Fake News, the Paradigm Shift, and Luttwak’s Voice of Authority

As President-elect Trump’s inauguration inches closer every day, the geopolitical earthquake of his victory has driven the Washington political establishment into a frenzy. The response has been, among many other things, a smear campaign in the mainstream media, and the war of words came to a head last Wednesday when Trump held his first press conference since winning the election.

After Buzzfeed and CNN reported on a set of documents purported to be an intelligence report outlining a Russian control file on Trump, a report that was unverified and unverifiable, Trump shot back at the media outlets, calling Buzzfeed a “failing pile of garbage” and CNN “fake news.”

On Sunday, it was reported that the Trump administration and incoming Press Secretary Sean Spicer were considering holding future White House press briefings outside of the West Wing in order to facilitate more reporters from a variety of media. This is a direct assault on the corrupt culture of DC and the cozy relationship between the press corp and the White House. By deliberately expanding the membership of the White House press corp, and taking them out of the West Wing, the prestige and luster of being a White House correspondent is severely lessened. Reporters who may have been more amenable and non-confrontational during press briefings for fear of losing their membership to this exclusive club would have no reason to continue pulling their punches. And don’t expect to see any more White House Correspondents Dinners with Seth Meyers in the future.

But Trump’s attack on CNN, christening them fake news and winning applause from the crowd, represents something very subtle but significant. By taking the mainstream media’s new favorite term to marginalize and discredit and turning it back on CNN, Trump is using his bully pulpit to flip the paradigm.

The Globalists know that as they lose power in national governments, they will also lose influence and legitimacy. As Globalist career politicians like President Obama, David Cameron, and Matteo Renzi step down, the influence and weight of their positions may fall to bolder, more nationalistic candidates like Trump.

Edward Luttwak, in his book Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, describes this specific type of institutional influence as the “voice of authority.” According to Luttwak, a crucial component to every coup is occupying that voice of authority. In your typical dictatorial regime change scenario, that would mean gaining control over the state-run media networks and whatever palace or capitol building the dictator occupies. The coup planners will then have the ability to control the narrative and shape the perception of their rebellion in order to gain legitimacy while degrading their opponents.

A similar situation is happening right now in the US, but in a much more peaceful and nuanced manner. Due to the separation of powers, there is no sole position or organ in our federal republic that has this voice of authority. Instead, it is spread among key parts of the three branches of government. With Trump and the Republicans taking powerful positions at the top of two branches of government- the Presidency with its bully pulpit and the Supreme Court- the ability of the Globalists to control the narrative and frame the ideological debate is diminished substantially. Stuck with their increasingly obsolete mainstream media mouthpieces, the Globalists’ Nazi-style program of Weltanschauungskrieg (worldview warfare) is crumbling before their eyes.

So their response is to imitate Trump. There is now a very clear reversal of attitudes between Trump and Globalist operatives with the Globalists now making outlandish allegations, questioning the integrity of the election and the legitimacy of the next President, riling up and radicalizing their hardliners, and staging large rallies in the form of protests. The new Globalist strategy is to feign populism, something that became apparent to me in a previous post I wrote about French Presidential candidate Francois Fillon.

The depth of this deception was made clear about a week ago when the formerly Eurosceptic Italian 5 Star Party headed by comedian Beppe Grillo were outed as a Globalist front funded by George Soros.

“Soros, working from behind the scenes in New York and London, engineered a coup over this past weekend.

“Grillo was convinced to abandon his alliance with UKIP and offer to join the European Parliament’s extremely pro-EU bloc — the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE).”

…

“There was one major glitch for Five Star and Grillo.

“ALDE refused to permit Five Star to join its parliamentary bloc.

“However, the damage was done. The anti-EU Five Star, which has wrested control of the mayors’ offices of Rome and Turin, had been exposed as a Soros front.”

Soros Cementing Control Over Europe’s Left

Almost immediately after this revelation, a Hungarian party leader called for all of Soros’ NGOs to be “swept out” of the country. Such is the price of clandestine political operations as Soros and his organizations have already been banned from Russia. Don’t be surprised if other nations start expelling Globalist fronts for interfering in their political systems.

All of this geopolitical and populist upheaval proves the Globalists’ strategies are no longer working. The coining of the term “fake news” to replace “conspiracy theory” is a perfect example of how the Globalists have had to change their tactics to deal with exigencies. By granting only the mainstream media the ability to report the “real news,” the Globalists have come to rely entirely on the reputation of the media to maintain their narratives. After the confrontation with the President-elect and the proposal to remove the press corp from the White House, Trump is putting pressure on the media to abandon the Globalist narrative.

The media would do well to do so. As I have stated previously, the Globalist narrative pertaining to Russia is designed to head off any prospect of a Russian reset and the implementation of detente politics. But in an effort to defame Trump, the Globalists have extended themselves past the point of credibility when most news outlets passed on the “docier.”

The fact that Trump compared the leaking of the alleged report to Nazi tactics is quite ironic. After the defeat of the Nazis, the part of Hitler’s intelligence apparatus responsible for spying on the Soviets was incorporated into the CIA. The organization was called Gehlen Org after its head, Nazi Major General Reinhard Gehlen, and for the beginning of the Cold War, the CIA relied entirely on Gehlen Org for their intelligence on the USSR. This organization, and the CIA by extension, had been heavily infiltrated by East German Communist spies almost from its inception. One notorious double agent, Kim Philby, spoiled Gehlen Org’s plan to keep Communism out of Poland via the clandestine WiN Operation. The truth is Russia has always had a formidable and competent intelligence program to keep up with the West

Keeping this in mind, the Globalist narrative regarding Russia starts to become even more inane. According to these intelligence sources, not only have they caught Russia interfering with a democratic election, but they have also obtained the Russians’ control file on Trump. If true, and that’s a big if, this would be a stunning loss for Russian intelligence. Not only would they have been caught with their hand in a very big cookie jar, one that Putin knows would cause severe blowback, but precious blackmail material saved to be used during political expedient times has been leaked to the public, making it far less useful. The more I read into this cartoonish narrative, the more it sounds like wishful thinking.

