The Dastyari Scandal: Australia Could Be Turning Against China

While China was completing the construction of its artificial island chains, the assistant chief of staff to the US Army, Colonel Tom Hanson, spoke publicly to pressure Australia into picking a side in the South China Sea conflict. The US has been trying to build a regional coalition to stop China’s takeover of the region’s fishing lanes, off shore oil reserves, and the $5 trillion worth of trade that passes through maritime shipping lanes.

That was over a month ago, and now Australian politics are hinting towards the continuation of the alliance with the US and the West and away from China. A recent scandal surrounding a high ranking senator, Sam Dastyari, saw accusations of bribery and influence peddling. Dastyari was accused of asking for and accepting money from a Chinese business with ties to the Chinese government to cover travel expenses and a legal bill. Those travel expenses were incurred while Dastyari was on a conference tour in China, speaking out against anyone who would interfere with the ongoing take over of the South China Sea and undermining the positions of the Australian government and his own party. After being condemned by the Prime Minister, he resigned from a prestigious senate position to become a rank and file senator with little influence.

Sam Dastyari steps down from Labor frontbench after accepting money from Chinese donors

This incident, along with the Australian Treasury’s blocking of two bids from Chinese investors to buy up infrastructure in New South Whales, are indicative of the growing suspicion of Chinese influence in the country. This is good news to the Globalists in Washington who are now threatened with a plethora nationalist uprisings in addition to Russian and Chinese expansionism and their own weakened economy.

Right now, the only country that has a lot of capital to invest is China. After agreeing it would no longer manipulate the value of the Yuan at the last G20 in Hangzhou, the IMF announced the Yuan would become an IMF reserve currency in November. It’s a sign that China’s currency is becoming commonly traded and stable, and on track but still not close to replacing the dollar as the most widely used reserve currency. A great number of Aussies are wary of foreign investment, but beggars can’t be choosers and China has the capital.

Australia’s wealthy have watched the developments on the world stage and are not immune to the uncertainty over who will control world energy markets and trade. Billionaire entrepreneur Gina Rinehart, whose business make billions in coal mining annually, has recently placed a bid on one of Australia’s largest beef producers with capital from Chinese investors who were limited to minority ownership. Understanding the need to diversify, Rinehart sees potential in Australia’s ability to produce food.

Chinese investment in Australia

Under the bid, Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting will end up with 67 per cent of Australia’s largest landholding. But one third of the ownership is to be taken by a Chinese group, Shanghai Cred, which had also formed part of the original bidding consortium rejected by the Treasurer.

Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal, the fourth largest producer of coal, and also the third largest producer of liquefied natural gas and expected to lead that market by 2020. With the uncertainty around energy markets, climate change policy and green technology, Australia is reacting like New Zealand, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and many other countries who have had to adjust their policies as well as their financial dealings to suit new geopolitical realities.

The West is arranging to tank Putin’s oil-ruble through the climate change debate, but they have not been able to keep pace with the developments rapidly being made in BRICS nations. The Globalists in DC, London and Berlin haven’t prepared a new framework to tie to the value of the dollar now that the Russians are trying to take the world energy market from them. This poor timing, combined with the intensification of climate change policy and treaties, is part of the reason why there is so much uncertainty seen in the markets and governments across the globe. But this course of action by the West has also placed additional pressure on the BRICS system to develop even faster, and maybe not very neatly or cohesively.

Before Monsanto’s reputation was so damaged that it had to be sold off to Bayer, the company that trademarked heroin and produced Zyklon B for Nazi concentration camps, GMO’s could have been the framework that the West was building to replace the petrodollar. GMO’s are designed to be hardier and have more consistent yields, making for a more stable commodity to trade on and pin the dollar to, and the reason I think they were given protections in the TPP and TTIP trade deals.

GMO’s are allowed in Australia with the exception of the state of South Australia, but the view towards them looks mostly negative as many Australian grocers have banned them from their stores voluntarily. If you suddenly start seeing campaigns and NGO’s calling for Australia to trade in GMOs or accept a treaty like TPP, you’ll know that the Globalists still have Australia on their side.

