The Raping of America: Mile Markers on the Road to Fascism

By John W. Whitehead
The Rutheford Institute
August 25, 2015

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”—Martin Luther King Jr.

There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry.

Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

Despite the recent outrage and protests, nothing has changed to restore us to our rightful role as having dominion over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.
Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases—these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. Thus far, the courts have done little to preserve our Fourth Amendment rights, let alone what shreds of bodily integrity remain to us.

Indeed, on a daily basis, Americans are being forced to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States.

In other words, we are all guilty until proven innocent.

Worst of all, it seems as if nothing will change as long as the American people remain distracted by politics, divided by their own prejudices, and brainwashed into believing that the Constitution still reigns supreme as the law of the land, when in fact, we have almost completed the shift into fascism.

In other words, despite our occasional bursts of outrage over abusive police practices, sporadic calls for government reform, and periodic bouts of awareness that all is not what it seems, the police state continues to march steadily onward.

Such is life in America today that individuals are being threatened with arrest and carted off to jail for the least hint of noncompliance, homes are being raided by police under the slightest pretext, and roadside police stops have devolved into government-sanctioned exercises in humiliation and degradation with a complete disregard for privacy and human dignity.
Consider, for example, what happened to Charnesia Corley after allegedly being pulled over by Texas police for “rolling” through a stop sign. Claiming they smelled marijuana, police handcuffed Corley, placed her in the back of the police cruiser, and then searched her car for almost an hour. They found nothing in the car.

As the Houston Chronicle reported:

Returning to his car where Corley was held, the deputy again said he smelled marijuana and called in a female deputy to conduct a cavity search. When the female deputy arrived, she told Corley to pull her pants down, but Corley protested because she was cuffed and had no underwear on. The deputy ordered Corley to bend over, pulled down her pants and began to search her. Then…Corley stood up and protested, so the deputy threw her to the ground and restrained her while another female was called in to assist. When backup arrived, each deputy held one of Corley’s legs apart to conduct the probe.

As shocking and disturbing as it seems, Corley’s roadside cavity search is becoming par for the course in an age in which police are taught to have no respect for the citizenry’s bodily integrity.

For instance, 38-year-old Angel Dobbs and her 24-year-old niece, Ashley, were pulled over by a Texas state trooper on July 13, 2012, allegedly for flicking cigarette butts out of the car window. Insisting that he smelled marijuana, he proceeded to interrogate them and search the car. Despite the fact that both women denied smoking or possessing any marijuana, the police officer then called in a female trooper, who carried out a roadside cavity search, sticking her fingers into the older woman’s anus and vagina, then performing the same procedure on the younger woman, wearing the same pair of gloves. No marijuana was found.

David Eckert was forced to undergo an anal cavity search, three enemas, and a colonoscopy after allegedly failing to yield to a stop sign at a Wal-Mart parking lot. Cops justified the searches on the grounds that they suspected Eckert was carrying drugs because his “posture [was] erect” and “he kept his legs together.” No drugs were found.

Leila Tarantino was subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic during a routine traffic stop, while her two children—ages 1 and 4—waited inside her car. During the second strip search, presumably in an effort to ferret out drugs, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. Nothing illegal was found. Nevertheless, such searches have been sanctioned by the courts, especially if accompanied by a search warrant (which is easily procured), as justified in the government’s pursuit of drugs and weapons.

Meanwhile, four Milwaukee police officers were charged with carrying out rectal searches of suspects on the street and in police district stations over the course of several years. One of the officers was accused of conducting searches of men’s anal and scrotal areas, often inserting his fingers into their rectums and leaving some of his victims with bleeding rectums. Halfway across the country, the city of Oakland, California, agreed to pay $4.6 million to 39 men who had their pants pulled down by police on city streets between 2002 and 2009.

It’s gotten so bad that you don’t even have to be suspected of possessing drugs to be subjected to a strip search.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Florence v. Burlison, any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials without reasonable suspicion that the arrestee is carrying a weapon or contraband.

Examples of minor infractions which have resulted in strip searches include: individuals arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, driving with an inoperable headlight, failing to use a turn signal, riding a bicycle without an audible bell, making an improper left turn, engaging in an antiwar demonstration (the individual searched was a nun, a Sister of Divine Providence for 50 years). Police have also carried out strip searches for passing a bad check, dog leash violations, filing a false police report, failing to produce a driver’s license after making an illegal left turn, having outstanding parking tickets, and public intoxication. A failure to pay child support can also result in a strip search.

It must be remembered that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to prevent government agents from searching an individual’s person or property without a warrant and probable cause (evidence that some kind of criminal activity was afoot). While the literal purpose of the amendment is to protect our property and our bodies from unwarranted government intrusion, the moral intention behind it is to protect our human dignity.

Unfortunately, the indignities being heaped upon us by the architects and agents of the American police state—whether or not we’ve done anything wrong—don’t end with roadside strip searches. They’re just a foretaste of what is to come.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government doesn’t need to strip you naked by the side of the road in order to render you helpless. It has other methods, less subtle perhaps but equally humiliating, devastating and mind-altering, of stripping you of your independence, robbing you of your dignity, and undermining your rights.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives. As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation, militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.

If there is any hope to be found it will be found in local, grassroots activism. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., it’s time for “militant nonviolent resistance.”

First, however, Americans must break free of the apathy-inducing turpor of politics, entertainment spectacles and manufactured news. Only once we are free of the chains that bind us—or to be more exact, the chains that “blind” us—can we become actively aware of the injustices taking place around us and demand freedom from our oppressors.

The Federal Reserve Is Not Your Friend

Submitted by Rand Paul & Mark Spitznagel via Reason.com,

Imagine that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was a corporation, with its shares owned by the nation's major pharmaceutical companies. How would you feel about the regulation of medications? Whose interests would this corporation be serving? Or suppose that major oil companies appointed a small committee to periodically announce the price of a barrel of crude in the United States. How would that impact you at the gasoline pump?

Such hypotheticals would strike the majority of Americans as completely absurd, but it's exactly how our banking system operates.

The Federal Reserve is literally owned by the nation's commercial banks, with a rotation of the regional Reserve Bank presidents constituting 5 of the 12 voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the body that sets targets for certain interest rates. The other 7 members of the FOMC are the D.C.-based Board of Governors—which includes the Fed chairperson, currently Janet Yellen—and are nominated by the President. The Fed serves its owners and patrons—the big banks and the federal government, while the rest of Americans get left behind.

The Federal Reserve has the ability to create legal tender through mere bookkeeping operations. By the simple act of buying, for example, $10 million worth of bonds, the Federal Reserve literally creates $10 million worth of money and adds it into the system. The seller's account goes up by $10 million once the Fed's monies are received. Nobody's account gets debited for $10 million. This is a tremendous amount of power for an institution to possess, and yet the Fed shrouds itself in secrecy and is accountable to no one.

In December 2008, Congress summoned then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to provide information concerning the enormous "emergency liquidity" programs that had begun during the financial crisis earlier that fall—all the new acronyms Wall Street analysts would come to know, such as TAF (Term Auction Facility), PDCF (Primary Dealer Credit Facility), and TSLF (Term Securities Lending Facility). Bernanke did not need Congress' permission to conduct those programs, but even worse, he refused to disclose the recipients of the $1.2 trillion in short-term loans that we now know were being administered behind closed doors. This staggering secret loan payouts doesn't even include hundreds of billions in "swaps" to foreign central banks. Bernanke's rationale was that if the Fed announced the names of the big banks being rescued, then depositors and investors would flee, thus defeating the whole purpose of the rescue operations.

Americans then and now were lectured that the trillions in loans and asset purchases were all for their own good and eventual benefit, to resuscitate the credit markets and bolster home values. Yet the truth remains—it is Wall Street that benefits from the Fed at the expense of Main Street. To make things worse, in October 2008—one month after Lehman Brothers collapsed and precipitated the worst of the financial crisis—the Fed began exercising a new policy of paying interest on reserves. The Fed began to subsidize and directly pay the nation's bankers not to make loans to their customers and keep their reserves parked on deposit with the Fed.

Today, Fed officials can give all sorts of technical explanations for that policy—a move that remains in effect today. Yet your average depositor received no such direct subsidy and likely still receives almost no interest on short term deposits.

It's unfortunately in keeping with Fed policies that disproportionately favor wealth—like low interest rates, a policy benefiting those that have the most assets and first access to borrowing, not for people who have little or no capital.

