Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

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Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Jan 20, 2017 2:20 am

Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame, Swelling the Shock Doctrine

Thursday, January 19, 2017

"With the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which have become costly guerilla conflicts, and with the exposure of the Bush administration's deceptions about 9/11 and the threats posed by Saddam Hussein, we have seen the seeds for new conflicts being planted in West Africa, Venezuela, and Columbia, as well as in the Far East, Indonesia and Korea. In each of these places, there are reserves of oil and gas or strategic transit routes that can help to meet supply needs for whoever controls them.

The Endgame for all this struggle is China, whose oil imports were recently predicted by the Japan Times to increase by 500% before the year 2030."


-Michael C. Ruppert from The Truth and Lies of 9-11 Introduction filmed in 2004



The interregnum of infamy is coming to a close. With the presidential election of 2016 now officially stolen, there have been numerous pieces written about the numerous ways this transition clearly delineates the end of Obamanation and the start of Abomination. Pieces about the repeal of Obamacare, the building of "The Wall" and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Pieces about the ban on Muslim immigration to the US and registry for Muslims in the US. Pieces about domestic policy that try to demonize Trump as something 'other' than a conservative Republican, as the ill-fated Clinton campaign tried to do, but which inevitably, from my perspective, illustrate him as just the inevitable hypocritical Tea Party poster child for government mismanagement at the highest level in the name of a political temper tantrum summed up in a two word mantra: "no compromise."

This is not going to be one of those pieces. My focus will be on foreign policy. Sure, there's plenty of columns out there on Trump's foreign policy, covering the upcoming 'tearing up' of the Iran nuclear deal, making nice with Russia and "bomb the shit out of ISIS." But not many cover the situation from the American Judas perspective: documenting the Deep State and other conspiracies through consciousness of the Carbon Crisis. I've already presented a hypothesis prior to the general election that the overworld might consider President Trump a useful tool to facilitate a transition of Operation Gladio B under NATO control to an Operation Gladio C that decentralizes NATO responsibility (as recently as January 15 he called them "obsolete")and privatizes wherever possible to obscure accountability. Anyone familiar with history knows that wherever Operation Gladio goes, false flag attacks follow. And there have certainly been no shortage of columns exploring the possibility of a 'Reichstag fire' event during Trump's time in office. Where I hope to be different in my exploration of a 'Trumpstag' event requires revisiting an old subject the overworld pimping privatization would prefer we all forget about: Peak Oil.

I happen to concur with the late Michael Ruppert, whom I quoted earlier, that one of the motives for the Gladio B attacks on September 11, 2001 was Peak Oil. Contrary to what pundits have proclaimed, Peak Oil is not "dead"; it never was a question of if, but when it would occur. "Maestro" Dick Cheney certainly didn't have a crystal ball to foresee how technological improvements in hydraulic fracking could forestall its imminence when, as CEO of Halliburton in 1999, he demonstrated his knowledge of Peak Oil in a speech at the London Institute of Petroleum. I don't claim to have a crystal ball either as to whether a peak in total liquid fuel global production (the real Peak Oil, not just light sweet crude) will happen before the end of the decade, or in the 20s or 30s. But it is axiomatic that unless there is massive global deindustrialization (highly unlikely) or massive global depopulation (scarily likely), it will happen before the end of the century. No other liquid fuel on the planet comes close to the energy density or energy return on energy invested as oil. So control of these resources is paramount; not just in securing supplies where they are produced but securing access to transport them for consumption. More on that later.

I think if we want to try to understand why a new 9/11 could occur, it also helps to look back and understand the economic motives behind the original 9/11. Not September 11, 2001, but September 11, 1973. That was the day that General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in a violent coup. He rolled out firing tanks into the streets and had fighter jets assault government buildings. Allende was killed and his cabinet rounded and locked up. About 13,500 civilians were arrested in the days that followed and imprisoned, many sent to the two main football stadiums in Chile where hundreds were tortured and murdered, including popular folk singer Victor Jara. In all, more than 3,200 were disappeared or executed, 80,000 imprisoned and 200,000 fled Chile to avoid political persecution. While much has been written about the assistance that Pinochet received from the CIA, ITT and Henry Kissinger, there is a deeper economic examination by Naomi Klein in her well-researched and compelling book The Shock Doctrine which shows collaboration between the military and a small group of neo-liberal privatization extremists called the Chicago Boys, who were disciples of laissez-faire economist Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. From page 86:


For a time, the coup planning proceeded on two distinct tracks: the military plotted the extermination of Allende and his supporters while the economists plotted the extermination of their ideas. As momentum built for a violent solution, a dialogue was opened between the two camps, with Roberto Kelly, a businessman associated with the CIA-financed newspaper El Mercurio, acting as the go-between. Through Kelly, the Chicago Boys sent a five-page summary of their economic program to the navy admiral in charge. The navy gave the nod, and from then on the Chicago Boys worked frantically to have their program ready by the time of the coup.