Venezuela is a Grim Warning to Other Oil Countries

Even if you haven’t heard about it from the mainstream media, the growing currency war between the US dollar and the Russian ruble is beginning to have severe ramifications on other oil exporting nations. After Russia decided to back the value of their currency with Russian oil sales to compete with the dollar as a reserve currency, the US and its OPEC allies opened the flood gates and drilled, pumped, and fracked as much oil as they could to keep oil prices down. That, along with the sanctions over Crimea, have tanked the ruble and stalled the Russian economy badly. Pegging your money to oil is the game that the US has been playing since Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system, taking the dollar off of its gold backing and arranging with Saudi Arabia to accept only dollars for payments for oil. That meant that if your country wanted to buy oil (which is every country), you had to exchange your currency for US dollars before you could even talk to OPEC. This kept the demand, and the value, of the US dollar high due to artificial inflation. But when Putin decided to get into the game, offering to sell his oil for rubles, he threatened the dollar monopoly and the oil glut was the initial response from the West.

Although Russia has trundled along in its current state, other oil countries have fared much worse. Venezuela’s economy has relied on oil exports since the 1930’s, using oil revenues for critical food imports and funding social welfare programs and reforms known as “Bolivarian Missions.” Hugo Chavez used oil money to subsidize the settlement and naturalization of Colombian refugees fleeing civil war to Venezuela, shaping a dependent class to boost his votes. Chavez even went so far as to provide bus services running across the border, ferrying voters who had returned to Colombia back to the polls in Venezuela to get himself reelected.

How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil

But when Chavez died and oil prices crashed a year later, unsustainable spending and no contingency would bring severe inflation, widespread food shortages, and the projection of a massive 10% contraction of the Venezuelan economy in 2016. The country’s state-run oil company is already $25 billion in debt to international service firms like Halliburton, who have started to curtail operations. The departure of skilled workers and technicians caused even more delays and complications to Venezuelan oil production, forming a deadly cycle. Disappointed with the turn in the economy, Colombian refugees starting moving back to Colombia. A potential conflict is now stewing between the two countries as Venezuela has claimed that federal aid and subsidized commodities are being smuggled across the border and sold at black markets in Colombia. A little over a week ago, both countries began patrolling their side of the border with troops and armored vehicles. Since then, more troubling incidents have occurred including the mysterious crash of a Venezuelan jet for unknown reasons and a small incursion into Colombia by Venezuelans soldiers chasing a man on a motorcycle.

Unconcerned with Venezuela’s fall, Western leaders are prepared to move beyond the initial response of the oil glut and onto the next step in the currency war. The Rockefeller oil dynasty dropped their investments in oil just months after prices plummeted, furthering the growing trend towards investment in renewable energy sources. It’s clear that the West has decided to slowly concede global oil markets to Russia and China, who have a limited time to exploit the opportunity.

Sell last gasoline car by 2035 to meet climate goals, study says

Although Western soft power has waned severely in the aftermath of the Obama and Bush administrations, the West has managed to hold onto the scientific, cosmological monopoly it has maintained since Rene Descartes laid out rationalism in the 17th century. In other words, the eggheads at the top of the Ivory Tower are still pro-west, and they are not above molding their interpretations of the data to keep the grant money flowing. Of course, there are many who genuinely support what they see as the “greater good.” Regardless of the motivation, the result is the same – the beginning of the end of oil sales starting in 2035, and if the West has its way, the beginning of the end of Putin’s oil ruble.

The phase-out is earlier than set by most car makers. Toyota, for instance, has a “zero carbon dioxide emissions challenge” for new vehicles under which it aims to cut emissions from its vehicles by 90 percent by 2050, from 2010 levels.

Although this Globalist plot may be going according to plan, a question arises. If Russia takes the oil markets, what commodity will the dollar be pegged to? I believe the answer was to make GMO crops that replacement. When genetically engineered, these crops are more bountiful and stay fresher longer. Resistances to disease and insects make yields more predictable, allowing for a more stable, predictable commodity to trade on. This would explain the unrelenting push for the widespread acceptance of GMO foods, regardless of the suspicion and antipathy sparked by the business practices of Monsanto-Bayer as well as a lack of long-term testing in humans.