No matter how much the Fed protests to the contrary, it shows little regard for the average Joe or Jane. Consider the types of assets it bought as the Fed's balance sheet exploded from $905 billion in the beginning of September 2008 to $2.2 trillion by the end of the year. (The Fed currently holds some $4.5 trillion in total assets, after the various rounds of "quantitative easing.")

Rather than bailing out struggling homeowners who were underwater, with higher mortgage debt than their homes were worth, the Fed instead loaded up on U.S. Treasuries (its own IOUs) and mortgage-backed securities—the very same "toxic assets" that reflected the horrible judgment of many investment bankers and the ratings agencies that signed off on the shenanigans. It is no coincidence that the federal government was able to run trillion-dollar-plus deficits for four consecutive years with no concern from the financial markets; everyone knows the Fed stands in the wings, willing to "print" new legal tender and sop up Uncle Sam's IOUs (which eventually come due, as we are now seeing in Greece).

When it comes to money, politicians are often seen as the least trustworthy. But in the debate over income and wealth inequality, few people point the finger at the biggest benefactor of the wheeler dealer crony capitalists: the Federal Reserve. The nation's central bank, which regulates all other banks and has the power to create money simply by buying assets, should be under the utmost scrutiny. Yet, perversely, members of Congress have to fight an uphill battle just to audit the Fed. We do not want to politicize monetary policy (as our detractors allege), but rather simply shine a very bright light on this unaccountable and unchecked (and thus entirely un-American) power. By doing this, we may finally be able to rein it in.

Introducing the Gigantic and Dangerous Wall Street Loophole You’ve Never Heard of

By Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg

This spring, traders and analysts working deep in the global swaps markets began picking up peculiar readings: Hundreds of billions of dollars of trades by U.S. banks had seemingly vanished.

The vanishing of the trades was little noted outside a circle of specialists. But the implications were big. The missing transactions reflected an effort by some of the largest U.S. banks — including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley — to get around new regulations on derivatives enacted in the wake of the financial crisis, say current and former financial regulators.

The trades hadn’t really disappeared. Instead, the major banks had tweaked a few key words in swaps contracts and shifted some other trades to affiliates in London, where regulations are far more lenient. Those affiliates remain largely outside the jurisdiction of U.S. regulators, thanks to a loophole in swaps rules that banks successfully won from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2013.

Many of the CFTC employees who were lobbied in these meetings went on to work for banks. Between 2010 and 2013, there were 50 CFTC staffers who met with the top five U.S. banks 10 or more times. Of those 50 staffers, at least 25 now work for the big five or other top swaps-dealing banks, or for law firms and lobbyists representing these banks.

The lobbying blitz helped win a ruling from the CFTC that left U.S. banks’ overseas operations largely outside the jurisdiction of U.S. regulators. After that rule passed, U.S. banks simply shipped more trades overseas. By December of 2014, certain U.S. swaps markets had seen 95 percent of their trading volume disappear in less than two years.
– From the excellent Reuters article: U.S. Banks Moved Billions of Dollars in Trades Beyond Washington’s Reach

The following story is guaranteed to make you sick. Once again, we’re shown that following trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts and backstops, TBTF Wall Street banks immediately went ahead and focused all their attention obtaining loopholes in order to transfer risk and make billions upon billions of dollars in the financial matrix, as opposed to adding any benefit whatsoever to society.

From Reuters:

NEW YORK – This spring, traders and analysts working deep in the global swaps markets began picking up peculiar readings: Hundreds of billions of dollars of trades by U.S. banks had seemingly vanished.

“We saw strange things in the data,” said Chris Barnes, a former swaps trader now with ClarusFT, a London-based data firm.

The vanishing of the trades was little noted outside a circle of specialists. But the implications were big. The missing transactions reflected an effort by some of the largest U.S. banks — including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley — to get around new regulations on derivatives enacted in the wake of the financial crisis, say current and former financial regulators.

The trades hadn’t really disappeared. Instead, the major banks had tweaked a few key words in swaps contracts and shifted some other trades to affiliates in London, where regulations are far more lenient. Those affiliates remain largely outside the jurisdiction of U.S. regulators, thanks to a loophole in swaps rules that banks successfully won from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2013.

For large investors, the products are an important tool to hedge risk. But in times of crisis, they can turn toxic. In 2008, some of these instruments helped topple major financial institutions, crashing the U.S. economy and leading to government bailouts.

After the crisis, Congress and regulators sought to rein in this risk, and the banks fought back. From 2010 to 2013, when the CFTC was drafting new rules, representatives of the five largest U.S. banks met with the regulator more than 300 times, according to CFTC records. Goldman Sachs attended at least 160 of those meetings.

Many of the CFTC employees who were lobbied in these meetings went on to work for banks. Between 2010 and 2013, there were 50 CFTC staffers who met with the top five U.S. banks 10 or more times. Of those 50 staffers, at least 25 now work for the big five or other top swaps-dealing banks, or for law firms and lobbyists representing these banks.

The lobbying blitz helped win a ruling from the CFTC that left U.S. banks’ overseas operations largely outside the jurisdiction of U.S. regulators. After that rule passed, U.S. banks simply shipped more trades overseas. By December of 2014, certain U.S. swaps markets had seen 95 percent of their trading volume disappear in less than two years.

While many swaps trades are now booked abroad, some people in the markets believe the risk remains firmly on U.S. shores. They say the big American banks are still on the hook for swaps they’re parking offshore with subsidiaries.

Still, the banks’ victory on the swaps loophole leaves a concentrated knot of risk at the heart of the financial system. The U.S. derivatives market has shrunk but remains large, with outstanding contracts worth $220 trillion at face value. And the top five top banks account for 92 percent of that.

In 2009, President Barack Obama tapped Gary Gensler, then 51 years old, to chair the CFTC. Liberals grumbled about Gensler’s résumé. The son of a cigarette and pinball-machine salesman in working class Baltimore, Gensler, at 30, had become the youngest banker ever to make partner at Goldman Sachs.

Among other jobs, he oversaw the bank’s derivatives trading in Asia. Later, as an undersecretary of the Treasury, Gensler helped push through the 2000 law that had banned regulation of derivatives markets.

Kenneth Raisler, a former Enron lobbyist representing JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Bank of America, argued in a letter that the CFTC should allow U.S. banks to do things overseas “even if those activities were not permissible for a U.S. bank domestically.”
“Kenneth Raisler, a former Enron lobbyist representing JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Bank of America.”

You just can’t make this stuff up. Gold Jerry, gold.

Meanwhile, Obama was hard at work as always proving himself to be a capable banker coddler in order to ensure his payday upon leaving office.

In his place, Obama nominated a long time aide to Democratic Senator Harry Reid, Mark Wetjen. Gensler and other pro-reform allies assumed that the veteran Democrat would vote with the Democrats on the commission.

Wetjen, a derivatives newcomer, was not a conventional liberal. He came with an endorsement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an opponent of the Dodd-Frank Act. As his policy adviser, Wetjen hired Scott Reinhart, former in-house counsel at the structured credit products division at Lehman Brothers – the bank whose collapse in 2008 set off the financial crisis.

Rosen, the banks’ lead lawyer, discussed Wetjen often on calls with his bank clients. The newcomer, Rosen told them, was key to swinging the commission in the banks’ favor.

Banks got dramatically more face time with commissioners after Wetjen’s appointment. In 2010, Gensler had met with the top five U.S. banks 13 times, and in 2011, 10 times. That was still more than any other staffer or commissioner at the CFTC.

In the year after Wetjen’s appointment, Wetjen aide Reinhart met with the top five banks 36 times, more than anyone else at the CFTC. Wetjen himself met with the top banks second-most often, 34 times. Gensler met them less than half as frequently, as did nearly every other commissioner and staffer, according to the records.

In June, Reinhart left the CFTC to join Rosen’s practice at Cleary Gottlieb.

Gensler had little patience for the bank-friendly Wetjen, former CFTC officials say. As their disagreements sharpened, Wetjen’s pro-bank views seemed to harden, these people said.

“Mark was struggling a little with the substance,” one former CFTC official said. “Gary treated Mark like he was a moron, and then Mark refused to budge.”

“The fight over this provision was one of the biggest policy fights in all of Dodd Frank,” said Kelleher, of the think tank Better Markets. “Once the banks got that loophole, then a lot of that predatory behavior migrated overseas to wherever there was less regulation.”

