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How America’s Dictatorship Works

Eric Zuesse

Trump could not have become America’s President if he had not won the “vote” of his nation’s second-largest political donor in 2016, casinos-owner Sheldon Adelson.

In publicly recorded donations, as of 25 December 2018, Adelson and his wife donated $82,522,800 to Republican candidates in 2016, and this amount doesn’t include any of the secret money. Of that sum, it’s virtually impossible to find out how much went specifically to Trump’s campaign for President, but, as of 9 May 2017, the Adelsons were publicly recorded as having donated $20.4 million to Trump’s campaign.

Their impact on the Presidential contest was actually much bigger than that, however, because even the Adelsons’ non-Trump-campaign donations went to the Republican Party, and the rest went to Republican pro-Trump candidates, and the rest went to Republican PACS — and, so, a large percentage (if not all) of that approximately $60 million non-Trump-campaign political expenditure by the Adelsons was boosting Trump’s Presidential vote.

The second-largest Republican donor in 2016 was the hedge fund manager Paul Singer, at $26,114,653. It was less than a third, 31.6%, as large as the Adelsons’ contribution. Singer is the libertarian who proudly invests in weak entities that have been sucked dry by the aristocracy and who almost always extracts thereby, in the courts, far larger returns-on-investment than do other investors, who have simply settled to take a haircut on their failing high-interest-rate loans to that given weak entity.

Singer hires the rest of his family to run his asset-stripping firm, which is named after his own middle name, “Elliott Advisors,” and he despises any wealthy person who won’t (like he does) fight tooth-and-nail to extract, from any weak entity, everything that can possibly be stripped from it. His Elliott Advisors is called a “vulture fund,” but that’s an insult to vultures, who instead eat corpses. They don’t actually attack and rip apart vulnerable struggling animals, like Singer’s operation does.

So, that’s the top two, on the Republican Party side.

On the Democratic Party side, the largest 2016 donor was the largest of all political donors in 2016, the hedge fund manager Thomas Steyer, $91,069,795. The second-largest was hedge fund manager Donald S. Sussman, $41,841,000. Both of them supported Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders, and then against Donald Trump.

As of 23 January 2019, the record shows that Trump received $46,873,083 in donations larger than $200, and $86,749,927 in donations smaller than $200. Plus, he got $144,764 in PAC contributions. Hillary Clinton received $300,111,643 in over-$200 donations, and $105,552,584 in under-$200 donations. Plus, she got $1,785,190 in PAC donations. She received 6.4 times as much in $200+ donations as Trump did. She received 1.2 times as much in under-$200 donations as he did. Clearly, billionaires strongly preferred Hillary.

So, it’s understandable why not only America’s Democratic Party billionaires but also many of America’s Republican Party billionaires want President Trump to become replaced ASAP by his V.P., President Pence, who has a solid record of doing only whatever his big donors want him to do. For them, the wet dream would be a 2020 contest between Mike Pence or a clone, versus Hillary Clinton or a clone (such as Joe Biden or Beto O’Rourke). That would be their standard fixed game, America’s heads-I-win-tails-you-lose ‘democracy’.

On 18 January 2018 was reported that, “Trump pulled in $107 million in individual contributions, nearly doubling President Barack Obama’s 2009 record of $53 million.”

However, in both of those cases, the figures which were being compared were actually donations to fund the inaugural festivities, not the actual campaigns. But Adelson led there, too: “Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson was [the] most generous [donor], giving $5 million to the inaugural committee.”

The second-biggest donor to that was Hushang Ansary of Stewart & Stevenson, at $2 million. He had previously been the CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company until the CIA-appointed dictator, the brutal and widely hated Shah, was overthrown in 1979 and replaced by Iran’s now theocratically overseen limited democracy. The US aristocracy, whose CIA had overthrown Iran’s popular and democratically elected Prime Minister in 1953, installed the Shah to replace that elected head-of-state, and they then denationalized and privatized Iran’s oil company, so as to cut America’s aristocrats in on Iran’s oil.

Basically, America’s aristocracy stole Iran in 1953, and Iranians grabbed their country back in 1979, and US billionaires have been trying to get it back ever since. Ansary’s net worth is estimated at “over $2 billion,” and, “By the 1970s, the CIA considered Ansary to be one of seventeen members of ‘the Shah’s Inner Circle’ and he was one of the Shah’s top two choices to succeed Amir Abbas Hoveyda as Prime Minister.”

But, that just happened to be the time when the Shah became replaced in an authentic revolution against America’s dictatorship. Iran’s revolution produced the country’s current partially democratic Government. So, this would-be US stooge Ansary fled to America, which had been Iran’s master during 1953-79, and he was welcomed with open arms by Amerca’s and allied aristocracies.

Other than the Adelsons, the chief proponents of regime-change in Iran since 1979 are the US-billionaires-controlled CIA, and ‘news’-media, and Government, and the Shah’s family, and the Saud family, and Israel’s apartheid regime headed by the Adelsons’ protégé in Israel, Netanyahu. America’s billionaires want Iran back, and the CIA represents them (the Deep State) — not the American public — precisely as it did in 1953, when the CIA seized Iran for America’s billionaires.

In the current election-cycle, 2018, the Adelsons have thus far invested $123,208,200, all in Republicans, and this tops the entire field. The second-largest political investor, for this cycle, is the former Republican Mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg, at $90,282,515, all to Democrats. Is he a Republican, or is he a Democrat? Does it actually make any difference? He is consistently a promoter of Wall Street. The third-largest donor now is Tom Steyer, at $70,743,864, all to Democrats. The fourth-largest is a Wisconsin libertarian-conservative billionaire, Richard Uihlein, at $39,756,996.

Back on 19 March 2018, Politico reported that “Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, are currently the biggest Republican donors of the 2018 midterm elections, having given $21 million to candidates for federal office and super PACs that will support them. And that doesn’t include their funding of state candidates.” On 1 October 2016, International Business Times had listed the top ten donors to each of the two Parties, and the Uihleins at that time were #4 on the Republican side, at $21.5 million.

Of course, all of the top donors are among the 585 US billionaires, and therefore they can afford to spend lots on the Republican and/or Democratic nominees. Open Secrets reported on 31 March 2017 that “Of the world’s 100 richest billionaires, 36 are US citizens and thus eligible to donate to candidates and other political committees here. OpenSecrets Blog found that 30 of those [36] [or five sixths of the total 36 wealthiest Americans] actually did so, contributing a total of $184.4 million — with 58 percent [of their money] going to Republican efforts.” Democratic Party nominees thus got 42%; and, though it’s not as much as Republican ones get, it’s usually enough so that if a Democrat becomes elected, that person too will be controlled by billionaires.

