Order Out of Chaos: The Global Elites Plan for a “Middle Eastern Union”

Guest Post by Steven MacMillan

The Middle East has been engulfed in a state of chaos for decades now, with the region becoming increasingly unstable in recent years largely due to Western-sponsored proxy wars. The current map of the Middle East was created in 1916 through the surreptitious Sykes-Picot agreement, a deal which divided the Ottoman-ruled territories of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, into areas controlled by either Britain or France. Today the chaos we see in the Middle East is the creation of Anglo-American-Israeli power, which is attempting to redraw the map to meet their present strategic and imperial objectives.

Islamic State: A Creation of US Intelligence

The Islamic State (IS) has hit the headlines in recent months due to their latest terror campaign in Iraq, which has led to US airstrikes in the North of the country. What has been omitted from mainstream circles though is the intimate relationship between US intelligence agencies and IS, as they have trained, armed and funded the group for years.

Back in 2012, World Net Daily received leaks by Jordanian officials who reported that the US military was training ISIL (as it was then known) in Jordan, before being deployed into Syria to fight against Bashar al-Assad. Francis Boyle, a Law professor at the University of Illinois, has described IS as a “covert US intelligence operation” whose objective is to “destroy Iraq as a state”.

The strategy in the Middle East is the creation of a perpetual condition of instability and a policy of “constructive chaos”, where nation states are to be destroyed so that the map of the Middle East can be redrawn. IS provided the pretext to intervene in Iraq once again, with the intervention ensuring the oil fields in Erbil are safely in the hands of multi-national corporations – as opposed to chaotic and dysfunctional mercenaries – as well as providing the justification for the US, Britain and France to “bolster” the Kurds in the North of the country, which furthers the agenda of destroying “Iraq as a state”. As the President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, Richard Hass, wrote in an Op Ed for Project Syndicate last month:

It is time to recognize the inevitability of Iraq’s break-up (the country is now more a vehicle for Iran’s influence than a bulwark against it) and bolster an independent Kurdistan within Iraq’s former borders.

As I reported in June, the policy in Iraq is to split the country into 3 separate religious and ethnic mini-states: a Sunni Iraq to the West, an Arab Shia State in the East and a Free Kurdistan in the North. The objective of dividing Iraq into 3 has been discussed in neo-imperial policy circles since as far back as 1982, when Israeli journalist – who also had close connections to the Foreign Ministry in Israel – Oded Yinon, wrote an article which was published in a journal of the World Zionist Organisation, titled: “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”. Yinon discusses the plan for a Greater Israel and pinpoints Iraq in particular as the major obstacle in the Middle East which threatens Israel’s expansion:

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel (p.12)……….The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. (p.11.)

Yinon continues:

In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. (p.12)

Israel is merely an extension of Anglo-American power and has been since its creation in 1948, so any expansion of Israeli territory is synonymous with an increase in Anglo-American hegemony in the region. Arthur James Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary from 1916 to 1919 and author of the 1917 Balfour Declaration – which declared British support for the creation of a Jewish state (Israel) in Palestine – was also a member of the Milner Group, according to CFR historian Carroll Quigley in his book the Anglo-American Establishment (p.311). The Milner Group was the precursor to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) or Chatham House; the British arm of the CFR, with both organisations sharing the collective objective of creating an Anglo-American global empire. 


The Plan for a “Middle Eastern Union”

After funding and being directly responsible for much of the chaos and instability that has been unleashed in the Middle East, western think tank strategists are proposing a centralised, sovereignty-usurping union as the solution to the problem they have created, in a classic deployment of the order out of chaos doctrine. As The New American reported last month, Ed Husain, an Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the CFR, compared today’s Middle East to Europe before the EU was created, and he asserted that the only solution to the ongoing violence is the creation of a “Middle Eastern Union”. This sentiment was echoed by Hass, who compared the Middle East of today to 17th century Europe, in his article “The New Thirty Years War”. Hass proclaims that the future will likely be as turbulent unless a “new local order” emerges:

For now and for the foreseeable future – until a new local order emerges or exhaustion sets in – the Middle East will be less a problem to be solved than a condition to be managed.

The idea of an EU-style governing body over the Middle East is not a new concept. In 2008, the Iraqi government called for an EU-style trading bloc in the Middle East that would encompass Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and later perhaps the Gulf states, in an address to the US think tank the Institute of Peace. The President of Turkey, Abdullah Gül, was in attendance at the second meeting in 2011 along with Egemen Bağış, the ‘Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator’ at the time, who gave a speech where he described the EU as the model for the Middle East:

We all know that the EU emerged as the most successful peace and development project of the history after a bloody war. Today, we have the very same expectations for the Middle East.