Accepting that Russia did hack the DNC, the question now becomes “who leaked it?” Julian Assange himself has hinted that DNC staffer Seth Rich was the perpetrator, not the Russians.

“[Assange] hinted darkly that the slain man had been a source in his organization’s recent publication of 30,000 internal DNC emails. The fallout from that embarrassment had led to the firing of several top Democratic Party officials.”

“‘What are you suggesting?’ a startled interviewer from Dutch television asked him.

“‘I am suggesting,’ Assange said, ‘that our sources, ah, take risks, and they, they become concerned to see things occurring like that.’ His organization later ‘clarified’ on Twitter that ‘this should not be taken to imply that Seth Rich was a source for WikiLeaks or to imply that his murder is connected to our publications.’”

Seth Rich: Inside the Killing of the DNC Staffer

But all of this argument and debate ignores a key point. The media continues to frame the “Trump vs. CIA” debate as something legitimate. The reality is that Trump will be the President, Commander-in-Chief, and head of the Executive Department. That means he will have control over the CIA, and if his prerogative is to remove Globalist stalwarts from their positions and send the “CIA Cowboys” riding off into the sunset, he has every right to do so.

And last but not least, Trump had some very interesting comments on blackmail and pinhole cameras. He warned those present that it is common practice for foreign intelligence services to hide recording devices in hotel rooms, but I wonder if this may have been more of a warning to Trump’s political opponents than to those who travel internationally. Recalling the Project Veritas tapes that caught Democratic party operatives inciting violence at Trump’s rallies and busing voters from poll to poll, I wonder if Trump has even more politically incriminating footage that he could use against his enemies.

We may find out after the 20th.

The Beginning of Geopolitical Upheaval and a New Economic Order in 2017

After talking about the geopolitically obstructionist nature of the Russian hacking theory in my last post, one might wonder exactly what the Globalists in the DC establishment are obstructing. We already know what the obstructionists want: open borders, the outsourcing of jobs in the “pivot to the Asia,” coziness with the Saudis, endless foreign wars and conflicts, and so on. But what does Trump, and most tellingly, one of his appointees tell us about his geopolitical goals over the next four or eight years in office?

United States

Many are wondering how Trump plans to fund an infrastructure repair bill while cutting taxes. The money has to come from somewhere, and repatriation of trillions of dollars from offshore accounts, foreign investment from allies like Japan, and lots of deregulation are keys for the Trump administration. Repatriation of funds is paramount, or else the administration will fall into the standard establishment protocol of Big Government Republicanism and running up the national debt.

In order to win back trillions of dollars in repatriation, Trump, through his appointees, has called for the establishment of a new economic order. For the position of Secretary of the Treasury, Trump has nominated Steven Mnuchin. Although many immediately took notice of Mnuchin’s membership in Skull and Bones and Goldman Sachs, few know the interesting details of his background.

According to Catherine Austin-Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and founder of The Solari Report, Steven Mnuchin is the son of Robert Mnuchin, the man who ran the equity trading desk at Goldman Sachs.

“When I worked there in the summer of 1977, I used to take some of the courses in the equity sales intern program and knew all those guys, which is how I met his dad. If you wanted to understand everything about equity on the planet, all you had to do was sit on that trading floor. Bob Mnuchin ran the arbitrage desk on that trading floor. You’re talking about somebody with unbelievably deep ties for generations in the equity world.”

The Solari Report- The Trump Transition with Dr. Joseph Farrell [PDF]

In other words, the Mnuchins are Goldman Sachs royalty, identifying at least one group of the deep state who have splintered from the Globalists and aligned with Trump. Catherine also notes how Steven Mnuchin was working closely with the architects of the housing market collapse, siphoning trillions of dollars out of the US economy and taking it elsewhere.

“So the idea of taking the people who engineered the financial coup d’état and using them to bring the money back is certainly interesting. If you’re talking about a machine that has real power, the question is: Can you get it to have a positive return to the taxpayer?”

The Solari Report- The Trump Transition with Dr. Joseph Farrell [PDF]

That is indeed the question at hand. When the old Soviet Bloc countries transitioned to capitalism, debt/equity swaps and equity trading gave insolvent governments a way to restructure their debts by selling off state-owned assets. In Russia, this was done under the Yeltsin regime to benefit pro-Western factions within the Russian deep state, factions that still do not see eye-to-eye with Vladimir Putin.

The lure of privatization could be very effective at repatriating money to the US. For example, the privatization of space required a huge amount of fixed capital, technological development, and innovation, but the lucrative prospects of asteroid mining and space tourism drew in investors and entrepreneurs from around the world. Of course, the financial predators wait in the wings, licking their teeth at the prospect of the classic “pump and dump” to line their own pockets at the expense of society.

Trump’s call for a new economic order is a shift away from debt based finance, centralization and Globalization and a move towards innovation, privatization, and deregulation.

The Middle East

Israeli officials said they felt betrayed last week when the Obama administration decided not to veto a UN resolution condemning Israel’s territorial expansion. Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to condemn the resolution and demand its repeal.