Their five-hundred-page bible - a detailed economic program that would guide the junta from its earliest days - came to be known in Chile as "The Brick." According to a later U.S. Senate Committee, "CIA collaborators were involved in preparing an initial overall economic plan which has served as the basis for the Junta's most important economic decisions.64 Eight of the ten principal authors of "The Brick" had studied economics at the University of Chicago.65



While I used the word 'neo-liberal' above to describe this economic approach, I think it's important to point out, considering how often the words 'liberal' and 'conservative' are used as labels to describe political polar opposites, that neo-liberals and neo-conservatives are really the same team in terms of the expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex into what Klein terms the "disaster capitalism complex." Whether it's the Friedmanite Chicago Boys sweeping across the governments of the Southern Cone in the 70s in which 100,000 to 150,000 were tortured and tens of thousands killed to protect the "free" market, or the IMF and World Bank offering aid with major strings attached to Poland and South Africa in the 90s, it all turns out the same in each country: a crisis is used (or manufactured) as a pretext for economic restructuring predicated on massive privatization and eradicating the public sector, resulting in a permanent underclass of anywhere from 25 to 60 percent of the population and the rich becoming super-rich. Exacerbating this Dickensian disconnect in the 21st century are the multi-national corporations profiting off this arrangement: heavy construction, high-tech security, arms dealers, private health care companies treating wounded soldiers, the oil and gas sector, and defense contractors. This paradigm is designed to avoid being voted out of existence. Designating it neo-con or neo-lib obfuscates its real nature: corporatist. As Klein writes on page 105:


Corporatism, or "corporativism," originally referred to Mussolini's model of a police state run as an alliance of the three major power sources in society - government, businesses and trade unions - all collaborating to guarantee order in the name of nationalism. What Chile pioneered under Pinochet was an evolution of corporatism: a mutually supporting alliance between a police state and large corporations, joining forces to wage all-out war on the third power sector - the workers - thereby drastically increasing the alliance's share of the national wealth.

read the rest at ...

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2017/ ... dgame.html


I was considering making this into a vlog, but it took a while to write and I wanted to publish it prior to the inauguration, plus it looks like putting a video together on this post could take another couple weeks. Anyway, since you folks have been my favorite audience on previous vlogs, if there's enough interest expressed here I'll put one together, if not that's fine too. But I hope I've provided enough food for thought in this blog entry whether you agree, disagree, concur or have a completely different spin on what we might anticipate in the years to come, I welcome your perspective.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Jan 25, 2017 7:50 pm

As an informal addendum, I realized today that in my earlier analysis, I didn't really go into the flip side of the Carbon Crisis - climate change - and how that factors into the upcoming Shock. I realized that while reading the latest book from Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything Capitalism vs the Climate. This section from pages 52-53 written in 2014 seemed particularly relevant:

As the effects of climate change become impossible to ignore, the crueler side of the denial project - now lurking as subtext - will become explicit. It has already begun. At the end of August 2011, with large parts of the world still suffering under record high temperatures, the conservative blogger Jim Geraghty published a piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer arguing that climate change "will help the U.S. economy in several ways and enhance, not diminish, the United States' geopolitical power." He explained that since climate change will be hardest on developing countries, "many potentially threatening states will find themselves in much more dire circumstances." And this, he stressed, was a good thing: "Rather than our doom, climate change could be the centerpiece of ensuring a second consecutive American century." Got that? Since people who scare Americans are unlucky enough to live in poor, hot places, climate change will cook them, leaving the United States to rise like a phoenix from the flames of global warming.50

Expect more of this monstrousness. As the world warms, the ideology so threatened by climate science - the one that tells us it's everyone for themselves, that victims deserve their fate, that we can master nature - will take us to a very cold place indeed. And it will only get colder, as theories of racial superiority, barely under the surface in parts of the denial movement, make a raging comeback.51 In the grossly unequal world this ideology has done so much to intensify and lock in, these theories are not optional: they are necessary to justify the hardening of hearts to the largely blameless victims of climate change in the Global South and to the predominately African American cities like New Orleans that are most vulnerable in the Global North.



For more on this very cold place we are being taken to, Naomi Klein wrote this recent piece for The Intercept:

Get Ready for the First Shocks of Trump’s Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein

January 24 2017, 10:11 a.m.

