political patrons behalf. This unholy alliance between the U.S. government and today’s pernicious lords of the internet should be examined more closely, and if necessary antitrust laws should be enforced. Nothing less than freedom and democracy are at stake.

 

 

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”

 

 

 

The Cryptocurrency Revolution is just Beginning

 

 

Before protesters would congregate at Zuccotti Park in New York City, or hundreds of billions of dollars under two separate administrations were spent on Wall Street bailouts, a different kind of revolutionary act was quietly taking place. In January of 2009 the Bitcoin network went online, creating the first digital, decentralized cryptocurrency in history. At the time, only a small number of technologists, economists, or investors were even aware of Bitcoins existence. Hardly anyone at the time could have foreseen it’s astounding development, from the underground to the mainstream, and how it’s changed modern commerce and subsequently, society as we know it.

 

The Blockchain

In order to know how Bitcoin functions, it’s important to first understand the basic conceptual framework in which the digital currency operates. The Bitcoin network is open source, meaning anyone can see the original source code and examine it’s internal architecture. The technology powering Bitcoin is called blockchain, which is described as a distributed ledger. Thousands of computers running the same software maintains the network, and they are constantly verifying and updating the public ledger, which records every single transaction on the peer to peer system. Every transaction ever made since the creation of the network has been recorded and saved on this open ledger. Unlike our current financial system, which is centralized, Bitcoin is completely decentralized. No single organization, whether it be a government or corporation, owns the Bitcoin network. Instead, anyone with a computer and a connection to the internet keeps the network alive. Approximately every 10 minutes one block is validated and thus the ledger is updated, not on a single computer owned by a single individual but on every computer participating in the network instantly and simultaneously.  As soon as a block (information of transactions between different parties) is validated using the “Bitcoin protocol”, it is added to the blockchain. Complex algorithms are used to solve these incredibly difficult mathematical calculations, and when it successfully does a new “Bitcoin” comes into existence as a reward. As more Bitcoins are “mined” it becomes exponentially more difficult to mine the next one, by making higher computational requirements for the next block to be processed and added. This is a pivotal aspect to the viability of Bitcoins, because it prevents an excessive quantity of Bitcoins from being created, therefore preventing excessive inflation from occurring. The gradual increase in the Bitcoin supply, along with the hard limit of 21 million Bitcoins to ever exist, is arguably the most significant mechanism to the Bitcoin infrastructure for monetary and economic reasons. Some calculations place the final bitcoin being mined around the year 2140,  demonstrating it’s ability to scale.

To summarize, the rules that were programmed into the network enable total security from fraud (mainly, the double spending dilemma) by having a transparent, public ledger which every user verifies. In exchange for validating the transactions and adding the legitimate records to the blockchain, miners automatically receive Bitcoins through the protocol.

 

The Modern Banking system

The social importance of crytpocurrency can only be appreciated when placed in context of our current financial system. Writing a totally comprehensive analysis of monetary theory and a meticulously detailed historical chronology of modern banking would require an entirely separate report. Instead we will examine the essential philosophical and economic principles in which the system works, and a basic timeline of major events leading up to today. Many scholars, historians, and political thinkers have written voluminously about this subject, so for those readers interested in learning more, links will be included at the end of this blog with a selection of  influential and illuminating pieces of literature and online resources. While the list will not be exhaustive, it should serve as a kind of primer or introduction for further exploration.

In the United States, the central bank, known as the Federal Reserve, was established in 1913, during the the Woodrow Wilson administration.  It was passed into law as legislation with the support of both congress and the president. The entire story is  fascinating, and worth learning, but for the sake of brevity we can condense it to this single incident. In creating the Federal Reserve, the U.S. government and the wealthiest and most influential banking elites of the time period established the extraordinary and unethical power to manipulate the entire economy.  This is done through having a monopolization on currency creation (enforced by legal tender laws), controlling the distribution of the currency, determining the currency supply (level of inflation), and setting the interest rates for markets to lend and borrow credit on. The government transferred the authority of monetary policy from the Treasury department to the extremely secretive, deceptive, and ideologically rooted Federal Reserve. It was also an unconstitutional act, as Article I, section 10 explicitly claims [1] “No state shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit, make any thing but gold and silver coin a Tender in Payment of Debts …” The constitution was never amended, even after the legislation to establish the Federal Reserve, to change what was classified as money, from gold and silver (or bank notes issued by the Treasury department backed with gold & silver ) to Federal Reserve notes backed by nothing. Legal barriers were ignored for political expediency, the elected officials who were meant to represent the people were either complicit or capitulated, and monetary scientist were granted their desires.

