[John Day]

Oh, My! I seem to be on a roll this morning.
Let me defend Monbiot, by way of “agreeing with what he meant”, as Hillary Clinton recently did, while explaining Nancy Pelosi’s reluctance to push for Trump impeachment.
I do present a process for development of a new market economy, which needs to develop to meet the emerging economic circumstances, which have never exactly existed in the past.
They will change, too. This adaptation in groups is what we do that sets us apart in the ecosystem on the surface of the blue planet.
First, a Monbiot quote, with which we can agree, basically about thermodynamic principles. To run any process requires a reduction in total energy/entropy in a system. Something must be “dissipated”.
“A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine.”
What this thermodynamic analysis leaves in the long term is the work done from sunlight by photosynthesis, but we are not suddenly reduced to that, because we still have so much order and knowledge, and analysis capacity, which has come from burning coal, oil and gas.
That technical capacity is currently dedicated to burning more coal, oil and gas, as rapidly as possible, but that directive is already foundering.
The big question right now, the immediate problem, is how 7 billionish people stop running down hill faster and faster, and do something less doomed.
Individuals with wiggle room can make adaptive changes in the right direction, and they will need to expend available energy and technical resources to make those small changes. Any of those changes will be open to logical attack for being wasteful, but in that analysis, we can only curl up and die.
Our greatest potential as a species lies in optimizing our strong suit to the cultivation of photosynthetic living ecosystems on the face of the planet. It’s something we do.


The progressive goal of this for humans is to have a good quality of life by being healthy and helpful and cooperative versions of the animals we were born as, not struggling to become more like machines, fighting distraction, fatigue and the urge to urinate. (We’re about at the end of that alley.)
This contrasts with the capitalist prime directive of winning by being the most effective at expending energy and resources every day, and thereby dominating and displacing the other contestants in the competition. That is short-termism.
I recently saw a genetic analysis, done over 150 years or so, that American families in a few towns with very good birth and death records, maximized their longer term growth by having fewer children later and investing in them. In the short term, breeding like rabbits won, of course, but I postulate that it failed badly in “selection events”, when things got difficult and needed sustained work and insightful innovation to adapt successfully.
Look up there! Selection Event on the horizon! …
Next agreeable Monbiot paragraph:
“This drives us towards cataclysm on such a scale that most people have no means of imagining it. The threatened collapse of our life-support systems is bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four. Societies can recover from these apocalyptic events, but not from the loss of soil, an abundant biosphere and a habitable climate.”
Now, a Monbiot paragraph with which I disagree, but mainly due to the boundary conditions, which he seems to assume. Rent extraction destroys real political economy in the long term, as per classical economics, but “wealth creation” happens within certain defined boundaries, and if those boundaries are defined as “photosynthesis” and “using stuff that already exists”, and “burning fossil fuel as a transitional investment in the new system”, then it looks pretty do-able. “Growth” needs rethinking.
“In the New York Times on Sunday, the Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz sought to distinguish between good capitalism, which he called “wealth creation”, and bad capitalism, which he called “wealth grabbing” (extracting rent). I understand his distinction. But from the environmental point of view, wealth creation is wealth grabbing. Economic growth, intrinsically linked to the increasing use of material resources, means seizing natural wealth from both living systems and future generations.”
Here is another paragraph about reframing goals/objectives/success, with which we can agree:
“Like coal, capitalism has brought many benefits. But, like coal, it now causes more harm than good. Just as we have found means of generating useful energy that are better and less damaging than coal, so we need to find means of generating human wellbeing that are better and less damaging than capitalism.”
More agreeableness:
“There is no going back: the alternative to capitalism is neither feudalism nor state communism.”
I accept Monbiot’s closing summation, a call to cooperative problem solving:
“So what does a better system look like? I don’t have a complete answer, and I don’t believe any one person does. But I think I see a rough framework emerging. Part of it is provided by the ecological civilisation proposed by Jeremy Lent, one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Other elements come from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics and the environmental thinking of Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben. Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury”. Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on this simple principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.
I believe our task is to identify the best proposals from many different thinkers and shape them into a coherent alternative. Because no economic system is only an economic system but intrudes into every aspect of our lives, we need many minds from various disciplines – economic, environmental, political, cultural, social and logistical – working collaboratively to create a better way of organising ourselves that meets our needs without destroying our home.
Our choice comes down to this. Do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?”

[John Day]

And now for something really NOT completely different…
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/calling-shots.html
Did Israel Kill both Kennedy Brothers?​ Thanks Eleni.
This article focuses on the motive of Israel to save it’s nuclear weapons program at Dimona, which JFK opposed most firmly, then the need to keep everything covered up by preventing a President RFK from investigating.
The article is long, detailed and focused on Israel. Why does it come out in Russia Insider? More Russian interference?
I personally think the deposed CIA Chief, Alan Dulles, the CIA, the Pentagon, the “military industrial complex” and the Federal Reserve Banking System all had ample interest in the elimination of JFK right away.
This was the Globalist Deep State blood-inauguration. Note: Sirhan Sirhan is a Palestinian Christian, not Muslim.
Let’s now conclude our overview of the evidence: beside the fact that John and Robert were brothers, their assassinations have at least two things in common: Lyndon Johnson and Israel.
First, their deaths are precisely framed by Johnson’s presidency, which was also the context for other political assassinations, such as Martin-Luther King’s. Johnson was in control of the State during the two investigations on John and Robert’s murders.
Secondly, in both cases, we find the fingerprints of Israel’s deep state. In the case of Robert, it is the choice of the manipulated patsy, which was obviously meant to disguise Robert’s assassination as an act of hatred against Israel. In the case of John, it it is the identity of the man asked to kill the patsy, a Jewish gangster linked to the Irgun.
Johnson and Israel, the two common elements in the Kennedy assassinations, are themselves closely linked, since Johnson can be considered as a high-level sayan, a man secretly devoted to Israel, or owned by Israel, to the point of committing high treason against the nation he had been elected to lead and protect.
The causal link between the two assassinations then becomes clear: even if Robert had been pro-Israel, which he was not, Israel and Johnson would still have had a compelling reason to eliminate him before he got to the White House, where he could—and would—reopen the investigation on his brother’s death.
What should have been obvious from the start now appears brightly clear: in order to solve the mystery of the assassination of John Kennedy, one has simply to look into the two other assassinations which are connected to it: the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man whose trial could have exposed the hoax and possibly put the plotters into the light, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the man who would have reopened the case if he had lived. And both these assassinations bear the signature of Israel.
At his death in 1968, Robert Kennedy left eleven orphans, not counting John’s two children, whom he had somewhat adopted. John’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr., aka John John, who had turned three the day of his father’s funeral, embodied the Kennedy myth in the heart of all Americans. The route seemed traced for him to become president one day. He died on July 16, 1999, with his pregnant wife and his sister-in-law, when his private plane suddenly and mysteriously nose-dived into the ocean a few seconds after he had announced his landing on the Kennedy property in Massachusetts.
https://russia-insider.com/en/did-israel-kill-both-kennedy-brothers/ri26455?ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=b1223a98e3&mc_eid=7a06d680cf

[John Day]

Milo Minderbinder’s “Syndicate” corporation, in Catch-22, provides a good, and increasingly complex and conflicted model of global corporate governance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Minderbinder
Milo Minderbinder is the mess officer at the United States Army Air Corps base who becomes obsessed with expanding mess operations and trading goods for the profits of the syndicate (in which he and everyone else “has a share”). Milo is a satire of the modern businessman, and beyond that is the living representation of capitalism, as he has no allegiance to any country, person or principle unless it pays him.[3]
Minderbinder, unlike most characters in Catch-22, who are only the subject of one chapter, is the subject of three chapters (Chapter 22: “Milo the Mayor”, Chapter 24: “Milo” and Chapter 35: “Milo the Militant”). He is one of the main characters in the novel. His most interesting attributes are his complete amorality without self-awareness, and his circular logicality in running his Syndicate.
Minderbinder’s enterprise becomes known as “M&M Enterprises”, with the two M’s standing for his initials and the “&” added to dispel any idea that the enterprise is a one-man operation. Minderbinder travels across the world, especially around the Mediterranean Sea, trying to buy and sell goods at a profit, primarily through black market channels. Everyone has a “share”, a fact which Minderbinder uses to defend his actions, stating that what is good for the company is good for all. For example, he secretly replaces the CO2 cartridges in the emergency life vests with printed notes to the effect that what is good for M&M is good for the country.
Eventually, Minderbinder begins contracting missions for the Germans, fighting on both sides in the battle at Orvieto, and bombing his own squadron at Pianosa. At one point Minderbinder orders his fleet of aircraft to attack the American base where he lives, killing many American officers and enlisted men. He finally gets court-martialed for treason. However, as M&M Enterprises proves to be incredibly profitable, he hires an expensive lawyer who is able to convince the court that it was capitalism which made America great, and is absolved only by disclosing his enormous profit to the investigating congressional committee.

[John Day]

@Dr D:
If it’s not owned by a person it is owned by…?
Corporations…
I think Corporations are forms of oligarchy.
Whaddayuz think?

[John Day]

@V.Arnold:
I’m in agreement with Graeber, Hudson and being grounded literally by planting and harvesting in real soil, and watching it. I’m looking out at the Austin garden now. We got 2 inches of rain yesterday, had fresh spinach last night, and I pulled a bunch of big carrots just now. this link is oldish news, provided just for pictures of my new and established Texas gardens, weekend before last.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/the-pompeo-doctrine.html

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/moral-decay.html
Last week Mike Pompeo spoke at Texas A&M University, itself long known for being a favored recruiting ground of the CIA, considering too that one of the university’s last presidents, Robert Gates, was CIA chief and later served as Bush and Obama’s Secretary of Defense.
During the Q&A session, Pompeo boasted that in the CIA both the training and culture are geared toward the following:
“We lied, we cheated, we stole.”
Interestingly, a Christian religious news broadcaster was the only media that seemed to pick up on Pompeo’s words last week, and described it as follows: “that’s not the resume of the Secretary of State… that’s the resume of Satan.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-21/i-was-cia-director-we-lied-we-cheated-we-stole

The Triumph of Evil, Paul Craig Roberts
Today (April 17) I heard a NPR “news” report that described the democratically elected president of Venezuela as “the Venezuelan dictator Maduro.” By repeating over and over that a democratically elected president is a dictator, the presstitutes create that image of Maduro in the minds of vast numbers of peoples who know nothing about Venezuela and had never heard of Maduro until he is dropped on them as “dictator.” …Secretary of state Mike Pompeo and vice president Pence have added their big mouths to the propaganda against the few independent governments in Latin America. Where is the shame when the highest American government officials stand up in front of the world and openly proclaim that it is official US government policy to overthrow democratically elected governments simply because those governments don’t let Americans plunder their countries?
How is it possible that Pompeo can announce that the “days are numbered” of the elected president of Nicaragua, who has been elected president 3 or 4 times, and the world not see the US as a rogue state that must be isolated and shunned? How can Pompeo describe Washington’s overthrow of an elected government as “setting the Nicaraguan people free?”