Whether a “Middle Eastern Union” will be created is difficult to determine at this point in history, but there is no question that the process of redrawing the map of the Middle East is well under way.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”, where this first appeared.

The Ebola Outbreak: U.S. Sponsored Bioterror?

 Guest Post By Jason Kissner

We can now be extraordinarily confident that the U.S. government is lying, in key material respects, about the latest Ebola outbreak—and not just because it lies about nearly everything of political consequence.  This article shows that there are compelling reasons to believe we are being told three big lies about Ebola.  It also offers a simple, rational, yet disturbing, explanation that very tidily accounts for all three lies.  The explanation supposes that the current Ebola outbreak consists in an act of U.S.-linked bioterror.
One key U.S. driven lie has to do with the Western MSM’s insistence that nobody of any repute believes that Ebola might be airborne.  On this issue, the Public Health Agency of Canada remarks:

In the laboratory, infection through small-particle aerosols has been demonstrated in primates, and airborne spread among humans is strongly suspected, although it has not yet been conclusively demonstrated (1, 6, 13).  The importance of this route of transmission is not clear. Poor hygienic conditions can aid the spread of the virus.

A few scientific studies expressing concern about the airborne possibility are cited in this article, and other such studies are not hard to find. 
So there are people with authority to speak to the issue who believe that there is some cause for concern regarding the airborne Ebola prospect, but the U.S. government/MSM complex instead lies and acts like this isn’t the case.
Before getting to the second U.S. lie, it is important to mention three facts that have not received enough discussion.  First—and this may be of pivotal significance–we still have no ideahow Ebolagot to West Africa.  See for yourself; there’s never been an Ebola outbreak in West Africa before.
Perhaps the racist U.S./MSM view is that all African countries are the same, so who cares?
Second, the current outbreak, in terms of the number and international breadth of infections, does seem to be far more contagious than any previous outbreak; as the previous link shows, we now have at least 1,975 cases.
Now pause for a moment and take this fully on board: the 1,975 cases exceed the total number of Ebola cases from 1977 to 2014’s outbreak.  So it’s no surprise that we have, for example, signs of infected individuals in Albania.
The second lie really is a lie of nondisclosure, and concerns the reality that the MSM has not told us that we are dealing with a biologically distinct form of Ebola that has never been seen before.
So, consider the following disconcerting information appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine in April 2014 regarding the current West African, Guinean outbreak of Ebola:

Phylogenetic analysis of the full-length sequences established a separate clade for the Guinean EBOV strain in sister relationship with other known EBOV strains. This suggests that the EBOV strain from Guinea has evolved in parallel with the strains from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon from a recent ancestor and has not been introduced from the latter countries into Guinea. Potential reservoirs of EBOV, fruit bats of the  species Hypsignathusmonstrosus, Epomopsfranqueti, & Myonycteristorquata, are present in large parts of West Africa.18 It is possible that EBOV has circulated undetected in this region for some time. The emergence of the virus in Guinea highlights the risk of EBOV outbreaks in the whole West African subregion.

Furthermore, from the same study:

The high degree of similarity among the 15 partial L gene sequences, along with the three full-length sequences and the epidemiologic links between the cases, suggest a single introduction of the virus into the human population. This introduction seems to have happened in early December 2013 or even before. 

So, the Guinean variant of Ebola we now confront has been found to be sufficiently genetically distinct from all previous versions of Ebola that it has been assigned its own genetic branch, or clade, and it is believed to have evolved in parallel from an ancestor held in common with a variant of Ebola native to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon. Moreover, the current outbreak began not in June or July, but as early as April 2014 and perhaps even earlier than December, 2013.
And, we seem to have a single introduction of the Guinea (West African) Ebola variant into the human population.  Thus, we seem not to have, for example, something along the lines of multiple bites of humans by supposedly Guinea variant Ebola infected fruit bats. 
Finally, the Western Africa Ebola outbreak does not appear to be traceable to Central Africa or anywhere else, and so we still do not know how Ebola got to West Africa.
Let us briefly summarize before presenting the third U.S. Ebola lie and concluding with a reasonable explanation that ties the three lies together.
The Guinea Ebola variant has never been seen before.  It might well be far more contagious than any Ebola variant hitherto encountered; it could even be airborne.  We still have no idea how Ebola arose in West Africa, but it did so some time ago—well before the Western MSM started to spew its lies.
Now the third U.S. Ebola lie: In a Matt Drudge-linked article entitled “The Federal Government’s Inconsistent Ebola Story”, we find that the U.S. government is telling two completely inconsistent stories regarding the circumstances surrounding delivery of MappPharmaceuticals’ magic ZMapp Ebola drug to Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol.  Thus, we have:
According to the CDC, it was Samaritan’s Purse, the private humanitarian organization that employs Dr. Brantley, who reached out to them in an attempt to find an experimental Ebola drug. The CDC says it passed Samaritan’s Purse along to NIH, who referred them to contacts within Mapp.