As the bloody nightmare of World War II was coming to a sordid end, bureaucrats, finance experts, pseudo-economists (such as John Maynard Keynes) and industrial representatives convened at Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire. After a great deal of plotting and negotiating the Bretton Woods system was established. This new international financial order meant that every nation would fix the value of their currencies to the U.S. dollar, while the U.S. dollar would be backed by gold. This arrangement gave the United States an enormous advantage in international trade, which continues to this day. For the next 27 years, the United States dollar was set to the gold standard, but it was infamously abandoned by President Nixon on August 15th 1971.  By decreeing with executive order the termination of the dollars convertibility to gold and silver, the state replaced it with fiat currency. Fiat currency is backed by nothing but government assurances (for whatever that is worth), and national debt.  It is the ultimate tool for economic centralized planning. With an elastic money supply, the Federal Reserve and the state are capable of printing an infinite amount of currency (now it is primarily bank credit, digits plugged into computers), which subsequently produces inflation. Ostensibly, one of the core purposes of the Federal Reserve was to protect the dollar, but since 1913 it has been prodigiously devalued and will continuously erode until it collapses. The Federal Reserve is a criminal organization, surreptitiously destroying the dollar through inflation and therefore perpetually diminishing the standard of living for the working and middle classes. At the same time, it rewards corrupt financial institutions for their avarice and fraudulent behavior with massive bailouts. With worthless money and easy credit, systematically cooked datasheets and fake statistics- market indicators are dangerously distorted, which finally ends in billions of dollars of misallocated capital. Natural price discovery has ceased to function, and the country no longer has a free market. The health of a nations currency is at the heart of any nations economic sustainability. Destructive business cycles with artificially created booms and busts wipe out incomprehensible amounts of wealth from the economy. This in turn crushes employment and peoples livelihoods, often with long and painful recessions during the aftermath. The central bank believes the panacea for every economic malady can be solved by fixing the interest rate (lowering it in “bad times”, raising it in “good times”) and injecting the system with currency through policies like quantitative easing. Contrary to what central planners would have the public believe,  this remedy will never work, and they only succeed in creating the illusion of growth, hiding the fundamental weaknesses of the economy.

Federal Reserve officials are appointed, not elected by the people, can stay in power throughout multiple presidential administrations (consider Bernanke), and are accountable to no one within the the government. The most egregious abuses of the central bank are never met with any punitive implications for the chairman or it’s board of governors. It has successfully resisted any meaningful audit since it’s inception in 1913. The Federal Reserve is the most secretive organization in the United States, second only to intelligence agencies.

Any truthful discussion on the modern banking system today must explain fractional reserve banking. Anytime a commercial bank makes a loan, it is creating bank credit, which is nothing more than numbers typed into the bank’s ledger. As a result of financial sector “regulations” the reserve ratio, meaning the actual amount of money required to remain on deposit (vault cash), can be hazardously low, generally around 10%, but frequently lower. To illustrate this concept, imagine an individual takes $100 to his or her bank, and deposits it in their account. The bank is only required to keep $10 in the vault, and the other $90 is legally theirs to use at their pleasure.  To reiterate, the rest of the clients money is used for however the banks largest shareholders want, such as creating new loans with higher interest, buying toxic and junk bonds, gambling in the equities market, or investing in derivatives. The other $90 is replaced with “bank credit”, and through skulduggery accounting methods is classified as currency in the banking systems records. But the bank credit on account is only the banks version of an “I owe you”, meaning all of society must rely on the these financial institutions solvency. Bank credit is then invariably used to create new bank credit, all the while exponentially increasing the the “currency” supply.  The bulk of the worlds currency supply comes from this fraudulent process, which highlights the grave systemic risks and instability modern economies operate on. None of this would be possible without fiat currency, and centralized banks. It also makes inconceivable amounts of debt possible. As the controversial British politician Godfrey Bloom once said before the European Parliament  “We have a system called fractional reserve banking, which means banks can lend money they don’t actually have..it’s a criminal scandal and it’s been going on for too long”