The Triumph of Evil

​James Petras on why Venezuela has not folded to the empire quite yet.
Despite the two decades of pressure by the world’s biggest imperial power ,which bears responsibility for the world’s highest rate of inflation, and despite the illegal seizure of billions of dollars of Venezuelan assets, the people remain loyal , in defense of their government. The reasons are clear and forthright.
The Venezuelan majority has a history of poverty, marginalization and repression, including the bloody massacre of thousands of protestors in 1989. Millions lived in shanty towns, excluded from higher education and health facilities. The US provided arms and advisers to buttress the politicians who now form the greater part of the US opposition to President Maduro. The US- oligarch alliance extracted billions of dollars from contracts from the oil industry.
Remembrance of this reactionary legacy is one powerful reason why the vast majority of Venezuelans oppose US intervention in support of the puppet opposition.
http://www.unz.com/jpetras/why-venezuela-has-not-been-defeated/

​Charles Hugh Smith:​
Consider America’s favorite pastime, corrosive partisan politics. This distemper is often traced back to (surprise!) extreme partisans, but as the chart below shows, political partisanship has risen in near-perfect correlation with wealth-income inequality, which it itself the hallmark of deeply systemic corruption, as the system is rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many. (Chart courtesy of Slope of Hope.)
There’s a phrase that describes a socio-economic system becoming the means for personal aggrandizement at the expense of civil society itself: moral decay.​ ​How else can we describe a system whose inputs and processes are rigged so the output is the vast majority of all income gains flow to the top 0.1%? (See chart below.)
When a socio-economic system institutionalizes the extralegal privileges of wealth and power, that is moral decay. When government only responds in ways that first serve the interests of entrenched insiders, that is moral decay. When the financial system is rigged to sluice income and wealth to the top of the wealth-power pyramid while strip​-​mining the productive class below via inflation and taxes, that’s moral decay. (See chart below of workers’ share of the national income.)
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr19/moral-decay4-19.html

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/secret-fire.html
Who knew that there was a big fire at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, also on Monday? What a coincidence!
It’s easy to see how that got completely missed by all the media and charitable corporations, with all of the important news about the Notre Dame fire, … isn’t it? Thanks Eleni.
Palestine news agency, Wafa, cited a guard as saying that,
“The fire broke out in the guard’s room outside the roof of the Marwani Prayer Room, and the fire brigade of Jerusalem Islamic Waqf handled the matter successfully.”
Al-Marwani prayer room is located underneath the south-eastern corner of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound (Haram Al Sharif).

Fire Breaks out at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (VIDEO)

​Criticizing Israel Will Land You In Prison:
Soon, this blog will be illegal.
No, I’m not selling drugs or peddling child pornography.
I write about America’s wars and the primary objective of those illegal and immoral wars—to make Israel the hegemon of the Middle East along with Saudi Arabia. All US foreign policy in that region centers on those two nations.
The following may soon be classified as hate speech and anti-semitism (as increasingly criticism of the Jewish state and its Zionist political ideology are considered crimes).
Jewish neocons found their way into the Reagan administration and later the Bush Junior White House and Pentagon. Huddled under the wing of Vice President Dick Cheney, they plotted to attack and destroy Israel’s enemies. Neocon ideologues strategized and published papers on these manufactured wars, most notably a paper presented to then Israeli president Bibi Netanyahu. It called for taking out Iraq and Syria. Israeli academics have written on this subject for decades. The nation’s early leaders engineered border provocations and false flag attacks (the Lavon Affair) to destabilize the region. Southern Lebanon is considered a valuable asset primarily for its water resources (e.g. “Operation Litani”) and the Golan Heights in Syria was occupied for its strategic value.

Death of Free Speech: Criticizing Israel Will Land You in Prison

​Why The Gulf States Are So Edgy, Alastair Crooke (I hope the link is working again when you click on it. Thanks Eleni)
The Gulf grandees have a right to be edgy, Alastair Crooke writes. They can see that Trump’s ‘war hawks’ are intent on cornering, pressurising and provoking Iran.. Algeria. Libya. Saudi Arabia.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/15/why-gulf-states-are-so-edgy.html

NOT Mike-the-Slob, please!
One day after North Korea’s Leader Kim reportedly oversaw the test of a “new tactical guided weapon”, North Korea on Thursday demanded that Secretary of State and former CIA chief, Mike Pompeo, should be replaced for any future negotiations with the U.S., the country’s media reported.
“Whenever Pompeo pokes his nose in, talks between the two countries go wrong without any results even from the point close to success,” Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Kwon Jong-gun as saying. Kwon is director general of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s department for American affairs. He was addressing the first session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly of the country.
Two summits between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un since June 2018 have failed to reach an agreement over the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. In response, Kwon suggested a “more careful and mature” negotiator to take Pompeo’s place.
“I am afraid that, if Pompeo engages in the talks again, the table will be lousy once again and the talks will become entangled,” he said.
“Therefore, even in the case of a possible resumption of the dialogue with the U.S., I wish our dialogue counterpart would be not Pompeo but [anyone] who is more careful and mature in communicating with us,” he said.
Kwon said the North Korean leader and the U.S. president had good personal relations.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-18/nkoreas-kim-wants-pompeo-replaced-chief-us-negotiator-will-meet-putin

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/deep-france.html
Charles Hugh Smith looks at the sustained assault upon French identity.
These are not matters solely of politics and finance; they are manifestations of the elite war on the identity of France.
As rationalists, we’re supposed to take the dramatic and profoundly tragic fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris as random chance or bad luck. But I cannot be the only one who feels a symbolic tie between the near-destruction of a French religious and cultural icon and the embattled identity of France.
As it happens, I am reading Fernand Braudel’s massive two-volume history The Identity of France: Volume One: History and Environment and Volume Two: People and Production…
The Chinese famously view natural disasters and similar events as portents of political change, as disasters suggest the Emperor/ruling elite has lost the Mandate of Heaven. It is difficult not to see the disastrous fire in Notre Dame as just such a portent.
For the identity of France is under assault on a number of fronts. The left-leaning status quo has set up a false duality: one either worships multiculturalism and rejects a national identity as the sworn enemy of multiculturalism, or one is a rightist racist. Thus anyone who even refers to a national identity of France is quickly vilified and marginalized…
These are not matters solely of politics and finance; they are manifestations of the elite war on the identity of France, to transform it into a bland, globalized hierarchy in which capital and power benefit the few, a system enforced by state propaganda and public virtue-signaling.​..
The corporate media, a key defender of the self-serving elite, will reject any symbolism in the near-destruction of Notre Dame. But deep down, many sense what cannot be spoken openly: the elites in France have lost the Mandate of Heaven.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2019/04/notre-dame-and-identity-of-france.html

The cause of the Notre-Dame Cathedral fire is still being investigated and the Paris prosecutor has ruled out arson and says it was likely the result of an accident.
“We are favoring the theory of an accident,” prosecutor Remy Heitz told reporters Tuesday.
The fire to the iconic church, however, may have raised awareness to a rash of vandalism to French churches. A total of 875 of France’s 42,258 churches were vandalized in 2018, with a small fire set to the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris in March, according to French police.
In the same week that the fire broke out at the Saint-Sulpice church, another 11 churches were vandalized. According to the Ministry of the Interior, a total of 1,063 anti-Christian acts were recorded in 2018 alone.
Other acts of vandalism to the churches include human feces spread on the walls of the Notre-Dame-des-Enfacts in Nimes and a damaged organ at the Saint-Denis basilica. Another 129 churches had thefts on their property with still another 59 cemeteries vandalized.
Republication MP Valerie Boyer told the Sun, “Every day, at least two churches are profaned.”
The fire at the Saint-Sulpice church, although small, was started deliberately according to police and will cost several hundred million euros to repair, Courrier International reported.
There has been a call for more investigations in the anti-Christian acts in France by legislators as the acts of vandalism have been downplayed by church officials.
https://www.ibtimes.com/notre-dame-cathedral-fire-not-arson-875-french-churches-vandalized-2018-2785886

“Hardly anyone writes and speaks about the increasing attacks on Christian symbols. There is an eloquent silence in both France and Germany about the scandal of the desecrations and the origin of the perpetrators…. Not a word, not even the slightest hint that could in anyway lead to the suspicion of migrants… It is not the perpetrators who are in danger of being ostracized, but those who dare to associate the desecration of Christian symbols with immigrant imports. They are accused of hatred, hate speech and racism.”
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14044/europe-churches-vandalized

Jesus—the revolutionary, the political dissident, and the nonviolent activist—lived and died in a police state. Any reflection on Jesus’ life and death within a police state must take into account several factors: Jesus spoke out strongly against such things as empires, controlling people, state violence and power politics. Jesus challenged the political and religious belief systems of his day. And worldly powers feared Jesus, not because he challenged them for control of thrones or government but because he undercut their claims of supremacy, and he dared to speak truth to power in a time when doing so could—and often did—cost a person his life.
Unfortunately, the radical Jesus, the political dissident who took aim at injustice and oppression, has been largely forgotten today, replaced by a congenial, smiling Jesus trotted out for religious holidays but otherwise rendered mute when it comes to matters of war, power and politics.
Yet for those who truly study the life and teachings of Jesus, the resounding theme is one of outright resistance to war, materialism and empire.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-16/jesus-christ-julian-assange-when-dissidents-become-enemies-state

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/the-pompeo-doctrine.html
When President Trump nominated the representative from Kansas, Mike Pompeo, as Director of the CIA, we interpreted this unexpected nomination in terms of the President’s difficulty to find allies in the Republican Party which he had just over-run. We had forgotten that from 2006 to 2010, Pompeo had been the CEO of the hydrocarbon equipment supplier Sentry International. He knew how the oil market worked, and knew personally the world’s main actors. At the same time, President Trump nominated Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. Tillerson had been the CEO of one of the major hydrocarbon companies, Exxon-Mobil…
It is obviously impossible today to estimate the extent of Pompeo’s actions as head of the secret service. However, we may entertain the thought that his older objectives may not be too far removed from those he defends today…
The 2019 Congress (CERAweek, 9 to 13 March, in Houston, Texas) was the largest international meeting in History on this subject. The CEOs of the main companies of 78 countries were present. Top of the bill was the speech by Mike Pompeo. The whole profession had been notified of the importance of his intervention, and this was the only moment at which the huge room was chock-full.
After having saluted his ex-colleagues, Mike Pompeo expressed his pride for the incredible performances of his country’s oil industry, which, in six years, had become the world’s major oil producer, thanks to new techniques for the extraction of shale. He announced that he had created a special bureau in the State Department tasked with managing energy resources. From now on, the directors of specialised US companies would have to talk to him. His mission was to help them to win markets overseas. In exchange, they must agree to help their own country to apply his energy policy.
This consisted both of producing as much as possible in the United States, and also drying up a part of the world offer in order to balance the market. This is the only way that the country would be able to sell shale oil and gas, since their extraction is particularly expensive.
According to the Pompeo doctrine, it is not a question of reducing world production to the level of demand per quotas of production, such as the OPEP+ has instituted for the last two years, but by closing the door on certain large-scale exporters – Iran, Venezuela and Syria (whose gigantic reserves were discovered only recently, and are not yet being exploited).​..​
Besides this,the US Treasury Department is blocking all means of transport for Iranian and Venezuelan oil, and also deliveries to destinations in Syria…
The attitude of the White House towards Syria is different, insofar as this country is currently unable to exploit its reserves, and Russia is allowing time to pass. The aim is to prevent reconstruction and therefore make life impossible for its people. The CIA is implementing an intense strategy of sabotage against any form of energy supply. The majority of the population, for example, has no more gas for heating their homes, nor for cooking purposes. Worse, a Turkish petrol tanker which was transporting Iranian product to Syria was sabotaged off the port of Latakia. The ship exploded, causing the deaths of its entire crew and a vast oil slick which the Western Press did not even mention…
Mike Pompeo is attempting to impose a new distribution of territorial waters which would re-route Lebanese oil tankers under Israëli sovereignty…
For the moment, Donald Trump’s policies can only succeed by diminishing US demand. Until now, hydrocarbons were mainly used to fill automobile petrol tanks, which explains the development of projects for electric cars. Consuming petrol in order to supply electricity is much less expensive in the United States than using it directly in car motors. Above all, electricity can be supplied from various sources on US territory, inexpensively and at stable prices.
It is important to note that the development of electric vehicles has hardly any connection with the ideology according to which we must decrease the production of CO2 to bring down the temperature of the Earth.​..
The United States will not allow the export of hydrocarbons from Iran, Venezuela and Syria until 2023 or 2024, the date at which their shale production will begin to decrease rapidly, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Once again, the entire geopolitical structure will be overturned. Thanks Eleni.​
https://www.voltairenet.org/article205987.html