“The 342-to-80 vote reflected the bipartisan nature of Congress’s support for Israel. Almost all of the votes against the resolution came from Democrats, and a handful of Democrats also voted ‘present.'”

House votes to condemn U.N. security council resolution on Israeli settlements

This is yet another attempt by Globalist stalwarts to sabotage and obstruct any return to a detente policy and to force the next administration back into the status quo. Israel has recently accepted Russian investments and cooperation exploiting the Leviathan gas field, a venture that Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson would be very familiar with.

In Turkey, we have what would appear to be even more obstructionism and sabotage with the assassination of a Russian ambassador at an art exhibition. The assassin claimed revenge for Russia’s actions in Syria, but the only effect this has had has been to embolden and inflame political hardliners backing both Putin and Erdogan, putting pressure on them to act against the West, and sabotaging any possibility of rapprochement between the US and Russia.

With the US becoming energy independent, and the silent, unremarked upon death of “peak oil,” don’t expect the Trump administration to be anywhere nearly as cozy with the Saudis as a Hillary Clinton administration would have been. The Saudis have been trying to sell off ownership of their state-run oil industry in an attempt to diversify their economy- dealing mostly with defense technology and arms manufacturing. Globalist carbon policies dictated this process, but the unexpected victory of Trump, who doesn’t believe in Climate Change, have caused the Saudis to prepare for a future that hasn’t arrived yet, and may not arrive for a while longer.

Asia

After President Obama spoke at a memorial in Hiroshima, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to Pearl Harbor to commemorate those killed in action. There has been a sincere desire by both sides (and maybe all of the US factions) to reaffirm our alliance with Japan. With Russia somewhat uneasy over the Chinese takeover of the South China Sea, Putin has welcomed Japanese investment in Siberian gas ventures and worked to resolve the Kuril Islands territorial dispute.With all of this recent fence mending, it would appear that Japan is establishing a position of detente. Given the location of the country, and the conflict between the US and China to control trade around the Pacific Rim, it’s not a bad idea. Expect Japan to play a vital part of any rapprochement between the US and Russia.

On Christmas day, a Russian plane carrying the Alexandrov Ensemble, formerly the Red Army Choir, to a Russian military base in Syria crashed into the Black Sea minutes after take off. The day after, Vladimir Putin declared a day of mourning, and investigations have concluded that it was an accident. But with the recent assassination of a Russian ambassador in Turkey and the flimsy Russian hacking theory being aired on most news networks in the US, I would not be surprised to discover Globalist involvement to – you guessed it – obstruct Trump.

Similar to the assassination in Turkey, the death of the Alexandrov Ensemble, and suspicions of foul play, have been whipping up the Russian hardliners backing Putin to act against the US and pro-Western factions in Russia.

Europe

In Europe, and the EU, the struggle between centralization and sovereignty continues. While the British establishment are still trying to hold back the triggering of Article 50, many European Parliament politicians have become concerned over the formation of an EU military. They have pointed out that such an army would be redundant to NATO, except even more bloated and bureaucratic. Any proposed EU army would also suffer from the same complications in coordination and logistics that NATO suffers from- i.e. language barriers and the need for mass standardization. On top of that, the US and the UK, two of the largest military powers in the world, will not be members of the EU, excluding their military might from an EU army.

In other troubling news, Yves Chandelon, the NATO Auditor General and the man in charge of investigating the international funding of terrorism, was found dead from a gunshot wound in Brussels. The official cause of death has been ruled a suicide, but Chandelon’s family disagrees. Could this be an effort by the Globalists to cover for their friends Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar? It is these three nations who have been implicated in the funding and nurturing of ISIS. Or perhaps this is a measure by the Globalists to rid themselves of further oversight, so they can continue their clandestine operations to manipulate world affairs well after President Obama leaves office.

The Myth of Russian Hacking Omnipotence is a Massive Effort of Obstructionism

In a last ditch effort to influence world affairs and abate a tide of change not only washing over the US, but the entire Western World including Britain, France, and Italy, Globalist politicians in every nation are blaming Russian hackers for their ills. It’s an attempt not only to focus attention away from their own appalling failures, but to also further entrench the Globalist geopolitical strategy of unipolarism and China first before the Trump administration takes office.

The plight of Mr. Global has become so desperate, free speech is becoming blatantly censored for fear of Russian agents spreading “fake news” (a.k.a. conspiracy theories). Now, social media networks are actively censoring alternative and independent viewpoints, placing them on the same threat level as Jihadi websites.

“The article by reporter Craig Timberg — headlined ‘Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say’ — cites a report by an anonymous website calling itself PropOrNot, which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian ‘misinformation campaign.’

…

“In other words, the individuals behind this newly created group are publicly branding journalists and news outlets as tools of Russian propaganda — even calling on the FBI to investigate them for espionage — while cowardly hiding their own identities. The group promoted by the Post thus embodies the toxic essence of Joseph McCarthy, but without the courage to attach individual names to the blacklist. Echoing the Wisconsin senator, the group refers to its lengthy collection of sites spouting Russian propaganda as ‘The List.'”

Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group

But the older, soft power method of conflating ideology with race is still being used. A little over a week ago, Dutch eurosceptic and Populist politician Geert Wilders was convicted of hate speech for criticizing the religion of Islam. Such blatant censorship is surely a sign of desperation.

Similar to the British establishment’s response to the Brexit, which is now being blamed on Putin, the Globalists in DC decided to obstruct the election in every way possible. From using a third party to demand recounts to subverting electors, the political establishments are simply filibustering, with the British taking the issue all the way to their supreme court and ignoring the will of the people and their own referendum.