Goldman had already started moving to restructure its trading operations to get around Dodd-Frank. In March 2012, it sent out a four-page letter to its derivatives clients with an unusual demand. Goldman wanted clients to sign off on giving the bank standing permission to move a client’s swaps trades to different affiliates around the world, whenever and wherever the bank saw fit.

Goldman called the letter the “Multi-entity ISDA Master Agreement.” It meant that a client might strike a derivatives deal with Goldman in New York in the morning, and that afternoon, with no disclosure, a Goldman office in London or Singapore or Hong Kong could take over the deal. With each shift, the trade could fall under different regulators.
Perhaps I should ask John Hilsenrath whether it is “anti-Semitic” to point this out.

Just in case you need a reminder of how incredibly putrid and corrupt Banana Republic America has become…


The global inter-dealer market for interest rate swaps in Euros is one of the largest derivatives markets in the world. U.S. banks’ monthly share of the market had plunged nearly 90 percent since January 2013, from over $1 trillion to $125 billion, according to ISDA.

The data were misleading. U.S. banks were still trading as vigorously as ever. But their trades, booked through London affiliates, without any credit guarantees linking them back to the U.S., were now showing up in the data as the work of European banks.

In mid 2014, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a banking lobby in Washington, circulated a private memo to its members. The memo consisted of talking points banks could use to justify the de-guaranteed contracts and shifting of trades if questioned by regulators and lawmakers.
Where have you heard about the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, or SIFMA, before? Recall the following from the post, Ex-NSA Chief Keith Alexander is Now Pimping Advice to Wall Street Banks for $1 Million a Month:

So what is Mr. Alexander charging for his expertise? He’s looking for $1 million per month. Yes, you read that right. That’s the rate that his firm, IronNet Cybersecurity Inc., pitched to Wall Street’s largest lobbying group the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), which ultimately negotiated it down to a mere $600,000 a month. In case you need a refresher on how much of a slimy character this guy is, I suggest you read the following posts…
What would we have done without the bailouts…

For related articles, see:

Why Obama Allowed Bailouts Without Indictments by Janet Tavakoli

Why Bailouts are Anti-American in One Minute by Max Keiser

“Bank Lives Matter” – Obama Administration Makes Another Move to Protect Profits of Criminal Mega Banks

Wall Street Moves to Put Taxpayers on the Hook for Derivatives Trades

Cronyism Pays – Eric “Too Big to Jail” Holder Triumphantly Returns to His Prior Corporate Law Firm Job

The U.S. Department of Justice Handles Banker Criminals Like Juvenile Offenders…Literally

Why Obama Allowed Bailouts Without Indictments by Janet Tavakoli

Elizabeth Warren Confronts Eric Holder, Ben Bernanke and Mary Jo White on Bankster Immunity

Even Washington D.C. Insiders Admit Eric Holder is a Bankster Puppet

Bad Credit Cannot Be Made Good!

Dear CIGAs,

Here we are six years after the “Great Financial Crisis”. Since then, every acronym in the book has been thrown at the economy and financial markets but to what end? The economy has gone nowhere over these six years, “recovery” has been the meme …but never “expansion”. Hasn’t anyone wondered about this? In the good old days we used to hear the word “expansion” for two or three years before the natural recession would roll through. This time we’ve heard nothing but recovery …year after year. “Hope” (which is the vestige of fools), year after year.

I wrote in 2008, “this is a crisis of ‘solvency’, more liquidity cannot turn bad loans into good ones”. Now, six years later it turns out this thought process was 100% correct. Other than financial assets being “saved”, all of the QE, all of the additional debt taken on by various sovereign treasuries has done nothing to the real economy of Main St.. The plan was to inflate asset values and this would spill onto Main St.. Even mainstream media when interviewing the talking heads of Wall St. and the liars out of Washington are questioning this. Heck, Peter Fisher (past chief of the plunge protection team Martin) this morning brought this up on his own. He said the policy of inflating assets has not worked and cannot work. The five plus year experiment has failed. One does not have to look far or even “into” the bogus reporting of unemployment to see what is happening. All you need to do is look at oil and Dr. copper. They are both crashing and now threating to break trend lines going back to the 1980′s.

In as few words as possible, we are witnessing a credit collapse. These two commodities (along with many others) are crashing NOT because currencies are so well foundationed or strong and “going up”. No, we are watching them crash because of shrinking demand. This is also confirmed by trade numbers (or lack of). We also see freight rates imploding all over the world due to the same lack of demand and trade. This should tell you something in very loud and very clear terms, the “reflation” efforts have failed miserably!

You don’t need to take my word, your own gut feel or even your very own eyes to know this. “They” have admitted it and we now even see stories going mainstream with titles such as “is the Fed out of bullets? and Fed loses its grip on debt” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-20/credit-traders-gird-for-the-worst-as-fed-loses-its-grip-on-debt. Just this week we have seen Alan Greenspan warn the “credit markets are in a bubble” http://www.marketwatch.com/story/greenspan-warns-about-bond-market-bubble-2015-08-19 . If that were not enough, the St. Louis Fed http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-19/after-6-years-qe-and-45-trillion-balance-sheet-st-louis-fed-admits-qe-was-mistake admits QE was a mistake and did nothing to help the economy.

In the case of Mr. Greenspan, he is simply trying to get on the record far enough to hopefully make historians forget he was the one driving the bus on the road to perdition. He is now on the record gold “is money” and a safe haven versus his precious product the dollar. Has he had some sort of come to Jesus moment? I believe no, not even possible as he’s known all along how money works and where he was driving the bus. His days with Ayn Rand were filled with quotes and writings which sounded much like today’s tin foil hat society! He knew then, he knows now and will know until his last breath, the end of the credit road is in sight. His own “legacy” and nothing else is his concern.

The St. Louis Fed is known as the “teaching” district. Their recent admission QE was a mistake is a little different than Alan Greenspan trying to get on the record. I’m not really sure what their motive is for telling the truth? It certainly does not aid their cause because they are admitting failure.

We stand on the cusp of a credit meltdown. Never mind the stock markets or the commodity markets, they are simply “symptoms” of a credit bubble going bust. The talk of “will the Fed tighten” in Sept. (or EVER again) is hilarious! The Fed will be forced to implement another round of QE no matter what the acronym or name. More QE will do what more QE has already done, simply pile more debt on top of already TOO MUCH DEBT! There are no possible fixes left, the CREDIT CRISIS has arrived. No way to reflate and no way to actually “pay” (settle) on the debt. Central banks all over the world are now beginning to act in their own best interests, it’s like the sharks are eating the sharks.

The credit BUST is here! Markets all over the world are crashing and the U.S. is now losing control. After breaking down yesterday, today looks to be another bad day. If the PPT cannot get any traction today, Monday could be a disaster. I even question whether markets remain open at some point because closure will be the ONLY way to stop the selling which will be forced (by margin calls) in nearly all markets. This is not fear mongering, it is now math. We live in a make believe world created by the illusion that “credit” is a strong foundation, it cannot be. Bad credits cannot be made good by those with too much debt. This is exactly what has been attempted by the largest debtor on the planet. The failure will be spectacular. All money today is nothing more than credit … credit IS the problem!

It is imperative you understand how this will go down. You must have exactly what you think you’ll need and what you want to own going into this. You will have no opportunity to change horses when the markets close. Bluntly, it’s not the closure of markets that will kill you …it will be the reopening!

Standing watch,

Bill Holter
Holter-Sinclair collaboration
Comments welcome! bholter@hotmail.com

Sinking currencies point to jitters about emerging economies

Aug 21, 3:18 PM (ET)
By PAUL WISEMAN and JOSHUA GOODMAN
(AP) In this Monday, June 29, 2015 file photo, currency traders work at the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The damage spans the globe.
Thailand's baht. Kazakhstan's tenge. South Africa's rand. Peru's nuevo sol.
In emerging markets worldwide, currencies are plunging over fears that developing economies are on the verge of a crippling fall. Success stories until recently, emerging economies are seen as casualties now — of slower growth in China, plunging prices for commodities like oil and iron ore, the prospect of higher U.S. interest rates and homegrown threats.
The damage has spilled across oceans, with the turmoil jolting investors in New York, Tokyo and Europe. Investors there worry that China and other major emerging economies will reduce their imports. They also fear a trade-disrupting currency war as some countries desperately lower their currencies' value to gain a competitive edge. A lower-priced currency makes a country's goods cheaper for foreigners.