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/fake-reality.html
Naw, that’s impossible. Where would the Taliban get the kinds of weapons to shoot down a B-52? Who would trust them?
The Taliban is currently claiming that militants have shot down a US B-52 Stratofortress heavy bomber over Afghanistan, Middle East based news site Muraselon reports, citing official Taliban statements.
Taliban spokesman Qarri Muhammad Yousef Ahmad was cited by the Mideast news source as saying, “Mujaheddin of the Islamic Emirate targeted US B-52 bomber with heavy weapons today early morning in Lar area in Washir district of Helmand province, the bomber went down and all its crew were killed while smoke still rising from the crash site.”
Russian and Iranian state media were quick to circulate the claim, though it’s as yet to be confirmed by other sources. Neither US nor Afghan national sources have acknowledged a B-52 crash, which the Taliban further said killed all crew members on board.
The alleged incident occurred as the aircraft was departing Shawrab Airbase in southern Afghanistan during the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Well-known Taliban sources online also cited the alleged shoot down, such as Alemara Arabic, which brands itself the Arabic language version of the “Official account of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”:
The claim of a Taliban-downed US aircraft — which if true would constitute a rare and disastrous event for coalition forces — comes on the heels of a Taliban attack on a US convoy in north-eastern Afghanistan on Monday, which killed three US Marines and wounded an Afghan contractor.
Early reports out of neighboring Iran which highlighted the claimed incident featured publication of misleading photos of a downed B-52 bomber, given that the main image was of a prior B-52 accidental crash in Guam in 2016.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-10/taliban-claims-shoot-down-us-b-52-bomber-over-afghanistan

No news since yesterday on that. Nothing today…
https://sputniknews.com/asia/201904111074023557-taliban-missile-us-airbase-afghanistan/

The US-Turkey showdown over Ankara’s deal with Russia for the S-400 anti-air defense system continues and could even escalate further considering Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu this week issued a return ultimatum after continued Washington pledges to halt sale of Lockheed’s F-35 stealth fighters.
Not only did FM Cavusoglu say on Wednesday that Turkey will not bow to mounting US pressure, but said if Washington blacklists Turkey on either sales of the US-made Patriot systems, or blocks F-35s already purchased, then Ankara may pursue even more S-400 systems and would further look for alternatives to the F-35 jets.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-10/turkey-threatens-buy-even-more-russian-s-400s-if-us-doesnt-cooperate

Notice how the interview is kept from straying into any mention of who coordinated with the CIA and Israel for guns, money medical care and air support…​
A former ISIS commander has claimed that the terror group cooperated directly with Turkish state intelligence agencies for years on areas of “common interest”.
The source said that senior Turkish government officials had numerous meetings with ISIS representatives to coordinate activities and that this also involved providing support and safe harbour to foreign fighters in the country. President Erdogan “was working hand in glove with ISIS” according to the US government counter-terrorism consultants who interviewed the ex-ISIS official…
Abu Mansour described having complete impunity to travel between Syria and Turkey, leading Speckhard to describe him as in effect an ISIS ‘Ambassador’. “I passed the borders and they let me pass”, he said. “[At the border], the Turks always sent me a car and I’m protected. A team of two to three people from our side were with me. I was in charge of our team most of the time.” …
Abu Mansour argued that his role was to coordinate a relationship between ISIS and Turkey where “both sides benefit.” Abu Mansour said that Turkey saw ISIS as a strategic tool to expand Turkey’s influence in northern Syria as the centre for a renewed empire:
“We are in the border area and Turkey wants to control its borders — to control Northern Syria. Actually they had ambitions not only for controlling the Kurds. They wanted all the north, from Kessab (the most northern point of Syria) to Mosul… This is the Islamists’ ideology of Erdogan. They wanted all of the north of Syria. That is what the Turkish side said [they wanted], to control the north of Syria, because they have their real ambitions. Actually, we talked about what Erdogan said in public [versus what he really desired.] This part of Syria is part of the Ottoman states. Before the agreement following the Second World War, Aleppo and Mosul were part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The agreement Sykes Picot [in which they lost these regions] was signed for one hundred years. In our meetings, we talked about reestablishing the Ottoman Empire. This was the vision of Turkey.”
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/erdogan-worked-hand-in-glove-with-isis-in-syria-claims-former-emir-e83c0e6b9c3d

[John Day]

Today’s offering, Prisoners And Puppets is not essentially different from Debt Rattle, sigh…
Thanks Ilargi
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/prisoners-and-puppets.html

[John Day]

This is appropriate on all counts, I think:

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/undercurrents.html
“It belongs to the people, not the bankers”, Italy moves to seize gold from Italian central bank.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-05/it-belongs-people-not-bankers-italy-moves-seize-gold-central-bank

Italian populist politicians may see the writing on the bathroom walls of the “gnomes of Zurich”…
According to Basel-III rules, gold is money again​. ​(Thanks Bill for unreadable article in machine-translated Russian to prompt finding this other article).
In 2018, central banks added nearly 23 million ounces of gold, up 74% from 2017. This is the highest annual purchase rate increase since 1971, and the second-highest rate in history. Russia was the biggest buyer. And not surprisingly, the lion’s share of gold is flowing into central banks of countries that are in the sights of America’s killing machine—the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us about in 1958.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), located in Basal, Switzerland, is often referred to as the central bankers’ bank. Related to this issue of central bank hoarding of gold is the fact that on March 29 the BIS will permit central banks to count the physical gold it holds (marked to market) as a reserve asset just the same as it allows cash and sovereign debt instruments to be counted.
There has been a long-term view that China and other nations dishoarding dollars in favor of gold have been quite happy about western banks trashing the gold price through the synthetic paper markets. But one has to wonder if that might not change, once physical gold is marked to market for the sake of enlarging bank balance sheets.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-17/jay-taylor-under-basel-iii-rules-gold-becomes-money

Charles Hugh Smith has a thumbnail strategic sketch of Brexit:
In sum: Britain’s participation in the EU was always contingent, and despite the continental urge to punish Brexit, Britain’s exit doesn’t really damage the balance of power. In terms of balancing land-based power, U.S. and NATO engagement with the Eastern European nations is far more consequential to continental Europe than Brexit.
In addition to geography, there’s democracy and the asymmetry of the neoliberal economic order. Not to put too fine a point on it, but democracy only works for the political and financial elites as long as the people vote as they’re told.
Once democracy becomes a source of resistance to the Power Elites, then elections that go counter to ruling-elite wishes must be declared illegitimate or reversed. (Hence the Power Elite’s furious battle to delegitimize Brexit and Trump’s election. Little wonder that the infamously bogus Steele Dossier was concocted by MI6 operatives.)
In other words, democracy is only acceptable if the voters rubberstamp the ruling elites’ centralized control of capital and power.
The last mechanism clanking away beneath the surface of Brexit is the hollowing out of economies ruled by centralized neoliberal (i.e. globalized) elites. High Street (Main Street in America) is simply not profitable to financial elites, and neither is a decentralized economy that serves localized needs rather than centralized profit centers.
So the economic and social fabric of the nation is ground down to dust in favor of Amazon, Wal-Mart, a handful of banks in London and New York and regulatory satraps in the central state who protect and serve the financial elites and their political and Deep State partners.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2019/04/beneath-surface-of-brexit.html

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/imagining-equality.html
The Delphic Oracle Was Their Davos, P​a​rt 4, Michael Hudson:
America’s military buildup, its anti-environmental policy and global wars are part of the same symbiotic strategy. The reason why America will not be part of a real effort to mitigate global warming is that its policy is still based on grabbing the oil resources of the Near East, Venezuela, and everywhere else that it can. Also, the oil industry is the most tax-exempt and politically powerful sector. If it also happens to be the primary cause of global warming, that is viewed as just collateral damage to America’s attempt to control the world by controlling the oil supply. In that sense the environmental impasse is a byproduct of American imperialism.
JS:​ ​What’s hopeful in the United States right now? What is a possible good outcome?
MH:​ ​Th​e precondition would be for people to realize that there is an alternative. Starting with wiping out of student debts, they can realize that the overall debt overhead can be wiped out without hurting the economy — and indeed, rescuing it from the financial rentier class inasmuch as all debts on the liabilities side of the balance sheet have their counterpart on the asset side as the savings of today’s financial oligarchy, which is doing to the U.S. economy what Rome’s Senate did to the ancient world.
JS: How can people proceed from here?
MH: Understanding must come first. Once you have to have a sense of history, you realize that there is an alternative. You also see what happens when a creditor oligarchy gets strong enough to prevent any public power from writing down debts and to prevent attempts to tax it.
You have to do to America today what the Republicans did after the Civil War: You have to have a new university curriculum dealing with economic history, the history of economic thought and the real world’s long-term development.
JS: And what would be the premise for such economic history?
MH:​ ​The starting point is to realize that civilization began in the ancient Near East, and made a turn to oppose a strong public regulatory sector in Classical Greece and Rome. The long-term tension is the eternal fight by the oligarchy of creditors and large land owners to reduce the rest of society to serfdom, and to oppose strong rulers empowered to act in the economy’s long-term interest by creating checks against this polarization.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/04/the-delphic-oracle-was-their-davos-a-four-part-interview-with-michael-hudson-a-new-reality-economics-curriculum-is-needed-part-4.html

​Paul Craig Roberts wonders where we are all going…
​President Franklin D. Roosevelt was happy to see World War II because he understood that it would leave Britain bankrupt and without an empire. Roosevelt understood that the gain would be America’s, because the US would take over the reserve currency role. The reason this is important is that the reserve currency country can pay its bills by printing money. Thus, the government has no budget constraints. For a country as indebted as America, to lose this role would be a crushing blow. It is this blow that Washington faces as a result of its idiotic policy of sanctions and disrespect of international law.
And there is another blow. Just as the Roman Empire fell to invaders who crossed the frontiers of the empire, so is Washington’s empire falling. Europe, the crown jewel of the empire, is now overrun with millions of unassimilable peoples to the extent that Europe is no longer European. The President of the US has so far been powerless to defend the borders of the United States. Indeed, the Democratic Party and the presstitute media are totally opposed to any defense of American borders. Why does a government unwilling to defend its borders spend $1,000 billion annually on defense?
The American Neoconservative Zionists, who have controlled US foreign policy in Israel’s interest since the Clinton regime, continue to operate as if we still live in an unipolar world. For some reason the National Security Advisor to President Trump has poor sources of information. He speaks as if he rules the world, but even Washington’s pathetic European vassals did not go along with Trump’s gift of the Syrian Golan Heights to Israel.
As for moral authority, after, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yeman, Ukraine, Honduras, and now Venezuela, all moral authority has vacated the West.