Saudi Arabia is another oil exporter wary of the currency war. Despite the fact that they have been complicit in the glut, the Saudis have started making arrangements to avoid Venezuela’s fate by offering shares in its state-run oil industry to the public in early 2017. The Saudis are planning to live off of the revenue of this deal and other investments rather than relying on the sale of the oil alone, claiming to be independent of fossil fuels by the 2035 deadline. But in reality, you would have better luck selling a Blockbuster franchise than shares in an oil company in the current political climate, no pun intended.

OPEC head warns investment cuts threaten oil supply

Barkindo called the cutbacks a “major concern for industries which need regular investments” and “which threaten our future”.

…

The 14 OPEC states and Russia are due to meet next week, with Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro saying Sunday a deal on limiting output was close.

 

After Rejecting the EU, Will Britain Reject Climate Change Too?

If the leaders of the Western world aren’t already stressed out about the Brexit decision a little over a month ago, they will be absolutely tearing their hair out at the possibility of the “Clexit.”

Rejection of experts spreads from Brexit to climate change with ‘Clexit’

With widespread dissent against EU immigration policy already creating nasty geopolitical blow back with Turkey and Southern Europe, a wholesale rejection of the climate change argument is yet another potential sociopolitical contagion that the West is going to have to contain. Climate change acceptance is a crucial component of the soft power cultural revolution the West has been operating since the end of the Cold War, an operation that has began to seriously lose steam in the years following 9/11 and the Iraq War.

So what’s the problem with climate change? Well, there are a few red flags that are apparent from the outset to anybody who is paying attention. Without even looking at the facts or the reasoning, a close look at the language of the debate is somewhat revealing, if off-putting. One will notice a lot of alarmism, oversimplifications, divisive rhetoric, and silencing and shaming tactics. The actual academic, scientific argument, all of those scientific studies and whitepapers laced with technical terms and jargon, are not an actual argument, but an appeal to the authority of the scientific establishment as nobody but them can translate and comprehend their own theories and ideas. Without a real, understandable argument to convince the laymen, oversimplified rhetoric is needed. Hence the term itself “climate change,” which is a description of an ongoing process rather than something explicitly new. It is broadly similar to “Earth rotating,” or “moon orbiting” in its all-encompassing vagueness. No need to get bogged down in debate over the finer details, or any debate, really. The other oversimplification is the 97% scientific consensus figure. Notwithstanding the fact that referencing a poll is not a real argument but an appeal to popularity and the bandwagon approach, the scientists taking the poll were asked to simply acknowledge whether or not humans have had an effect on the climate of the planet. Fair enough. But none of the scientists were asked about how urgent or dire the threat of climate change is. If one were to poll the appropriate scientists for a consensus on “imminent climate change apocalypse,” there would not be a 97% consensus. So what’s up with the alarmism? How does the time metric factor into all of this? We’ll cover that later.

There are a few finer points that go unnoticed in the rancor of the debate. The very fact that there is a scientific consensus on any aspect of climate change is exceptional and worth noting on its very own. Considering the interpretation of the Greenland ice cores samples, the Earth has been through some dramatic, actually scary climate changes just in the past 20,000 years or so. Scientists have not reached a consensus, or even a solid theory on why the Earth entered, and just as abruptly exited, the last major ice age.

But the biggest anomaly in this mess of a cultural conversation is the question of why there is even a debate in the first place. If the rhetoric is true, and the threat of climate change is truly grave, why even wait for a consensus? Why not just ignore the naysayers and go save the world? The leaders of the Western world are not, and have never been, in the habit of justifying, let alone asking for consent, for their decisions and policies in response to strategic geopolitical realities. They never asked for consent on the war on terror and the surveillance state. They never asked for consent for the financial bailouts and the infringement of our civil liberties. They usually don’t care about what you think, so why do they care now?

The purpose of all of this consensus building is not as a means to an end, it’s the forming of a consensus itself that is the goal. In other words, the widespread rejection of oil consumption, and therefore, an end to buying and trading on the global oil markets, is the true geopolitical goal of this western soft power strategy. With Russia and China entering the oil markets, setting up the BRICS system, and threatening the petrodollar hegemony the US has enjoyed since the Nixon days, a change had to be made. In response, the western bankers dumped oil stocks from their portfolios and have begun funding alternative energy. Giving the oil industry away to China and Russia meant that the value of the dollar had to be pegged onto another commodity. I believe food was chosen as that commodity and the GMO process has sought to create crops that are hardier, longer lasting, and more bountiful than normal to make for a more stable trading commodity.