(AP) In this Monday, June 8, 2015 file photo, Turkish Liras, Euros and U.S....
The Dow Jones industrials plunged 400 points, or 2.4 percent, in afternoon trading Friday on top of a 358-point drop Thursday. It's down more than 6.5 percent in the past month. Tokyo's Nikkei index shed 3 percent Friday.
For all the markets' jitters, many economists say they remain confident that the U.S. economy is resilient enough to withstand a slowdown in the developing world. And Europe's economy appears to be emerging from its long slump.
Even so, the trouble in emerging markets is a surprising and unsettling reversal.
"It's remarkable just how things turned around so quickly," says Neil Shearing, an economist at Capital Economics and a former British Treasury official.
Consider Peru. Three years ago, its capital, Lima, was chosen to host an International Monetary Fund's meeting of global finance officials in what was seen as a celebration of Latin America's arrival in the economic big leagues.
But with the event six weeks away, Latin America's outlook has descended from boom to gloom. Peru's economy has steadily slowed, and its currency, the nuevo sol, has plunged 2.5 percent against the U.S. dollar in the past month.
And Peru boasts one of the region's healthiest economies. Brazil's economy is expected to shrink this year and next. Its currency, the real, is down 7 percent the past month and more than 30 percent the past two years.
It's hardly just Latin America. Kazakhstan's currency plummeted this week after the government decided to let it trade freely. The South African rand fell this week to a 14-year-low against the U.S. dollar. Turkey's lira hit a record low against the dollar this week.
Hung Tran, an executive managing director at the Institute of International Finance, expects developing countries to post 3.8 percent economic growth this year, down from 4.3 percent in 2014. The institute is on the verge of cutting that forecast further.
Analysts point to a primary culprit:
"It's all coming from China," says Masamichi Adachi, an economist with JP Morgan Chase in Tokyo. "Brazil, South Africa, many countries are commodity exporters, and the final destination is all going to China."
The Chinese economy is slowing more sharply than most people had expected from the double-digit growth rates of the mid-2000s. The world's second-biggest economy is expected to grow 7 percent this year, which would be its slowest pace since 1990.
Beijing is trying to manage a transition from rapid growth based on exports and often-wasteful spending on factories, real estate and infrastructure to slower, steadier expansion based on consumer spending.
That transition means China would need fewer raw materials — Chilean copper, Nigerian oil, Brazilian iron ore. That helps explain why China's pullback has loosed carnage in global commodity prices: The Standard & Poor's GSCI commodity index, which tracks 24 commodities prices, is down nearly 20 percent this year.
Emerging markets were already feeling the squeeze last week, when China devalued its currency, the yuan. That step ignited a semi-panic.
"The devaluation is a red flag about China's current economic situation," says Kurt Braybrook, who runs a Shanghai company that does quality control work. A falling yuan raises the risk that other countries will devalue their currencies to catch up.
Most countries can't blame China and the vagaries of the global commodities market for all their problems.
South Africa is battling labor strife. Brazil is contending with a corruption scandal at state-owned oil giant Petrobras. Turkey is struggling to form a government while its military battles the Islamic State extremist group and Kurdish separatists.
Adding to the pressure: America's Federal Reserve is expected, perhaps at its September meeting, to raise the short-term rate it controls from near zero. Investors could respond by moving even more money out of emerging markets to seek higher U.S. rates. That would lift the dollar higher and emerging market currencies even lower.
A Fed rate hike could also squeeze emerging market companies that have borrowed in U.S. dollars. Those companies would struggle to accumulate enough local currency to pay their now-more-expensive dollar-denominated debt.
Tran at the Institute for International Finance says dollar borrowing by emerging market companies surged from $700 billion in 2010 to $2 trillion through March.
The rising dollar and the hoard of dollar loans recall the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. Back then, a currency sell-off triggered an emerging market debt crisis that became a disaster for countries such as Indonesia and South Korea.
But the picture is less alarming now, analysts say. For one thing, developing countries have stockpiled foreign reserves that they can use to buy their own currencies and stop a crisis.
What's more, emerging market companies that borrowed in dollars in recent years tended to take out longer-term loans, notes Joaquin Cottani, Standard & Poor's chief economist for Latin America. During the '97-'98 crisis, companies had taken out short-term loans and couldn't refinance when the loans came due during a panic.
"Countries have learned from their experiences," says Monica de Bolle, visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
---
Goodman reported from Caracas, Venezuela. AP Writers Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo, Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong, Nataliya Vasilyeva and James Ellingworth in Moscow, Suzan Fraser in Istanbul and Lynsey Chutel in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
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What Would Happen if a Massive Solar Storm Hit the Earth?

Maddie Stone
Filed to: SPACE WEATHER 8/20/15 3:00pm

We all know that major storms can wreak havoc, flooding cities and decimating infrastructure. But there’s an even bigger worry than wind and rain: space weather. If a massive solar storm hit us, our technology would be wiped out. The entire planet could go dark.

“We’re much more reliant on technology these days that is vulnerable to space weather than we were in the past,” said Thomas Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He told Gizmodo, “If we were hit by an extreme event today, it’d be very difficult to respond.”

“Solar storm” is a generic term used to describe a bunch of stuff the Sun hurls our way, including x-rays, charged particles, and magnetized plasma. A massive solar storm hasn’t hit the Earth since the mid-19th century, but space weather scientists are very worried about the possibility of another.

Solar Flares

A solar storm usually starts with a solar flare — a giant explosion on the surface of the sun that sends energy and particles streaming off into space. Small, C-class flares occur all the time and are too weak to affect the Earth, while mid-sized M-class flares can produce minor radio disruptions. X-class flares, meanwhile, are the largest explosions in the solar system, releasing up to a billion hydrogen bombs worth of energy. These eruptions occur very rarely, but when they do, they’re an epic sight.

One of the most powerful flares measured with modern instruments took place during a solar maximum in 2003. It was so large it maxed out our satellite sensors, which registered an X-28 (28 types larger than an X-1 flare, which itself is 10 times greater than an M1 flare). Here’s what that event looked like:



The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft captured this epic solar flare in 2003. Image credit: ESA / NASA - SOHO

Despite observing flares for over a century, scientists still aren’t totally sure what causes the Sun to erupt. We do know that flares have a lot to do with disruptions in the Sun’s powerful magnetic field, which oscillates over the course of an 11-ish year solar cycle.

“Solar storms originate in magnetic features that erupt from the surface of the sun,” explained space weather scientist Joe Gurman, speaking to Gizmodo from NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center. “We call these active regions, or sunspots. When they’re big and ugly, that’s an indication that the magnetic field is changing rapidly. And when the magnetic field changes rapidly, that appears to be the cause — or related to the cause — of solar activity.”

A mid- to large-sized solar flare would send waves of high energy radiation — x rays and ultraviolet light — zipping toward the Earth. These types of radiation are powerful enough to rip electrons off of atoms. That’s exactly what they start doing when they hit the upper portion of our atmosphere, known as the ionosphere. Basically, the sky gets zapped with a giant electromagnetic pulse. But according to Berger, even the biggest flares don’t impact humans very much.

“It’s a huge EM pulse that roils up the ionosphere, causing it to expand out,” Berger said. “But the solar flare really doesn’t damage technology.”

The one exception is radio. Radio signals between the Earth and orbiting satellites can be blocked when the atmosphere becomes too charged.

“Radio communications are sometimes impacted,” Berger noted. “Over the horizon radio becomes difficult. When airplanes are flying over the poles, the only way they communicate with control centers is high frequency radio waves bouncing over the continents. But it’s just a temporary difficulty lasting ten minutes to hours at the most.”


An X-class flare captured by NASA on March 6th, 2012. Image Credit: NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center / Flickr

We don’t have a great way of forecasting solar flares, and they hit the Earth too quickly for NOAA to provide airline companies with advance notice (it takes about eight minutes for sunlight to reach us).

“The only thing we can do is issue an alert when we see one,” Berger said. “Airlines are very interested in flare effects on high frequency communications, and if there’s a really large event, they’ll consider grounding flights.”

If you’re not an airline operator, you pretty much get to sit this one out. But don’t forget to check out the amazing images over at NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory every now and then.

Charged Particles

Minutes to hours after a solar flare lights up the sky, a stream of charged particles — electrons and protons — arrive at the Earth. They bombard the magnetosphere, a protective envelope around Earth created by our magnetic field. “We see the radiation level go up sometimes, which can indicate that particles are impinging on Earth’s orbit,” said Berger.



Charged particles falling into Earth’s atmosphere contribute to the northern lights. Image Credit: Adam Woodworth

Occasionally, a large pulse of charged particles will hit orbiting satellites and damage their electronics. Particle radiation is also a big health risk for humans in space.