For example, in the West Virginia Democratic Presidential primary in 2016, Bernie Sanders won all 55 counties in the state but that state’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention handed 19 of the state’s 37 votes at the Convention to his opponent, Hillary Clinton, who got more money from billionaires than all other US Presidential candidates combined. The millions of Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton were voting for the billionaires’ favorite, and she and her DNC stole the Party’s nomination from Sanders, who was the nation’s most-preferred Presidential candidate in 2016; and, yet, most of those voters still happily voted, yet again, for her, in the general election — as if she hadn’t practically destroyed the Party by prostituting it to its billionaires even more than Obama had already done.

Of course, she ran against Trump, and, for once, the billionaires were shocked to find that their enormous investment in a candidate had been for naught. That’s how incompetent she was. But they still kept control over both of the political Parties, and the Sanders choice to head the DNC (the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party itself) lost out to the Obama-Clinton choice, so that today’s Democratic Party is still the same: winning is less important to them than serving their top donors is.

This means that America’s winners of federal elections represent almost entirely America’s 585 billionaires, and not the 328,335,647 Americans (as of noon on 23 January 2019). Of course, there is a slight crossover of interests between those two economic classes, since 0.000002 of those 328,335,647, or 0.0002% of them, are billionaires. However, if 0.0002% of federal office-holders represent the public, and the remaining 99.9998% represent the billionaires, then is that actually a bipartisan Government? If instead 99.9998% represented 328,335,062 Americans, and 0.0002% represented the 585 billionaires; then, that, too, wouldn’t be bipartisan, but would it be a democratic (small “d”) government? So, America is not a democracy (regardless of whether it’s bipartisan); it is instead an aristocracy, just like ancient France was, and the British empire, etc. The rest of America’s population (the 328,335,062 other Americans) are mere subjects, though we are officially called ‘citizens’, of this actual aristocracy.

The same is true in Israel, the land that the Adelsons (the individuals who largely control America) are so especially devoted to. On 8 November 2016, Israel’s pro-Hillary-Clinton and anti-Netanyahu Ha’aretz newspaper headlined “The Collapsing Political Triangle Linking Adelson, Netanyahu and Trump”, and reported that Ha’aretz’s bane and top competitor was the freely distributed daily Israeli newspaper, Israel Hayom, and:

Israel Hayom was founded by Adelson nine years ago, in order to give Netanyahu – who has been rather harshly treated by the Israeli media throughout his political career – a friendly newspaper. Under Israeli law, the total sum an individual can donate to a politician or party is very limited, and corporate donations are not allowed.

Israel Hayom has been a convenient loophole, allowing Adelson to invest the sort of money he normally gives American politicians on Netanyahu’s behalf. It has no business model and carries far fewer ads than most daily newspapers. While the privately owned company does not publish financial reports, industry insiders estimate that Adelson must spend around $50 million annually on the large team of journalists and the printing and distribution operations.

Distributed for free, in hundreds of thousands of copies the length and breadth of the country, Israel Hayom … clings slavishly to the line from Netanyahu’s office – praising him and his family to the heavens while smearing his political rivals, both on the left and the right.

A billionaire can afford to use his or her ‘news’-media in lieu of political campaign donations. Lots of billionaires do that. They don’t need to make direct political donations. And ‘making money’ by owning a ‘news’-medium can even be irrelevant, for them. Instead, owning an important ’news’-medium can be, for them, just another way, or sometimes their only way, to buy control over the government. It certainly works. It’s very effective in Israel.

Adelson is #14 on the 2018 Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, all having net worths of $2.1 billion or more, his being $38.4 billion, just one-third as large as that of Jeff Bezos. Bezos is the owner of around 15% of Amazon Corporation, whose profits are derived almost entirely from the Amazon Web Services that are supplied to the US Pentagon, NSA, and CIA. So, he’s basically a ‘defense’ contractor.

Bezos’s directly owned Washington Post is one of America’s leading neoconservative and neoliberal, or pro-invasion and pro-Democratic Party, media; and, so, his personal ownership of that newspaper is much like his owning a one-person national political PAC to promote whatever national policies will increase his fortune. The more that goes to the military and the less that goes to everything else, the wealthier he will become. His newspaper pumps the ‘national security threats’ to America.

Adelson controls Israel’s Government. Whereas he might be a major force in America’s Government, that’s actually much more controlled by the world’s wealthiest person, the only trillionaire, the King of Saudi Arabia. He has enough wealth so that he can buy almost anybody he wants — and he does, through his numerous agents. But, of course, both Israel’s Government and Saudi Arabia’s Government hate Iran’s Government at least as much as America’s Government does.

In fact, if Russia’s Government weren’t likely to defend Iran’s Government from an invasion, then probably Iran would already have been invaded. Supporters of America’s Government are supporters of a world government by America’s billionaires, because that’s what the US Government, in all of its international functions (military, diplomatic, etc.) actually represents: it’s America’s global dictatorship.

They throw crumbs to America’s poor so as to make it a ‘two-party’ and not merely a ‘one-party’ government and so that one of the Parties can call itself ‘the Democratic Party’, but America’s is actually a one-party government, and it represents only the very wealthiest, in both Parties. The aristocracy’s two separate party-organizations compete against each other. But their real audience is the aristocracy’s dollars, not the public’s voters. This “two-Party” dictatorship (by the aristocracy) is a different governing model than in China and some other countries.

The great investigative journalist Wayne Madsen headlined on January 24th “Trump Recognition of Rival Venezuelan Government Will Set Off a Diplomatic Avalanche” and he reported the possibility of a war developing between the US and Russia over America’s aggression against Venezuela. US media even have pretended that the US Government isn’t the one that customarily perpetrates coups in Latin America, and pretended that Russia’s and Cuba’s Governments are simply blocking ‘democracy’ from blossoming in Venezuela.

On January 24th, Middle East Eye reported that Morgan Stanley’s CEO James Gorman had just told the World Economic Forum, in Davos, that the torture-murder of Saudi Crown Prince Salman’s critic and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was “unacceptable,” “But what do you do? What part do you play in the process of economic and social change?” and the report continued: “Gorman said he did not judge any country’s attempts to root out corruption,” and Gorman and a French tycoon joined in throwing their “weight behind Riyadh’s economic and social direction, by saying, ‘it is quite difficult and brave what the kingdom is doing’,” by its ‘reforms’. It was all being done to ‘root out corruption, and to spread democracy’. Sure.

There’s “a sucker born every minute,” except now it’s every second. That seems to be the main way to win votes.

On January 26th, Trump appointed the fascist Elliott Abrams to lead this ‘democratization of Venezuela’, by overthrowing and replacing the elected President by the second-in-line-of succession (comparable in Venezuela to removing Trump and skipping over the Vice President and appointing Nancy Pelosi as America’s President, and also violating the Venezuelan Constitution’s requirement that the Supreme Judicial Trbunal must first approve before there can be ANY change of the President without an election by the voters).