We already know that the Trump administration plans to deregulate markets, wage all-out war on “radical Islamic terrorism,” trash climate science and unleash a fossil-fuel frenzy. It’s a vision that can be counted on to generate a tsunami of crises and shocks: economic shocks, as market bubbles burst; security shocks, as blowback from foreign belligerence comes home; weather shocks, as our climate is further destabilized; and industrial shocks, as oil pipelines spill and rigs collapse, which they tend to do, especially when enjoying light-touch regulation.

All this is dangerous enough. What’s even worse is the way the Trump administration can be counted on to exploit these shocks politically and economically.

Speculation is unnecessary. All that’s required is a little knowledge of recent history. Ten years ago, I published “The Shock Doctrine,” a history of the ways in which crises have been systematically exploited over the last half century to further a radical pro-corporate agenda. The book begins and ends with the response to Hurricane Katrina, because it stands as such a harrowing blueprint for disaster capitalism.

That’s relevant because of the central, if little-recalled role played by the man who is now the U.S. vice president, Mike Pence. At the time Katrina hit New Orleans, Pence was chairman of the powerful and highly ideological Republican Study Committee. On September 13, 2005 — just 14 days after the levees were breached and with parts of New Orleans still underwater — the RSC convened a fateful meeting at the offices of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Under Pence’s leadership, the group came up with a list of “Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices” — 32 policies in all, each one straight out of the disaster capitalism playbook.

To get a sense of how the Trump administration will respond to its first crises, it’s worth reading the list in full (and noting Pence’s name right at the bottom).

What stands out in the package of pseudo “relief” policies is the commitment to wage all-out war on labor standards and on the public sphere — which is ironic because the failure of public infrastructure is what turned Katrina into a human catastrophe. Also notable is the determination to use any opportunity to strengthen the hand of the oil and gas industry.

The first three items on the RSC list are “automatically suspend Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws in disaster areas,” a reference to the law that required federal contractors to pay a living wage; “make the entire affected area a flat-tax free-enterprise zone”; and “make the entire region an economic competitiveness zone (comprehensive tax incentives and waiving of regulations).”

Another demand called for giving parents vouchers to use at charter schools, a move perfectly in line with the vision held by Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

All these measures were announced by President George W. Bush within the week. Under pressure, Bush was eventually forced to reinstate the labor standards, though they were largely ignored by contractors. There is every reason to believe this will be the model for the multibillion-dollar infrastructure investments Trump is using to court the labor movement. Repealing Davis-Bacon for those projects was reportedly already floated at Monday’s meeting with leaders of construction and building trade unions.

Back in 2005, the Republican Study Committee meeting produced more ideas that gained presidential support. Climate scientists have directly linked the increased intensity of hurricanes to warming ocean temperatures. This connection, however, didn’t stop Pence and the RSC from calling on Congress to repeal environmental regulations on the Gulf Coast, give permission for new oil refineries in the United States, and to greenlight “drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”

All these measures are a surefire way to drive up greenhouse gas emissions, the major human contributor to climate change, yet they were immediately championed by the president under the guise of responding to a devastating storm.

The oil industry wasn’t the only one to profit from Hurricane Katrina, of course. So did a slew of well-connected contractors, who turned the Gulf Coast into a laboratory for privatized disaster response.

The companies that snatched up the biggest contracts were the familiar gang from the invasion of Iraq: Halliburton’s KBR unit won a $60 million gig to reconstruct military bases along the coast. Blackwater was hired to protect FEMA employees from looters. Parsons, infamous for its sloppy Iraq work, was brought in for a major bridge construction project in Mississippi. Fluor, Shaw, Bechtel, CH2M Hill — all top contractors in Iraq — were hired by the government to provide mobile homes to evacuees just 10 days after the levees broke. Their contracts ended up totaling $3.4 billion, no open bidding required.

And no opportunity for profit was left untapped. Kenyon, a division of the mega funeral conglomerate Service Corporation International (a major Bush campaign donor), was hired to retrieve the dead from homes and streets. The work was extraordinarily slow, and bodies were left in the broiling sun for days. Emergency workers and local volunteer morticians were forbidden to step in to help because handling the bodies impinged on Kenyon’s commercial territory.

And as with so many of Trump’s decisions so far, relevant experience often appeared to have nothing to do with how contracts were allocated. AshBritt, a company paid half a billion dollars to remove debris, reportedly didn’t own a single dump truck and farmed out the entire job to contractors.

Even more striking was the company that FEMA paid $5.2 million to perform the crucial role of building a base camp for emergency workers in St. Bernard Parish, a suburb of New Orleans. The camp construction fell behind schedule and was never completed. When the contractor was investigated, it emerged that the company, Lighthouse Disaster Relief, was actually a religious group. “About the closest thing I have done to this is just organize a youth camp with my church,” confessed Lighthouse’s director, Pastor Gary Heldreth.