“We do have to worry about energetic particles on the ISS,” Gurman said. “If we ever get to the point of being a spacefaring race, they’re going to become a much bigger concern.”

But by and large, the effects of solar particle radiation are buffered by the magnetosphere and atmosphere. It’s what’s coming next that you and me on the ground need to worry about.

Coronal Mass Ejections

When the Sun flares up, it sometimes shoots a giant cloud of magnetized plasma off into space. This is called a coronal mass ejection (CME). CMEs are the slowest form of solar weather, taking anywhere from 12 hours to several days to reach the Earth. They’re also by far the most dangerous.

https://youtu.be/96ceuLV_Ojs

Fortunately, because CMEs are slow moving, our space weather forecasters have a little more time to anticipate them. They examine images of the Sun, pulled from the SOHO and STEREO satellites. When our observatories see something big, NOAA responds.

Berger outlined what happens next: “A watch is issued when we see something happen on the Sun headed toward the Earth. Typically if there’s a large CME, something major we think could impact the Earth, we put out a watch.”

A CME will shoot pretty much straight out from the Sun, and there’s always a good chance that the Earth won’t end up in its path. If a CME is coming straight at us, it’ll first hit NASA’s ACE satellite, located at the L1 Lagrange point roughly a million miles in front of the Earth. If that happens, we’ve got anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour before a cloud of plasma rains down from above, interacting with our planet’s magnetosphere and triggering a geomagnetic storm.

That’s when you start to see effects on the power grid.


Artist’s depiction of the solar wind colliding with Earth’s magnetosphere. Image Credit: NASA / Wikimedia

“This generates huge electrical currents in upper atmosphere of Earth,” Berger said. “Depending on how conductive the ground is, you can get large currents getting picked up by power stations and fed into the grid.” And that’s bad news, because “our grid isn’t designed for huge amounts of current coming out of the ground.”

Geomagnetic storm strength is measured in “disturbance storm time” or Dst, which essentially describes how hard a CME shakes up Earth’s magnetic field. Ordinary storms, which cause the northern lights to flare up but otherwise don’t impact us, register somewhere in the neighborhood of Dst = -50 nT (nanoTesla). The worst geomagnetic storm of the space age, which knocked out power across Quebec in March of 1989, registered a Dst = -600 nT.

But even that 1989 storm looks puny in comparison to the Carrington event, a geomagnetic storm that zapped the Earth 156 years ago. At the time, the damage wasn’t too bad. But a Carrington-sized storm today could spell disaster.

Monster Storms

The Carrington event of September, 1859 is named for Richard Carrington, the English astronomer who saw the sun flare up with his own eyes. In the days following Carrington’s observation, a series of powerful CMEs hit the Earth head-on, igniting the northern lights as far south as Cuba. Currents electrified telegraph lines, shocked technicians, set telegraph papers on fire, and caused widespread communications outages.

Modern estimates for the strength of this storm range from Dst = -800 nT to -1750 nT.



Things stand to get really dark up in here the next time a Carrington-sized storm hits. Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Human society is far more reliant on electricity today than it was 156 years ago. Berger pointed out that today we have pipelines, electrical transmission grids, and a lot more ground-based electrical conduction technology. So, what would happen if a Carrington-sized event struck us now? Pretty much ever aspect of the modern world would take a hit, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences.

The ground currents induced by large geomagnetic storms can melt the copper windings of transformers that lie at the heart of power distribution systems. If this happens, it can ;ead tp massive power outages. And because our power grid has grown much more interconnected over time, the effects of such an outage today could be spread far and wide.



A map showing the at-risk transformer capacity by state for a 4800 nT/min geomagnetic field disturbance. Regions with high percentages of at-risk capacity could experience long-duration outages extending for several years. Image Credit: J. Keppenman, Metatech Corp

It’s hard to overstate just how much this would uproot our lives. The lights would of course go out, as would the internet, and any device that draws current from the wall. In places with electronically-controlled municipal water supplies — like most modern cities — toilets and sewage treatment systems would stop working. Heating and air conditioning would fail. Perishable food and medication would be lost. ATMs would be useless. Gas pumps would go offline. And so forth.

GPS technology would also be knocked out. Said Grunman, “The GPS system depends on the very precise timing of a course of signals between two points, like a spacecraft and your phone. If you dump a bunch of energetic particles into the atmosphere, that effects your GPS. Which is sobering when you consider the replacement of old aircraft landing technology with GPS.”

Some of these effects could last years, and they’d be felt globally. “The entire magnetic field of the Earth is changing, so the entire Earth feels it,” said Berger.



It’s hard to fathom the social consequences of billions of power-hungry humans suddenly being pulled off the grid, but I think we can all agree it wouldn’t be pretty. What we do know for sure is that the economic toll would be enormous. The National Academies report estimates that total cost of a Carrington-sized event today could exceed $2 trillion dollars — 20 times greater than the cost of Hurricane Katrina.

It’s important to keep in mind that we aren’t talking about some incredibly far-fetched, Armageddon-style apocalypse situation here. In fact, in July of 2012, a massive CME ripped through Earth’s orbit and narrowly missed us. That event, which was picked up by NASA’s STEREO-A satellite, would have registered a Dst of -1200 nT — comparable to the Carrington event.

“If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” space weather scientist Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado told NASA in 2014. “How many other [storms] of this scale have just happened to miss Earth and our space detection systems? This is a pressing question that needs answers.”

Are We Dead in the Water?


Hopefully we can enact some smart mitigation policies before the techno-pocalypse befalls us. Image Credit: Shutterstock

Thanks to a growing army of space weather observatories, we’re much better able to predict CMEs than we were 20 years ago. Still, most space weather scientists agree that if a massive solar storm struck today, we’d be pretty screwed. But we’re trying to change that.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has assembled a task force to explore ways of responding to extreme events. Berger said that they have a national space weather strategy due out in October. The strategy will outlines what the US needs to do to be “better prepared.”

Berger couldn’t comment on the specifics of the policy strategy, so we’ll have to check in again this fall. He did hint that it would be heavy on the recommendations for power suppliers. (Currently, power companies respond to large solar storm warnings by re-routing power distribution around transformers.)

In the meanwhile, what can a space weather-conscious Earthling do? Most of the usual disaster preparedness advice applies. Build an emergency supply kit. Have a plan for getting in touch with loved ones should the phones fail. Keep your car tank at least half full of gasoline. Keep extra batteries on hand, or purchase a solar or hand-crank charger. Back up your data. Make sure you’ve got plenty of spare crowbars — wait, no, that’s the zombie apocalypse.

And of course, you can keep up with the latest solar storm warnings over at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

Sources: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory, “Solar Flares: What does it take to be X-Class?”, “Observations of an extreme storm in interplanetary space caused by successive coronal mass ejections”, “A massive solar eruptive event in July 2012: Defining extreme space weather scenarios”, “Severe space weather events: Understanding the societal and economic impacts”

“Homegrown Terrorists”: New US Draconian Laws Usher in the New World Order

Duhaime’s legal definition of tyranny states: “A form of government other than a monarchy in which the formal written constitution is not adhered to and is broken by force of arms by a single person who then undertakes to rule as a monarch and primarily in his personal interests.”

With his unprecedented number of oppressive executive orders bypassing both US Congress and constitutional rule of law, the ex-constitutional lawyer himself President Obama has become a bona fide dictator and traitor exercising tyranny over the people of the United States.

According to McLean and McMillan’s Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics, essential features present in tyranny and dictatorship are that “the abuse of the state’s coercive force operates in the absence of rule of law” but instead by “rule of the tyrant’s arbitrary treatment of citizens if not by outright systematic use of terror.” The latter application using terror against the populace more accurately describes the evolution of US dictatorship from one criminal regime (Bush-Cheney’s) to Obama’s criminal regime. On marching orders from the globalists, through both the neocons remain in charge.

Clearly mounting evidence blatantly exists in recent years that demonstrate a totalitarian police state power in America. The systematic militarization of police state USA has used terror to recklessly and maliciously abuse its own citizenry, particularly those of color in cities across this nation. The soaring rate of militarized police deploying lethal force to willfully murder unarmed Americans, calculatingly cause growing racial tensions and civil unrest with near complete impunity reflects the growing contempt that agents of US government increasingly harbor against the very citizens they took oaths swearing to protect and serve. This police state phenomenon has unfolded in parallel process with elected government leaders who treasonously plot and destroy America despite taking oaths to both uphold and protect the Constitution and the nation from both foreign and domestic enemies.