It’s clearly another US coup that is being attempted here. Trump, by international dictat, says that this Venezuelan traitor whom the US claims to be installing is now officially recognized by the US Government to be the President of Venezuela. Bloomberg News reported that Abrams would join Trump’s neocon Secretary of State on January 26th at the UN to lobby there for the UN to authorize Trump’s intended Venezuelan coup. The EU seemed strongly inclined to follow America’s lead. On the decisive U.N. body, the Permanent Security Council, of China, France, Russia, UK, and US, the US position was backed by three: US, France, and UK. Russia and China were opposed.

In the EU, only France, Germany, Spain, and UK, came out immediately backing the US position. On January 25th, Russia’s Tass news agency was the first to report on the delicate strategic situation inside Venezuela. It sounded like the buildup to Obama’s successful coup in Ukraine in February 2014, but in Venezuela and under Trump. In fact, at least two commentaors other than I have noted the apparent similarities: Whitney Webb at “Washington Follows Ukraine, Syria Roadmap in Push for Venezuela Regime Change” and RT at “‘Venezuela gets its Maidan’: Ukrainian minister makes connection between regime change ops”.

Abrams’s career has been devoted to “regime-change,” and is as unapologetic about it as is John Bolton. Also like Bolton, he’s an impassioned supporter of Jewish apartheid. He wrote in his 1997 book Faith or Fear, that “Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart — except in Israel — from the rest of the population.”

Israel is, in this and the view of many billionaires, the whole world’s ghetto, and ‘real’ Jews don’t belong anywhere else than there. And, according to that, nobody else does belong there, except people who accept being ruled by Jewish Law — the Torah. So, on 25 June 2001, George W. Bush, as the main representative of America’s billionaires, made Abrams the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations at the National Security Council.

Of course, Abrams was gung-ho for Americans to conquer Iraq, because Iraqis didn’t like Israel. And the current US President hires that same agent of Israel, Abrams, now to sell internationally America’s current coup to grab Venezuela for America’s billionaires. Abrams, for years, had been courting Trump’s favor by having declined to include himself among the many Republican neoconservatives, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. He thereby has now won his new job, on the real-world sequel to The Apprentice, which is known as President Trump’s Administration. Another such winner, of course, is John Bolton, who likewise had declined to endorse Hillary.

Perhaps the US regime thinks that testing the resolve of Russia’s Government, regarding Venezuela, would be less dangerous than testing it over the issue of Iran. But Big Brother says that this imposition of America’s corruption is instead merely a part of rooting out corruption and spreading democracy and human rights, throughout the world.

The US has managed to get Venezuela in play, to control again. Some American billionaires think it’s a big prize, which must be retaken. The largest oil-and-gas producers — and with the highest reserves of oil-and-gas in the ground — right now, happen to be Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Russia, Venezuela, and US. So, for example, Venezuela is a much bigger prize than Brazil.

All of those countries have an interest in denying the existence of human-produced global warming, and in selling as much of their product as quickly as possible before the world turns away from fossil fuels altogether. High-tech doesn’t drive today’s big-power competition nearly so much as does the fossil-fuels competition — to sell as much of it as they can, as fast as they can. The result of this competition could turn out to be a nuclear winter that produces a lifeless planet and thus prevents the planet from becoming lifeless more slowly from global burnout — the alternative outcome, which would be produced by the burnt fossil fuels themselves. Either way, the future looks bleak, no matter what high-tech produces (unless high-tech produces quickly a total replacement of fossil fuels, and, in the process, bankrupts many of the billionaires who are so active in the current desperate and psychopathic global competition).

This is what happens when wealth worldwide is so unequally distributed that the “World’s Richest 0.7% Own 13.67 Times as Much as World’s Poorest 68.7%”. According to economic theory (which has always been written by agents for the aristocracy), the distribution of wealth is irrelevant. This belief was formalized by a key founder of today’s mathematized economic theory, Vilfredo Pareto, who, for example, in his main work, the 1912 Trattato di Sociologia Generale, wrote (# 2135), that, though “the lover of equality will assign a high coefficient to the utility of the lower classes and get a point of equilibrium very close to the equalitarian condition, there is no criterion save sentiment for choosing between the one [such equality of wealth] and the other [a single person — whom he called “superman” — owning everything].”

The article on Pareto in the CIA’s Wikipedia doesn’t even so much as mention this central feature of Pareto’s thinking, the feature that’s foundational in all of the theory of “welfare” in economics. Pareto was also the main theoretician of fascism, and the teacher of Mussolini. This belief is at the foundation of capitalism as we know it, and as it has been in economic theory ever since, actually, the 1760s. Pareto didn’t invent it; he merely mathematized it.

So, we’ve long been in 1984, or at least building toward it. But US-allied billionaires wrote this particular version of it; George Orwell didn’t. And it’s not a novel. It’s the real thing. And it is now becoming increasingly desperate.

If, in recognizing this, you feel like a hog on a factory-farm, then you’ve got the general idea of this reality. It’s the problem that the public faces. But the publics in the US and its allied regimes are far less miserable than the publics in the countries that the US and its allied regimes are trying to take over — the targeted countries (such as Syria). To describe any realistic solution to this systematic global exploitation would require an entire book, at the very least — no mere article, such as here. The aristocracy anywhere wouldn’t publish such a book. Nobody would likely derive any significant income from writing it. That’s part of the reality, which such a book would be describing.

However, a key part of this reality is that for the billionaires — the people who control international corporations or corporations that even are aspiring to grow beyond their national market — their nation’s international policies are even more important to them than its domestic affairs (such as the toxic water in Flint, Michigan; or single-payer health insurance — matters that are relatively unimportant to billionaires), and, therefore, the most-censored and least-honestly reported realities on the part of the aristocracy’s ‘news’-media are the international ones. And, so, this is the field where there is the most lying, such as about “Saddam’s WMD,” and about all foreign countries.

However, when a person is in an aristocracy’s military, deception of that person is even more essential, especially in the lower ranks, the troops, because killing and dying for one’s aristocracy is far less attractive than killing or dying in order honestly to serve and protect an authentic democracy. Propagandizing for the myth that the nation is a democracy is therefore extremely important in any aristocracy.

Perhaps this is the reason why, in the United States, the military is consistently the institution that leads above all others in the public’s respect. It’s especially necessary to do that, in the nation that President Barack Obama repeatedly said is “the one indispensable nation”. This, of course, means that every other nation is “dispensable.” Any imperial nation, at least since ancient Rome, claimed the same thing, and invaded more nations than any other in the world when it was the leading imperial nation, because this is what it means to be an empire, or even to aspire to being one: imposing that given nation’s will upon other nations — colonies, vassal states, or whatever they are called.