But the larger ramification, and the overarching goal of such an effort, is to have a geopolitical effect. It is an attempt to sabotage any rapprochement with Russia, or an abandonment of the China First policy. Trump, with the Taiwan call, has signaled an end to this type of relation with the PRC. By raising tensions at the mere possibility of any deviation in American foreign policy, the political establishment are nothing more than obstructionists acting under the guise of the concerned. And what they are obstructing is a return to the multipolar detente, balance of power politics of Henry Kissinger under Nixon.

This is the type of foreign policy, balance of power, that won’t hesitate to put an end to amicable relations with the Chinese. As Globalist lawmakers across the West are set on outsourcing their manufacturing bases in their “pivot to Asia,” their disenfranchised electorates have voted to put an end to it. While the world invests in the development of the Asian continent, China takes the lead on the research and development of green energy, possibly shutting out the West from dominating that new market as America does the world energy markets. If anything, the West has been locked into a detente policy put on by China, being played against the Russians to benefit the PRC.

But the pundits and talking heads, themselves obsessed with the type of personality-driven politics that propelled Trump into the spotlight, very rarely elevate the scope of their reporting to include the bigger picture view of geopolitics. As Hillary Clinton continues to blame everyone from the FBI to Putin to the electoral college in her public psychodrama, the EU disintegrates further, and Globalism under corrupt, corporate cronies continues to be rejected.

The EU Experiment is Failing… Badly

Several weeks ago, following the Brexit and other uprisings throughout Southern Europe, I began to question the continued existence of the European Union. A combination of non-elected leadership, years of austerity measures, open borders policies, and Russian sanctions hurting European businesses have inspired the movement to leave the EU.

In Italy, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s referendum to amend the constitution has been rejected by the Italian people, and he has resigned his position. The proposal sought to provide stability to the Italian banking system and the government, which has gone through 63 administrations since the fall of Mussolini during World War II. Renzi’s opponents rejected the bill for being poorly drafted and somewhat vague, weakening democratic representation in Parliament, and centralizing power in the cities and away from the provinces.

Although this isn’t explicitly an anti-EU vote, it certainly rejects all of the centralizing, autocratic tendencies of Brussels. Furthermore, most of the votes garnered by these anti-EU movements come from the less-populated rural areas such as the provinces. If anything, it’s more of the same, and the Italians have rejected it.

Not long after the “Renzignation” the value of the euro plummeted.

“The euro was under the gun on Monday, skidding to a 20-month low after Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign following a stinging defeat on constitutional reform that could destabilize the country’s shaky banking system.

…

“Opinion polls show Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD) is neck-and-neck with the 5-Star [Party], which has called for a referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro currency.”

Euro slumps as Renzi vows to quit after Italy referendum loss

Facing movements like the 5-Star Party, Marine Le Pen’s National Front, the Dutch Party for Freedom, and many other groups and leaders, the bureaucrats in Brussels have started to panic a little. This recent article shared by Dr. Joseph Farrell over at Giza Death Star quotes European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker advising European leaders against holding these anti-EU referendums.

“Regarding referenda on EU membership, I think it is not wise to organise this kind of debate, not only because I might be concerned about the final result but because this will pile more controversy onto the huge number already present at the heart of the EU.” – Jean-Claude Juncker

European president Jean-Claude Juncker pleads with EU leaders not to hold ‘in-out’ referendums – because voters will choose to LEAVE

Even Merkel in Germany has begun to soften her stances in response to her party’s drubbing in the last local elections. Formerly a staunch supporter of muslim refugees and multiculturalism, Merkel has now advocated for a burqa ban similar to France. Although I don’t agree with forcing women to cover their heads in public (or barring them from getting an education, income, and driving for that matter), I shudder at the thought of giving the government the power to decide what people can or cannot wear and the duty to enforce such laws with fines or imprisonment if necessary.

Should the Mainstream Media be Considered a Part of the Political Class?

I’ve gotta say folks, it’s getting harder and harder to read and understand the news these days. It’s not so much the tribalistic biases, distortions, and lying by omission that we’re all used to, it’s about honesty, ethics and accountability. There’s a reason why Brian Williams was fired from his show for lying about his experiences during the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. If people are forced to take William’s statements with a grain of salt, that kind of undermines the whole purpose of news and being a journalist, right? So how does the MSM still get it so wrong? You had one job…

Although it would seem that lying for your own benefit as a journalist is punished, lying on behalf of the political class is accepted. The fourth estate has been subject to a form of regulatory capture. There’s a revolving door and members of the news media are often considered for propagandist positions in administrations such as Press Secretary and Director of Communications. In order to be considered for the job, administrations will be looking for loyalty, and a body of work that they or their candidate approve of.

This means that unethical hack reporters and pundits who view journalism as a stepping stone to their own personal power will collude and slant their coverage to curry favor with powerful politicians. Those who wish to become White House propagandists will produce propaganda on their own to show that they are capable of it. When you have a field of such competitors vying for a limited amount of administration positions, you can have your own propaganda machine quietly working for you in the news industry.

If you’ll remember, Wikileaks published a list of journalists who agreed to have dinner with John Podesta. It should be noted that this was a private dinner, none of the participants have come forth to explain what was discussed, and we probably would have never known about this if it weren’t for Wikileaks and Julian Assange. It should also be noted that ABC’s George Stephanoplous was RSVP’d, and that he was Bill Clinton’s Communications Director in 1993.