While cold-blooded murder of US citizens is skyrocketing now (over 70 times of other Western nations), federal agencies across the boards not even remotely related to either law enforcement or the military have been buying up billions of rounds of bullets that upon impact tear the human body apart. What does that say about a government that has its postal service, Social Security Administration and Department of Game and Wildlife arming themselves to the hilt with brutally lethal weapons? The answer is pathetically obvious. The federal government has embarked on waging an all-out war against its own hapless, law abiding citizens.

Clearly First Amendment rights to peaceful assembly and public protest in this country are also no longer upheld or recognized as rule of law. In recent years the Occupy Movement and Democratic National Convention protests have been marred by excessive police brutality, bloody street violence and unlawful arrest. In the war against American protesters, police attacking them with the chemical weapon of tear gas that in any other war is criminally outlawed by international law, is used in the US to systematically silence the people’s voice from ever being heard in the wake of totalitarian oligarchy.

Criminalizing dissent is redefining homegrown terrorism to include anyone willing to exercise their basic civil liberties guaranteed US citizens under this nation’s Constitution that for over two centuries was recognized as the ultimate rule of law in America. But now any Americans daring to even criticize and object to the federal government’s growing tyranny is conveniently labeled a belligerent and enemy of the state subject to assassination or indefinite imprisonment led by a dictator president who matter-of-factly proclaims his despotic right to kill fellow Americans on US soil.

Early on in this twenty-first century we’ve observed the neocons’ “Pearl Harbor-like event” in their 9/11 inside job needed to justify their forever war on terror, making a war of terror on the entire world by committing human genocide in the false name of “global sustainability” and “CO2 climate change” with the puppet masters’ UN Agenda 21. Starting with their imperialistic war on Islam in the Middle East and Central Asia based on lies of mass deception, the real terrorists are the Empire killing machine that spawnedfake monster mercenary thugs whose CIA staged savagery is showcased weekly on youtube’s video parade.

After more than a dozen years of raging bloody counterinsurgency wars against darker-skinned people abroad, the US Empire has come home to treasonously roost, now in its first phase of war attacking American people. But with globalization a dominant theme in this age of global tyranny, corrupt governments throughout the Western world are each passing a plethora of subversive, draconian laws designed to unleash a thunderous wave of oppressive false imprisonment and citizen murder on a worldwide scale. To the globalists and their long time eugenics plan to depopulate the earth, 6.5 billion of us “useless eaters” must be assassinated. Enter the hard and fast kill method of World War III created by the neocon propaganda of cold war II, complete with first strike nuclear intervention. Never before in recorded human history has this world been so armed and dangerous, and precariously on the brink of self-annihilation.

As this New World Order noose tightens around our necks, more extreme draconian measures are being propagated by governments on a near weekly basis. Here are a few of the latest obscenities being cranked out by both the US federal government as well as by selected state governments, all designed to place the final nail in the coffin of America as a once great, independent, sovereign democratic republic.

As if the TPP as NWO’s secret blueprint and the NSA’s invasive warrantless massive data collection dossier on every American isn’t enough, introduced in June and passed two weeks later is the House of Representatives’ H.R. 2596 that morphed on July 7thinto the Senate as S. 1705, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016allocating funding to the likes of the CIA, NSA and FBI to force all internet servers and search engines to report any suspicious “terrorist” activity they may encounter. The language is worded in ambiguously confusing terminology in order to – out of fear and intimidation – purposely manipulate the likes of Google and Microsoft to over-report as extensions of Big Government. In the unsettling words of activist-writer Stephen Lendman, if this law passes in the Senate, its:

… Vague language makes independent journalists, political, anti-war, and social justice activists, academics and students doing legitimate research, as well as others vulnerable to being called suspected terrorists.

The game is to find any arbitrary excuse to criminalize and institutionalize virtually every American citizen as a potential homegrown terrorist, certifiably mentally ill or otherwise “undesirable” needing to be locked up. A case in point is the out of control weapon of the psychiatric diagnostic system driven by Big Pharma. The latest DSM has reached the absurdity of labeling anyone concerned about ingesting only healthy food with a mental disorder. Obama has executive orders authorizing those who arehomeless, those who have respiratory illness or those who are diagnosed with mental illness to be summarily rounded up against their will and consent and involuntarily placed in FEMA camp settings.

If people are so easily expendable as designated “useless eaters” deemed of little to no value to society by the elite, then virtually any and all of us in America are susceptible to what apparently awaits us sooner than later – incarceration and/or death. This list of expendables can easily include those with handicapped disabilities, the elderly, the infirm, the chronically unemployed, the indebted, those with criminal records, the welfare poor, the morbidly obese, the list can go on indefinitely until the only population left alive are either the globalists themselves or their subservient lackeys. At any rate, according to the likes of Bill and Ted’s bogus eugenics misadventures, the elite’s objective is to radically cull the human herd down from 7.3 billion to a mere half billion. That’s more than 13 out of 14 of us right now on this earth who are presently in the NWO firing squad crosshairs.

Another draconian template recently came to light when in late July Congress passed a law after a 15 minute “debate” to revoke US passports of Americans suspected of affiliating or sympathizing with “foreign terrorist organizations.” This passage gives the US Secretary of State power to now take away passports of Americans’ traveling abroad without any explanation, presumption of innocence or due process. The bill passed in the House without even a count but by mere voice approval, ostensibly to hone in on young Americans flying off to foreign lands to join and fight with ISIS. So If John Kerry concludes that your being in a foreign country threatens or compromises national security in any way, real or imagined, you and your passport become null and void, no questions asked. The room for tyrannical abuse here is once again limitless.

Because in recent years hundreds of thousands of US citizens have seen this Orwellian nightmare coming true in America, they’ve been leaving the US in record number droves, many renouncing their citizenship (3000 in 2013). Recognizing so many are escaping the feds’ totalitarian control, the government is now cracking down on “disloyal” expatriates, mandating foreign banks to fully disclose all US citizens’ assets living abroad, and aggressive IRS land grabbing to seize their foreign properties and assets for unpaid back taxes. This latest ploy is any Americans living abroad who owe the IRS $50,000 or more in taxes are having their passports pulled and these Americans are being sent home.

And this is only the beginning of the Empire’s militant arm extending across oceans to pluck any American citizen within their globalized target zone to rejoin the captive birdcage locked inside gulag Amerika. Ironically but definitely by globalist design, the US-Mexican border is wide open for ISIS terrorists to invade America along with any criminal elements freely entering the US but soon all US borders to Americans will likely be indefinitely closed, in effect captivating all US citizens from escaping their government’s lethal clutches while trapped inside the US. Something’s gone terribly wrong when ex-Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano openly admits terrorists wanting to harm America are arriving because of an unprotected border while law abiding Americans find it increasingly harder to leave the US than ever before.

Speaking of lethal clutches, the state of California is the first state in the US to mandate that all adults in America’s most populated state be required mandatory vaccinationswith absolutely no exemptions along with criminal penalties for those non-compliant. This Gestapo-like imposition has already been in the works nationally spearheaded by the US Public Health Department. Of course scientists, whistleblowers and anti-vacciners have been mysteriously murdered and relentlessly harassed for being courageous enough to tell the sinister truth about the damage that Big Pharma’s toxic vaccines around the world have already afflicted on humanity. Vaccines have been directly linked to spreading the very disease they’re supposed to prevent along with a myriad of horrifying conditions most notably autism, permanent brain damage and a host of other severe afflictions frequently enough resulting in death.

Yet this neo-Nazi global vaccine program conveniently paves the way for merging with long planned microchip implants for every American slated by 2017. And of course this invasive level of extreme central control over the global masses opens up the floodgate to an NWO Pandora’s Box – mind control programming, pre-crime arrests, genetically altered human DNA, electronic pulse weapon victimization, a cashless society where chips are arbitrarily turned off and/or assets seized and the unwanted are unable to feed themselves and systemically are starved to death. But the demonic New World Order must go on!

Speaking of seizing assets, the giant central banks are already stealing money out of private citizens’ accounts with the next massive redistribution of wealth reset button, only instead of tax-funded bail-outs the globalists have already devised economy collapse contingency plans with legislation authorizing banks to bilk billions of bail-indollars that’s already begun. With a gambling debt of $1.5 quadrillion in global derivatives being racked up by criminal banksters, their latest capital offense crime chapter in grand theft planet is already well underway.