When soldiers know that they are the invaders, not the actual defenders, their motivation to kill and die is enormously reduced. This is the main reason why the ‘news’-media in an imperial nation need to lie constantly to their public. If a news-reporting organization doesn’t do that, no aristocrat will even buy it. And virtually none will advertise in it or otherwise donate to it. It will be doomed to remain very small and unprofitable in every way (because the “World’s Richest 0.7% Own 13.67 Times as Much as World’s Poorest 68.7%”). Billionaires donate to ‘news’-organizations that might report accurately about domestic US problems, but not to ones that report accurately about international affairs, especially about important international affairs. Even liberal ‘news’-media are neoconservative, or favorable toward American invasions and coups. In order to be a significant player in the ‘news’-business in the United States, one has to be.

So: this is how America’s dictatorship works. This is not America’s exceptionalism: it is America’s ordinariness. America’s Founders had wanted to produce something not just exceptional but unique in its time: a democratic republic. But what now exists here is instead a dictatorial global empire, and it constitutes the biggest threat to the very existence of the United Nations ever since that body’s founding in 1945. If that body accepts as constituting the leader of Venezuela the person that America’s President declares to be Venezuela’s leader, then the U.N. is effectively dead.

This would be an immense breakthrough for all of the US regime’s billionaires, both domestically and throughout its allied countries (such as in France, Germany, Spain, and UK). It would be historic, if they win. It would be extremely grim, and then the U.N. would immediately need to be replaced. The US and its allies would refuse to join the replacement organization. That organization would then authorize economic sanctions against the US and its allies. These will be reciprocated. The world would break clearly into two trading-blocs. In a sense, the UN’s capitulation to the US on this matter would create another world war, WW III. It would be even worse than when Neville Chamberlain accepted Hitler’s offer regarding the Sudetenland. We’d be back to the start of WW II, with no lessons learned since then. And with nuclear weapons.

Originally posted at strategic-culture.org

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Theo
Theo
Feb 20, 2019 1:14 PM

Good Article.

comite espartaco
comite espartaco
Feb 19, 2019 8:37 AM

No it does not work like that. Monetary (commodity) fetishism does not explain anything. Money was the ‘occasion’ for Trump’s victory, but did not created it or caused it. Trump’s victory was the political expression of an alliance between the Working Class and part of the capitalist (industrialist) class of the USA, forged to combat the treacherous and rebellious policies of a globalist and immigrationist oligarchy, bent on destroying the advances of labour through unfair competition. Trump’s victory was a brutal setback for that oligarchy, its media, academia and bureaucracy as, in spite of their massive means and investments, threats, bribes and terror, they could not control the votes of the workers of the nation. The American electoral system that, like any other, is biased against the Working Class, meant that only a person like Trump, with sufficient resources and means to withstand the onslaught of ‘friend’ and foe, of Republicans and Democrats alike, was capable of winning by marching at the front of the discontent and articulating the main grievances of a betrayed people.

dhfabian
dhfabian
Feb 19, 2019 4:49 AM

If elections go to the highest bidder, why bother with elections? But if there is reason to vote, enough people need someone to vote FOR. Most votes, we are told, come down to economic issues: “Are you better off…?” That’s where Democrats have a problem that will not be addressed. The Dem voting base had long consisted of the poor and middle class, workers and those left jobless. This base was split wide apart in the 1990s, and the Obama years confirmed that this split is permanent.Then the Democrats’ zealous campaign against Russia made them too dangerous to vote for. So what are the solutions? I’ve no idea.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 19, 2019 6:20 AM
Reply to  dhfabian

dhfabian, I have a solution: Let the U$ Democrats return to the National Socialism of FDR and The New Deal. Make the USA great again.

And don’t forget the US Communist Party. I guess there might be a few survivors left, still living openly, and even more cryptos, despite the U$ regime’s systematic Cultural Genociding of Communists over the past 70 years.

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Feb 19, 2019 8:17 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Problem is, Hitler’s National Socialism was ALL NATIONALIST and NO SOCIALISM. Duh!

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 20, 2019 11:46 AM

Yes, Thomas, the Nazis gave Socialism a bad name. Like the Zionazis give Zionism a bad name.

Eric Zuesse
Eric Zuesse
Feb 20, 2019 4:16 PM
Reply to  vexarb

“The Zionazis” are merely the people who carry Zionism to its rational conclusion, as an apartheid regime with ‘Jews’ (whatever that means) on top and everyone else underneath. This is probably the real reason why Einstein refused the offer for him to become Israel’s President. He had earlier called Menachem Begin a “fascist.” Of course, Begin later became Israel’s Prime Minister.

ANY theocratic and racist regime is nazi in its ideology, and Israel is simply another such phenomenon. It’s no different simply by Jews being placed on top.

Sandy Wright (@sonnyleith)
Sandy Wright (@sonnyleith)
Feb 19, 2019 1:06 AM

I’m tired, weary and feeling totally impotent in trying to navigate a moral compass in this totally fucked up world.
I became more politically aware, round about the Scottish referendum in 2014, which, unfortunately was won by the same experts of false information dissemination.
This awakening, enlightenment ( maybe ) changed my perspective of what is going on the Western media and I was horrified by this discovery. ( I’m not a youngster I hasten to add ). It also made me question the opinions of many commentators that I believed to to be legitimate. To find out that you have been lied to, on a monumental scale was not only a terrible feeling of betrayal but also a wake up call. A time of reflection, a time to recognise my naivety and hubris, a time to try and inform myself.
This, I have tried to do. I have delved into the dark arts of political machination’s, the intrigues,plotting,manoeuvres and corrupt evil that permeates the world that we share. I imagine that many people on this site are well aware of the many wrongs that are perpetrated by the so called democracies of the West, but for me, I was totally shocked on a grand scale.
However, after this five year quest for truth and honesty, I feel totally helpless. What good does it do being privy to a collection of information which shows the dishonesty of NATO, USA Hegemony, the untold suffering of the people of Yemen, the barbaric treatment of Palestine by Israel and on and on ad infinitum.
I see no solutions, I see no strategy, I see no answer.
Sorry for a miserable post, but as I said at the beginning, I’m weary.

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Feb 19, 2019 8:18 PM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

Well-put.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Feb 19, 2019 12:23 PM

Sandy Wright: Hello Sandy. I, too, feel tired and weary, and at times helpless. I relate and empathise where you’re at. Coming on sites like OffGuardian, Moon Of Alabama, The Saker, Mintpress, etc, its like we’re not alone, we see others who see the World the same, or at least similar. For me, that helps. Its a truly fucked up Orwellian world we live in, bombarded by lies and propaganda daily. I try and connect with nature as much as possible, in a spiritual sense, and to practice mindfulness. That helps as well. Connect with beauty around you. Connect with people who Arn’t wilfully blind to what is happening, and that Don’t buy into ‘The System’. My awakening began in the late 1980s – early 90s when I was involved in a Central American solidarity group. That really opened my eyes to the role of the United States in the world. Take care….

