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Fri, 29 Oct 2021
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Light Sabers

Russia stops transit of NATO military cargo to Afghanistan through its territory

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© AFP
Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev has revoked a decree that allowed delivery of NATO military equipment to Afghanistan through Russian territory.

According to the official document, signed by Medvedev and published on Monday, all previous decisions on NATO cargo transit to Afghanistan have now been revoked. This includes an act allowing delivery of military hardware and equipment via rail, motor vehicles, or through Russian airspace.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has been ordered to inform all the countries involved.

Comment: It only makes sense. What has NATO ever done for the benefit of Russia?


Snakes in Suits

79 members of Congress have been in office for at least 20 years

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No wonder Washington never changes - 79 members of Congress have been there since Bill Clinton's first term in the White House. This list includes names such as Reid, Feinstein, McConnell, McCain, Pelosi, Boehner, Rangel and Boxer.

In this article, I am going to share with you a complete list of the members of Congress that have been "serving" us for at least 20 years. They believe that they are "serving" us well, but without a doubt most Americans very much wish that true "change" would come to Washington. In fact, right now Congress has a 15 percent approval rating with the American people, and that approval rating has been consistently below 20 percent since mid-2011. So of course we took advantage of the 2014 mid-term election to dump as many of those Congress critters out of office as we possibly could, right? Wrong. Sadly, incumbents were re-elected at a 95 percent rate in 2014. This just shows how broken and how corrupt our system has become. The American people absolutely hate the job that Congress is doing, and yet the same clowns just keep getting sent back to Washington again and again.

Comment: Yes, there are solutions but Americans need to wake up first and realize there is a problem in order to make the changes that benefit themselves.


Stock Down

JP Morgan warns of liquidity crunch; U.S. farmers in 'dire straits'

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© Worldpropertyjournal.com
Despite the government's 'advice' to young debt-laden students, the tragedy of the American farmer continues with worryingly pessimistic views on the future of the industry. With farmland prices falling for the first time in almost 30 years, credit conditions are weakening dramatically and the Kansas City Fed warns that persistently low crop prices and high input costs reduced profit margins and increased concerns about future loan repayment capacity, and JPMorgan concludes, the industry is currently in dire straits with the potential for a liquidity crunch for farmers into 2016.

Not so long ago, U.S. farmland - whose prices were until recently rising exponentially - was considered by many to be the next asset bubble. Then, almost overnight, the fairytale ended, and as reported in February, U.S. farmland saw its first price drop since 1986.
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© Zerohedge
Looking ahead, very few bankers expect price appreciation and more than a quarter of survey respondents expect cropland values to decline further in the next three months.

Crusader

Sen. Warren releases 'Broken Promises' report in face of Obama's TPP vows

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
© Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
One of the biggest critics of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal being touted by the White House raises questions about the Obama administration's promises for the TPP in a new report.

The 15-page "Broken Promises" study put out by the Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) on Monday this week contains what the lawmaker's office describes as highlights from "two decades of failed enforcement by the United States of labor and environmental standards" related to past free trade agreements.

US President Barack Obama has hailed the 12-nation TPP agreement currently being discussed as a means of enhancing the economy both at home and abroad by establishing new relationships among Pacific Ring nations. Opponents of the trade deal have taken aim at the secrecy with which negotiations have so far been conducted, as well as whether or not the TPP will actually live up to the administration's promises, or spawn results similar to that of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

Comment: She keeps hammering the point but is anyone listening?


Chess

Another moronic plot to damage Russia as the US strains to hold on to world dominance

us lose world power

The Empire is failing.
"The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.....We must, however, be mindful that...Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States."

-- The Wolfowitz Doctrine, the original version of the Defense Planning Guidance, authored by Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, leaked to the New York Times on March 7, 1992

"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia...and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained."
-- The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, page 30

The Laussanne negotiations between Iran and the so called P5+1 group (the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany) have nothing to do with nuclear proliferation. They are, in fact, another attempt to weaken and isolate Russia by easing sanctions, thus allowing Iranian gas to replace Russian gas in Europe. Laussanne shows that Washington still thinks that the greatest threat to its dominance is the further economic integration of Russia and Europe, a massive two-continent free trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok that would eventually dwarf dwindling US GDP while decisively shifting the balance of global power to Asia. To counter that threat, the Obama administration toppled the elected government of Ukraine in a violent coup, launched a speculative attack on the ruble, forced down global oil prices, and is presently arming and training neo-Nazi extremists in the Ukrainian army. Washington has done everything in its power to undermine relations between the EU and Russia risking even nuclear war in its effort to separate the natural trading partners and to strategically situate itself in a location where it can control the flow of vital resources from East to West.

Eye 2

Every man, woman and child: Why NSA surveillance is worse than you've ever imagined

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© Matt Mahurin

Comment: Interesting to note that Establishment-media outlet Reuters published this article.


Last summer, after months of encrypted emails, I spent three days in Moscow hanging out with Edward Snowden for a Wired cover story. Over pepperoni pizza, he told me that what finally drove him to leave his country and become a whistleblower was his conviction that the National Security Agency was conducting illegal surveillance on every American. Thursday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York agreed with him.

In a long-awaited opinion, the three-judge panel ruled that the NSA program that secretly intercepts the telephone metadata of every American — who calls whom and when — was illegal. As a plaintiff with Christopher Hitchens and several others in the original ACLU lawsuit against the NSA, dismissed by another appeals court on a technicality, I had a great deal of personal satisfaction.

It's now up to Congress to vote on whether or not to modify the law and continue the program, or let it die once and for all. Lawmakers must vote on this matter by June 1, when they need to reauthorize the Patriot Act.