After all the layers of subcontractors had taken their cut, there was next to nothing left for the people doing the work. For instance, the author Mike Davis tracked the way FEMA paid Shaw $175 a square foot to install blue tarps on damaged roofs, even though the tarps themselves were provided by the government. Once all the subcontractors took their share, the workers who actually hammered in the tarps were paid as little as $2 a square foot. “Every level of the contracting food chain, in other words, is grotesquely overfed except the bottom rung,” Davis wrote, “where the actual work is carried out.”

In Mississippi, a class-action lawsuit forced several companies to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back wages to immigrant workers. Some were not paid at all. On one Halliburton/KBR job site, undocumented immigrant workers reported being wakened in the middle of the night by their employer (a sub-subcontractor), who allegedly told them that immigration agents were on their way. Most workers fled to avoid arrest.

This corruption and abuse is particularly relevant because of Trump’s stated plan to contract out much of his infrastructure spending to private players in so-called public-private partnerships.

In the Katrina aftermath, the attacks on vulnerable people, carried out in the name of reconstruction and relief, did not stop there. In order to offset the tens of billions going to private companies in contracts and tax breaks, in November 2005 the Republican-controlled Congress announced that it needed to cut $40 billion from the federal budget. Among the programs that were slashed were student loans, Medicaid, and food stamps. In other words, the poorest people in the United States subsidized the contractor bonanza twice: first, when Katrina relief morphed into unregulated corporate handouts, providing neither decent jobs nor functional public services; and, second, when the few programs that directly assist the unemployed and working poor nationwide were gutted to pay those bloated bills.

This is the disaster capitalism blueprint, and it aligns with Trump’s own track record as a businessman all too well.

Trump and Pence come to power at a time when these kinds of disasters, like the lethal tornadoes that just struck the southeastern United States, are coming fast and furious. Trump has already declared the U.S. a rolling disaster zone. And the shocks will keep getting bigger, thanks to the reckless policies that have already been promised.

What Katrina tells us is that this administration will attempt to exploit each disaster for maximum gain. We’d better get ready.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Jan 25, 2017 8:26 pm

Im guessing deep down, we've all wondered aloud what will be the 9/11-Reichstag event to occur during the Trump administration.
Even a small one, on the order of Paris or Belgium airport could be exploited to a point that would make Cheney wince :p

I remember that Jack Ryan movie from 2002 movie "Sum of all Fears" where a cabal of neo Nazis stage a false flag nuclear terror event at the Superbowl
and made it look like Russia did it to start World War 3.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby SonicG » Wed Jan 25, 2017 8:29 pm

Nah mang, at least we won't have war with Russia...And the Neo-Cons are out of power!!
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Jan 25, 2017 8:51 pm

SonicG » Wed Jan 25, 2017 7:29 pm wrote:Nah mang, at least we won't have war with Russia...And the Neo-Cons are out of power!!


future Simpsons episode...
Homer: "Yeah but still, the emails and benghazi thing..."

Image
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:01 pm

8bitagent » Wed Jan 25, 2017 7:26 pm wrote:Im guessing deep down, we've all wondered aloud what will be the 9/11-Reichstag event to occur during the Trump administration.
Even a small one, on the order of Paris or Belgium airport could be exploited to a point that would make Cheney wince :p

I remember that Jack Ryan movie from 2002 movie "Sum of all Fears" where a cabal of neo Nazis stage a false flag nuclear terror event at the Superbowl
and made it look like Russia did it to start World War 3.


Yeah, I've definitely wondered what the size and shape would be. Mostly, I wonder about who the patsies will be this time. ISIS, obviously, but who else will get ensnared in the web? Mexicans? Chinese? Shit, maybe they'll even throw a Russian in there just to fuck with Trump; see how fast on his feet he is.

This may sound way the hell out there, but maybe he was chosen for this position at this time precisely because he's so unstable. I'm sure they're curious to find out just how livable those underground bunkers (for the rich) and cities (for the elite) really are!

But, most likely, it will just be another occasion for everyone to wrap the flag around themselves, update their Facebook profile pic with the victim du jour, and fall in lockstep.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:02 pm

8bitagent » Wed Jan 25, 2017 7:51 pm wrote:
SonicG » Wed Jan 25, 2017 7:29 pm wrote:Nah mang, at least we won't have war with Russia...And the Neo-Cons are out of power!!


future Simpsons episode...
Homer: "Yeah but still, the emails and benghazi thing..."