Mikalina
Mikalina
Feb 19, 2019 1:17 PM

Living a programmed life, as we have brings an exhaustion (perhaps it’s the battle between the ‘you’ that knows the truth and the programme) which is usually alleviated by drugs and alcohol but also by our ‘plans’ for the future which distract us (politics is a good one). When we wake up, we ARE exhausted; the tiredness is real – from the battle. Recognise this and take care of yourself – get plenty of rest and, as Gazza says, nature, fresh (erm) air and, I find, something rewardingly physical: paint the house, make/create something, chop wood – wonderful, wonderful physical stuff which helps you celebrate the miracle of your physicality – and calms the brain.

The biggest and most insidious lie we have absorbed is that we are alone, or loners. This is so not true. We are linked in ways we no longer understand. Every time YOU discover a truth, it is spread between us; it is shared. Every one of your 5 years of search has enabled my search and Gazza’s search for the truth – our own awakening.

We are used to “a plan” so when we wake up, we feel lost. We are also used to basing our decisions on what we see as reality around us. When that reality is shown to be fabricated, we feel lost.

You are now what you were supposed to be – a pioneer. I’ve no idea what comes next but the possibilities are endless (they always were but we were stuck into the plan). It’s quite exciting, really, and wonderful to think that we can be part of it. Right, off to ferment some vegetables……..

Dee
Dee
Feb 6, 2020 4:25 PM
Reply to  Mikalina

who is Gazza?

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Feb 19, 2019 8:30 PM

Agree: “I see no solutions, I see no strategy, I see no answer.” Despair.

Except that Reps. Congresswomen Ocasio-Cortez and Omar Ilhan are raising hell and a new Bernie Sanders campaign is scaring the crap out of the billionaires the way UK billionaires and Blairites are scared of Corbyn.

Both Ocasion-Cortez and Ilhan came from the ground up, not the top down. Same with Sanders and Corbyn. **Same with the Yellow Vests** in le petit roi Macron’s France. Same with Chavez/Maduro.

Somehow, wherever we are, we got to get LOCAL.

As for a platform, I thought the global demands of the Gilets Jaunes is a damn fine start.

The best we can do individually is take things a day at a time, increase real human connections, stay abreast of public affairs, read books, stay healthy, Get Local, and Be Ready.

mark
mark
Feb 19, 2019 10:02 PM

It took Iraq to wake me up.
Don’t get too downhearted.
They are losing, and they know it.
They are getting more and more desperate.
They are going down.
The collapse can happen at any time.
When it does, the only surprise will be it took so long.

Oslo - Norway
Oslo - Norway
Feb 20, 2019 6:18 PM
Reply to  mark
milosevic
milosevic
Feb 20, 2019 3:07 PM

To find out that you have been lied to, on a monumental scale was not only a terrible feeling of betrayal but also a wake up call. A time of reflection, a time to recognise my naivety and hubris, a time to try and inform myself.

This, I have tried to do. I have delved into the dark arts of political machinations, the intrigues, plotting, manoeuvres and corrupt evil that permeates the world that we share. I imagine that many people on this site are well aware of the many wrongs that are perpetrated by the so called democracies of the West, but for me, I was totally shocked on a grand scale.

However, after this five year quest for truth and honesty, I feel totally helpless. What good does it do being privy to a collection of information which shows the dishonesty of NATO, USA Hegemony, the untold suffering of the people of Yemen, the barbaric treatment of Palestine by Israel and on and on ad infinitum.

I see no solutions, I see no strategy, I see no answer.

You can try to educate other people, using the same arguments and evidence that awakened you. Your own experience is the proof that this is possible, that principled and intelligent people can change their understanding of the world, if they are presented with information that demonstrates that their prior beliefs were factually or ethically incorrect. There are people who are right now, trapped by the same lies that you have succeeded in escaping from. Whether they will also escape, or remain in the delusional fantasy world created by the mass media and the rest of the establishment, depends on what YOU do.

Make up a sign and some leaflets, and stand in a public place and hand them out to anybody who will take one. (the sign is to get their attention; you can judge people’s receptiveness by their reaction to it. offer a leaflet to anybody who slows or stops to read it. if they start reading the leaflet, ask them what they think about it. make sure to put some reliable internet references on the leaflet.) Speaking from personal experience, the 9/11 event, more than anything else, will interest anybody who is still capable of being reached. Some people will become hostile and abusive; ignore them, and talk to those who are at least willing to have a civil discussion.

Under current circumstances, this is the most important thing you can do. Only when some significant fraction of the population starts to wake up, will things start to happen, as is now being seen in France. This outcome depends on people like YOU, and the understanding that you have acquired through years of effort. Consider your current feelings towards whoever it was that helped you to learn what you now know. You can do the same for somebody else. You are not totally helpless — you are needed.

Mikalina
Mikalina
Feb 18, 2019 9:48 PM

“But what now exists here is instead a dictatorial global empire, and it constitutes the biggest threat to the very existence of the United Nations ever since that body’s founding in 1945.

The UNELECTED United Nations IS the dictatorial global empire; the US is just its terrorist arm. Orwell’s 1984 should be considered non-fiction and, as rightly stated, such a book wouldn’t earn much money – in fact, he probably died for publishing it.

dhfabian
dhfabian
Feb 19, 2019 4:55 AM
Reply to  Mikalina

Disagree. The UN has been a scapegoat from the start. What has a been sinking the Western nations can be called “the corporate state,” a fascist capitalism that plunges countries into wars and destroys countless lives. We’re helpless because most of us depend on that corporate state for our jobs, our means of survival.

Mikalina
Mikalina
Feb 19, 2019 12:01 PM
Reply to  dhfabian

The little chickens pecked away at the seed thrown on the ground for them. Sometimes they complained that there wasn’t enough or the quality wasn’t what it used to be, but they adapted, helped enormously by the bigger chickens who put them through their paces and spun stories of previous times and received a slighter higher quantity of corn. The little chickens never knew from day to day what would happen and would pass the time discussing the ins and outs of seed production, control and distribution (and the fairness of the system, of course – goodness, they did have rights, after all) – except the ones who received very little seed; they were so exhausted they just shut up and grabbed what they could. Mother hens gathered around them advising wisely (based on experience), “Don’t look up, what ever you do, don’t look up!”

But some did. They removed themselves to the periphery of the prescribed system and looked up. They saw the hand which fed them; they saw the arbitrariness with which they were fed, depending on whims of control, certainly not availability. They saw other chicken coops with different names and flags all around them and they saw the same system in operation; the same starving, dying, suiciding; sickening, defeated chickens of all skin colours and shapes.

They survived by running occasionally into the seed piles and grabbing some, but mostly from seed thrown to them by other chickens who knew there was something wrong but couldn’t make the move to join them.

Finally, they saw all the seed providers join together in a big building, financed by a ruthless controller of huge quantities of seed; a building built on sacrificial land, providing the very best, specially grown feed for all who resided there. And, of course, there was chicken on the menu everyday.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 20, 2019 12:19 PM
Reply to  Mikalina

vierotchka
vierotchka
Feb 18, 2019 7:21 PM

A very sad state of affairs, nay, a tragic one.