Wikileaks email 21063- “RE: Press Dinners – Full Info”

And then there is, of course, Donna Brazile’s dismissal from CNN for passing town hall questions to the Clinton campaign, the various brown-nosing emails from people like Glenn Thrush and John Harwood, fraternizing at the White House Correspondence Dinners, and so on and so forth.

When somebody like Trump points out this collusion and tries to hold the media accountable, they claim victimhood and persecution of a free press. These delicate geniuses are anything but. You can’t be that delicate when you have the power of the pen, and there was absolutely nothing genius about the MSM’s 2016 election coverage. And yes, it is important to have a free and independent media in this country, but that last part – independent- isn’t mentioned.

Then I heard the UKIP’s Nigel Farage speak at a convention for journalists in Copenhagen, and I was struck by his statement that many are viewing the MSM in the same light as politicians.

“2016 has been the year of political revolution, it has been the year of the outsiders. But remember, what made Brexit happen, and what got Trump elected, were a lot of little people who don’t normally vote at all, but have simply had enough and want to vote for change. They feel they’ve been talked down to, they feel they’ve been sneered at, and I think what this conference needs to face up to is it’s not just the political class that increasingly is treated with contempt by the broader public across the West. Actually, the national broadcasters – and the rest of the media, too – are being, I’m afraid, viewed in the same way. You are now on a par with the political class. How ’bout that? It’s not a great place to be, is it?”

Nigel Farage at the News Xchange annual conference [Video]

With all of the whitewashing, distortions, omissions of context, and appeals to emotions, media pundits and commentators are beginning to talk more and more like politicians. Looking at the 2016 election coverage and the Podesta Wikileaks, it would seem that news networks like CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and the New York Times were little more than political advocacy groups. So if the mainstream media pundits are willing to advocate on behalf of politicians, attend private dinners with campaign managers, and even help them cheat at town halls, should they be considered a part of the political class? Should the public have to take their words with a grain of salt the way they do with politicians? I find myself doing just that.

So what can we do? I think if Trump wants to drain the swamp in DC, he could drain the swamp in midtown Manhattan as well. I suggest that print and especially broadcast journalists working for the 6 major media conglomerates (CBS, Time Warner, Viacom, Disney, News Corp, and GE) be required to resign from their positions for a period of 4 years before accepting a job in the federal government. This will prevent the kind of media collusion and manipulation of public opinion we saw in the 2016 election. With such a steep requirement to transition into the public sector, the incentive to appease politicians disappears, and the revolving door is locked shut.

Taiwan and Other Tenuous Relationships in the North Pacific

A simple congratulatory call from the president of Taiwan to President-elect Donald Trump has ruffled Beijing’s feathers. One week prior, the Chinese were flying nuclear-capable bombers around the island country, perhaps signaling a warning to Taiwanese nationalists not to act up.

“According to a press release from the Trump transition team about the phone call, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen offered her congratulations and Trump offered the same to her for her election victory this year. They discussed the ‘close economic, political, and security ties between Taiwan and the United States,’ the Trump transition team said.”

China Lodges Diplomatic Protest After Trump’s Call With Taiwan’s President

Since 1949, Taiwan has been a particularly sensitive area for Chinese internal politics. In fact, you could call it an old wound that has never completely healed over. When Mao Zedong and the PLA won the Chinese Civil War with the help of the Soviets, the deposed government was the Republic of China (ROC) under Chiang Kai-shek, and they were forced to abandon their capital and set up a government in exile on Taiwan. Since then, there has been no armistice, no cease-fire signed between the two Chinese factions. Both governments, the PRC and the ROC, claim to be the legitimate government of China, but the Communists held the mainland, and when Nixon came around to open up relations with China, he chose to negotiate with the PRC.

Although Chiang Kai-shek lead the Nationalist Party and the Republic of China for most of the 20th century, the ROC was first lead by Sun Yat-sen, a doctor, political philosopher, and revolutionary who was born in China, but received an education from American schools in Hawaii. Sun believed in decentralizing power and developing a federal republic of smaller states similar to the US. He lead the rebellion that overturned the last Chinese emperor and the Qing Dynasty. A photo of Sun Yat-sen is featured above.

With the death of the TPP, US foreign policy in the Pacific Rim has stalled, but this contact between the President-elect and the president of Taiwan could be taken as a sign of changing relationships between the US and China.

The whole northern Pacific area is a bit of a work in progress for both China and Russia. Right on their doorstep is North Korea, a nuclear powder keg being run by a megalomaniac. Below the 38th parallel is South Korea, a bastion of Western influence and home to nearly 30,000 US troops. Further east is Japan, who are currently rearming and overhauling their military forces in response to China’s aggression in the South China Sea. Japan has also established its own balance of power, working economically with Russia as a counterbalance for Chinese expansion.

Japan’s recent rapprochement with Russia has also helped to settle the territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands. The Russians agreed to return two of the four islands to Japan, but on the territory they’ve kept, they’ve installed missile systems with a 375 mile effective range.

“The disagreement over the Pacific islands, seized by the Soviet Union in the final days of World War II, has kept the two countries from signing a peace treaty formally ending their wartime hostilities.

“Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been pushing for progress in the dispute over the islands, called the southern Kurils by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan.

“The sparsely inhabited islands lie just north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido, in an area rich in natural resources, and they also serve as a strategic vantage point for the Russian military. Last month, Japan protested after Russia announced the deployment of new anti-ship missiles on Pacific islands to the Kurils.”