“This experimental treatment was arranged privately by Samaritan’s Purse,” the CDC said. “Samaritan’s Purse contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who referred them to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH was able to provide the organization with the appropriate contacts at the private company developing this treatment. The NIH was not involved with procuring, transporting, approving, or administering the experimental treatments.”

The New York Times first reported this version of events on Aug. 6, and the statement was posted on the CDC’s website a few days later,where it remains.
But, as the Morning Consult reports in the same article, we also have:
But the NIH told Morning Consult one of its scientists on the ground in West Africa approached the charity before the group had even decided to pursue an experimental alternative.

“The NIH scientist who was in West Africa referred Samaritan’s Purse to company contacts because they were best equipped to answer questions about the status of their experimental treatment,” the agency said in an email to Morning Consult. “This occurred before Samaritan’s Purse decided to pursue an experimental therapy.”

A statement from Samaritan’s Purse also conflicts with the CDC’s telling of events, and indicates the NIH and other government agencies may have played an active role in procuring the drugs.

“The experimental medication given to Dr. Brantley was recommended to us,” the group said. “We didn’t seek it out, but worked with the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies to obtain this medication.”

Hence, we have the U.S. government saying both that delivery of the drug to the aid workers was initially government’s idea, and that it wasn’t initially government’s idea.  Since both of these possibilities cannot be true, we have our third U.S. federal Ebola lie. 
But whose idea was it, really, to deliver the ZMapp magic serum (which is said to have begun reversing Brantly’s condition within 20 minutes to an hour)?  In all likelihood it was the U.S. government’s idea, at a minimum for the following reason mentioned in the Morning Consult article:

If [Mapp] did this on their own, they must have had unbelievable confidence in the product and lawyers who know this up and down,” Vox said. “If they went this alone, their investors should be worried, because that’s reckless. A team of scientists could get in a lot of trouble doing that, and I can’t imagine they run their company that way, especially considering they have support from the Department of Defense.

Let’s put all of the above together and move toward wrapping matters up.We have what appears to be the most contagious variant of Ebola ever encountered, its genetic form is novel in important respects, and we still have no idea how it arose in West Africa. 
Yet, we are told that an experimental drug, ZMapp—produced by a previously unheard of U.S. firm with U.S. Department of Defense ties—is functioning in miraculous fashion.  Furthermore, the U.S. government cannot keep its story straight about who initiated the delivery of the experimental drug to the U.S. aid workers, but there are compelling reasons to suppose it was the U.S. government that engineered the delivery.
All of the foregoing should prompt us to ask: When was Mapp Pharmaceutical’s magic drug ZMappdeveloped?
The following language, drawn from an article at International Business Times, might provide guidance:
A statement from Mapp said:

“ZMapp is the result of a collaboration between Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc, LeafBio, DefyrusInc, the US government and Public Health Agency of Canada.
“ZMapp is composed of three ‘humanised’ monoclonal antibodies manufactured in plants, specifically Nicotiana. It is an optimised cocktail combining the best components of MB-003 and ZMAb.
“ZMapp was first identified as a drug candidate in January 2014 and has not yet been evaluated for safety in humans. As such, very little of the drug is currently available. Any decision to use an experimental drug in a patient would be a decision made by the treating physician under the regulatory guidelines of the FDA.