Comment: Even if lawmakers actually vote to modify what the NSA is doing - which they most likely won't because they are likely already blackmailed or want to appear "strong" on issues of "national security" - the NSA is, with few exceptions, super-secretive and practically an entity unto itself; it would never allow its goals of profit and totalitarian awareness be curtailed. It is a behemoth bureaucracy of malevolent intent that serves no one but the few within the 1% who are the real movers and shakers on the planet. And few of those interested parties have anything in common with normal and healthy-minded humans.


Comment: The NSA is a technocratic beast; a runaway train with a gaping maw that would seek to label every man, woman and child on the planet as either a threat or a sheep to the very apparatus it seeks to serve. Its power and intent are largely unknown and unimaginable to most because information about it, until only the last few years, has been scarce. It also didn't have the name recognition of the CIA though it is several times larger! And is the stuff of dystopian science fiction novels.

Though presented with a decidedly fundamentalist Christian point of view, the book Project L. U. C. I. D.: The Beast 666 Universal Human Control System by Texe Marrs is well researched and points to what the NSA has been doing for quite a while now. It is all the more interesting since the book was written nearly twenty years ago, and well marks the NSA's development and the growing fruition of its true purpose.


Eye 1

U.S. court rules Federal government not required to disclose cell service disabling policy

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© Flickr/David Becher
Standard Operating Procedure 303 is designed to be used to cut cell service during emergencies. However, some electronic freedom organizations are demanding the details of the program be revealed.

US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia won't require the US to disclose its surreptitious policy regarding a cell service disabling plan.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), filed suit after being refused a FOIA request. A federal court has denied their request but EPIC appealed. The court of appeals declined, issuing a one-sentence decision.

"Upon consideration of appellee's petition for rehearing en banc, the response thereto, and the absence of a request by any member of the court for a vote, it is ORDERED that the petition be denied," they wrote.


Comment: It is a bit odd that the court did not support their decision with any case law - constitutional or otherwise.


The government had argued that the Department of Homeland Security is authorized to withhold documents from a FOIA if their exposure could "endanger" public safety.

EPIC had demanded documents related to 303 in 2011 following the blocking of cell service in the San Francisco Bay Area subway system during a protest. The DHS refused.

Comment: Signs that the American elite are feverishly preparing for something BIG


Pyramid

Mega-Psycho; When the most successful, smartest psychopaths go bigger-- think pyramids

Sphinx and pyramid
© New York Public Library
Sphinx and pyramid -- monuments to psychopaths.
In the world of psychopaths there are different levels of functioning. The lowest functioning psychopaths have weak impulse control. They get caught when they lose control and have rage episodes, often violently assaulting others.

Better functioning psychopaths don't lose control of their temper but they're not that smart in their predatory behavior. They get caught ripping people off, lying, manipulating.

Then there are the smartest psychopaths. They almost never get caught, and when they do, they are often so ensconced behind the barriers of wealth, power and influence that they are untouchable-- too big for jail. Perhaps they are so big that their actions are not even seen as psychopathic.They are often rewarded and honored, their ruses are so effective.

The book and movie, The Corporation, describes how corporations fit the profile of psychopaths in many ways. Corporations get away every day with psychopathic behavior. I would argue that most billionaires also engage in what must be defined as psychopathic behavior.
"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." Honore de Balzac
Balzac nails it. Look close enough at EVERY billionaire and there is crime, certainly not caught and convicted crime, but crime nonetheless. Billionaires have become, like bankers, too big to prosecute. But it's not just criminality that is the problem with billionaires. They have so much power that they engage in manipulation at massive levels. Remember, small time psychopaths and narcissists routinely rip people off. Women are often victims of charismatic psychopaths who empty their bank accounts, sell their homes out from under them and put them into massive credit card debt. That's small time.

The scale of destruction for billionaires and the corporations they run is so, so much bigger it's hard to get your head around it. Think about the pyramids-- massive edifices that cost thousands of lives of slaves. Built for psychopaths. Today's billionaires and corporate heads can be just as bad, but less overt in the megalomaniacal predations.

Dollars

US and Ukraine sign $1 billion loan guarantee

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© RIA Novosti / Alexandr Demyanchuk
The US has signed a $1 billion loan guarantee deal with Ukraine, and is prepared to consider giving additional loan guarantees of up to $1 billion at the end of 2015 if Ukraine continues implementing economic reforms and cooperating with the Congress.

A US-born Finance Minister Natalie Yaresko signed the agreement on behalf of Ukraine, while the US government was represented by US Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt and USAID's Ukraine director Jed Barton.

"If Ukraine continues to make concrete steps to implement economic reforms and will also meet certain conditions of cooperation with the Congress, we will consider the possibility of providing additional loan guarantees of up to $1 billion at the end of 2015," Pyatt said in Kiev Monday after the signing ceremony.

Comment: American taxpayers are paying for this pouring money down the drain. Guess what Kiev will spend this money on?


Info

Drone wars: Germany, France and Italy sign EU drone program to challenge US, Israeli alternatives

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© AFP Photo / John Moore
Germany, France and Italy have agreed to start a European drone program aimed at reducing reliance on US and Israeli technology. The first EU-tailored drone is expected to be operating by 2025.


Comment: A lot can happen by then.


"It's a very important step for European cooperation, a critical cooperation which we must have at our disposal in many theaters of operation," French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said at a joint signing ceremony alongside his German and Italian counterparts.

The three EU states decided to cooperate on a joint project to build an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in 2013. On Monday, they agreed to a two-year technical assessment to lay the basis for a European drone, which is scheduled to be operating in 10 years.

Comment: Europe must be concerned over cyber security of the purchased drones.