Russia warns Japan not to expect quick progress on islands

The Chinese are already very busy taking over the South China Sea, stabilizing the Yuan, and building infrastructure along with other long-term geopolitical goals. Having to deal with Taiwanese nationalism may be another issue for China to juggle, and the possibility of a currency war turning into an all-out trade war with the US could threaten China’s ability to coordinate and fund big projects that require heavy, fixed capital.

Is Putin Purging His Kremlin of Keynesians?

In a previous post about Russia’s geopolitical goals, I mentioned the struggle for influence among the Western Liberal economists running the Russian Central Bank and the Stolypin Club, a collection of economic advisors shaping Putin’s foreign policy goals. Judging from Russia’s recent geopolitical moves, it would seem that the Stolypin Club were winning that war of influence, and I have been watching for Putin to start purging the Keynesians that made their way into the Kremlin under the Yeltsin administration.

When news surfaced that Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev was arrested for accepting a bribe, I started parsing through the details to see if the incident may have been related to the palace politics I mentioned earlier. Ulyukayev is accused of accepting $2 million to “grease the skids” for a major deal between two Russian oil companies, and Putin dismissed him from service the same day he was arrested.

Corrupt oligarchs are the norm in Russia, so what’s the big deal? Although many in the media are characterizing Ulyukayev as an underling for Putin, Ulyukayev came into power under Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and held the position of Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia for 9 years prior. It was also the Medvedev economic team who bailed out major banks and initiated a stimulus program when the 2008/2009 recession hit the country- two very Keynesian policies. At this point, I began to wonder if Ulyukayev may have been the latest casualty in the war over Russia’s economic policies, and if the Stolypin Club had begun to eclipse their rivals.

Putin is a product of Russia’s corrupt oligarchical system. Formerly the mayor of St. Petersburg, any business who had planned to open up shop in his city needed his approval, and I’m willing to believe this is how Putin made many of his contacts among the Russian business and banking elites. But now, he claims to be cracking down on that corruption, perhaps in an effort to make Russian government and industry a bit more efficient and structured in case their economy continues to stagnate or decline.

“Putin hasn’t really done much to dismantle the corrupt system that has flourished in Russia under his rule — probably because graft is the glue that has held it together all these years. Yet he has appeared impatient with it since the 2014 Crimea land grab and the simultaneous oil price drop. No longer happy (or perhaps no longer able to comfortably afford) the crony capitalism of the 2000s, he wants a mobilized, militarized, patriotic nation that would circle its wagons against a perceived threat from the West and the economic difficulties that go with it. ”

Why Putin Sacrificed His Economy Minister

Putin is the one who has benefited greatly from cronyism, and it was Medvedev who ran on an anti-corruption platform, so Ulyukayev being dismissed by Putin for corruption is rather ironic. But the irony is lost on Putin’s more rabid supporters who are calling for a Soviet-style purge of all corrupt ministers and government workers. Some have even suggested that representatives from the FSB run the purged departments of government until an appropriate time for elections.

If Ulyukayev’s arrest is the beginning of a purge of Western Liberal economists from the Kremlin, it may have also been a litmus test to assess the political and social ramifications of further shake ups in senior leadership. Judging the public’s reaction to Ulyukayev’s arrest, I think a majority of the Russian people would buy into an anti-corruption cover story. If Putin begins to move against the Russian Central Bank or the rest of Medvedev’s team, then we can be sure there’s going to be another shakeup in Putin’s Kremlin.

“Putin has been careful not to threaten the economic team in Dmitry Medvedev’s government and the central bank.”

Why Putin Sacrificed His Economy Minister

So why the shake up? I think it may have something to do with the election of Trump, the death of TTP and other free trade deals, and a potential rehabilitation of the over-leveraged, bubble-prone debt finance model of economics. If Keynesians like Paul Krugman and Janet Yellen are in danger of falling out of favor in the West, then Keynesians in Russia should be listed as an endangered species.

The French Establishment’s Answer to Their Trumpian Candidate and a Possible Frexit

With the stunning results of the Brexit referendum and the historical upset of a Donald Trump victory, a world-wide movement to reject Globalism and open borders has made their message clear in Europe and have taken the Presidency in America. The next battleground appears to be the French 2017 Presidential elections, with voting set to begin April 23rd.

Although it could be argued that Putin was the first modern leader to stop playing by the Globalist’s rules when he invaded South Ossetia in 2008, Putin has never been a good role model for politicians in the West due to his autocratic nature. On the other hand, Silvio Berlusconi had just won a third term as Prime Minister of Italy in 2008, and many European commentators have been pointing out the similarities between him and Trump since the latter announced his run for President.

“‘The most powerful way to oppose [Berlsuconi], but it was never really done seriously, was to try and understand what his voters want and try to address the need of his voters. No jokes, stop shouting, stop crying, stop saying: ‘It is a horror and disaster’; try and seriously understand what his voters want, and the left was never really successful in doing that,’ [Giovanni] Orsina said.”

If Berlusconi is like Trump, what can America learn from Italy

Berlusconi may have been the prototype for Trump in terms of persona and spectacle, but more importantly, his populist leanings and later Euroscepticism very closely parallel the nationalist tendencies of Trump and the UKIP. It was these populist policies that addressed the needs of the Italian voters and outshone all of his personal flaws.

Over in France, Marine Le Pen leads the National Front party, and supports policies that are openly nationalist and protectionist. Le Pen is not a lippy, spray tanned billionaire like Trump and Berlusconi, her father led the National Front for 40 years and she has been active in politics since 1998. Le Pen may be the most dangerous opponent to the EU bureaucrats due to her pedigree, her success in reforming her party’s image, and her push to pass a referendum allowing French citizens to vote to leave the EU. Yes, she wants a Frexit, just like Britain’s Brexit.