One very interesting thing to note is the parties involved in producing ZMapp.  Two of the parties are the U.S. government and the Public Health Agency of Canada—and the Public Health Agency of Canada, you will recall, is the very same agency that “strongly suspects” that Ebola might be airborne (see the second paragraph of this article).  Yet, we are constantly told the U.S. government suspects no such thing.
But there are even more important things to consider.
Does “ZMapp was first identified as a drug candidate in January 2014” mean that ZMappwas designed from the ground up, pretty much when the outbreak began, with the specific purpose of treating the Guinea Ebola variant (see above for timing of the outbreak)?  Or, does it mean that ZMapp was repurposed in some way to grapple with the Guinea variant?  Or does it perhaps mean something else entirely?
In any event, if the above MappPharmaceuticals statement is true, this much is perfectly clear: a major decision about ZMapp and its potential efficacy was made in January 2014, and that decision appears to have been made very close on the heels of the beginning of the current Guinea Ebola outbreak. 
Therefore, if ZMapp really is the miraculous success it is purported to be, we are given to believe that, in Research and Development terms, results must have been achieved virtually overnight.    This is because with the beginning of the outbreak of the brand newGuinea Ebola variant dated to around December 2013, Mapp could not possibly have had much time before its January 2014 decision to target the Guinea Ebola variant with ZMapp.
Or might Mappin fact have had plenty of time?
One possibility is that Mappdid have plenty of time, because it knew about the brand new Ebola variant before its debut appearance in West Africa.  This would be very strong evidence of a bioterror conspiracy, would it not?  Of course, we are very far from sure about this prospect.
However, even if we are to believe that Mapp did not know about the novel Guinea Ebola variant before that variant’s first appearance, but did in fact advance anyway with ZMapp againstthe Guinea variant in January 2014, wemust still ask exactly how ZM appended up being effective against a brand new variant Mapp would, under the present assumption, have only just encountered. 
Perhaps Mapp had been in the process of designing ZMapp so that it could successfully attack already extant Ebola variants, and whatever properties made it effective against those already extant variants also transferred to the novel Guinea variant?
Maybe.
But if that is so, ZMapp should prove successful against variants of Ebola other than the Guinea variant.  Will it?
If it doesn’t prove successful against variants of Ebola other than the Guinea variant, I do not see how one can logically avoid the conclusion that the West African rooted, Guinea variant of Ebola amounts to U.S. government linked bioterror.
Unless, of course, one is willing to invoke what amounts to a miraculous stroke of luck consisting in the design of a solution that successfully attacks something that’s never been seen before and was not anticipated—even though the solution fails against related versions of the same problem.
In closing, please note that the U.S. act of bioterror explanation economically accounts for all three U.S. lies discussed in the article.  It explains why the U.S. government is lying about the airborne status of Ebola, why the U.S. government/MSM hybrid is in no hurry to disclose the geographical and virological novelties of the Guinea variant, and, finally, why the U.S. government, out of one side of its mouth, wants to act like its “miracle experimental drug” had to be pried out of its greedy and comprehensive regulatory hands.
It must be stated, though, that there is one last possibility after all, which is that the Dr. Kent Brantly miracle recovery is no real recovery at all.

Dr. Jason Kissner is Associate Professor of Criminology at California State University. Dr. Kissner’s research on gangs and self-control has appeared in academic journals.  His current empirical research interests include active shootings.   You can reach him atcrimprof2010@hotmail.com.

How The U.S. Dollar Reserve Currency Dies… Slowly At First, Then All At Once

Guest Post By Chris Hamilton

By any objective measure Reserve Currencies — particularly the US dollar — are dying. The question most analysts get when discussing the reality of the US and world economic/financial situations is, if things are so dire, why doesn’t it feel like it? (***see dire links below )

If all the facts stated about $6 trillion annual (GAAP basis) US budget deficits or US government total debt and obligations in excess of $90 trillion are true, why does the system still “function”???  Social Security recipients receive checks, the military is still paid, the garbage gets picked up, and stores still have stocked shelves. Life seems hectic but generally “normal”. So, is there a problem at all and if so, when and how will it go from theoretical to reality?

US is Bankrupt: $89.5 Trillion in US Liabilities vs. $82 Trillion in Household Net Worth & The Gap is Growing. We Now Await the Nature of the Cramdown. – See more at: http://charlesbiderman.com/2014/08/04/us-is-bankrupt-89-5-trillion-in-us-liabilities-vs-82-trillion-in-household-net-worth-the-gap-is-growing-we-now-await-the-nature-of-the-cramdown/#sthash.RkY8CKFZ.dpuf