So why hasn’t this plan worked? It’s because the soft power strategy relies on actually having something that people want, IE the carrot rather than the stick. The GMO carrots of the West, and their bee-killing pesticides, have not gone over well. There are now 38 countries who have banned GMO food or products, compared to the 28 who have accepted them. Russia is also investing in agriculture to offer a regular alternative to GMO crops. Worse yet, the western bankers are prepared to leave oil but have no widespread alternative energy infrastructure or framework to offer to the world. Sure, electric-powered cars are common now, but the electricity powering your home probably comes from a massive coal-fired power plant. Maritime trade, a crucial component to every economy, still uses a huge amount of fossil fuels everyday. The globalists in Washington, London, and Berlin have painted themselves into a corner. For the first time in a long time, the music is going to stop and it will be the globalists who won’t have a chair to sit in.

This explains the alarmism, the decisive rhetoric, and the building of consensus for the sake of consensus. It’s clear that the West needs the climate change dialectic to work, otherwise Russia and China win the soft power game with their lucrative offers of oil exploitation and the eclipse of the petrodollar. Therefore, geopolitics demands that the “climate denier” be done away with, and the rhetoric is cranked up to the max setting. The very term “denier” denotes either a mental problem or ulterior motives, suggesting a lack of virtue or a lack or morality on those given the epithet. It’s a shaming tactic, and it is not scientific in any way as science has always valued a plurality of ideas. All of the shaming, intellectual bullyism, and mind games have the opposite of their intended effect. Rather than acquiescing, people have become suspicious and combative. And for good reason, in my opinion. Will climate change denial spread like a contagion in Europe? I seriously doubt it, but the response of the Western elites have shown just how desperate and out of touch they have become. Their only option is to spread divisive rhetoric in order to divide and obfuscate the argument, and hold what little ground they still have.

 

 

 

US Military Bases Facing Expulsion, Has Trilateral Foreign Policy Failed?

Make no mistake, I love America. Even with all of our selfie sticks and deep-fried twinkies, I love this country. But I have to give credit where credit is due, and I have to seriously consider if Russia, and Putin in particular, has bested this country in the realm of geopolitics, for now. The petrodollar hegemony is under siege, GMO’s and trade deals are being rejected, the EU is in danger of disintegration, and our allies are turning to Russia. One of those allies is Japan, who has recently invested in the Russian oil project in the Irkutsk region of Eastern Siberia. Wary of an aggressive China, Japan has recently set off on a course of rearmament and military revival, rather than relying on the US as a guarantor of protection. Relations between the US and Japanese Okinawa have soured to the point that the US has agreed to move its base to a remote location, away from a local populace deeply angered over a history of criminal conduct involving members of the US military. The US wore out its welcome in Okinawa.

Abe, U.S. commander agree to carry out defense guidelines in steady manner

Due to a severe backlash against the refugee and migrant policy in the EU, which may have been the primary cause of the Brexit referendum, Turkey and its president, Recep Erdogan, were forced to capitulate to the Russians and end their effort to remove Bashar al-Assad from power in Syria. With the possibility that much of Europe could severely limit the amount of migrants and refugees entering their countries, Erdogan was facing the grave scenario of Syrian war refugees entering Turkey for asylum and having nowhere else to go. A massive influx of refugees staying in rather than passing through Turkey would have severe economic, political and social ramifications. Very shortly after Erdogan’s reversal of policy, a (possibly rushed) coup attempt failed to unseat him. Officially blaming the US, power to the Incirlik Air Base and thousands of US Airmen was cut off and no flights were allowed to take off from the base for two days. Last night, thousands of Turkish police officers have surrounded the base for a “security check” after local police were told of a second coup attempt. Nothing was found, but it is clear that the base, and the US, is no longer welcome in Turkey.