Image



YES YES!! :)
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:18 pm

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Considering The Simpsons track record for predicting the future, if they actually did that episode, I'd start looking to invest in a bunker.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:30 pm

all this time trump thought he was in control of the army ..I bet some republicans are writing up the papers as I type


Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Article 4



Pro tip: when meeting w the people who have the power to remove you under the 25th amendment, try not to say anything glaringly insane
https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status ... 9144984576
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:44 pm

seemslikeadream » Wed Jan 25, 2017 8:30 pm wrote:all this time trump thought he was in control of the army ..I bet some republicans are writing up the papers as I type


Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Article 4



Pro tip: when meeting w the people who have the power to remove you under the 25th amendment, try not to say anything glaringly insane
https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status ... 9144984576


I really hope Trump never saw the Oliver Stone movie Nixon. Remember this scene with Nixon (Anthony Hopkins) and Alexander Haig (Powers Boothe)?

INT. THE WHITE HOUSE - LINCOLN SITTING ROOM - NIGHT (1974)

NIXON sits in his chair in a suit and tie, listening to
"Victory at Sea" at top volume. In front of him is a
picture album -- 1922 portraits of the NIXON FAMILY.
HAROLD holding ARTHUR. RICHARD stares glumly at the camera
between HANNAH and FRANK.

GENERAL HAIG, with KISSINGER behind, approaches with some
papers held out in his hand. Nixon sees them, turns down
the hi-fi.

NIXON
"Victory at Sea," Al ... Henry. The
Pacific Theatre. Christ, you can
almost feel the waves breaking over
the decks.

HAIG
I'm afraid we have another problem,
Mr. President.

He hands him a paper. Nixon glances at it.

HAIG (CONT'D)
June twenty-third, '72, sir. The part
that's underlined. Your instructions
to Haldeman regarding the CIA and the
FBI.

NIXON
So?

HAIG
Your lawyers feel it's the ...
"smoking gun."

NIXON
It's totally out of context. I was
protecting the national security. I
never intended --

HAIG
Sir, the deadline is today.

NIXON
Can we get around this, Al?

HAIG
It's the Supreme Court, sir; you don't
get around it.

Nixon, silenced, looks down at the paper in his hands and
sighs.

HAIG (CONT'D)
If you resign, you can keep your tapes
as a private citizen ... You can fight
them for years.

NIXON
And if I stay?


A long moment.

HAIG
You have the army.


Nixon looks up at him, then over at Henry.

NIXON
The army?

HAIG
Lincoln used it.

NIXON
That was civil war.

HAIG
How do you see this?



Nixon, of course, had the discretion, dignity and sanity not to use the army. Would Trump?
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby dada » Wed Jan 25, 2017 11:48 pm

stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Jan 25, 2017 8:01 pm wrote: I'm sure they're curious to find out just how livable those underground bunkers (for the rich) and cities (for the elite) really are!


I can't imagine that when it comes down to it, anyone really wants to live in an underground city. I don't care what kind of pharmaceutical fog they're in.

Who does the laundry down there? What kind of maid service will there be? Robots can vacuum, but there's still a ways to go before they can handle everything that the help does.

You can't really flaunt your wealth in the underground bunker. And what happens to the stock market? These are important questions with no concrete answers as of yet.

And don't forget, these are fragile egos we're talking about. After the nuclear winter, we'd probably open up the bunkers to find they've all killed themselves. I'd put my money on the mutants above ground.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Jan 26, 2017 2:35 am

.

Very interesting piece in a true Ruppert mode, stillrobertpaulsen! Thank you.

Peak carbon, at least from every way it had been harvested until now, has actually happened. We can agree. That's why the resort to the ocean floor, blowing up mountaintops, fracking to the point of turning OK into an earthquake zone (bizarre!), the shale-oil atrocity, and the Arctic hopes. For the moment, this insane atmosphere-killing recklessness has flooded the market with cheap carbon energy, creating the illusion of plenty -- it will last forever, I tell you! This plunder has also slowed down the still so-gradual move to renewable alternative energies (which I do take seriously). It also juiced an enormous investment wave and thus a carbon bubble. Values here have been deflating for the last couple of years, but there has not yet been a big crash. And it is here that I see the thinking of the new gang in the executive.

You may be describing the long-term analytic thinking within the Deep State accurately. I doubt the Trumpians are seeing it exactly the same way. They are pirates with extremely short-term gratification windows. They want their service and their plunder now, always. My belief, based on the new cabinet, is that right now, their main preoccupation is to save the carbon market from the mid- to short-term threat of a devastating crash that would resume economic crisis (which soon enough will be blamed on them, as these things go). Yet when they guy says, "go back to Iraq and TAKE THE OIL," even he knows that a reoccupation cannot be sustained. In the meantime I've convinced myself I had a revelation with the thought that what they really mean is take the oil off the market.