US is Bankrupt: $89.5 Trillion in US Liabilities vs. $82 Trillion in Household Net Worth & The Gap is Growing. We Now Await the Nature of the Cramdown. – See more at: http://charlesbiderman.com/2014/08/04/us-is-bankrupt-89-5-trillion-in-us-liabilities-vs-82-trillion-in-household-net-worth-the-gap-is-growing-we-now-await-the-nature-of-the-cramdown/#sthash.RkY8CKFZ.dpuf

***US is Bankrupt: $89.5 Trillion in US Liabilities vs. $82 Trillion in Household Net Worth & The Gap is Growing. We Now Await the Nature of the Cramdown
or
***America Has Adopted The Sclerotic European / Japanese Model
or
***The Story of America’s Economic Illiteracy – Truth hidden in Plain Sight…Yet We Choose to be Blind?
Commit to about 5 to 10 minutes of reading and maybe we can have a very plausible answer.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

Following WWII, a new monetary system for international commerce and finance was implemented. This agreement known as Bretton Woods (the location in New Jersey where the conference was held) gave the expected Allied victors the spoils and represented the World as of 1945.

CHIEF FEATURES OF THE BRETTON WOODS SYSTEM:

• An obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate by tying its currency to the U.S. dollar
• The ability of the IMF (created by the Bretton Woods agreement along with many other current day acronyms) to bridge temporary imbalances of payments (IMF would loan money to nations in trouble with strings attached to ideally resolve these imbalances and keep the system functioning).
• Address the lack of cooperation among other countries and to prevent competitive devaluation of the currencies as well (avoid countries printing money to cheapen their exports and gain advantage in trading)
• To ensure the US did not abuse it’s privilege as the world’s de-facto currency, the US dollar would be freely convertible into gold (if the US printed an excess quantity of $’s, nations accumulating too many dollars from US trade/budget deficits could convert and retire these dollar’s into gold (gold representing a relatively fixed quantity and storage of value).

WHAT ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE:

• 1946-1959 – Growth surged while debt was flat.
• Total US government obligations grew minimally from $269 billion to $285 billion. As a result the Debt to GDP ratio fell from 113% to 54%. In other words, the US essentially ran a balanced budget adding approximately $1 billion per year to national debt over 13 years, (about a third of a % annually…all while conducting the Marshall plan, the Korean War, and huge US infrastructure projects). The US was the model of global economic stability and fiscal restraint.
• 1960-1975 – Debt Doubled While GDP Grew by More Than Three Times.
• US government debt almost doubled from $285 billion to $533 billion while GDP more then tripled, from $525 billion to $1.7 trillion. In 1975 the US hit a Debt/GDP post Great Depression low of 31%. But great forces were already set in motion that would lead us to today’s trouble…including the initiation of the Great Society in ‘65 and LBJ’s four years later theft of these surplus’ meant to cover future tax shortfalls for these programs…all to hide the true cost of the Vietnam war…all under the “Unified Budget”. The US had put in motion the betrayal of Bretton Woods for national political purposes and the unfunded liability monster was borne.
• 1975-2014 – Debt Spiked 168 times, 16 times GDP Growth, 11 times Household Net Worth.
• Total US government obligations grew from $533 billion to $89.5 trillion while GDP grew 10x’s $1.7 trillion to 17 trillion and Household net worth grew 15x’s $5.4 trillion to $82 trillion. Median household income grew 3x’s from an estimated $17k to $51k annually while Real median household income barely grew 1.13x’s, from $45k to $51k annually. Bad policy decisions of 4 decades earlier went parabolic.
Below is a chart of GDP, Household Net Worth, and Federal Treasury Debt all indexed to 1973 to visualize the growth and relationship in each over the last four decades.