In response to a growing global movement against their policies, and the further potential of a breakup of the EU, the French political Establishment have chosen Francois Fillon to be the Presidential candidate for the Republican party. Fillon served as Prime Minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, an EU Globalist who almost went rogue when sanctions on Russia began to seriously degrade the French economy. Both Sarkozy and Fillon are your typical big government conservatives espousing oligarch-friendly tax cuts while implementing tax-subsidized government welfare and stimulus programs to run up deficits and debts just like George W. Bush.

In an attempt to woo voters away from Le Pen, the Republican party and Fillon has ceded many positions on their platform to populist sentiment. He’s taken a strong stance against Islamic terrorists, favors a reset with Russian relations, and is somewhat socially conservative. But the one area where the bureaucrats in Brussels won’t release their grip is the economy, and Fillon toes the line in this respect. Fillon’s crusade against budget deficits and debt can only mean one thing for an EU country – austerity measures. He has also rejected the protectionist measures of the National Front, insisting instead that French workers embrace job retraining and the offers of employment given to them afterwards.

If that last part about job retraining sounds familiar, it’s because it was a major issue that popped up during the American election. Many inhabitants of the Rust Belt, the region of the country that may have handed Trump the election, suffered under deindustrializing trade deals like NAFTA, and did not want retraining. They wanted to keep their jobs.

“To counter Trump’s populist appeal, [Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairman David] Betras urged Clinton to go vigorously after blue-collar workers by promising to bring back jobs. The key, Betras argued, was to have this message delivered not by politicians but by local blue-collar families in radio and television ads across the region. ‘The messages can’t be about job retraining,’ he wrote. ‘These folks have heard it a million times and, frankly, they think it’s complete and total bullshit.'”

These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming

So why do the Globalists insist on making the same mistake in France? It’s because the EU common market, and the combined economic cooperation of France and Germany, is the only thing keeping the EU and the Euro afloat. Any advice from political pundits and commentators to address the needs of the voters directly will be ignored because it can’t be followed due to geopolitical circumstances and bureaucratic inertia. The current economic paradigm of the “pivot to the East” entails the outsourcing of heavy industry and manufacturing to countries like China, Vietnam, and India in order to build more robust international trade ties and one large, interconnected world economy. Le Pen, and the threat of a Frexit, could undo all of that.

In pursuit of such a system, the EU has rejected national sovereignty, borders, and job security for their people. Anybody with half a brain can see that the Free Trade position is untenable, but the EU bureaucrat bankers and career politicians in Washington, London, and Berlin have been so dependent on public relations, focus grouping, consensus building, sugarcoating their failed policies and painting the leaves green that they have forgotten what is real.

 

Weird Things: Pizzagate and Trump’s Scientist Uncle

If you thought things were getting weird leading up to the election, they just seem to get weirder. When I first heard the mainstream media news outlets warning of “fake news,” I suspected something big was coming down the pipe. Something so embarrassing or incriminating that the media had to find a replacement for their shopworn “conspiracy theory” marginalizing term to prep the populace.

Pizzagate

I suspect that big story may have originated from the thousands of documents leaked by Wikileak’s Podesta Emails. If you’ll remember, the Clinton campaign claimed that disinformation in the form of falsified emails were being intermixed with the contents of Podesta’s inbox in a scheme to smear Clinton. The campaign made that claim just before the Spirit Cooking incident surfaced and began trending, so I suspect that this “fake news” warning is a cover for Pizzagate, which has also come out of the Podesta leaks.

For many years, probably decades, there have been rumors that the very wealthy, very connected, and political classes were engaging, in an organized fashion, in the sexual abuse of children. In 2008, billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein plead guilty to offering sex with a minor, and Bill Clinton’s phone number was found in his contact book. The investigation also uncovered that Epstein would install hidden cameras to record his clients’ criminality for blackmail purposes.

In 2012, police in Britain initiated Operation Yewtree to investigate rumors of a pedophilia ring involving BBC employees. By 2015, six were charged with assaulting minors including four Television personalities, a medical doctor, and a publicist who used to work for The Beatles.

The most disturbing aspect of this already unsettling issue is the growing pile of dead bodies consisting of whistle blowers and prospective investigators following these pedophilia rings. Individuals like Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar, Max Spiers, Gary Caradori, Carole Kasir, and now a woman working for the Human Trafficking Center and investigating child abduction in Haiti, Monica Petersen, has been found dead a little over a week ago.

According to previously declassified FBI briefings, pedophile networks use code and symbolism to communicate their intentions. Common examples are a small heart encompassed by a larger heart, or a small triangle inside of a bigger one. With Pizzagate, the term “pizza” is supposedly code for sex with a minor, with various other food items to specify age and sex. Further investigation of the Podesta emails believed to be written in code lead to James Alefantis, the owner of Comet Ping Pong in Washington DC and a former romantic partner of David Brock, the founder of Hillary’s Correct The Record Super PAC. A review of Alefantis’ Instagram account under the name jimmycomet revealed many picture entries of an explicitly sexual nature, which is very concerning since this is supposed to be a family establishment with games for children. Some pictures were of nude men with pizza covering their groin, a restrained child, a baby doll with a price tag, and a man wearing a shirt reading “I love children” in French.