Report: 7,000 Turkish forces surrounded Incirlik air base overnight

US military bases are crucial to the projection of American power. With the ability to quickly form a military response, the US is able to establish and enforce treaties and agreements, protect allies, and deter rivals. When local opinion turns against the US, the military base and its inhabitants are often the first target of protests and enmity. The situations in Turkey and Japan, and the fact that this scenario is no longer an isolated incident, suggests that the foreign policy of the current administration has performed poorly.

The Obama administration belongs to the Trilateral Commission school of thought, with Zbigniew Brzezinski being the expert on foreign policy and a key founder of the group. There are clear parallels between current policy and Brzezinki’s policy during the Carter administration

• an aversion to unilateral policy and overt warfare
• a preference for covert armament and proxy wars, technological superiority and manipulation, and political and media pressure
• alliance building, support for the EU and control over Eurasia
• and most importantly, the abandonment of (Kissinger’s) balance of power strategy, as per Presidential Directive 18 on U.S. National Security, for a globalist, supranational hegemony led by Western financial elites, technocrats, and intelligence agencies.

Nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state. – Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: The Technetronic Era, 1971

It should be noted that Brzezinski does not hold any official positions in the administration, and he has even criticized some of its decisions including the arming of rebels in Syria. Brzezinski even admitted that the US is “still the strongest, but we’re not necessarily the most respected or legitimate,” in 2014. This point, legitimacy and respect, is the linchpin of Brzezinski’s style of foreign policy, and the key failure of the Obama administration in implementing it. With the exposure of NSA surveillance, technological superiority and legitimacy are threatened. Due to unpopular economic policies and underhanded trade deals, our alliances and friendships are threatened. The policy of regime change, dubious support of “moderate” Muslim radicals in Syria, and drone warfare collateral damage degrades our reputation as a facilitator of peace.

There has been a schism in the leadership over these issues. Henry Kissinger, the purveyor of the balance of power strategy (AKA detente), has tacitly shown displeasure at the current state of affairs. In February, Kissinger met with Putin as the West was imposing sanctions and denouncing the Russian slow-mo invasion of the Ukraine. Kissinger even met with Donald Trump in May, answering Trump’s requests for help developing foreign policy.

Donald Trump to meet with Henry Kissinger, GOP’s foreign-policy eminence

“America first will be the overriding theme of my administration,” Trump said last month in a speech at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, where he also called globalism a “false song.”

 

Russia Investing in Agriculture to Compete With Future GMO’s

Despite sanctions and a slowing economy, Russia has allocated $3.5 billion to boost agricultural output in 2016.

Agricultural machinery production in Russia surges 35%

What seems like a relatively mundane effort is really an insight into Russia’s plans to exploit the distrust of GMO’s and replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.  Considering how the west has vociferously pushed GMO foods with all of their accompanying proprietary products and pesticides, the legal strings attached to using intellectual property, and other reasons (the TTIP among them), only 28 countries have adopted GMO’s and 38 have banned them outright. So why is the west still pushing GMO’s so much? It has to do with the dollar and oil.

The status of the dollar as world reserve currency and the Saudi-American petrodollar scheme set up under Nixon and OPEC has been under seige since 2009. The BRICS bloc is now competing directly with the petrodollar, OPEC, the IMF, and even the SWIFT payments system, but the west has a plan. Now that the world’s oil markets can no longer be monopolized via US foreign policy, the west will relinquish control of this market and establish a new commodity to tie the dollar to. In March, the Rockefeller Foundation dumped all of their shares in Exxon.

That new commodity, I suggest, will be food, and I suspect that this is one of the reasons why the west has pushed for the adoption of GMO’s so doggedly. By creating crops that are more regular in output and resistant to bugs and bad weather, food as a commodity is more stable, predictable and easier to trade and profit from. When the dollar is separated from it, oil as a commodity will be devalued as much as possible in order to tank the Ruble and the Yuan. All of the talk about carbon emissions and climate change will see to that, and there are already investments by the Rockefellers and Jeff Bezos into new types of propulsion and clean energy sources.

But there is still one problem in all of this. A lot of people around the world still don’t trust GMO foods or Monsanto, and Russia has taken note of that. In the event that all of the effort and coordination behind the BRICS oil scheme was for nothing, Russia is still planning to compete with the west in agricultural exports. Unless the western powers can make GMO work, Russia may already have an advantage in offering an organic alternative. That is, if my crackpot theory is correct.