In case you’ve been asleep all year long, the US military is massively moving record amounts of heavy weaponry and war making materials around North America like there’s no tomorrow. Timed with the historic Jade Helm 15 exercise ongoing tillSeptember 15th that’s supposedly operating in just nine states, actually Jade’s been busily going on in all fifty states the whole year long. Now the Homeland Securitydomestic army (the militarized police state merging with the US military) has suddenly erected undisclosed checkpoint inspections all over the country, interfering and limiting the right of Americans to freely travel within the lower 48 contiguous states.

Pervasive conditions identical to prewar Nazi Germany are undisputedly alive and well flashing red alert signals throughout America in 2015. What is increasingly clear is the feds are trying to keep the American public (like always) cluelessly blinded in the dark while preparing for large scale war soon fought on US soil, possibly in reaction to the feds’ orchestrated ISIS invasion and false flag attack(s) and/or potential earthshaking comet and asteroid collisions. The house of cards Western economy has been coordinated to collapse simultaneously in perfect storm convergence when inevitable catastrophes befall America with NWO vengeance along with their accompanying ripple effects felt around the world. More people are waking up and bracing for what’s imminently in store for us during the rest of this tumultuous, earth-changing year.

Another highly revealing, equally disturbing eye opener is news of the Pentagon’s recently released Law of War Manual calling for open season on journalists as belligerents and enemies of the state. Apparently the US killing machine in its wanton lust for war crime atrocities no longer feels comfortable embedding even the MSM presstitutes for either Jade Helm or future military conflicts around the world. Now journalists are declared the unwanted enemy, particularly those from independent news outlets bent on exposing Empire evildoing.

The 1165-page new laws of war manual give license to kill civilians with no pretense of concern as “collateral damage” anymore. Now they too are the apparent enemy lurking in every country where black ops are fighting, currently active in upwards of near three quarters of the earth’s nations. Human life on this planet in the twenty-first century under the already here and now New World Order is the US military’s latest enemy target. After all, we’re all casualties in this globalist genocidal war against humanity.

This endgame scenario has actually been a long time coming. The mushrooming of draconian laws in America has been exponentially soaring ever since 9/11. A half dozen years ago a number of states were outlawing private citizens from collecting rainwateron their own property, or prohibiting them from growing vegetable gardens on their private land, or feeding the homeless in public parks. Our freedoms in a controlled fascist police state sponsoring both global and domestic terrorism have been fast drying up over the last fifteen years at unprecedented freefalling speed, paving the way for implementation of the UN’s Agenda 21. Surviving humans in America will be herded into six metropolitan camps on each coast leaving America’s vast underground resources in between to be mined.

Yet still far too many sheeple sleep in delirium, too busily intoxicated and addicted to their gadget toys that entertain, distract, numb and dumb down the masses to ever notice the everyday signs of the one world government tyranny spearheaded by their own treasonous international crime cabal government. Whether too late or not, it’s time for revolution now. The feds’ already have a head start with the war they’re waging against us well underway. But what they’re most terrified of is the sleeping, dumbed down giant of America to finally smarten up and wake up to their diabolical agenda, and fully aware and alert rise up en masse in committed, unified solidarity to actively oppose the elitist death-mongering executioners. We outnumber the demonic sub-human species a thousand to one. While together it’s possible that we can beat their odds, divided we’re all doomed to unavoidably fall.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site athttp://empireexposed. blogspot. com/. He is also a regular contributor to Global Research.

Did The FINAL WAR Just Start?

Dear CIGAs,

The question of our title is very important, “Did the FINAL WAR just start?”. If you polled Americans on this question, 99.9% would answer “no” if you took out the Middle East. Last week I wrote “The Rumblings of War” regarding the IMF rebuffing China’s entry into the SDR. This was followed up by “The shot heard ’round the world” on Tuesday commenting on China’s surprise devaluation. The purpose of this writing is to show you YES, we are in fact at war! Rather than “tell” you we are at war, I feel it is better to point out a few dots, connect some of them and then ask a few questions which might help you understand the war that is in fact being waged. If you can answer some of the questions then connecting dots and forming your own conclusions will be easier.

As our backdrop, we are “told” the world is in recovery from the very bad experience of 2008. Since then, various central banks have monetized debt on a massive scale, led by the Federal Reserve of the U.S.. Undoubtedly, the greatest “export” from the U.S. has been dollars themselves and financial products known as derivatives. For the most part, the world spun merrily until last fall when Saudi Arabia decided to increase production and lower prices. This was presumably done at the request of the U.S. and meant as a tool to injure Russia’s energy sector, economy and financial system. Can the petrodollar which became accustomed to $100 oil be supported with sub $50 oil? There are two sides to this coin, yes the consumer of oil saves but doesn’t lower oil price mean less liquidity in the system? Doesn’t it mean lower velocity and less demand for dollars?

Moving along, did anyone really wonder “why” or what (or better yet, WHO) was behind China being put off for acceptance as a component of the SDR? Then just two trading days later, China devalued their currency in a surprise move…followed by two more devaluations! Remember, the U.S. has been prodding China to strengthen their currency and has gone so far as to call them a “currency manipulator”! Now we see China doing the exact opposite of U.S. requests (demands?). World markets have been shaken, and at a time when liquidity is quite tight.

A stronger dollar since last fall has acted as a constant and nagging “margin call” to the world which has contributed to the lack of liquidity. Have the Chinese finally said “fine, you want to issue a margin call to the world, we will help you issue it. Let’s see what happens to your financial system when the margin call fails to be met?”. Do you see what I am getting at here? The Chinese are now forcing the dollar higher by devaluing their own currency. They understand the dollar is nothing more than a debt instrument, are they attacking and intending to destroy the dollar with its own strength?

Follow this through, a stronger dollar will decrease our exports and slow our already slow or negative economy. A too strong dollar can actually undermine itself and even kick off a derivatives chain explosion. Our banks and brokers are very thinly capitalized, can they withstand losses in derivatives caused by a currency crisis? Can they withstand the losses from failed counterparties unable to pay? Do you see? A currency crisis “caused” by China could be a calamity. China has already accused Citadel (Ben Bernanke’s new employer) of creating the crash in their equity markets, is a currency crisis retaliation for their equity crash and public shaming by the IMF? If you understand how the Chinese think and also understand the works of Sun Tzu, Jim and I ask if China’s strategy is … “In order to destroy the dollar permanently make it stronger temporarily.”?

Another area to look at is gold and silver. Supplies have recently gotten very tight, not just for retail in the U.S. but all over the world. Has production slowed or have buyers stepped up their hoarding? Or, have Western central banks reduced their “dis hoarding”? Whatever it is, something in the supply/demand dynamics has definitely changed …and it has not taken much money to do it! Are these separate events or are they tied together somehow?

This is where it gets weird or some might say “coincidental”. Did anyone see the explosion at the Chinese port city of Tianjin yesterday? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_92WaPxeqCs “Yesterday” being one day after China devalued their currency? I am no rocket scientist and cannot say for sure, but does this not look like a nuclear explosion? Can someone out there explain to me in simple terms how a chemical explosion could look like this? As for the word “coincidence”, the CIA says there is no such thing as a coincidence!

Speaking of coincidences and I have permission to pass this along to you. Jim Sinclair wrote just a few days ago for the first time in many a moon, he said “gold has very limited downside from here and could move to $2,000 as an initial stop”. Do you believe it was a coincidence that he speaks now? No, he was called and was “told” by the same people who guided him in 1980 at the market top. Do you believe it was a coincidence following Jim’s writing, the IMF shunned China followed by the shot heard ’round the world of a yuan devaluation …three times?!!! …not to mention an explosion that could be seen from space! My mind is made up, no it is not any coincidence at all.

or months I have been suggesting Mr. Putin would drop a “truth bomb” revealing all sorts of false flag events and fraud perpetrated by the U.S.. I still believe this is to come and now even more likely. Why more likely? Because the financial sparring between East and West may have taken a very serious turn yesterday and I seriously believe a tactical nuke was set off. If this is the case, China will provide proof and they will retaliate. I believe the smoldering stages of what was a financial/technological/trade war have now become hot and the first shot was fired. I truly do ask for comments regarding what happened in Tianjin. Please do not send me opinions, I would like to hear exactly why or why not the explosion was nuclear. I will believe a tactical nuke until someone proves to me it was not. May God help us all with what comes!