Andy
Andy
Feb 18, 2019 6:35 PM

A great article,yet not a mention of the Rothschilds………..

Eric Zuesse
Eric Zuesse
Feb 18, 2019 8:00 PM
Reply to  Andy

Just because it doesn’t mention one of your (and many anti-Semites’) pet peeves doesn’t mean that it should have. It doesn’t mean that that particular peeve is even relevant, at all, to what this article does report — and document. Maybe you, too, are merely a sucker? Could it be the case that none of the Rothschilds is politically as potent in the U.S. as are the individuals that are mentioned in this article? Examine data, not merely your particular existing beliefs. But regardless: I have cited the most-reliable sources. Maybe you just don’t care about reliability, scientific credibility, etc., but only about maintaining and sustaining your pet peeves. Think about it. If you are capable of doing so in a scientifically respectable way.

Andy
Andy
Feb 18, 2019 9:10 PM
Reply to  Eric Zuesse

I have never heard the Rothschilds called a ” pet peeve “. I congratulated you on a great article and merely asked the question of why there was no mention of that family. You can’t be so naive as to think they have no political influence. And as for the anti semite remark, lets treat that with the contempt it deserves. I apologise if my question offended you Eric, that was not the point. I made what I thought was a legitimate point. Your article hit the nail on the head toll you mentioned the Saudis as the only trillionaires.
Don’t be so touchy would be my advice. 😁

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Feb 19, 2019 8:32 PM
Reply to  Andy

Evidence please?

K Oncreat
K Oncreat
Feb 19, 2019 12:18 AM
Reply to  Eric Zuesse

Please define your meaning of “peeves” before going on a commenter bashing rant.

Rhisiart Gwilym
Rhisiart Gwilym
Feb 19, 2019 9:26 AM
Reply to  K Oncreat

Eric’s often peevish himself, so he knows the meaning of the word. This is a good article, though; as he asserts, nicely objective-fact based.

K Oncreat
K Oncreat
Feb 19, 2019 12:14 AM
Reply to  Andy

Indeed. ” The King of Saudi Arabia is the only Trillionaire…” What of the Rothschilds, are they not Trillionaires, too?

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 19, 2019 6:48 AM
Reply to  K Oncreat

Mr K, the Rothschilds are not only trillionaires many times over (compared to the King of Saudi Arabia who is a simple trillionaire) but they are also His Majesty’s boss. Saudi Arabia is a Rothschild oil company masquerading as an Arab kingdom; it’s only ally in the Middle East (apart from other Rothschild oil companies known as the Gulf Sheikdoms) is Israel.

“The voice is the voice of Esau but the hand is the hand of Jacob”. — Old Testament. As then, so now.

But Mr.Zuess is right; the Rothschild crime family are simply the reigning capitalists of our day. The crimes of capitalism spread much wider to pervert Democracy in the U$A. For instance, Mr.Zuess does not mention the Bush crime family either; they not only financed Nazi Germany but still rant about The New World Order. The U$A is an Augean stable awaiting a Hercules to clean out Washington by diverting the Potomac to wash out decades of accumulated Capitalist BS.

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Feb 19, 2019 8:33 PM
Reply to  K Oncreat

Evidence, please?

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 18, 2019 5:41 PM

Another reason for Uncle $cam’s visceral hate and urge to bring Democracy U$ $tyle to Venezuela:

“Igor BundyOnline BTL SyrPer #287250

Rather than bailing out the culprits [Too Big to Fail] as was done in the U.$. in 2009, the [Venezuelan] government nationalized seven Venezuelan banks, accounting for around 12 percent of the nation’s bank deposits. In 2010, more were taken over. Chávez’s government arrested at least 16 bankers and issued more than 40 corruption-related arrest warrants for others who had fled the country”.

John
John
Feb 18, 2019 10:53 AM

Sheldon is Jewish

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 18, 2019 11:51 AM
Reply to  John

America’s Government, that’s actually much more controlled by the world’s wealthiest person, the only trillionaire, the King of Saudi Arabia
The kings of SA are Arabs and lead the fierce Wahhabi branch of the Muslim religion – ideology, the one avoided by too many here.
Western Lefties AND Deep States do the same….

bevin
bevin
Feb 18, 2019 2:20 PM
Reply to  Antonym

“The kings of SA are Arabs and lead the fierce Wahhabi branch of the Muslim religion – ideology, the one avoided by too many here.
Western Lefties AND Deep States do the same….”
What is this meant to mean? Is it a riddle of some kind? Or a symptom of disorder?

mark
mark
Feb 18, 2019 3:34 PM
Reply to  John

The Great American Democracy and American foreign policy – bought and paid for by a tiny clique of Jew billionaire spivs.

Idi Malink
Idi Malink
Feb 18, 2019 5:40 PM
Reply to  John

Adelson represents the interests of billionators, not any religious adherents. Adelson rips off Jews as readily as any gentiles. Support for the racial nationalism of Israel does Jews no favors, nor does war making against Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians. This is also true of America’s billionator class, which enacts policies in their best interests, at the expense of other Americans, even the ones, especially the ones bamboozled by nationalist propaganda. Raising working class consciousness to oppose capital is thwarted by accusations of racial supremacy by members of the billionaire class. Jews, Muslims, European Americans are all victims of capital; making their ethnicity the focus of opposition is the goal of capital.

bevin
bevin
Feb 18, 2019 6:03 PM
Reply to  Idi Malink

You are absolutely correct. I would go further and suggest that the alliance between Israel and the US ruling class is an alliance between fascists.
Nothing is more dangerous to Zionism than the deliberate ‘painting into a corner’ being carried out by the fascists like Netanyahu who see Israel as a major axis of the US Empire. Had they any interest in ‘making it a home and refuge for the Jews’ they would not have steered it, deliberately, into a position in which its only hope of survival is bound up with that of the dominant imperialist faction in Washington.
Adelson may have a sentimental interest in Israel but his real interests lie in Macau and the US Empire. And in defending the imperial system from the geopolitical threat of multi polarity and the existential threat of equality and democracy, or as it is also known, socialism. That is Netanyahu’s main object too- even the Attorney General in his own cabinet can see that he regards Jews as cattle to be exploited.

mark
mark
Feb 18, 2019 10:33 PM
Reply to  Idi Malink

Adelson, Saban, Rothschild and the rest, represent Zionist interests. Israel is virtually a Rothschild fiefdom. Always has been.

And the King of Saudi Arabia is poor as church mice compared to the Rothschild clan. They are not billionaires, they are multi trillionaires.

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Feb 19, 2019 8:35 PM
Reply to  mark

Evidence, please?

mark
mark
Feb 19, 2019 10:08 PM

Follow the money.
Just go and count the money if you’ve got 10,000 years to spare.