Apocalyptic levels of debt

The United States government is drowning in astronomical amounts of debt. When central banks can produce currency ad infinitum, it incentivizes governments to take on more debt. This has a rippling effect, as society is currently seeing excessively overleveraged corporations, while private debt held by the public has reached historic highs (also, see here) in every category. An avalanche of debt is not limited to North America however, it is also a global phenomenon. Take for example Japan, the third highest GDP in the world,  but is significantly eclipsed by it’s staggering level of debt. The Bank of Japan has desperately been pumping trillions of yen into the economy for years,  and recently implemented an asinine policy of negative interest rates. Or consider the tragedy of Greece, which has been balancing over the precipice of bankruptcy for years, with their debt to GDP ratio over 180%. Put another way, Greece’s debt was seven times more than their annual tax revenues. The Greek debt crisis reached a breaking point two years ago, but it actually began much earlier, in 2011-2012 when the government of Greece was faced with one of the largest sovereign debt defaults in history. Skip forward to 2015 (and the Cypriot financial crisis), when Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called upon the people to vote in a national referendum against the ECB and IMF bailouts, which would have stipulated severe austerity measures. The majority of the Greeks voted oxi, only to find one week later the Prime Minister betrayed his previous promises and signed the loathed bailout, effectively invalidating the democratic will of the population he was elected to serve. Today, Greece is clinging onto life support from their international creditors, with stagnant wages, high unemployment, shrinking public services, and a crippled GDP.

While people from around the world may deny the possibility of a Greek style debt crisis happening in their own countries, history has proven that prodigious quantities of debt can and eventually will manifest itself into a destructive force- one that will unleash economic ruin. None of this even includes the long and well documented history of central banks plunging nations into hyperinflation by printing their currency into oblivion. Despite fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, and centralized planning, immutable economic principles can only be ignored until reality crashes through the myths propagated by the state and the banker elites. Unserviceable national debt is a form of economic bondage, and it is inevitable with the modern banking system which we have today.

 

An Alternative to Insanity

This brings us back to the invention of cryptocurrency. With an inherently inflationary, debt driven banking system and monetary policy, cryptocurrency responds to economic necessities with technological ingenuity. From this standpoint, the political and philosophical appeal to cryptocurrency isn’t difficult to appreciate. Unlike centralized banking, most cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin) money supply is controlled by the participants of the network. This transfers the power of money creation and distribution from the state and it’s bankster co-conspirator’s to the people. Even with this fundamental rearrangement of power structures in society, the creation of money is further safeguarded by it’s technical laws that regulate and maintain itself.  Another invaluable aspect of cryptocurrencies, and perhaps the most politically enticing, is the fact that cryptocurrencies require no traditional financial institutions to facilitate transactions between different parties. This completely eliminates any need for intermediaries, either from governments or banks. Individuals, or organizations, can directly make payments with anyone, anywhere, with absolutely no interference. That means no capital controls, no frozen assets, no suspension of payments, and no politically motivated financial seizures. Because cryptocurrencies are designed using extremely advance cryptography in security, it doesn’t matter how much coercion a government may apply to an individual or organization, they cannot gain access to their wealth without knowing their private keys. Never before in history has there been such an effective tool against unjust government confiscation. Consider the example of how the United States Government pressured Bank of America, VISA, Master Card, PayPal, and Western Union into a financial blockade against Wikileaks, after publishing Cablegate in 2010. But as Julian Assange smugly tweeted in Oct 14th 2017, these actions by the USG backfired with  poetic justice. Other than showing the auspicious twist of fate for Wikileaks, it also served as powerful testimony of how cryptocurrencies can be used to circumvent unethical and retaliatory actions from the state. It offers a salient lesson in how similar, future situations could be resolved, and how cryptocurrencies are capable of subverting criminal actions enforced by the establishment.