Where Is The World Headed? — Paul Craig Roberts

Even Arch Financial Capitalist Ray Dalio is preaching reform now…
Ray Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund.
In a new essay, Dalio wrote that capitalism is failing the majority of Americans and has to be reformed because concentrated and restrained wealth does not benefit the overall economy and destabilizes society.
Dalio called for leadership that declares inequality a national emergency and addresses it with steps such as increased taxes on the wealthy.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ray-dalio-on-how-to-save-failing-capitalism-2019-4

Oh, the rest of the top 0.01% won’t allow their structural financial advantages to be threatened…
The IRS’ new approach to taking on the superwealthy has been stymied. The wealthy’s lobbyists immediately pushed to defang the new team. And soon after the group was formed, Republicans in Congress began slashing the agency’s budget. As a result, the team didn’t receive the resources it was promised. Thousands of IRS employees left from every corner of the agency, especially ones with expertise in complex audits, the kinds of specialists the agency hoped would staff the new elite unit. The agency had planned to assign 242 examiners to the group by 2012, according to a report by the IRS’ inspector general. But by 2014, it had only 96 auditors. By last year, the number had fallen to 58. The wealth squad never came close to having the impact its proponents envisaged. As Robert Gardner, a 39-year veteran of the IRS who often interacted with the team as a top official at the agency’s tax whistleblower office, put it, “From the minute it went live, it was dead on arrival.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/ultrawealthy-taxes-irs-internal-revenue-service-global-high-wealth-audits

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/history-of-oligarchy.html
I am linking to parts 1-3 of Economist, Michael Hudson’s recent interview, describing the competition between economies with periodic forgiveness of slavery and debt, “Jubilee”, and those with lending-at-interest by an oligarchic class, with the remainder of the society choked to debt peonage without property, or outright slavery. The Oligarchy at interest format was an aggressive and expansionist format, requiring resource extraction through conquest. It typified the Roman Empire, which collapsed for multiple reasons when it could not expand. It typifies the current financial regime.
In the debt-at-interest scheme of oligarchy, an oligarchic class collects rent and plunder from all others, and clear-cuts forests rather than manage them for centuries. It is a short-term extraction scheme, which depletes the underlying economy or economies.
Such extractive oligarchy is vulnerable to the natural collapse of the economy, to the French Revolution, and to the rise of a populist tyrant, more powerful than the other oligarchs, who aligns with a restive populace against the other oligarchs, to restore economic viability.
Hudson gives clear historical examples.
He also gives insights into how the concept of “Jubilee” was a reform presented as a conservative act of restoration in antiquity.
The concept of history was different then.
We are currently, globally, at a crossing of many roads. The USSR collapsed, and it is rising steadily with populism supported by the Putin government, and the oligarchy ceding a certain amount of power, in order to foster the stability and prosperity which has come with some rule of law.
China is perhaps peaking in a populist economic boom, with rapid growth of wealth in recent decades. China is trying to rein-in the corrupt practices of local mafia-type organizations, to prevent collapse.
The US and Western Europe have reached some limits to external colonial extraction, and are now consuming themselves through internal colonization (Greece) and self-digestion (student loans and bubble markets). Each exploited country and region has a particular story, and it is mostly variations on colonialism and debt/currency extraction of value, with as much fear and murder as required…
“Mixed Economies” have some hard limits to the power of oligarchs, and this typified the US economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (with exception for railroad oligarchs). Classical Economics, culminating with Marx, viewed “economic freedom” opposite to neoliberal economics.
Reading the history makes the present so much clearer, I think.

The Delphic Oracle Was Their Davos, Part 1:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/04/the-delphic-oracle-was-their-davos-a-four-part-interview-with-michael-hudson-about-his-forthcoming-book-the-collapse-of-antiquity-part-1.html

The Delphic Oracle Was Their Davos, Part 2:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/04/the-delphic-oracle-was-their-davos-a-four-part-interview-with-michael-hudson-mixed-economies-today-compared-to-those-of-antiquity-part-2.html

The Delphic Oracle Was Their Davos, Part 3:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/04/the-delphic-oracle-was-their-davos-a-four-part-interview-with-michael-hudson-the-inherent-financial-instability-in-western-civilizations-dna-part-3.html

The Post WW-2 oligarchy tightened up the connections between the financial and military arms by use of the “Deep State”, while maintaining the semblance of rule-of-Law, which exists as a baseline, with exceptions for those “more equal” (Clintons, Bush family, Rockefeller…) Thanks Eleni.
The CIA Takeover of America in the 1960s Is the Story of Our Times. The Killing of the Kennedys and Today’s New Cold War

The CIA Takeover of America in the 1960s Is the Story of Our Times. The Killing of the Kennedys and Today’s New Cold War

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/04/pieces-in-motion.html
Venezuela, geostrategically, is as important to Moscow as Syria and Ukraine.
Gerasimov also detailed how, “the Pentagon has begun to develop a fundamentally new strategy of warfare, which has been dubbed the ‘Trojan Horse’. Its essence lies in the active use of the ‘protest potential of the fifth column’ in order to destabilize the situation with simultaneous strikes by precision-guided weapons on the most important targets.​ ​”Then the clincher; “The Russian Federation is ready to oppose every one of these strategies. In recent years, military scientists, together with the General Staff, have developed conceptual approaches to neutralize the aggressive actions of potential opponents. The field of research of military strategy is armed struggle, its strategic level. With the emergence of new areas of confrontation in modern conflicts, methods of struggle are increasingly shifting towards the integrated application of political, economic, information and other non-military measures, implemented with the support of military force.​ ​”Call it Russia’s response to Made in USA Hybrid War. With the major incentive of being a value for money operation; after all the Russian General Staff, unlike the Pentagon, is not in the business, for all practical purposes, of stealing trillions of dollars from taxpayers for several decades…Rostislav Ishchenko, arguably the top Russian analyst of the Ukraine saga, explained it to me in detail:​ ​“Putin does not ‘take over the elites’ or ‘guide the nation.’ His genius lies in an acute intuitive sense of the strategic needs of the nation (which creates a strong feedback and causes absolute trust of the absolute majority of the people), but most importantly, he is a master of political compromise, understanding the importance of maintaining peace between different social, economic, and political groups within the country, to ensure its stability, prosperity, and international authority. Given that foreign policy is always a continuation of domestic policy, we can clearly trace his desire for compromise in Russian international activity.”“Putin, Ishchenko added, “does not try to suppress the opponents even in those cases when Russia is unconditionally stronger and the result of the confrontation will clearly be in her favor. Putin understands that both the loser and the winner lose in the confrontation. Therefore, he always offers a compromise for a long time, almost to the last opportunity, even to those who clearly do not deserve it, moving to other solutions only after the opponent has clearly crossed all possible red lines and can pose a threat to the vital interests of Russia. An agreement based on consideration of each other’s interests is always stronger than any short-term ‘victories’, which tomorrow will result in the need to reaffirm their status of the winner again and again. It seems to me that Putin understands this well. Hence the effectiveness of his actions. You can also take a look at his team. These are professionals who adhere to a variety of ideological views (or do not adhere to any). The main thing is that they perform their work qualitatively. The ability to manage such a team is another of its undoubted advantages. After all, these are all ambitious people who are aware of their professionalism and are able to defend their opinion, which is not always the same for everyone. Nevertheless, they work as a single mechanism and achieve really great results.”​ ​https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/01/pentagon-obsession-china-china-china.html
​Maduro’s stay in power has Washington as well as various regional neighbor countries worried about the situation. It seems that Venezuela’s neighbors followed a false promise to get rid off the Venezuelan President rather quickly. According to the report, allies of the U.S. are disappointed with the result and are now questioning their decision to recognize Juan Guaido as interim president. A military invasion seems to be the only method available to accomplish their goal, and such a scenario doesn’t sit all too well with countries like Colombia and Brazil, according to the report. ​https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Washington-Concerned-Over-Maduros-Stay-in-Power-20190402-0021.html

​Turkish election insights from Moon Of Alabama. Erdogan is still in power in rapidly shifting circumstances: Over the last two quarters Turkey’s GDP declined. The country is in a recession. Inflation is near to 20% which leaves no room to lower interest rates. Before Sunday’s election the central bank of Turkey propped up the Lira. It will have to end that or will otherwise diminish Turkey’s foreign currency reserves. After the long build up of the credit bubble it will take years for the economy to return to a steady state. There is little room for the government to turn the economy around.
Erdogan’s decision to become more independent of NATO is also taking its toll. Buying the Russian made S-400 air defense system secures Turkey from a potential U.S. attack but also means that its access to ‘western’ weapons ends. Germany stopped cooperation for the production of a new Turkish tank even before the S-400 issue came up. Today the U.S. haltedall F-35 fighter plane deliveries and training for Turkey. This will be a loss for both sides but add to Turkey’s economic problems:
“Because Turkey is not just an F-35 purchaser, but an industrial partner, blocking delivery of these systems represents a major escalation by the United States as it threatens to impose serious costs on both sides,” Hunter said.
Reuters reported last week that Washington was exploring whether it could remove Turkey from production of the F-35. Turkey makes parts of the fuselage, landing gear and cockpit displays. Sources familiar with the F-35’s intricate worldwide production process and U.S. thinking on the issue last week said Turkey’s role can be replaced.
Russia will be happy to supply Turkey with Su-35 fighter planes. They are arguable better than the F-35 and will likely be cheaper. But they will come with a political price.
Turkish supported Jihadis still hold Syria’s Idleb provinces and need to be removed. Erdogan tried to turn them into ‘moderate rebels’ but failed. Russia has for some time pressed Turkey to become more active in Idleb and to do more common Turkish/Russian patrols. These alienate the Jihadis, some of whom start to see Turkey as an enemy. Russia intends to do everything possible to intensify that feeling, while urging Turkey to finally solve the problem.​ ​https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/04/turkeys-problems-will-change-the-dynamics-on-the-idlib-front.html

[John Day]

To whom does Fidel Castro’s son presume that he is speaking here?
Gosh…
“Civil wars within parties are incredibly damaging because they signal to Canadians that we care more about ourselves than we do about them,”

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/different-arrangements.html

Middle East Entente; New Alliance begins to displace Gulf Cooperation Council
The first priority was to build Qatar’s new oil and gas pipelines to the Mediterranean via Iran-Iraq-Syria and also connect to the pipelines in Turkey. These pipelines would substitute for the originally planned “Sunni pipelines” which were to transverse Qatar-Saudi Arabia-Iraq-Syria and which had originally led to the Qata-ri support for the Syrian jihad. The new pipelines would move to the shores of the Mediterranean — mainly the Syrian port of Latakia — gas and oil from both Qatar and Iran. The pipelines would be followed by electricity lines and a fully integrated transportation infrastructure on a regional basis.
The long-term strategic infrastructure envisioned by “the Middle Eastern Entente” reflected the grand-strategic aspirations of Iran and Turkey.​..
​Taken together, the transportation cooperation agreement between the three bloc members (Qatar, Iran, and Turkey), and the transportation agreement between Iran, Iraq, and Syria, provide for a road and rail-way system linking all these states. This makes Iran the lynchpin of the regional transportation networks, and, thus, a crucial purveyor of access for the PRC. Indeed, PRC senior officials consider Iran to be “a key pivot to China’s BRI in the region”.
https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Middle-East/New-Middle-East-Alliance-Shakes-World-Powers.html

​Turkey wants S-400 more than F-35, for sure…
​https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-29/erdogan-remains-unmoved-us-senate-moves-kill-f-35-transfer-turkey

Joe Biden doesn’t recall hair-sniffing or long kiss…
Describing the 2014 incident, the then-35-years-old Flores says she raced to a November 1 campaign rally with unwashed hair – spraying some “dry shampoo” in, only to have Biden creep up from behind and ‘do his thing.’
As I was taking deep breaths and preparing myself to make my case to the crowd, I felt two hands on my shoulders. I froze. “Why is the vice-president of the United States touching me?”
I felt him get closer to me from behind. He leaned further in and inhaled my hair. I was mortified. I thought to myself, “I didn’t wash my hair today and the vice-president of the United States is smelling it. And also, what in the actual fuck? Why is the vice-president of the United States smelling my hair?” He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-29/what-actual-fck-nevada-dem-describes-biden-metoo-hair-smelling-followed-big-slow

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/narratives-breaking.html
Global financial elites: “Let them eat rubber bullets”.
​Macron outed himself as the very symbol of what animates the globalist elite he represents.
Disdain.
The disdain he holds for the people he leads is palpable. It’s as palpable for his disdain for the British who voted for Brexit.
To him the EU is all, the EU is inevitable and when faced with the choice of serving France or serving the EU, he chooses the EU every time.
That is what led him to this disastrous decision to deploy the French military to the streets for the first time since 1948 with orders to shoot protestors.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/27/globalism-last-disgrace-army-vs-yellow-vests.html