Eric Zuesse
Eric Zuesse
Feb 18, 2019 8:06 PM
Reply to  John

What’s relevant isn’t that he’s a Jew but that he’s an extremely ethnocentric person, whose only self-identification is his particular ethnicity, just as Hitler was. He’s a nationalistic Jew just as Hitler was a nationalistic German, and both favor international conquest by their particular ethnically defined nationality. Those people are birds of the same feather, but merely different ethnicities.

Joe
Joe
Feb 19, 2019 12:21 AM
Reply to  Eric Zuesse

Hitler was Austrian.

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Feb 19, 2019 2:14 AM
Reply to  Joe

Joe,
i’ weiß die Wahrheit, aber . . .
FFS ,
don’t tell the Germans !
😉

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Feb 19, 2019 8:38 PM
Reply to  Joe

An example of what Freud said was “the narcissism of petty differences.”

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Feb 19, 2019 8:37 PM
Reply to  Eric Zuesse

Indeed: “he’s an extremely ethnocentric person, whose only self-identification is his particular ethnicity, just as Hitler was”

Too many comments from too many people who prioritize FAITH-BASED BIGOTED BELIEF over EVIDENCE, FACTS, REASON, LOGIC, EMPATHY, and TRUTH-TELLING.

mark
mark
Feb 19, 2019 10:11 PM

“There are no such things as facts, just opinions masquerading as certainties.”

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 20, 2019 12:02 PM
Reply to  mark

Some opinions are more in line with objective data than others. This is what raises them from the level of opinion to the level of fact. But people who do not like a fact untiringly demand more evidence.

“The truth rarely, if ever, convinces its opponents; it simply outlives them”. “Mad” Max Planck, Physicist and Christian.

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Feb 18, 2019 10:38 AM

One of today’s stories out of the UK is the report of the select parliamentary committee’s enquiry into Facebook, slamming both it and Zuckerberg for being “digital gangsters” and subverting democracy. If there’s one thing the British Divine Right really don’t like it’s new money trailer trash muscling in on their age old despoliation of the oxen class’s ability to even glimpse democracy beneath all the centuries of fake news that they, themselves, have hitherto, to that end, seen fit to print.

In other news, seven of the usual quislings have just quit the Labour Party on the grounds that it would be irresponsible to allow Jeremy Corbyn to become Prime Minister. What with already having cut out his tongue, cut off his balls and damn near blinded him, too, with all those daggers thrown at. his eyes, it seems they’re finally getting serious about their Holy Mission.

Apparently Katherine Viner has been hospitalised with a suspected overdose of ecstaticasy.

mark
mark
Feb 18, 2019 3:12 PM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

Good riddance to the Blairite Backstabbers.
Expect hundreds of puff pieces from the MSM in the near future,
But they will go the way of Dick Taverne, Woy Jenkins and the SDP.
Their response to whether they would be calling a by election was quite funny – like Dracula and the Holy Cross.

Frankly Speaking
Frankly Speaking
Feb 19, 2019 4:48 AM
Reply to  mark

You appear to dislike Jews, make fun of a man with a speech impediment…are all Momentum members as charming as you?

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 19, 2019 7:43 AM

Frankly, you are not speaking frankly. Mark above does not say he dislikes Jews-in-General, he wrote: “Adelson, Saban, Rothschild and the rest, represent Zionist interests. Israel is virtually a Rothschild fiefdom.” Mark dislikes Zionists; perhaps because he confuses them with Zionazis — easily done when Israel elects and re-elects Zionazis like Nutty Yahoo and his ilk to represent Jewish Stewardship of the Holy Land. Take my word (for what its worth as a British expat in Israel) there are some Israeli Jews who cringe over Netanyahoo the way some Brits cringe over May, some Yanks cringe over Trump, and most Frogs cringe over Macron.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 19, 2019 7:56 AM
Reply to  vexarb

PS. As for Mark referring to “Woy” Jenkins, I laughed even though I did not know that Roy had from a speech impediment (never listened to his speeches). I laughed not because it caught to perfection a certain Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear naivete of the LibDems (for whom I used to vote). When We Were Very Young.

“Crash! Bang! nobody cares / Christopher Robin has fallen downstairs.” — Beachcomber.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 19, 2019 7:57 AM
Reply to  vexarb

PPS not “not”. Where’s the post-pub Edit button?

bevin
bevin
Feb 19, 2019 1:35 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Are we certain that Jenkins did have a speech impediment? I always assumed that his was an affectation of the Castilian kind.

Mikalina
Mikalina
Feb 20, 2019 12:24 AM
Reply to  bevin

I remember him spitting a lot – oh, hang on, that might have been his Spitting Image puppet……….. (guess they must have based it on something?)

Scourge Detector
Scourge Detector
Dec 28, 2019 7:56 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Wow, interesting… Yanks…, Frogs? Typical, boring but typically British…. Perhaps you should have been consistent and wrote Kykes and Limeys…?

BREXIT… BREXIT… BREXIT…!!!!!

Tim Jenkins
Tim Jenkins
Feb 19, 2019 1:57 PM

Fak’ Mark’sa champ charmer , lol , he got you movin’ . . .

Just jesting Frankly, full moon momentum.
thinking wavebands , Magnets pull & repel, 😉

Re.bells>
Alarm Clock >

Dusk draws in upon a rising moon,
Stars smother the vault of heaven.
Forest rustles upon a rising wind.
The Balkan HAARPs the Rebels Hymn . . .
(Botev & me)

“The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused
is to develop a mind that tries too hard . . .”
(Tao of Pooh)

is that charming ?

mark
mark
Feb 19, 2019 10:15 PM

No, some of them are people like you who think they are wits.
But they are only half right.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Feb 18, 2019 9:23 AM

Goes to show just how far the rot has deepened in what was once a democracy. And it is also illustrative of the age old truism that empire and democracy can never cohabit. Imperial overstretch and the methods to maintain empire will ultimately come home to extinguish democracy. This is exactly the tendency recognized by Thucydides writing of the decline of Ancient Athens. The Project for a New American Century along with the Wolfowitz doctrine quite openly formalised America’s imperial ambitions. However, for every action there is a reaction.

”A disparate but nevertheless strengthening tide of anti-hegemonic arrangements and organizations began to emerge … the dangers of unipolarism were made clear, accompanied by wars of choice. The creeping universalization of American law and practices of universal jurisdiction represented a new type of power that threatened the sovereignty of states everywhere. In response counter-hegemonic movements gained vitality and and dynamism.” (Richard Sakwa – 2017).

The US and its Euro-Vassal Vichy bloc ultimately rests of the $, a currency backed by nothing and forced upon its reluctant vassals abroad. It is the US’s greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness. A currency not backed by gold, but by the US Marine Corps. For most countries engaged in foreign trade need to either work or borrow to obtain a dollar, the US simply prints them.