So when a story like Pizzagate comes out, it’s not coming out of left field. There has been a history of pedophilia allegations with the elites, and it was only a matter of time until word got out. I suspect that organized activities like child sex rings, spirit cooking rituals, and even the collection of nude celebrity photos that were released during the Fappening point to a massive blackmail network being used by secret societies to keep their pawns from wandering off the Establishment reservation.

Dr. John G. Trump

In more weird news, we examine the President-elect’s uncle, who was a highly accomplished electrical engineer teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Trump was known mostly for his work on very high-voltage machinery and his refinement of x-ray machines in the 1930’s, but during World War II, he was recruited by the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), under the chairmanship of Vannevar Bush, to lead secret research into radar systems with British and American Scientists.

“But first, given [Donald] Trump’s tendency to wrap things in porcelain and gold and shoot sparks through them, it’s worth noting that John Trump really does seem to have been a brilliant scientist. He was at M.I.T. for decades, and the X-ray machines he helped design ‘provided additional years of life to cancer patients throughout the world,’ as the Times put it in his obituary, in 1985.”

Donald Trump’s Nuclear Uncle

But what is not mentioned is that Dr. Trump was already working under Bush before the the start of the war as a part of his graduate program at MIT. The two were quite familiar, and I believe that is why Bush gave Dr. Trump the highly-sensitive radar program. Considering that Vannevar Bush was, without a doubt, a trusted insider, he was allowed to initiate and oversee the beginning of America’s first black project- the Manhattan Project. So I am given to speculate if Dr. Trump, a brilliant mind around extremely high-voltage applications, may have been involved in any government black projects under the direction of Vannevar Bush. And I wonder if that work would have concerned the generation of power.

Could it be possible that, through family connections, President-elect Trump has been allowed to peak behind the black project curtain? Did he learn about something that made him adopt an energy policy to “pursue all forms of energy?”

If you’d like to know more about Dr. John Trump, here’s a nice video interview of him from the MIT vaults.

Vignettes of Early Radiation Workers (1978)

Can Liberals Reform the Democratic Party?

After an unexpected drubbing in the election and the loss of many of their senior leaders, the Democratic Party is experiencing an existential crisis. Some blamed the FBI, some blamed bigotry, and Clinton’s senior strategist blamed the “Bernie Bros.” The latter suggestion rankled Sanders’ supporters, and I think the rigging of the Democratic Primary, and the rejection of Sanders by the Establishment, has the potential of driving a wedge between the moderate liberals who actually vote for the party and the Democratic Establishment who leads them. If the voters had been allowed to have their way, a Democratic politician wouldn’t have even made it onto the final ballot as Bernie Sanders is technically an Independent.

For years, there’s been a section of the left who have recognized that the policies of neoliberals like the Clintons, Joe Manchin, Chuck Schumer, and John Kerry were not all that different from neoconservatives like the Bush dynasty, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. They are all friends of Wall Street and the banks, they all like to ship American jobs overseas, and they always vote in favor of the next war. The only real difference between these two groups are their social programs, an obsession for those practicing identity politics.

So maybe after this rout, you would think the Democrats would pick fresh new leadership? Wrong. Chuck Schumer has taken over the Senate from outgoing Harry Reid and Keith Ellison is experiencing resistance from the Obama White House in his run to take over the DNC. But the leadership of the House minority is in contention, with Ohio Representative Tim Ryan challenging incumbent Nancy Pelosi. There is a very clear anti-establishment trend developing in the response of the Democratic party, so what does that mean for policy?

Will Democrats continue to allow their corporate side to run the party? Will they continue to tolerate bailouts for too big to fail banks and corporate firms? Will bankers and CEO’s continue to be too big to jail? Are corporate lawyers going to write America’s trade deals like TPP and NAFTA? How will the Democrats judge the Keynesian response to the great recession? Did quantitative easing work? And will the Democrats accept the austerity model of the EU for their future economic policies? Is long-term debt an economic ball and chain?

Will the Left finally stand up to the war hawks in their party? Or will they be silenced by “matters of national security?” The media will no longer report the truth, so America needs an antiwar party.

If Liberals continue fighting for civil rights, can they grasp the conflation of equality under the law with freedom from societal ills and economic woes? Will they realize that fraternity and fidelity create harmony, not social rules and honor brigades? Can they understand the difference between the rule of law and social justice? Can they continue to accept the war on drugs? And continue to support sending non-violent drug offenders to for-profit prisons to work as slave labor?

Will Democrats accept the management of a nation’s borders as a normal part of culture and governance? Or will race be a component of every argument and motivation? Will the Left recognize and reward the plight of illegal immigrants over the dedication and cooperation of the people going through the naturalization process? Does implicit bias preclude shared societal values? Is that why the Progressive fringe feels entitled to create new social rules like microaggressions, gender-neutral pronouns, and safe spaces?

And what will happen to the boondoggle of American Socialism? With Obamacare anything but a success, will the Left finally abandon Corporate Socialism with legislation written by and for campaign donors? Can they return to the New Deal policies that FDR created and Bernie Sanders is offering? Can they stop the draining of Social Security and Medicare funds?

The Left has a long road ahead of them, but a good start would be to drain the swamp in their own party first. The media is still focused on bigotry and the social injustice of a Trump Administration because it is a reaffirmation of the Left’s social view, but the party will have to deal with the core issues eventually. The attention on Trump also distracts from the Democrats as they fall into dissension and disarray. But the leadership’s problems will only grow if Trump drains the swamp. A higher turnover rate for Congressional leadership requires a larger pool of leaders to draw from, and the Democrats are at a distinct advantage here because of their lack of leadership and party unity and the advanced age of their current leaders.