Parliament voted on 8 options, and voted all of them down. There is no decent option. That has been prevented by two and a half years of play acting by people who really need Brexit to fail, and better if Britain loses sovereignty as part of the “deal”. Time is shorter thn it seems, since procedures must be followed, and they take set amounts of time. “Crash-Out-Brexit” happens, even if everybody votes against it.
Mrs Leadsom told the Commons: “The motion tabled will comply with the Speaker’s ruling.”
She added: “The only way we ensure we leave in good time on 22 May is by approving the withdrawal agreement by 23:00 GMT on 29 March.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47729773

Just get out…​
The most controversial “meme ban” part of new EU copyright law was voted through by MEPs by mistake, it has emerged.
This week, the European Parliament voted to pass the new copyright regulations, which critics claim could fundamentally alter how the internet works. And one vote on those specifics of those rules appears to have been decided on the basis of MEPs who approved them by accident…
But desp​i​te the fact that the voting records now show the corrected results, the original ones will still stand. There is no way for those MEPs to change the official vote, even though the records can be corrected.
The new EU copyright rules force technology companies to take responsibility for the content that is shared on their platforms. That has proven controversial among copyright activists, internet campaigners and the technology companies themselves – with Google suggesting that it might have to fundamentally alter its search results, and YouTube suggesting it could be forced to ban people within Europe from uploading videos at all.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/meme-ban-eu-copyright-law-article-13-11-vote-results-european-union-eu-meps-a8842646.html

[John Day]

Giving Israel North and South Carolina is out of the question. They already own New York, Washington and LA.
Let’s talk about Mississippi, though…

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/river-of-change.html
At a high-level meeting in Rome this week, it seems that Russia reiterated a grave warning to the US – Moscow will not tolerate American military intervention to topple the Venezuelan government with whom it is allied…
The encounter in Rome this week was described as “frank” and “serious” – which is diplomatic code for a blazing exchange. The timing comes at a high-stakes moment, after Venezuela having been thrown into chaos last week from civilian power blackouts that many observers, including the Kremlin, blame on American cyber sabotage. The power grid outage followed a failed attempt by Washington to stage a provocation with the Venezuelan military over humanitarian aid deliveries last month from neighboring Colombia…
After the Rome meeting, Ryabkov said bluntly: “We assume that Washington treats our priorities seriously, our approach and warnings.”
One of those warnings delivered by Ryabkov is understood to have been that no American military intervention in Venezuela will be tolerated by Moscow.
For his part, Abrams sounded as if he had emerged from the meeting after having been given a severe reprimand. “No, we did not come to a meeting of minds, but I think the talks were positive in the sense that both sides emerged with a better understanding of the other’s views,” he told reporters.
“A better understanding of the other’s views,” means that the American side was given a red line to back off.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/22/russia-gives-us-red-line-venezuela.html

Russian specialists are in Venezuela as part of the 2001 military-technical cooperation deal with Caracas that doesn’t need further approval, Moscow said after reports of the arrival of two military planes with troops and cargo.
Russia develops its relations with Venezuela “in strict accordance with the Constitution of this country and in full respect of its legislation,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
The existing deal was ratified by both Russia and Venezuela, and it “doesn’t require any additional approval from the National Assembly of Venezuela,” she pointed out.
https://www.rt.com/news/454815-russian-military-venezuela-foreign-ministry/

The United States has again put both Venezuela and Russia on notice, after days ago two military planes carrying a contingency of about 100 Russian troops led by a high ranking officer touched down in Caracas. National Security Adviser John Bolton warned that foreign military “meddling” in Latin America would not be tolerated, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Russia to “cease its unconstructive behavior”…
Monday’s outage affected a little over half the nation, including parts of Caracas. Shortly after most of the country’s electricity was restored, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez made a televised statement saying the “fascist right” and their American “imperial masters” had attacked key transmission lines, impacting about 57% of Venezuela.
Rodriquez called out Pompeo, Bolton, as well as Republican Senator Marco Rubio specifically for orchestrating attacks on the Maduro government to cause a coup. He dubbed them “the trio of misfortune, perversity and criminality”.
Maduro’s vice president questioned, “What was the objective of this new attack? It was to deprive Venezuela’s people of electricity as happened so terribly just two weeks ago.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-26/venezuela-blames-trio-misfortune-pompeo-bolton-and-rubio-blackouts
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/25/russian-military-officials-arrive-in-venezuela-to-discuss-training-and-strategy

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/changes-underway.html
US-made “crisis” in Venezuela seems to be coming up short at street level. Meat is short, but there are beans, rice and vegetables.
CG: During blackouts, people told stories, played music, or went out and talked on the streets. It was a paradise, no TVs, smartphones, but real human contact. People cook together. During the day they’re playing board games, dominoes, and kids are having fun. People with kids are possibly more stressed, especially if you live in a tower block, as if you’ve no electricity, you’ve no water. That is why the US hit the electricity grid as it means no water in Caracas – a city of 10 million people. Luckily there are wells with clean water around the city, so people queue up to get it.
PC: So there was a real discrepancy between the image you were given of Venezuela and the reality?
AG: Sure, there are queues for oil, but people are not dying of starvation and, as I said, poverty is no where near what it is like in Brazil. I wouldn’t say a harsh dictatorship, people were open, and criticized the government, and the US, but also Chavez and Maduro. The Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) have admitted they had made bad economic decisions. I thought it would be more repressive, and it wasn’t. People were not fearful about speaking out. I think Venezuelans blame the Americans for the situation more than Maduro.

On the Ground in Venezuela vs. the Media Spectacle

​I wonder what will come of this meeting. Trump should be able to quell any dissent, but won’t get army boots in Venezuela from these guys.​
“President Donald J. Trump will welcome the leaders of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, the Republic of Haiti, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia on Friday, March 22, 2019, for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago,” Sanders said on Tuesday. “The President looks forward to working with countries in the region to strengthen our security cooperation and counter China’s predatory economic practices. The President will use this meeting as an opportunity to thank these countries for their support for peace and democracy in Venezuela.”
https://sputniknews.com/latam/201903201073384999-trump-discus-venezuela-caribbean-leaders/

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/no-new-deal.html

We are at another cusp in history where the economic arrangement is on it’s last legs, failing around the edges and in pockets, without any reliability going forward.
This now applies to a truly global economy, mostly controlled by global capitalists, through global multinational corporations, and political “contributions” and the deep state..
Human perceptions have not kept up with that business model. We are social animals, who work in groups of a size where we can know all of the other members, and not just by name, but from experience.
We have limits to what and who we can know, and limits to how clearly we can think about our world, and limits to how clearly we can consider future scenarios.
The ruling elites who own us have about the same human limits, but very different power at their disposal.
Their interests are at odds with our interests. Their role is to manipulate us to serve their interests.
The first prerogative of the power elites is to own what people need to live. They ration food, water and fuel.
We can see the utility in that, but their ownership is presented as an absolute, not a social utility.
In order to maintain ownership and rationing of wealth, the owners need to have a monopoly, or near monopoly on the use of violence.
They need to kill threats to their authority sometimes.
Periodically the end of a financial/economic regime leads to the necessity of a reset, the development of a new form of economy, which efficiently suits the current needs of people and availability of resources, and has what looks like a few generations of stability, going forward.
This change of financial/economic regime is really hard, because it only happens when there is not enough to go around, and making the adjustments means dismantling parts of the process of provision of food, water and fuel, so there is even less.
Members of a society, or a nation have agreed rights to their life-supporting rations of food, water and fuel.
The owner-class have the vast rights, which are threatened by the pressing needs of so very many other people who are acutely shorted of what they need to live.
Desperate people are willing to kill for their basic needs at that point.
We reach a point where we are ready to mass and mass-murder to be assured of what we need.
This is no secret to the intelligent owners, and the very bright people they hire to think for them and control the rest of us (think Dick Cheney).
Throughout history the owners/rulers have faced the difficult decision of how to maintain their own position, and survive, when the people they own and rule are at the point of desperate need, and ready to murder for what they need.
It has been straightforward. Find somebody who has some food water and fuel, and convince your slaves/people that it is rightfully theirs, and they need to kill the current holders to reclaim their birthright.
Alternatively, the people do the French Revolution on the king and nobles.
That second alternative, revolution against the power elites is gradually gaining favor in France.
The ruling elites tried ignoring the masses, tossing them a little bone, waiting through the winter weather, and have been ramping up the violence against the protesters, while claiming that the protesters are violent, and a threat to society.
They need help to make that case, like the “black bloc” agents provocateur, who come into the peaceful Yellow Vest protests and destroy and burn.
The police then shoot rubber bullets and rubber grenades to maim and blind, at the Yellow Vests, not the black bloc.
The European working class knows this. The more affluent professional class does not know this and does not want to know this.
None of these usual measures seems to be working much these days.
The French can’t really go to war with the Germans or Italians.
They destroyed Libya (oil) and helped with destroying Iraq (oil) and are helping in the faltering destruction of Syria (gas pipeline, oil, location).
Push will come to shove when the global economic can can’t be kicked down the road one more time.
People everywhere feel the tension.
Some people in some places have guns. “Ooops” for owners.
“Controlling the narrative” is critical for the owners going forward, and they do tests of narrative changes, measure the responses on social media, tailor those responses as much as they can, and try again if it doesn’t look good enough. They have tried a lot by now.
The needs of the narrative are internally conflicted.
In the status quo, the people need to be divided against each other, so the rulers can feed and mediate the tension and exercise control.
In the US this was South vs North, black vs white, and so on, but it really wore out after WW-2, the last time that the whole country had to be united to fight an external enemy.
America is pretty big. It’s really not natural for us to go fight external enemies and die on foreign shores and stuff.
Really, and demonstrably in America and the world, it is the military which is using up so much of the resources people need to live, and slaughtering millions of brown people in oil places, to gain control of the oil we all need to eat to live.
Weird…
We do basically eat oil, with our vast mechanized farming system running on diesel, chemical fertilizers, and V-8 powered water pumps draining fossil water reservoirs which are starting to run dry.
The vast mechanized food growing system is not strictly necessary for anybody to survive. It is a military tool of the owner class, along with Reaper drones and F-35s. The purpose of the vast field of cheaply produced corn and wheat is to bankrupt farmers of the vassal countries, so those countries rely upon grain from the United States to feed their people.
Kissinger, Nixon and Secretary of Agriculture (“get big or get out”) Earl Butz came up with that plan.
It bankrupted most American farmers, but Cargill is doing fine.
The problem that the globalist elite owners face is that their holdings are the only big bunch of fuel, food and water for the desperate people of the world to expropriate.
Their holdings do not save and rationally distribute the wealth of the world in good times and bad, as did the Great Inca.
The current global elite squander the oil, water and mineral resources of the world for murder and destruction, just to maintain their position as owners, and protect it from projected rivals in their same league.
What the elites do need to maintain their ownership status is the loyalty of the top 10% to 20% of the population, the professional and managerial class.
It is really hard to come up with any narrative which presents a rational case for the current level of military and industrial-agricultural support for the globalist elites and their servants in politics and industry. They are still trying.
We, the humans of this fair planet, need to work together for the common good, and not cut each other’s throats for the owners.
We do currently have communication networks which allow for the living creation of other narratives, based on somewhat more truth than the “New World Order” narrative.
The most difficult and critical step is for the top 20%, the professional and managerial classes, to look for systemic efficiencies, which will reduce their absolute wealth in the short term, to create a more stable social order for their kids and grandkids.
The elites seem to be effectively blocking this kind of meeting of the minds with identity politics and squabbles about virtue signaling among the mid-wealthy, selfish grasping.
Individuals an take their own steps towards a future of burning less fuel, using less plastic, and growing more vegetables at home.
I am bike commuting and growing vegetables at home, and at work, where people can see that it is possible and normal.
I’m also starting it up in the smaller town of Yoakum, where there is good soil and climate.
Grow more vegetables in the good places, especially.
I am currently fortunate to be able to take these steps, right now. It is my responsibility.
I am just passing through this world. I am a transient life form. I don’t really “own” pieces of this world, to defend by violence.
Minor narrative battles are also being fought. This is necessary to keep destroying potential threats to the elite power structure.
People in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have guns.
The elites needed that 200 to 300 years ago, but it now poses a threat to their power going forward, when the people with guns see who stole the stuff they need to live.
We keep getting stories about how all the people need to relinquish their guns, so that a few people will not shoot innocents in post offices and places of worship.
I am not a violent revolutionary, have no use for a gun, and no interest in owning them. I was raised on military bases, and went to the rifle range with Dad every Tuesday, and have the hearing damage to prove it. I did hunt deer for food as a teenager on my Grandfather’s ranch, and did all that a responsible hunter does, field dressing the fresh kills, and so on.
As a doctor, I have sometimes been in the struggle for life against death when people have been shot with guns, including high powered rifles.
People shot with high powered rifles mostly bleed to death, but might drop unconscious in 10 seconds if their heart is shot.
I always killed with a heart lung shot. The deer would sprint 10 seconds and drop still.
Head shots are harder to be sure of, but they happen, and I killed a deer this way once, when it was injured jumping a fence on the neighbor’s property, sold to him by my Grandfather. Morgan came over Thanksgiving morning at dawn to ask us to deal with a spike buck who had crippled himself trying to jump a fence in the night.
I went over and saw the right rear leg dislocation. He could not stand, and scrambled with his front legs trying.
I sat with the deer and looked in his gentle brown eyes, and talked, and cared that he was in this predicament.
I brought him water to drink, and went back to be with the family until after Thanksgiving dinner, having made a good friend.
When I returned after midday dinner, with a small automatic pistol of Dad’s, I was resolute in my mission, and compassionate. I had killed many lab rats compassionately in med school research. Our eyes met with warmth about 25 feet away, and he turned his head away from me and held still.
I carefully shot him at the base of his skull, to destroy his brainstem and centers of perception, to immediately end his life of suffering.
The body of the young deer flipped and flopped around on the ground violently. I waited half a minute. It still flopped.
I shot him in the head again. Flopping changed some. I had to wait over a minute for it to stop.
I still feel the soul of that young deer and see his warm brown eyes. I had already stopped eating mammals years before we met. We were friends.