”It costs only a few cents for the Bureau of Engraiving and printing to produce a $100 bill, but other countries have to pony up a $100 worth of actual goods and services to obtain one. (Barry Eichengreen – Exorbitant Privilege)

Interesting enough both China and Russia have been buying gold hand over fist. Russia has recently sold its US Treasury’s simply to buy more gold. Gold is money and can be used outside of the dollar zone. De-dollarization is the weapon of choice for the anti-hegemonic bloc.

bevin
bevin
Feb 18, 2019 2:25 PM
Reply to  Francis Lee

The US has also been piling up gold, most obviously by confiscating it (Libya, Ukraine etc) but also and probably more importantly, through its manipulations of the gold market in order to keep prices down.
Is that reasonable, Frank, in your view?

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Feb 18, 2019 5:36 PM
Reply to  bevin

Undoubtedly the manipulation of the gold and other precious metals by dumping unsecured shorts of paper gold into the markets has served to put a lid on the price of this particular asset class. However there is turbulence building up in the pressure cooker. Gold is inching up to £1026.00 and $1326.00 per oz The price back in November was £900.00. Given the fact that Russia and China have been buying large quantities of the yellow metal is bound at some stage to have an effect on the price is a moot point. China is now buying quantities of oil using its own currency – the Yuan. The Yuan is now on an embryonic gold standard, fully convertible and available also on a newly functioning Futures Market. Is this the beginning of a new counter-hegemonic gold standard to run parallel to the existing fiat dollar standard? An open question I think

axisofoil
axisofoil
Feb 18, 2019 8:32 AM

Here is a take on the situation we have created for ourselves that’s worth reading.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51121.htm

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 18, 2019 8:22 AM

Of course, she ran against Trump, and, for once, the billionaires were shocked to find that their enormous investment in a candidate had been for naught.

It was maverick Trump’s clever election campaign that won him most votes in crucial states.

Then the US Cabal through FBI McCabe + NYT & WaPo tried for coup by incrimination: not sticking. Even the NSA’s dirty laundry basket on Trump didn’t work!!

Next could be the CIA’s JFK solution, because the guy might be re-elected.

The French Cabal on the other hand wrestles with a headless counter, the yellow vests: a good strategy for Trump voters too if needed.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 18, 2019 7:22 AM

Reverend Nasr’Allah on U$ democracy. This gun for hire:

“For example, why do they [Yankee spokespersons] insist on saying the ‘Islamic State organisation’? We say ‘Daesh’ [terrorist]. Today when Trump was speaking he says the ‘Islamic State organisation’. Everyone there is insisting on calling it the ‘Islamic State organisation’, why? Because on the one hand we have the ‘Islamic Republic of Iran’, the Islamic state that has technology, technical (expertise), education, sports, medicine, advancement, industry, cheap water and petrol (availability), electricity and gas reaching every single house, with its national sovereignty and elections, its freedoms, and power, dignity, and honour (for its people) in this world and the next, (this is one image); then on the other hand, when you [Trump] present to me an ‘Islamic State organisation’ that carries out beheadings, and destroys churches and mosques and religious shrines, with the cutting of human organs, the eating of (human) kidneys, the cutting open of chests, the burning alive of prisoners within cages, the drowning of whole regions with water, widespread destruction. This is the ‘Islamic State organisation’ the U$A wants.

This ‘Islamic state’ of Daesh (was the result) of (the U$A) asking Saudi Arabia to promote its (Wahhabi) culture throughout the world, and it spent over $200 billion for this purpose. Hence, the Saudi are tools within this war, there is no such thing as a ‘Saudi war’. Who is Saudi Arabia to wage a war or to (lead) a project of confrontation against Iran? Saudi Arabia and others are tools within the U$ war. ‘Pay money here’ – ‘go to Syria and pay money’, the Saudi do so. ‘Send takfiris’, they send takfiris. ‘Send weapons’, they send weapons. To talk of this as a Saudi strategic administration of a grand Saudi project against Iran – what is this talk?

Okay, why is the U$A insisting on this war against Iran? For two reasons. The first reason: Iran is an independent state, a sovereign (state), it makes its own decisions. Iran owns its oil and gas (reserves), it owns its steel, its metal, its owns all of its mineral (reserves), it completely owns its huge wealth of human (resources), it completely owns its huge wealth of material (resources), its owns its rivers, seas, borders, ports, land and skies, and it does not submit itself to the U$A nor does it work for the U$A, it works in the interests of its people, nation, and country. (All) this cannot be tolerated by the U$.”

Antonym
Antonym
Feb 18, 2019 1:58 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Are you kidding? Sunni KSA is inciting the US Deep State to go against Shia Iran (and Irak, Syria and Yemen), not the other way around. He who pays the piper……
Similarly KSA is renting uniformed and guerilla Pakistani/ Afghani weapons & bodies for cash.

Trump tries to get out from under these mil-industial-oil thumbs but he has the FBI, MSN, NSA & CIA on his neck too.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 20, 2019 1:28 PM
Reply to  Antonym

He who pays the piper, also calls the tune.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 18, 2019 6:18 PM
Reply to  vexarb

PS. http://middleeastobserver.net/video-nasrallah-on-real-reason-why-us-continues-40-years-of-war-on-iran-english-subs/

“Trump’s brain, which only has the dollar $ign in it — such a person is coming to Venezuela for the sake of Democracy?” — Rev.Nasr’Allah

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Feb 18, 2019 6:53 AM
mark
mark
Feb 18, 2019 3:38 PM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

Counterpunch is Soros funded garbage.

milosevic
milosevic
Feb 20, 2019 2:00 PM
Reply to  mark

The well-known leftist website Counterpunch is an example of the “never apologize, never explain” school. A number of writers and journalists who have published many pieces at Counterpunch have been banned from this site in recent years without an explanation, Andre Vltchek and C.J. Hopkins being two who crossed an invisible boundary the Shadow had drawn and were never again published by Counterpunch. Others, smelling an odd odor, have walked away. The numbers are growing.

Edward Curtin — Counterpunch Shadowboxes and Loses

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 19, 2019 11:05 AM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

Uncle $cam’s chest is heartless for sure but after recent reckless investments the old man is fumbling near the bottom of his pockets.

https://thesaker.is/munich-conference-showed-that-america-is-losing-ground/

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 18, 2019 6:31 AM

Dr.Assad on the principles of U$ democracy. This gun for hire:

“From the beginning, you offered yourselves and the homeland for sale. I wouldn’t say you offered your principles, because you had none to begin with. You offered yourselves and the homeland for sale, and there was demand for these kinds of goods at the time, and you were paid handsomely and bought, but after the new owners tried you out, and despite all the plastic surgery and improvements and upgrading and modifications, you failed to achieve the required tasks, so they decided to sell you at a discount after demand for you decreased in the international slave market, but at a low price, and they won’t find a buyer and they’ll probably give you away for free, and no-one will take you.”