One of the strongest characteristics of many cryptocurrencies is it’s anonymity or pseudonymity. With Bitcoin, every single transaction is recorded on the “blockchain” or public ledger, but the parties involved in those transactions are only identifiable by a long string of numbers and letters (the senders and receivers addresses) and not their legal names. Although there are numerous ways technically knowledgeable and skilled individuals can trace these addresses back to the parties involved, it is generally private, especially if one is willing to take some relatively simple precautions. These could include using a VPN  (virtual private network) or downloading and using the Tor Browser while handling cryptocurrencies online. Sharing your address with the individual you intend to trade with by using a secure messaging app such as Signal is also prudent. Even without these precautions, when contrasting the privacy concerns between using credit and debit cards with Bitcoin, there is absolutely no comparison. While privacy in cryptocurrency is more important to some people than others, it is does pose a unique challenge,  with a growing number of solutions to satisfy increased demand. Already there have been multiple cryptocurrencies developed specifically with the objective of maximizing the protection of anonymity, such as Monero and Zcash. Many more will undoubtedly follow.

 

Cryptocurrency Growth

Bitcoin takes center stage in most discussions about cryptocurrency, but the truth is it only represents one type of digital currency in a constantly expanding digital realm. Perhaps this is because it was the first successful cryptocurrency to be put into practice, and has grown with a devoted community, so many people often overlook the plethora of other altcoins that now make up a robust and diverse cyber economy.  This previous year alone saw an incredible profusion of ICO’s (Initial coin offerings, similar in theory to IPO’s) come into existence, with various start-up companies and small independent software engineers trying to get an edge over growing competition. There are thousands of altcoins trading today, and that number is increasing at a steady rate with no signs of slowing. Still, Bitcoin remains the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, even after the hard fork in the network which spawned Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Bitcoin’s massive increase in value has been truly astounding, from $0.39 in 2010 to $20,000 on Dec. 17th 2017. The year witnessed a 1,950% increase for Bitcoin, shattering even the most optimistic expectations. Many people leaped headlong into Bitcoin investing, hoping to make a quick and easy fortune before it’s value came back down with an unavoidable correction. The cryptocurrency mania has become something analogous to the 19th century California gold rush, with high risks but potential for enormous gains. Other cryptocurrencies have also seen major increases in value as well, such as Ethereum (ETH) reaching over $1,000 and Ripple (XRP). On the prudential side, many staunch supporters of cryptocurrency are beginning to express concern something may be going awry, while others have conjectured speculative bubbles are forming that could severely destabilize the market.

 

Establishment countermeasures for self-preservation

The proliferation of cryptocurrencies and their accelerated integration into global commerce has not gone unnoticed by the establishment. For central bankers, politicians, and Wall Street elites, it was initially met with bewilderment, skepticism, or dispassionate curiosity. As Bitcoin began to explode in popularity, it was responded  more with patronizing and trivializing comments, followed by dismissive attitudes. But the times have changed. The magnitude of cryptocurrency, the volume of trade and it’s tremendous upward growth in value has become something of a threatening obelisk to the elites, which they can no longer afford to underestimate, and the establishment is quickly forming strategies to either control or undermine it. Presently there are political developments underway by central banks, traditional financial institutions, and government regulatory agencies to reign in the crytpocurrency revolution, which is already having a direct impact on it’s value. While there are multiple factors in Bitcoins historic rise and fall in prices, the recent extreme volatility in Bitcoin (and all cryptocurrencies) is directly correlated with escalating state interventions. The Communist Party of China may be the most aggressive state actor so far, banning cryptocurrency exchanges and Bitcoin mining from operating within the country. South Korean policymakers are attempting to do the same, but the immediate public backlash is setting a stage for conflict. The deputy governor of Russia’s central bank, Sergei Shvetsov has stated  Bitcoins are nothing more than a “pyramid scheme”, and will pursue policies to restrict websites that maintain cryptocurrency exchanges. In India, the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has employed scare tactics to discourage cryptocurrency investments, calling Bitcoins a “worthless ponzi scheme”.

While many governments have displayed derision towards cryptocurrencies, the greater threat, perhaps even greater than prohibition measures, is central banks attempting to co-opt cryptocurrencies and their independence. By undermining cryptocurrencies and attempting to supplant them with their own centrally regulated digital tokens, the government would destroy the sociopolitical sovereignty in which the entire system and it’s movement is founded on. For the establishment, their motivation is predictable; to regain control over the monetary system within society, and further entrench their power of monitoring and manipulating the economy. While this may seem implausible, there already exists some experiments by central banks, such as De Nederlandsche Bank’s “DNBcoin”. In Sweden, the Riksbanken has announced it is considering creating it’s own cryptocurrency. A “cashless” economy can only be positive for society if it outside the control of centrals banks, otherwise it will be turned into an instrument of inescapable repression.  The cryptocurrency community should unite in solidarity against any such schemes to co-opt the nascent technology for establishment interests.