At this point, I would like to comment on my one time, careful viewing, without audio, of the 16 minute New Zealand Mosque shooting video.
About 6 minutes is shooting, with the first and last parts being driving around and getting guns in and out of the car.
I do not see convincing evidence, from just the shooting part of the video, that it is real. I am not stating that it is false, but it has lots of aspects which suggest that it might be staged.
Firstly, every single body is face down. You cannot see any single face, which could be identified by facial recognition software, in the many people who are lying still, perfectly still on the floor. The shooter revisits them several times for a closer look. All face down; all still.
People fall in impossible positions when shot with a high powered rifle.
They need to be re-positioned to administer first aid. I have done this.
A lot of them will be face up, trying to breathe.
Some will flip and flop if shot in the head or neck.
There will be gaping exit wounds where the bullet tore out the other side of the body.
I saw none of those features in the video. It appeared that all of the bodies had chosen their positions, or had been laid neatly face down.
If you choose to look, that is what you will see. I turned off the sound before starting. the video is choppy, and has the look of way more bullets being fired than the clips we see would possibly hold. All of the shooting is at enough of a distance to obscure details.

https://www.brighteon.com/6014702402001

Oh well; it worked last night. The link has gone dead. That’s what I saw.

[John Day]

In my post “Repression Justified” I signed off “Gardening While Rome Burns”. There’s a picture of some of my recent work preparing the vegetable garden beds for planting at the “country place”. http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/repression-justified.html

[John Day]

Good work again today, Ilargi, you old CONSERVATIVE! 🙂
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/one-more-step.html
Moon of Alabama asks:
Did John Bolton, President Trump’s national security advisor, order an assault on the North Korean embassy in Spain to get an advantage in the nuclear talks?
On February 22 the embassy of the DPRK in Madrid was raided by a gang of thugs:
A group of men entered North Korea’s embassy in Madrid, bound and gagged staff, before driving off with stolen mobile phones and computers, Spanish media has reported.
…Spanish police are investigating after El Confidencial reported a woman escaped the embassy last Friday screaming in Korean, prompting residents nearby to call police.
After she reportedly revealed staff were tied up and gagged, officers knocked on the door to investigate, but were met by a man who told them everything was fine.
Soon after, two cars left the compound at high speed, one of them carrying the man who had answered the door. Police did not enter the building, but staff walked out soon after the incident.e might be missing.
…Kim Hyok Chol was ambassador to Spain until September 2017, when the Spanish government expelled him and another diplomat following Pyongyang’s round of nuclear tests and missile launches over neighbouring Japan.
The name Kim Hyok Chol sounds familiar. He recently was in the news when he led the North Korean delegation in the nuclear talks​…
​https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/03/who-ordered-the-cia-to-raid-north-koreas-embassy-in-spain.html#more

​How many dollars of medical repair does it take to fix one dollar of knife-in-the-back? How much has been secretly spent already?
​At his Monday press conference, Mike Pompeo said “we’ve asked (Congress to appropriate) up to $500 million…to restore the economy of the Venezuelan nation (sic) (and) help Juan Guaido.”
He failed to explain the ongoing Trump regime coup plot, nor that it’s all about replacing Bolivarian social democracy with US-controlled tyranny – DLT and hardliners surrounding him wanting control over Venezuelan oil, gas, gold, and other valued resources.
It’s what the scourge of imperialism is all about, Guaido an illegitimate US designated puppet, usurper in waiting, traitor to Venezuela and its people, belonging in prison longterm for his highest of high political crimes.
What the Trump regime calls “democratic transition” in the Bolivarian Republic and other targeted countries is all about gaining imperial trophies – intolerant of democracy everywhere, notably at home.

Trump Wants Half a Billion Dollars to Finance Regime Change in Venezuela

​Charles Hugh Smith:
How States/Empires Collapse in Four Easy Steps
The promises cannot be met, and so society decays into warring elites and competing constituencies.
There is a grand, majestic tragedy in the inevitable collapse of once-thriving states and empires: it all seemed so permanent at its peak, so godlike in its power, and then slowly but surely, too many grandiose, unrealistic promises were made to too many elites and constituencies, and then as growth decays to stagnation, the only way to maintain the status quo is to appear to meet all the promises by creating money out of thin air, i.e. debauching the currency.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar19/empires-collapse3-19.html

[John Day]

Ilargi, Amigo…
I’ve consistently appreciated your insights and analysis since spring 2008, when a friend advised me to take a look.
Why do people who disagree with you still read, and write to you? Are they a little uncertain of the beliefs of their church? Inwardly questioning?

If you can’t please everyone, then you’ve got to please yourself.”

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/losing-war-games.html
Hey, LOOK, Mexico has a Good President! (“Me canso ganso”)
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s first 100 days in office have combined a compulsive shedding of presidential trappings with a dizzying array of policy initiatives, and a series of missteps haven’t even dented his soaring approval ratings.
Lopez Obrador has answered more questions from the press, flown in more economy-class flights, posed for more selfies with admiring citizens and visited more genuinely risky areas with little or no security than several combined decades of his predecessors. He’s also surprised many by maintaining a cordial relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, helping contain Central American migrant caravans while resisting U.S. efforts to oust the leftist government of Venezuela.
https://apnews.com/e94737e30a5a49589fa9b5159070fdbf

Venezuela is getting electricity back to places little by little.
President Nicolas Maduro gave a televised address on Tuesday evening, offering more details about the alleged attack against the country’s electrical infrastructure. According to Maduro, both the computerized system in the Guri Dam, on Thursday afternoon, and the central electrical “brain” in Caracas, on Saturday morning, suffered cyber attacks, while recovery was delayed by physical attacks against transmission lines and electrical substations.​..
Self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaido has blamed the electricity crisis on government mismanagement and corruption, dismissing the government’s cyber attack thesis on the grounds that the system is analog, and attributing the national outage to a lack of qualified personnel needed to reactivate the grid. However, these claims have been called into questionby people with knowledge of the system.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14377

China says it is ready to help Venezuela to restore its power grid. The South American country suffered a five-day blackout, with Caracas accusing Washington of cyber “sabotage.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Beijing had noted reports that the power grid had gone down due to a hacking attack.
“China is deeply concerned about this,” Lu said, adding that Beijing “hopes that the Venezuelan side can discover the reason for this issue as soon as possible and resume normal power supply and social order.
https://www.rt.com/business/453697-china-venezuela-electricity-help/

She has advanced Media Gladiator Skills already. Where will she go in the power structure? Where will the power structure go?
On the issue of Wells Fargo’s relationship with the private prison industry and the Trump administration’s child detention policy, Ocasio-Cortez asked sharply: “Mr. Sloan, why was the bank involved in the caging of children?” https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/12/watch-ocasio-cortez-grills-wells-fargo-ceo-over-profiting-caging-children-and

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/poised.html
The Golan is part of Syria, but Israel has based most of Israeli agriculture on that water for the past 50 years, and now there is found to be oil and gas…

Syria has notified Israel through United Nations diplomatic channels that it is prepared to go to war if Israel does not leave the Golan Heights.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad reportedly sent the message through the head of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), Christine Lund, this past week, according to a World Israel News report and later picked up other major Israeli sources, including The Jerusalem Post. “Syria will attack Israel if it does not leave the Golan Heights,” Mikdad told the UN representative.
Mikdad further warned Lund that Syria will respond with force should Israel continue its attacks on Syria, which have occurred more than a dozen times over the past year, but which seem to have recently paused following Russia’s announced delivery of the advanced S-300 anti-air missile defense system to Damascus late last year.
“We will not hesitate to confront Israel,” Syria’s Mekdad said. “We are also not scared away by its [Israel’s] supporters who are helping to perpetuate the occupation of the Golan,” he added.
Damascus’ firm warning appears a response to a controversial bill recently under renewed consideration by US Congress, co-sponsored by Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, and Democratic Rep. Mike Gallagher, which aims to give formal US recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights region.
Meanwhile, multiple Israeli political leaders have responded to Syria’s historic claim to the Israeli-occupied Golan and willingness to go to war over it. While speaking on a visit to the Golan Heights, Blue and White party politicians Gabi Ashkenazi, Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz and Moshe Ya’alon vowed, “It is ours and it will stay ours” — certainly a dominant sentiment that cuts across Israeli party lines.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-10/syria-tells-israel-it-will-attack-unless-israeli-forces-leave-golan-heights

​”Two to Tango” is a quorum…
​Well informed sources say that “it all depends on the direction the Israeli elections will take. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu estimates his chances are high enough to win a second term, then he will not venture any time soon into a new confrontation with Syria and its allies. The date of the next battle will be postponed. But, if he believes he will lose the election, then the possibility of his initiating a battle becomes very high. A serious battle between Israel on one hand and Syria and Iran on the other would be sufficient enough to postpone the elections. Netanyahu doesn’t have many choices: either he wins the election and postpones the corruption court case against him, or he goes to jail”.