Unfortunately I agree that a Trumptag is in the works. It can't have too many moving parts, cannot be too staged and big and exotic. Unlike a certain CIA family and their extended network of long-time operators who had been in power already many times, these new guys are outsiders to the national security state. As we have seen they are in an antagonistic position with some of its factions (although if Trump falls all would be harmony on that end). We have also seen that in the post-truth/post-factual/post-reality environment, it is easier than ever to blow up any event to mountainous proportions, assuming you control the government and its amplifying Wurlitzer. Really any bombing attack, including outside the U.S., might suffice for use as the trigger of an "enabling" process. (Do these motherfuckers really need more enabling? They can't have enough of it, I figure.)

The narrative of eradicating radical Islamic terrorism is there. I would expect the "event" to be ISIS related, and the response to be in the form of massive intervention (but still mostly air attacks and our troops in the rear) in Syria and Iraq, causing a renewed meltdown of the latter. Middle Eastern oil supply falls for an indefinite period: Japan and China and the tigers are hit hardest. The oil price goes up: this helps Russia as well rescuing values on the endangered carbon investment market. The new war budget swallows everything in sight, making MIC & Co. happy. The borders close, an attempt is made to boost the patriotic devotion (for the first time I think it's an open question whether that will actually work). The jackboots and 24/7/360-degree surveillance tools go wild, of course. Perhaps even the show of an infrastructure spending wave is justified.

Or as the man himself would say, you won't believe how much you are winning. As to more specific thinking I had today, on what the shape of the thing might be, it's highly speculative and inadvisable to post here.

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We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby kelley » Thu Jan 26, 2017 8:17 am

terrific post.

great to see discussion that returns the relationships debt, growth, security, and conflict have to energy. that was mike ruppert's original assertion prior to 9/11, and was what made his work compelling-- how exploration, extraction, and transport impact energy costs. that is indeed the significant factor leading to checkmate in any endgame. this piece does likewise, and have posted it is as such since the original is littered with confusing chart junk. the analysis seems to come out of the intelligence community? but worth a look:


https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/ ... modernity/


Alastair Crooke
What is this ‘Crisis’ of Modernity?

We have an economic crisis – centred on the persistent elusiveness of real growth, rather than just monetised debt masquerading as ‘growth’ – and a political crisis, in which even ‘Davos man’, it seems, according to their own World Economic Forum polls,is anxious; losing his faith in ‘the system’ itself, and casting around for an explanation for what is occurring, or what exactly to do about it. Klaus Schwab, the founder of the WEF at Davos remarked before this year’s session, “People have become very emotionalized, this silent fear of what the new world will bring, we have populists here and we want to listen …”.

Dmitry Orlov, a Russian who was taken by his parents to the US at an early age, but who has returned regularly to his birthplace, draws on the Russian experience for his book, The Five Stages of Collapse. Orlov suggests that we not just entering a transient moment of multiple political discontents, but rather that we are already in the early stages of something rather more profound. From his perspective that fuses his American experience with that of post Cold War Russia, he argues, that the five stages would tend to play out in sequence based on the breaching of particular boundaries of consensual faith and trust that groups of human beings vest in the institutions and systems they depend on for daily life. These boundaries run from the least personal (e.g. trust in banks and governments) to the most personal (faith in your local community, neighbours, and kin). It would be hard to avoid the thought – so evident at Davos – that even the elites now accept that Orlov’s first boundary has been breached.

But what is it? What is the deeper economic root to this malaise? The general thrust of Davos was that it was prosperity spread too unfairly that is at the core of the problem. Of course, causality is seldom unitary, or so simple. And no one answer suffices. In earlier Commentaries, I have suggested that global growth is so maddeningly elusive for the elites because the debt-driven ‘growth’ model (if it deserves the name ‘growth’) simply is not working. Not only is monetary expansion not working, it is actually aggravating the situation: Printing money simply has diluted down the stock of general purchasing power – through the creation of additional new, ‘empty’ money – with the latter being intermediated (i.e. whisked away) into the financial sector, to pump up asset values.

It is time to put away the Keynesian presumed ‘wealth effect’ of high asset prices. It belonged to an earlier era. In fact, high asset prices do trickle down. It is just that they trickle down into into higher cost of living expenditures (through return on capital dictates) for the majority of the population. A population which has seen no increase in their real incomes since 2005 – but which has witnessed higher rents, higher transport costs, higher education costs, higher medical costs; in short, higher prices for everything that has a capital overhead component. QE is eating into peoples’ discretionary income by inflating asset balloons, and is thus depressing growth – not raising it. And zero, and negative interest rates, may be keeping the huge avalanche overhang of debt on ‘life support’, but it is eviscerating savings income, and will do the same to pensions, unless concluded sharpish.