 

Only the beginning

When the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto released a white paper for a digital, decentralized peer to peer payment system on an obscure cryptography mailing list, the wheels of change started to spin. Since then, the the value of bitcoins have skyrocketed, and millions of people across the world have adopted the technology into their lives. Bitcoins inspired thousands of other cryptocurrencies to come into existence, each trying to build off the success of what came before it. The brilliant concept of the blockchain, combined with it’s ability to be both transparent and simultaneously anonymous, has created a profound effect in economic activities, which challenges our traditional understanding of how commerce and money can work in the 21st century. Cryptocurrencies promise greater economic freedom for the individual, which in turn will advance societies collective prosperity. It is not an exaggeration to claim cryptocurrencies are capable of dismantling the entire fraudulent financial system which everyone is trapped in today. While there is legitimate criticism against Bitcoins and other altcoins, these arguments should not be used to cynically disregard cryptocurrencies as a whole, but instead be used to constructively improve upon what exists today, making it more accessible, efficient and secure. We’re already seeing significant strides, such as Hashgraph.

Cryptocurrencies are disruptive to institutionalized corruption and malfeasance, both from the banking sector and from authoritarian governments. The battle against these unethical political ideologies and centuries old power structures will be difficult, perhaps overwhelmingly so. It might even prove to be futile. But if what we’ve witnessed so far is any measurement of cryptocurrencies potential, it is a cause worth fighting for, even when the outcome is uncertain. Consider this- the odds are more in our favor than one might think, and for one relatively simple reason. As of now, the only way the establishment can end cryptocurrency networks is by shutting down the entire internet. The state isn’t technologically capable of such a feat (for the time being), and even if it were possible, such an act would be tremendously counterproductive to it’s own malign agenda. It would become a self-defeating act of recklessness by their own making, one they simply cannot afford to make. Cryptocurrencies can be transformative in ways unimaginable, and the revolution is only beginning.

 

 

Additional resources

 

One of the most important videos to ever be uploaded to Youtube, Mike Maloney explains how our entire financial system is deeply unethical and inherently unsustainable. The title “The biggest scam in the history mankind” isn’t hyperbole. Disturbing and enlightening, it cannot be recommended enough.

 

Murray Rothbard (March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was a contrarian Austrian economist, historian and political theorist, whose prolific writings have continued to influence entire fields of study today. One of his most accessible, but also educational books was titled “What has Government Done to Our Money?” which explains the history of money and banking throughout different civilizations and time periods. You can read the entire 130 page book for free in PDF format, courtesy of the Mises Institute. Follow the link here 

Ron Paul has become a legend over the years. A former congressman and three time presidential candidate, he has consistently advocated for civil liberties and opposed American military interventionism in foreign policy for decades.  His anti-war beliefs are only matched by his dedication to end the Federal Reserve system, which is outlined in his book End the Fed.  Paul’s writing style is articulated and logically grounded, his arguments expertly crafted. It serves as a one of the best contemporary critiques of centralized banking.

 

You can read the original Bitcoin white paper by following the link here 

To follow the latest news of crytpocurrency, try the website https://cointelegraph.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

President Trump and American Imperialism

 

 

 

In 2016 there were those that believed  then candidate Donald Trump would create a more restrained foreign policy. They found his unorthodox views towards transnational military organizations like NATO laudable, and his willingness to open dialogue with foreign leaders who have gained the ire of Washington’s elite sensible. Many considered his inclination towards detente with Russian relations as advantageous and pragmatic.  Whatever those hopes might have been, one year after the election and it is clear that such trust was miserably and irreparably misplaced. The current president of the United States is an unstable authoritarian who is wreaking havoc across the world outside America’s borders. The consequences for this have yet to be truly measured, but the death and destruction will be felt by it’s victims long into the future.