Syria preparing its missiles for the next battle with Israel

Israel hammers Gaza for 3rd night in ‘vigorous response’ ordered by Netanyahu
https://www.rt.com/news/453444-israel-strikes-gaza-attacks/

Electrical systems in Venezuela have been targeted by another cyberattack, President Nicholas Maduro has said. Caracas has accused the US of “sabotage”, while US officials blame local corruption and mismanagement for the blackout.
After a failure at the Guri hydroelectric power plant left much of the country without power on Thursday night, Venezuelan authorities managed to restore power to “many parts” of the country. However, the country’s grid took another hammering on Saturday, with many of the restored systems knocked out once again, the country’s embattled president said.
According to Maduro, the systems had been nearly 70 percent restored when “we received another attack, of a cybernetic nature, at midday… that disturbed the reconnection process and knocked out everything that had been achieved until noon.”
https://www.rt.com/news/453434-venezuela-maduro-cyberattack-power-grid/

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/blame-dead-victims.html
Deeply Embarrassing to the Deep State, Putin’s doing, again…
Vovan and Lexus, Russian telephone pranksters known for their trolling of politicians from around the world, have struck again, targeting US special representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams to find out more about the US-backed effort to unseat that country’s legitimate government. Sputnik got ahold of the full audio from the talks.
Posing as Swiss President Ueli Maurer, who also serves as the country’s finance minister, the pranksters contacted Abrams on two occasions – in mid-February and early March, speaking to him for over 23 minutes about Swiss policy on the ongoing effort to freeze the Venezuelan government’s assets as part of broader plans to replace President Nicolas Maduro with US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido.
https://sputniknews.com/latam/201903061073002069-abrams-full-interview-audio/

S​topping Venezuela’s heart… This is like bombing cities. Even the rich Venezuelan’s get hurt. This will reduce their support for the US.
A massive power outage at the Guri Dam in Venezuela caused 18 of the country’s 23 states to go dark on Thursday, bringing life to a halt. Caracas has alleged it’s the work of Washington, where key politicos seemed to know about the attack almost as it happened. An activist told Sputnik it’s the “first act in a new play” of regime change.​..
​Venezuelan Vice President Dulcy Rodriguez pointed the finger firmly at Washington, which since January 23 has backed the self-proclaimed interim president of Venezuela, a parliamentarian named Juan Guaido, as the legitimate leader of the country, seeking Maduro’s ouster. She noted that only three minutes after the blackout began, US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweeted about it, gloating that the “Maduro regime is a complete disaster.”
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201903091073076691-US-Attack-Venezuelan-Power-Grid-First-Act-New-Play/

​I’ve been watching the story of the 40 tons of stolen Syrian gold being accepted by US Special Forces, to give ISIS safe-passage out of their tomb. The Syrian press has now broached the subject of US theft of Syrian gold, which it obviously is. Gold is worth stealing from enemies of the dollar.
The Syrian National News Agency headlined on February 26th, “Gold deal between United States and Daesh” (Daesh is ISIS) and reported that,
Information from local sources said that US army helicopters have already transported the gold bullions under cover of darkness on Sunday [February 24th], before transporting them to the United States.
The sources said that tens of tons that Daesh had been keeping in their last hotbed in al-Baghouz area in Deir Ezzor countryside have been handed to the Americans, adding up to other tons of gold that Americans have found in other hideouts for Daesh, making the total amount of gold taken by the Americans to the US around 50 tons, leaving only scraps for the SDF [Kurdish] militias that serve them [the US operation].
Recently, sources said that the area where Daesh leaders and members have barricaded themselves in, contains around 40 tons of gold and tens of millions of dollars.
Allegedly, “US occupation forces in the Syrian al-Jazeera area made a deal with Daesh terrorists, by which Washington gets tens of tons of gold that the terror organization had stolen, in exchange for providing safe passage for the terrorists and their leaders from the areas in Deir Ezzor where they are located.”
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/08/syria-accuses-us-stole-40-tons-of-its-gold.html

[John Day]

“Narrative Control Slips” http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/narrative-control-slips.html
‘Anti-Semitism’ Is a Cover for Censorship​, Finian Cunningham​ (Wow! Brilliantly simple, Thanks Eleni)
Whether against the Yellow Vests, or US congressmen or UK politicians, the accusation is meant to stop thought
https://russia-insider.com/en/anti-semitism-cover-censorship/ri26399

Democratic party patricians work to assure Trump re-election in 2020 by rigidly enforcing status quo within “their” party. Moon of Alabama.
The unwillingness of the Democrats to have real political discussion is also visible in their attempt to subdue the new young House members who have come up with real new proposals and ideas. The use of the Zionist lobby AIPAC and false claims of ‘anti-semitism’ against them is especially outrageous:
When Representative Ilhan Omar landed a coveted seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Stephen Fiske began working the phones to Capitol Hill.
Alarmed by messaging that he saw as anti-Semitic and by Ms. Omar’s support for the boycott-Israel movement, Mr. Fiske, a longtime activist with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, began texting and calling his friends in Congress to complain. He is hoping Aipac activists will punish Ms. Omar, a freshman Democrat from Minnesota, with a primary challenge in 2020.
On Wednesday, House Democratic leaders will mete out one form of punishment: Spurred by outrage over Ms. Omar’s latest comments suggesting that pro-Israel activists “push for allegiance to a foreign country,” they will put a resolution condemning anti-Semitism on the House floor.
‘Anti-semitism’, in the false sense of AIPAC and the Democratic leadership bound to it, is anything that is not 100% in support of the racist state of Israel and the Zionism ideology.
The resolution is aimed at House member Ilhan Omar who suggested that such automatic dual loyalty is a problem. It also proves that she is right:
Ilhan Omar @IlhanMN – 20:01 utc – 3 Mar 2019
I am told everyday that I am anti-American if I am not pro-Israel. I find that to be problematic and I am not alone. I just happen to be willing to speak up on it and open myself to attacks.
Ilhan Omar will not be the only one to be targeted like that. The Lobby is aiming at two more:
In Florida, Mr. Fiske said it was time for “pro-Jewish voices to speak up” about Ms. Omar and two other Democratic freshmen who have been critical of Israel: Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
And he offered a prediction: “They are three people who, in my opinion, will not be around in several years.”
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/03/democrats-take-two-more-step-to-clear-the-way-for-trumps-reelection.html#more

Narrative slipping, slipping, slipping…
Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) on Tuesday introduced a bill that would end the nearly two-decade-long Afghanistan War.
The 2019 American Forces Going Home After Noble Service Act would have the United States declare victory in Afghanistan and set a 45-day deadline for a plan to withdraw all U.S. forces within a year, according to a statement accompanying the bill’s text.
It would also set a “framework for political reconciliation to be implemented by Afghans.”
Additionally, the legislation would require the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to be repealed at the end of the withdrawal.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/432681-paul-udall-introduce-bill-to-end-afghanistan-war

[John Day]

Helen of DesTroy is an unattributed writer for RT, whose stuff you see every day, and which stories you can catch up on weekly, collected on her blog. Here is a long essay, for people who already pay plenty of attention, about narrative control by the deep state. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Effect
http://helenofdestroy.com/index.php/74-the-sorcerer-s-apprentice-effect
Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?
Lazy propaganda is largely to blame for the lapse in narrative superiority. The same tawdry psy-ops are recycled again and again, as we see now in Venezuela, where Iran-Contra felon and smirking genocide enthusiast Elliott Abrams has been wheeled out of cold storage to work his death-squad magic on a population we’ve already tried and failed to hypnotize with the promises of neoliberalism. Just as the one-two punch of fake Iranian revolutions made the fatal error of running the same script twice in most “protesters’” lifetimes, the attempt to overthrow Maduro comes less than two decades after the US-backed effort to overthrow Chavez – also led by Abrams – and it’s not fooling anyone. It doesn’t help that the total nobody they picked to lead the charge was a stranger to 80% of all Venezuelans, or that John Bolton couldn’t even keep from blurting out the truth – that this entire pantomime of humanitarian intervention is being conducted to pillage Venezuela’s sweet, sweet oil, which has the gall to sit beneath one of the last socialist holdouts in the western hemisphere.

[John Day]

Venezuela comes after Libya. It’s not doing like Libya did… http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/human-factors.html
Juan Guaidó, the random guy who claims to be ‘interim president’ of Venezuela, just arrived back in Caracas. He was not arrested. It seems that President Maduro’s strategy is to simply ignore Guaidó and to wait until the guy campaign runs out of steam…
Maduro can sit this out. Guaidó’s claims to the presidency are clearly illegal. He has failed to gain support at every step of his way. The army stands strongly behind the government. No human waves appeared to carry the ‘humanitarian aid’ across the border. The opposition does not know what to do next.
All neighboring countries spoke out against a military intervention. Russia and China will prevent negative steps at the UN. While the U.S. wages an economic siege against the country, others are willing to help. Sanctions alone hardly ever bring a government down.
Maduro can simply let Guaidó clown around in Caracas or wherever he wants to go. The guy seems unable to deliver results. The longer his campaign takes the less support will he have. In a few month the whole thing may well fizzle out.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/03/venezuela-random-guyaid%C3%B3-returns-to-be-ignored.html#more

​Why the Venezuelan army didn’t defect.​
The Venezuelan military remembers things like Salvador Allende being fairly elected and then overthrown, or the Contras mass murdering civilians. They know that this type of behavior doesn’t end when the US wins. They know Pinochet threw labor leaders, socialists, and anyone who opposed his trash neoliberalism from helicopters after taking power. They know the Contras and other death squads were bayoneting toddlers to prove a point to scared farmers, often while not even actually engaging whatever force they were ostensibly fighting even a single time.
https://geopoliticsalert.com/venezuelan-military-coup

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed in a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday that Moscow is ready for talks with Washington on Venezuela, but only in strict compliance with the principles of the United Nations Charter, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The conversation, held at the US request, focused on the Venezuela crisis, the ministry said.
“In connection with Washington’s proposal to hold bilateral consultations on Venezuela, it was pointed out that we were ready for them but only in strict accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter, since only the people of Venezuela have the right to determine their future,” the foreign ministry said.http://tass.com/politics/1047204

[John Day]

@ Zerosum

“Key changes are needed in: land ownership and rights of rentiers and rights of serfs”

Yep, but first, somebody has to survive on the production, huh?

[John Day]

Further minimalism…
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/pedal-there.html
Riding a bicycle is really energy efficient. It does require the existence of roads to be that efficient, which is a huge assumption. They currently exist.
In the days before I had a car I carried some really long lumber strapped to my bike a couple of times, and pretty far, 5-10 miles. Not fun in traffic…
When we bike toured as a family in Europe and New Zealand, we carried our own stuff on our bikes from hostel to hostel. That is really efficient, but hard, and there have to be hostels. We rarely met folks camping that way, first a German family, then an Austrian man and a family from Tasmania.
The folks who bike camped were very impressive, indeed, carrying much heavier loads than we were. It placed them upon a pedastal of nearly super-human endeavor in our estimation.
That’s good context. It’s a really advanced level. I bike camped some in Germany in summer of 1981, and gave up on it pretty quickly after everything got wet. That’s the problem with tent camping, it’s a fair weather activity.
That’s not quite the end of that thought, though…

This guy made a bike camping trailer for $150 and what looks like a couple of years of work, with this being the second project. It is a really refined and well engineered design, an exercise in using the least which works well, and everything working together. It is waterproof, well insulated, aerodynamic, very light and includes the essential functionality for surviving bad weather and sleeping restfully, anywhere. He largely used plastic political campaign signs and duct tape for the outer shell, and aluminized bubble insulation inside, on a 1″ X 2″ wood frame, supporting more of that plastic and a foam mattress. Note that is is low enough to sit in the end with feet comfortably on the ground, chair height.
https://offgridquest.com/tinyhouse/150-bike-camper-diy

[John Day]

Are you already “prepping”? How about just growing some vegetables?
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/03/proactively-changing.html
The Future (if any) is Rural.
Whether because we can no longer afford the damage caused by burning fossil hydrocarbons or because they are a nonrenewable resource, the era of oil, coal, and natural gas will come to an end in the foreseeable future. Mass urbanization has been made possible by the prodigious exploitation of fossil fuels. Cities have always been wholly reliant on the capacity of rural areas to produce basic goods, most importantly food. But due to the concentrated energy in oil, with its ability to power heavy equipment and transport goods over long distances, cities have been able to reach the scale they do today by drawing support from a land base often several hundred times their own area.[ii]​ …
​In anthropological terms, as we have less energy available, our society will become less complex, characterized by fewer monetary transactions and an increase in subsistence and informal economies. Progressively less energy from fossil fuels will require greater labor inputs and less reliance on mechanization over time. As energy use in countries like the U.S. declines over the coming decades, rural areas will repopulate, and lifestyles may resemble those in countries that never had access to vast energy supplies (Figure 3). [vi]​ …
Food, its scarcity, the desire and opportunity to grow it, and the need to do it in ways that are appropriate to place and circumstance, will drive demographic shifts this century. People with life experiences and training suited for the urban environment are going to need a rapid education on what it takes to live off the land, and so-called conventional farmers and ranchers will have a steep learning curve to adopt more frugal and sustainable methods. But farmers and ranchers are not the only ones who need help adjusting to 21st century pressures. A society that actively supports them is also crucial to their success.​..
​Navigating energy descent will likely require that we take the best of liberal world views—like openness to ideas, enthusiasm for change, and tolerance of differences—and at the same time be deeply conservative—valuing interpersonal relationships, demanding respect and civility when those are under threat, and rediscovering a land ethic that resets social norms to help us restore and protect the places we love.