But beyond the spent force of monetary policy, we have noted that developed economies face separate, but equally formidable ‘headwinds’, of a (non-policy and secular) nature, impeding growth – from aging populations in China and the OECD, the winding down of China’s industrial revolution, and from technical innovation turning job-destructive, rather than job creative as a whole. Connected with this is shrinking world trade.

But why is the economy failing to generate prosperity as in earlier decades? Is it mainly down to Greenspan and Bernanke’s monetary excesses? Certainly, the latter has contributed to our contemporary stagnation, but perhaps if we look a little deeper, we might find an additional explanation. As I noted in a Comment of 6 January 2017, the golden era of US economic expansion was the ‘50s and ‘60s – but that era had begun to unravel somewhat, already, with the economic turbulence of the 70s. However, it was not so much Reagan’s fiscal or monetary policies that rescued a deteriorating situation in that earlier moment, but rather, it was plain old good fortune. The last giant oil fields with greater than 30-to-one, ‘energy-return’ on ‘energy-cost’ of exploitation, came on line in the 1980s: Alaska’s North Slope, Britain and Norway’s North Sea fields, and Siberia. Those events allowed the USA and the West generally to extend their growth another twenty years.

And, as that bounty tapered down around the year 2000, the system wobbled again, “and the viziers of the Fed ramped up their magical operations, led by the Grand Vizier (or “Maestro”) Alan Greenspan.” Some other key things happened though, at this point: firstly the cost of crude, which had been remarkably stable, in real terms, over many years, suddenly started its inexorable real-terms ascent. And from 2001, in the wake of the dot.com ‘bust’, government and other debt began to soar in a sharp trajectory upwards (now reaching $20 trillion). Also, around this time the US abandoned the gold standard, and the petro-dollar was born.

Well, the Hill’s Group, who are seasoned US oil industry engineers, led by B.W. Hill, tell us – following their last two years, or so, of research – that for purely thermodynamic reasons net energy delivered to the globalised industrial world (GIW) per barrel, by the oil industry (the IOCs) is rapidly trending to zero. Note that we are talking energy-cost of exploration, extraction and transport for the energy-return at final destination. We are not speaking of dollar costs, and we are speaking in aggregate. So why should this be important at all; and what has this to do with spiraling debt creation by the western Central Banks from around 2001?

The importance? Though we sometimes forget it, for we now are so habituated to it, is that energy is the economy. All of modernity, from industrial output and transportation, to how we live, derives from energy – and oil remains a key element to it. What we (the globalized industrial world) experienced in that golden era until the 70s, was economic growth fueled by an unprecedented 321% increase in net energy/head. The peak of 18GJ/head in around 1973 was actually of the order of some 40GJ/head for those who actually has access to oil at the time, which is to say, the industrialised fraction of the global population.

But as Steve St Angelo in the SRSrocco Reports states, the important thing to understand from these energy return on energy cost ratios or EROI, is that a minimum ratio value for a modern society is 20:1 (i.e. the net energy surplus available for GDP growth should be twenty times its cost of extraction). For citizens of an advanced society to enjoy a prosperous living, the EROI of energy needs to be much higher, closer to the 30:1 ratio.

“You will notice two important trends in the chart above. When the U.S. EROI ratio was higher than 30:1, prior to 1970, U.S. public debt did not increase all that much. However, this changed after 1970, as the EROI continued to decline, public debt increased in an exponential fashion”. (St Angelo).

In short, the question begged by the Hill’s Group research is whether the reason for the explosion of government debt since 1970 is that central bankers (unconsciously), were trying to compensate for the lack of GDP stimulus deriving from the earlier net energy surplus. In effect, they switched from flagging energy-driven growth, to the new debt-driven growth model.

From a peak net surplus of around 40 GJ (in 1973), by 2012, the IOCs were beginning to consume more energy per barrel, in their own processes (from oil exploration to transport fuel deliveries at the petrol stations), than that which the barrel would deliver net to the globalized industrial world, in aggregate. We are now down below 4GJ per head, and dropping fast. (The Hill’s Group)

Is this analysis by the Hill’s Group too reductionist in attributing so much of the era of earlier western material prosperity to the big discoveries of ‘cheap’ oil, and the subsequent elusiveness of growth to the decline in net energy per barrel available for GDP growth? Are we in deep trouble now that the IOCs use more energy in their own processes, than they are able to deliver net to industrialised world? Maybe so. It is a controversial view, but we can see – in plain dollar terms – some tangible evidence fo rthe Hill’s Groups’ assertions.