The endless campaign for conquest in the Middle East has found a new leader. President Trump has faithfully followed in the footsteps of his 21st century predecessors. Obama, who campaigned in 2008 as anti-war, or just diplomatic and humanitarian, managed to wage war in seven different countries. During his final year in office, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize dropped 26,171 bombs. In a previous report here on TMR,  we examined how the Obama administration reigned over an obfuscated, duplicitous and highly secretive assassination complex with fleets of lethal Drones. The administration fought bitterly to keep their drone operations as opaque as possible, until an anonymous military insider leaked documents to The Intercept. Going back one warmonger further, the unmitigated disaster of Bush’s illegal invasions and occupation’s of Afghanistan and Iraq continue to haunt the world today. Donald Trump’s legacy will now be be joined with those who came before him, marking a continuation of failed foreign policy by Washington and it’s special interests.

In early April, the Trump administration launched 59 tomahawk missiles at a Syrian military base. The missile strike was in response to the alleged sarin gas attack on a village by Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad. The evidence for such an attack was highly dubious, where even Susan Rice claimed on NPR that “We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile”.  The former national security adviser isn’t necessarily a trustworthy individual, but if the Syrian government did have a stockpile of chemical weapons, it begs the question why the Obama administration would lie about it. It stands to reason that it would have been advantageous for the administrations agenda in Syria if Bashar Al- Assad held onto chemical weapons, simply because that could potentially to be used as a political justification for more aggressive actions against the regime they had long declared “must go” (Obama also personally held these beliefs). The public may never know if Trump was given false intelligence, or he ignored accurate intelligence, but the early April attack was only the beginning. Russia’s intervention on behalf of it’s Middle Eastern ally, Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, dramatically changed the dynamics of the proxy war. Now that ISIS is on the brink of collapse (both in Syria and Iraq) , Russia has declared their goals accomplished, and are making a quick departure to avoid becoming embroiled in a protracted conflict (perhaps memories of the 1980’s Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan lingers in the minds of their military strategists). The fevered dreams of regime change in Syria for American warmongers (in both parties) seems to be crushed, if only temporarily. By every standard set by national security circles, it seems to be a failure to the establishments ambitions. Bashar-Al Assad has retained his dictatorship over his country, the territories under ISIS control have been defeated- mainly by our eastern European adversary, and Iran is gaining closer ties to both of them, which represents a consolidated foreign alliance that is perceived as challenging America’s military hegemony. This has not impeded the persistence of policies already implemented, with growing signs that a mission creep is being planned to finish unsatisfied insidious motives.

Just a few short weeks after Trump authorized the tomahawk missile strikes on the Syrian facilities, the U.S. military dropped it’s most destructive non-nuclear bomb in history on Afghanistan, citing it was targeting underground tunnels by the Pakistan border that was being used by terrorist organizations. The bomb was nicknamed “MOAB” or “mother of all bombs” and weighed 21,600 pounds which had a blast radius of one mile. While Afghan officials claimed it had killed nearly one hundred militants, the DoD has yet to release it’s own assessment on casualties. As always, official reports that come from the Department of Defense should be approached with a handful of salt and serious skepticism, as they have a long and well documented history of manipulating their information, especially when calculating death tolls. “The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire” analyzes this in greater depth, through extensive research of diplomatic and military cables. As it was recently discovered, the government has been deceiving the public about the actual number of troops currently deployed in Syria and Iraq, but it unsurprisingly had a muted response in mainstream American news. Perhaps they were focused on other important matters, like the latest Twitter spat the President had with celebrities, or how many scoops of ice cream he enjoys after dinner.

Now Trump is signaling a more hostile position against that age old nemesis of the deep state, Iran. This hawkish turn towards Iran is nothing new, since the United States has a long and nefarious history of covert involvement against the nation dating all the way back to the 1950’s. From overthrowing the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, to conducting cyber attacks against their nuclear program, the United States and Israel along with other western powers have long sought to destabilize the refractory nation. This hard-line approach will undoubtedly please not only defense contractors, but Trump’s newest ally-in arms Benjamin Netanyahu, who was overjoyed by his declaration to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. This latest move resulted in outrage not only in Palestine but across the world, and will only succeed in exacerbating a complicated and painful regional conflict. The Israeli and Palestinian claims on the holy land stretch back decades,  with both sides committing human rights violations. At the heart of the conflict is national sovereignty, ancient religious history, and cultural pride that have created a challenge which cannot be resolved by foreign intervention. Trump’s arrogant actions in regard with Jerusalem will carry terrible ramifications and only cause more turmoil for both Palestinian’s and Israeli’s, Jews, Muslims and Christians alike.