The Future is Rural: The Unexpected Consequence of Energy Descent

[John Day]

http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/02/looking-for-friend.html
W​hoa! This is recent history of SOUTH KOREA.
Nobody knows how many innocent Koreans were accused as “Reds” and killed, imprisoned and tortured by the conservative governments. But several millions could have been the victim. Under the government of Rhee Syngnman, more than 200,000 innocent Koreans were killed in the areas of Jeju, Yosu and Soonchon. The government accused these poor victims for being “communists”, “Reds”, “PPal- gaing-ie” Among the victims were children and old people who had nothing to do with ideology.
General Chun Doo-hwan had his share of killing the people. In 18th of May, 1980, the citizens of Gwang-ju organized a street demonstration to protest the Chun’s dictatorship. Chun mobilized highly trained air-born battalion and killed at least 1,000 citizens with tanks and helicopters. A great number of citizens were wounded. Moreover, Chun set up, during his presidency (1980-1987), a massive killing field in the Sancheong Education School; about 100,000 young people were massacred for not supporting Chun’s government policies and some other dubious reasons.
The true reason behind these massacres was to silence the voice of opposition against the corruption and the violation of human rights committed by the conservatives. These people were falsely condemned as “Reds” or “being friendly with North Korea” (Chin-book). In other words, the existence of North-South tension provided a good reason to oppress the people.

The Conservatives, “Nam-Nam Friction” and Nuclear Crisis in South Korea

[John Day]

Can’t get something for nothing. Kim Jong Un saw what happened to Gaddafi.
President Trump had apparently hoped that the pomp and circumstance of another historic summit would soften Kim Jong Un up. But despite all the talk about North Korea being “ready to denuclearize” and both leaders hyping up the possibility that a deal would be struck, alas, no deal was forthcoming, and Trump is now headed back to Washington empty handed.
Talks between the two world leaders broke down Thursday afternoon as President Trump abruptly walked away from the table and canceled a planned lunch and signing ceremony (it’s still not clear what the two leaders had hoped to sign, though scheduling the ceremony before a deal had been struck did seem risky). With the talks in disarray, Trump moved up a news conference where he and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took questions from the press.
Trump told reporters that the talks collapsed after the North refused to yield from its demand that the US completely remove all of the U.S.-led international sanctions – including the sanctions approved by the UN security council – in exchange for the shuttering of the North’s Yongbyon nuclear facility. Trump and Pompeo refused to make a deal without the North committing to giving up its secretive nuclear facilities outside Yongbyon, as well as its missile and warheads.
According to Trump, the talks ended amicably enough, with a commitment to keep the talks alive, and Kim also promised that he would not resume nuclear and missile tests – the basis for the detente between the two countries – and Trump said he would take Kim at his word.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-28/sometimes-you-have-walk-hanoi-summit-collapses-trump-rebuffs-demands-sanctions

​Moon of Alabama:
​The U.S. demanded the destruction of Yongbyon and of other complexes before any change in the sanction regime. North Korea insisted on following the sequencingthat was agreed upon during the first summit. The joint statement by the two leaders signed in June 2018 defined four clearly sequenced steps:
President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:
The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
The United States and DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
Eight month later new relations in form of the opening of embassies or a lifting of sanctions were not established. No peace treaty was signed. North Korea destroyed nuclear testing tunnels and a missile test stand. Some POW/MIA remains have been repatriated. But the U.S. side has taken no steps that could be seen as fulfilling its commitments.
Since the first summit Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. media have done their best to ignore the sequencing. North Korea on the other side has insisted on it again and again. It made absolutely clear that it would not budge on the issue. In his New Year speech the chairman emphasized:
If the US responds to our proactive, prior efforts with trustworthy measures and corresponding practical actions, bilateral relations will develop wonderfully at a fast pace through the process of taking more definite and epochal measures.
We have no intention to be obsessed with and keep up the unsavoury past relationship between the two countries, but are ready to fix it as early as possible and work to forge a new relationship in line with the aspirations of the two peoples and the requirements of the developing times.
I am ready to meet the US president again anytime, and will make efforts to obtain without fail results which can be welcomed by the international community.
But if the United States does not keep the promise it made in the eyes of the world, and out of miscalculation of our people’s patience, it attempts to unilaterally enforce something upon us and persists in imposing sanctions and pressure against our Republic, we may be compelled to find a new way for defending the sovereignty of the country and the supreme interests of the state and for achieving peace and stability of the Korean peninsula.
The “corresponding measures” the U.S. promised will have to come first before North Korea gives up more of its nuclear infrastructure.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/02/trump-sticks-to-sanctions-us-north-korea-summit-fails.html#more

[John Day]

Pillage Venezuela http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/02/pillage-venezuela.html

Is Marco a Sadist? He even tweeted the picture of Gaddafi being murdered.
It appears Rubio, disappointed that weekend events didn’t escalate further beyond isolated border crossing clashes, must be venting his frustrations by reminiscing about the “good ole days” of Libya and Syria regime change wars.
As As’ad AbuKhalil, a professor of Middle East history at California State University-Stanislaus points out, “The esteemed senator from Florida is calling for the anal rape and murder of Maduro.”
Perhaps a minor question that remains is: will Twitter make Rubio delete a tweet threatening the extra judicial killing of a head of state?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-24/marco-rubio-tweets-thinly-veiled-death-threat-maduro

The Washington Post has stealth-edited all mention of Richard Branson’s Venezuela aid concert in Cucuta, Colombia, after the paper originally claimed that the event “drew a crowd of more than 200,000 people Friday.” …
According to the Google map scale the field’s northern edge is some 125 meters wide. The crowd was standing at the northern end of the field at a depth of about 50 meters. The density of the static crowd was low to medium with on average 2 to 3 people per square meter.
125m * 50m = 6,250 m2 * 2.5 people/m2 = 15,625 people
One may generously add a count of one or two thousand for the people mingling around in the back of the public area. In total there may have been up to 18,000, but certainly no more than 20,000 people at the concert. -Moon of Alabama
In short, Fake News.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-24/wapo-secretly-deletes-bransons-venezuela-concert-article-after-fake-attendance

Moon of Alabama and RT have video of the pro-Guaido thugs lighting some “aid” trucks on fire. None of it got into Venezuela.
https://www.rt.com/news/452326-venezuela-us-aid-truck-protesters/

[John Day]

Eleni T, an Athenian of ancient family, has translated to English, the essay by a French Colonel, commander of artillery of NATO coalition forces in Syria, which was referenced in the Moon of Alabama article I posted 2/20/19. In it, the olonel assesses the coalition strategy and tactics, and how they played out with the political forces at work with the American President and his campaign promises.

This essay has ceased to be available online, but I copy what she has sent me, with thanks to Eleni and to Colonel François-Régis Legrier

Battle of Hajin: tactical victory, strategic defeat?

Colonel François-Régis Legrier

Head of the 68th Artillery Regiment of Africa. commanding officer Wagram Task Force Levant from October 2018 to February 2019.

Author of: If you want peace, prepare the war for Via Romana Publishing.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4275885258914846834#editor/target=post;postID=6635908436494017917;onPublishedMenu=template;onClosedMenu=template;postNum=0;src=link

[John Day]

Putin is more macho, bigger hands, IMHO.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2019/02/war-for-survival.html

At least the Empire is winning the Trade-War…​
Chinese state-run newspaper the Global Times warned – or perhaps threatened – late Tuesday that failed trade negotiations would have dire consequences for global stocks.
The threat of a market catastrophe has pigeonholed the US into striking a deal with Beijing, the report suggests although many are confident that the situation is flipped…
Why China’s implicit threat? Perhaps because, as Shard’s Bill Blain noted earlier today, at least in the context of its economy, China is already losing the trade war, and therefore has little to lose by escalating the war of words. This is what Blain said overnight:
The recent data highlights the Chinese economy may be slowing faster than XI can maintain his grip – he’s weaker than ever before. (Raising one scenario threat of a long-drawn out period of uncertainty if he is marginalised/deposed and a power struggle follows. That could be very destabilising and disruptive for the Occidental economies desperate to sell the China!)
We reckon XI knows he’s out of time and has to settle – handing Trump a critical victory. Long-term the US-China tech-war is difficult to call. Trump is determined to garner payback for China IP theft, and its difficult to imagine the rest of Asia adopting Chinese tech systems if they lose the current trade war to the US. However, you can’t just undo years of China tech development. My techy contacts tell me Huawai’s boasts about the US’ inability to close them is partial bluff and bluster – it’s not as advanced or robust as it claims, plus the US is going to insist on wrecking it – which could prove another long-term friction point.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-20/new-us-tariffs-china-will-be-catastrophic-global-stocks-report

​War of the Worlds… A lot has happened on this field of battle since this prescient October 2018 article was penned.
Today America is locked in a struggle for high-tech supremacy with China. The battlefields range from lasers, hypersonic weaponry, and advanced unmanned systems for the military, to artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computers and even driverless cars in the civilian sector. One is transparently clear: whoever wins this struggle will become the dominant superpower in the 21st century; and one of the most decisive contests will be over 5G wireless.
Fifth-generation or 5G technology is much more than the future of global telecommunications, offering more bandwidth than anyone ever imagined (think of downloading entire movies in a few seconds) and enough to make the Internet of Things a daily reality. The rollout of 5G also demands billions of dollars to install the fiber-optic networks needed for these high-capacity systems, and billions more to operate them. Which companies and which countries design and invest in this new infrastructure, will have a hefty say in not only how 5-G transmits information, but also how others are to access the system.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurherman/2018/10/17/the-war-for-the-worlds-5g-future/#7c1b2cb91fe5

​5G is a poisoned chalice. These frequencies are weaponized by the US military to beam at crowds, making them flee in pain.​
Samsung and telecom company Verizon made a joint announcement on Monday that was supposed to be unequivocally exciting news: the blazing-fast fifth generation wireless cellular network — known as 5G — is slated to be more accessible in the United States in the first half of next year (2019).
Yet public health experts, professors, and watchdog groups are increasingly concerned about the untested aspects that this next-gen cell network requires — including more cell towers and a constant chorus of higher-energy photons streaming through human bodies and dwellings.
https://www.salon.com/2018/12/03/why-public-health-experts-are-worried-about-5g-the-next-generation-of-cell-network/
https://healthfreedomidaho.org/5g-military-weapon

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