Briefly, what does this all mean? Well, the business model for the big three US IOCs does not look that great: Energy costs of course, are financial costs, too. In 2016, according to Yahoo Finance, the U.S. Energy Sector paid 86% of their operating income just to service the interest on the debt (i.e. to pay for those extraction costs). We have not run out of oil. This is not what the Hill’s Group is saying. Quite the reverse. What they are saying is the surplus energy (at a ratio of now less than 10:1) that derives from the oil that we have been using (after the energy-costs expended in retrieving it) – is now at a point that it can barely support our energy-driven ‘modernity’. Implicit in this analysis, is that our era of plenty was a one time, once off, event.

They are also saying that this implies that as modernity enters on a more severe energy ‘diet’, less surplus calories for their dollars – barely enough to keep the growth engine idling – then global demand for oil will decline, and the price will fall (quite the opposite of mainstream analysis which sees demand for oil growing. It is a vicious circle. If Hills are correct, a key balance has tipped. We may soon be spending more energy on getting the energy that is required to keep the cogs and wheels of modernity turning, than that same energy delivers in terms of calorie-equivalence. There is not much that either Mr Trump or the Europeans can do about this – other than seize the entire Persian Gulf. Transiting to renewables now, is perhaps too little, too late.

And America and Europe, no longer have the balance sheet ‘room’, for much further fiscal or monetary stimulus; and, in any event, the efficacy of such measures as drivers of ‘real economy’ growth, is open to question. It may mitigate the problem, but not solve it. No, the headwinds of net energy per barrel trending to zero, plus the other ‘secular’ dynamics mentioned above (demography, China slowing and technology turning job-destructive), form a formidable impediment – and therefore a huge political time bomb.

Back to Davos, and the question of ‘what to do’. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, warned that Europe needs to address disagreements spurring the rise of nationalist leaders. Dimon said he hoped European Union leaders would examine what caused the U.K. to vote to leave and then make changes. That hasn’t happened, and if nationalist politicians including France’s Marine Le Pen rise to power in elections across the region, “the euro zone may not survive”. “The bottom line is the region must become more competitive, Dimon said, which in simple economic terms means accept even lower wages. It also means major political overhauls: “I say this out of respect for the European people, but they’re going to have to change,” he said. “They may be forced by politics, they may be forced by new leadership.”

A race to the bottom in pay levels? Italy should undercut Romanian salaries? Maybe Chinese pay scales, too? This is politically naïve, and the globalist Establishment has only itself to blame for their conviction that there are no real options – save to divert more of the diminished prosperity towards the middle classes (Christine Lagarde), and to impose further austerity (Dimon). As we have tried to show, the era of prosperity for all, began to waver in the 70s in America, and started its more serious stall from 2001 onwards. The Establishment approach to this faltering of growth has been to kick the can down the road: ‘extend and pretend’ – monetised debt, zero, or negative, interest rates and the unceasing refrain that ‘recovery’ is around the corner.

It is precisely their ‘kicking the can’ of inflated asset values, reaching into every corner of life, hiking the cost of living, that has contributed to making Europe the leveraged, ‘high cost’, uncompetitive environment, that it now is. There is no practical way for Italians, for example, to compete with ‘low cost’ East Europe, or Asia, through a devaluation of the internal Italian price level without provoking major political push-back. This is the price of ‘extend and pretend’.

It has been claimed at Davos that the much derided ‘populists’ provide no real solutions. But, crucially, they do offer, firstly, the hope for ‘regime change’ – and, who knows, enough Europeans may be willing to take a punt on leaving the Euro, and accepting the consequences, whatever they may be. Would they be worse off? No one really knows. But at least the ‘populists’ can claim, secondly, that such a dramatic act would serve to escape from the suffocation of the status quo. ‘Davos man’ and woman disdain this particular appeal of ‘the populists’ at their peril.
Last edited by kelley on Thu Jan 26, 2017 8:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby kelley » Thu Jan 26, 2017 8:17 am

[dubz]
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby semper occultus » Thu Jan 26, 2017 9:06 am

It has been claimed at Davos that the much derided ‘populists’ provide no real solutions.


the other one is that sonehow "protectionism doesn't work" or is some heretical aberration against the laws of nature...ofcourse it bloody works...virtually every industrialised country used &/or continues to use protectionism in its various overt & covert forms to bolster its economic base ( Japan, China & Germany being examples of moderately successful capitalist economies - the one exception is GB as it industrialised when there wasn't anyone to protect against ) , its the basic logic behind the emerging trade blocs & is used to protect the agricultural sector across virtually the whole developed world
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