Standing Watch,

Bill Holter
Holter-Sinclair collaboration
Comments welcome!
bholter@Hotmail.com

YOU DON'T NEED A 'NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES' TO SILENCE CRITICS

By Ron Ewart
August 12, 2015
NewsWithViews.com



"Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong, which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." - Frederick Douglass, Aug. 4, 1857

Hitler's rise to power is well documented in history. The Germans left a paper trail as wide as the infamous Autobahn is long. Hitler politically fudged the rules, changed the rules, amended the rules, suspended the rules and lied through his teeth to become Chancellor and then Dictator of Germany. But he went even further with three initiatives that permanently cemented his absolute power.

First, he rammed through the Enabling Act, which suspended the parliament, the constitution and gave the Chancellor absolute power to do anything he wanted on a whim. Interestingly, he managed to convince the Catholics in power to vote for the Enabling Act if he promised to allow them free rein in the society. Begrudgingly, they took the word of one of the most evil men in history and voted for the act. Talk about making a pact with the Devil.

He then, on the "Night of the Long Knives" (June 30 to July 2, 1934) used the military to murder the opposition, in other words his critics. Estimates are that at least 85 senior officers and bureaucrats were murdered during those 3 days, but other estimates put the murders much higher.

Hitler then went on to create some straw men tied to racial and genetic purity and German national pride. The Arian Nation (German race) was, according to Hitler, more pure genetically and superior to all other races. The non-thinking German people bought the propaganda hook, line and sinker.

The first straw men were the Jews. The Jews were not of Arian descent and therefore they were the enemy of the German people and had to be exterminated. Think of it: EXTERMINATED! The extermination started with the "Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht) (Nov. 9-10, 1938) on Hitler's command and ended with "The Final Solution", on Hitler's command.

(NOTE: It has been reported that Hitler was a crystal meth junkie and took injections of crystal meth every day to fight his constant depression. The injections increased as the war progressed.)

Purifying the Arian race didn't end there for Hitler. The sick, indigent, disabled, disfigured and homosexuals were also genetically imperfect and had to be terminated, or could be used for medical experimentation. One of Hitler's political enemies that was murdered during the "Night of the Long Knives", one Ernst Rohm and leader of the German Brown Shirts, was a homosexual.

What may be lost in all this is that the German people were complicit and co-conspirators in the deaths of over 60,000,000 innocents resulting from World War II, another war fought to rid the planet of a megalomaniac, like so many other megalomaniacs in the last 5,000 years, that thought they could dominate all the people of the world ….. with brute force.

Nevertheless, you don't have to use brute force to conquer the world or silence your critics. First, you have to develop a straw man, or let's say a victim, just like Hitler did. Let's see, how many societal victims can we name? The elderly, the poor, the disabled, any ethnic race other than white, homosexuals, women and those cute little male lions (Cecil) that eat their cubs, come to mind. Then you have to create a group who supports and defends the victim. We'll call this group the "Victim Defenders." The rest is easy.

To silence your critics, all you have to do is convince the public that anyone who doesn't support and defend the victim, is cheap, in-sensitive, cruel, a bigot, a racist, a homophobe, a nativist, a voter suppressor, an animal hater, or a misogynist. Since the average individual doesn't want to be accused of being one of these pejoratives, they shut up and the silencing is complete.

Hillary Clinton wasted no time, a few hours before the first Republican Presidential debate on August 6, 2015, to accuse all of the Republican candidates of being voter suppressors for advocating voter identification before being able to vote. Hillary is a true blue "Victim Defender", no matter what it costs.

Critics of any of Obama's policies are of course racists because he is black. Those with religious convictions against gay marriage are bigots and homophobes and they must pay for their transgressions and pay dearly. If you take issue with Hillary's position on women, you are a misogynist.

Of course none of this would be possible or effective if the "Victim Defenders" didn't have the so-called "free" press aiding, abetting and parroting every word that comes out of the mouths of the "Victim Defenders."

Now is there an analogy to Hitler's extermination of the Jews and the genetically challenged, in contemporary America? Who is being exterminated today? Oh, but ladies and gentlemen, you know those being exterminated have no rights under our constitution so it's OK. They are just blobs of protoplasm growing in the womb, with a heart, a brain, lungs and limbs.

So men, on the U. S. Supreme Court, out of thin air no less, decreed that unborn babies ARE NOT subject to the protections of the U. S. Constitution. In fact, under this Supreme Court decision, "Planned Infanticide Hood" can sell the dead baby's body parts for huge sums of money, not legally.

The court decision is quite interesting in that the U. S. Constitution makes no mention of abortion, but every single Founding Father would have reacted with horror at the thought of exterminating a baby in the womb, as it would have vehemently violated their strongly held religious beliefs. Is it any wonder that religious people today are equally horrified?

If men, or women, or a court, can decide that an unborn baby has no rights, then how far of a stretch is it for a mortal man or woman, or a court, to decide to suspend the rights of all humans, even under the alleged protections of the Constitution and even though all living humans are supposed to have unalienable natural rights that come from their creator, not from man, under that Constitution? Not very far it would seem.

And then, to go a little farther with this thought, how a far of a stretch is it for a mortal man or woman, or a court, to suspend the constitutionally protected property rights of landowners? But you see, this has already happened with the passage of radical environmental laws that supersede and have priority over so-called unalienable property rights. These radical environmental laws have now forced the rural landowner to bear most of the brunt of those laws, with no legal recourse or protection of those rights. Our nationally known organization, the National Association of Rural Landowners, was formed 10 years ago to be an advocate for those disenfranchised rural landowners. We are well known in rural circles throughout the U. S.

Then there is the other straw man that the "Victim Defenders" have invented. The victim is the environment and the "Victim Defenders" tell us that the environment is in peril by man's activities and man-caused global warming. With the aid of national and international radical environmentalists, in-the-tank scientists, government and the alleged "free" press that parrots their every word, the endless propaganda convinces the unknowing public that they are guilty of harming the environment by their earthly activities and by emitting carbon dioxide and must pay for their transgressions. If you don't believe in the cult of environmentalism and man-caused global warming, then of course you are an environment and climate change "denier" and must be vilified, smeared and maligned by the "Victim Defenders." It makes no difference that the made-as-instructed science the "Victim Defenders" use to support their environmental policies, is at best a theory and at worst an outright fraud.

The slow slippage into totalitarian rule happens a little bit over time as the people become unwitting co-conspirators in fudging the rules, changing the rules, amending the rules, suspending the rules and allowing our leaders to lie through their teeth in an overt and deliberate attempt to become the Dictators of America, whether the Dictator is one man or woman, or a group of men or women in a cabal of elites, rightfully called an Absolute Democrat Monarchy.

It happens as unconstitutional laws are passed that are not challenged in court. It happens when judges legislate from the bench. It happens when federal, state and local bureaucracies become powers unto themselves with no Congressional oversight, in violation of Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution.

It happens when politicians violate their oath of office and are criminally negligent in discharging their duties for and on behalf of the people, as we discussed in our last article entitled, "We're Charging Governors With Violation of Their Oath of Office."

It happens when you pass the War Powers Act (FDR - 1941) that never sunsets and can suspend the constitution and habeas corpus on the whim of the President. Japanese Americans were interned on this authority.

It happens when Congress passes the Patriot Act that repeals portions of the U. S. Constitution. It happens when you pass the National Defense Authorization Act and the Trade Powers Act that gives extraordinary, unconstitutional powers to the President.

It happens when the government allows millions of illegal aliens to flood into America's welfare state and when government allows criminal illegal aliens to rape and murder lawful American citizens ….. but refuses to do anything about it.

It happens as corruption invades our institutions like a cancer that can't be cured. It happens as the people and the politicians lose their sacred honor, where their word is no longer their bond and where greed, avarice, self-gratification, or the obsession with being re-elected, overtake their instinctive desire to support and defend what is right and punish what is wrong.
And it happens when the "Victim Defenders" of one ideology silences another ideology with false charges of being cheap, in-sensitive, cruel, a bigot, a racist, a homophobe, a nativist, a voter suppressor, an animal hater, or a misogynist.

So in the end ladies and gentlemen, you don't have to kill 'em to silence 'em. You just have to use a victim or victims and public pressure to shut the critics up so that the critics' voices are never heard above the din of the "Victim Defenders"; in an environment where the "Victim Defenders" don't care about the victims except to use them as political fodder; an environment in which dictators are born from the loins of those very same "Victim Defenders."

Who are the "Victim Defenders?" You decide!

The question is, will the American people override the "Victim Defenders", or will they follow in the path of the German people and become complicit and co-conspirators in the death of America and American freedom and as a result, bring chaos and anarchy to the world?