The appetite for war by the U.S. empire is not limited to the Middle East. As it is, the USG has over 800 military bases across across the world, which surely would have made even the greatest of Roman emperors envious. In Africa there is in development a maniacal military strategy which is certain to destabilize countries within the continent- a continent that is already submerged in tribal and sectarian violence, poverty and corruption. Somalia has suffered since 2009 not only from a bloody civil war, but the emergence of terrorist organizations like Al-Shabaab which are being increasingly targeted by American drones since Trump became president. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has recently released data on 18 strikes this year, revealing a disturbing trend of increased intervention in the region. As recently as November 21st, new reports by the Pentagon claim up to 29 strikes. These numbers are likely low and intentionally misrepresented by the DoD, but the sharp increase cannot be ignored. America’s military presence is also expanding with special forces and conventional combat troops.  This trend is continued in Niger with an escalation of military activity, where back in October four American soldiers and five Nigerian troops were killed in a reconnaissance mission. Presently, the USG has soldiers stationed in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, South Sudan, Djibouti, in addition to smaller numbers scattered across numerous countries in the continent. According to Nick Turse, the author of “Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa”, the U.S. military conducts an average of nearly 3,500 missions per year on the continent. Other than the ambiguous “war on terror”, politicians and military commanders rarely offer a consistent or clear explanation for it’s raison d’être.

For decades North Korea had posed a unique and extremely precarious security issue, not only for South Korea but the entire international community. The socialist dictator Kim Jong-Un has shown malicious and erratic behavior, and the proliferation of their nuclear weapons program has led to strong condemnation from world leaders. The hermit kingdom is isolated from the rest of the world in a way that no other country is, but it continues to depend on imports to sustain itself. Complicating the volatile situation is President Trump’s egotistical and bellicose temperament, who has recently  taken to provoking Kim-Jong Un (little rocket man). While North Korea continues to test it’s ICBM’s, screaming across the Sea of Japan and falling within close proximity to the land of the rising sun, many in the Pentagon are growing tired of sanctions and itching for direct military engagement. The neoconservatives in Washington and the military-industrial complex are willing to jeopardize the lives of millions in Asia with their belligerence and hubris, believing tough political posturing is necessary to force behavioral change from Pyongyang.  There is little sign that these tactics have been effective, and yet Trump’s administration continues to intimidate the nuclear armed state. The threat of a nuclear attack by North Korea is also repeatedly exaggerated, both in the MSM and from government officials. Deliberately misrepresenting the probability is conducive to private defense contractors, and further serves the interests of the deep state. While King Jong-Un is indisputably a brutal authoritarian, there is little reason to believe he is suicidal. Any military action against the United States or it’s Asian allies (South Korea, Japan) would be met with total annihilation. This is fully understood by the supreme leader and his generals, so they choose instead to antagonize the region in hopes of receiving concessions. Still, dangerous escalations of this kind have consequences, and the Cold War had numerous instances where the world narrowly averted catastrophe. Trump has rejected diplomacy and instead displayed criminal recklessness towards North Korea that could end in disaster.

If there was any question as to where Trump’s loyalties rest, one need only look at the $700 billion National Defense Authorization bill that was signed into law last week. In 2012 President Obama signed a controversial NDAA into law, empowering the executive branch and authorities in the military to detain any terrorist suspect indefinitely, without habeas corpus. This dangerous totalitarian power has now been inherited by the incumbent President. Despite all of the rhetoric about “draining the swamp”, Trump has only removed old monsters and replaced them with new ones. Bureaucrats and politicians are transient, but morally bankrupt ideology takes permanency within the establishment. The American empire continues to defend it’s geopolitical interests by consolidating and maintaining it’s economic and military hegemony. The insatiable desire for power and dominance has not been diminished, and American imperialism continues to grow without any major resistance.  The final bulwark between tyranny or freedom, war or peace, is the will of the people. Society must band together to end the insanity of the political elite, before it is too late.  Now is a time for action, not reticence.