RAMIFICATIONS

• The US had roughly 19,000 tons of gold as of the end of WWII and peaked in excess of 20,000 tons by 1958…but by 1971, the redemptions by nations concerned over US deficit spending and printing had reduced the US gold holdings to just over 8,000 tons and a run on the remaining gold (the convertibility of the dollar to gold being the dollars foundation of the dollar) looked likely.
• 1971 President Nixon closed the US dollars convertibility into gold…but to avoid the dollars demise, Nixon struck an agreement with Saudi Arabia (and soon after all of OPEC) that all future purchases of oil will need be conducted in US dollars (regardless the buyer or destination). In exchange, the US promised weapons and protection to these close “allies” of the US. Unfortunately, this policy rewarded some very un-democratic and very despotic leaders in the middle-East whom reaped the rewards with a tiny minority of their cohorts. These trade policies typically left the populace poor and seething with anger at the US for supporting kings and dictators who ruled in complete contradiction to US founding principles and the best interests of the citizens of these nations.
• Ultimately, this petro-dollar agreement allowed the US to run very large trade and budget deficits and export the excess dollars worldwide (through our trade/budget deficits) that would have otherwise created significant inflation within the United States.
• This Petro-dollar agreement compelled by force of necessity a gigantic supply of dollars to be accumulated by foreign nations worldwide.
• In fact, the estimate is that there are more than 4x’s the supply of all money in the US ($2.8 trillion, M1**) held abroad ($12+ trillion). This includes nearly $6 trillion in foreign held US Treasury’s, $6+ trillion in formal Reserves, and the Federal Reserve estimated that 55% to 70% (and potentially in excess of 100% of M1) of all US currency was held abroad and increasing as of 2012*. As an aside, 80% of all US currency is in $100 bills and the vast majority of these reside overseas, but foreigners also hold lesser amounts in $50’s and $20’s. These formal and informal dollar and US Treasury bond reserves held by foreign nations allow trade in oil and other de-facto dollar denominated commodities (legal and illicit).
Crisis and Calm: Demand for U.S. Currency at Home and Abroad from the Fall of the Berlin Wall to 2011
**M1 = the supply of money measured by all physical money, checking accounts, and liquid cash like money within the US economy

BRETTON WOODS, THE DOLLAR, & THE “BRICS”

But global power has shifted a bit since 1945 and the US has balked on its Bretton Woods pledges, the Middle-East teams with “radicals” and “revolutionaries”, and now the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) are on a path to de-emphasize dollar usage in favor of localized, decentralized currencies in trade. The US leans on the privilege of the dollar (established @ Bretton Woods) to maintain its lifestyle via massive $6 trillion annual (GAAP basis) deficit spending…but the dollars global dominance wanes more every day while America increasingly leans on this rickety crutch.
Today, the BRICS account for about 25 per cent of global GDP, 35 per cent of total international reserves (with China at over $4 trillion), 25 per cent of total land area and around 42 per cent of the world’s population…and BRICS affiliated nations increase these numbers significantly more.
However, despite their economic weight, the BRICS’ representation, voting power, participation in management and staff in the Bretton Woods institutions (International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and International Finance Corporation) and others like the Bank of International Settlement, displays a major deficit of ‘voice’ and influence.
As of July, the BRICS nations formally agreed on a BRICS bank funded w/ $100 billion to rival the influence and power of the IMF. This money is to be lent to nations in need, as an alternative to the IMF (typically with US directed strings attached). China, Brazil, Russia, and so many more are moving away from clearing their trade in dollars and instead utilizing the Yuan, the Real, the Ruble, etc. Please note that Russia and Saudi Arabia are now the largest exporters of oil – and at least Russia is moving rapidly to settle in anything but the dollar…and the troubles in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, etc. are all symptomatic of this conflict for which currency(s) will be used to settle trade.
China is organizing itself and its trade partners in at least 24 separate agreements to transact in the Yuan rather than the dollar. As of 2009, less than 1% of China’s global trade was settled in Yuan but by mid-2013, 17% of Chinese trade was being cleared in Yuan…almost entirely at the expense of the dollar. And the trend and structure to allow far more has only accelerated throughout the BRICS.

ENOUGH – WHAT’S THE ANSWER ALREADY?

It should be very clear where this trend is going and the implications to the United States – the perennially optimistic Congressional Budget Office and like prognosticators have acknowledged the US will soon need to run even larger budget deficits in excess of $1 trillion (and that’s assuming all goes well) due to large debt loads, growing social programs, and large unfunded liabilities. Of course the situation will only get worse because:
• We consistently spend more cash than we take in as revenue but due to Cash-Based accounting the true nature of the deficit spending is concealed.
• We continue adding new participants to existing entitlement programs increasing present and future unfunded liabilities…while the tax payers per social program recipient is expected to fall from 4 to 2 per recipient within a decade.
• We add new entitlement programs (i.e. the Prescription Drug Act in 2003 and the Affordable Care Act in 2010) absent funding therefore increasing our future liabilities.
• We incur interest expense each year on our Federal Obligation; real interest on our debt held by the public (included in item (a) above), virtual interest on our intra-governmental borrowings, and virtual interest on the present value of our unfunded liabilities).
All this will necessitate the world accept and utilize ever more dollars. HOWEVER, the existing dollar-centric system is not in the favor of most of the new powers of the world…and they are rapidly moving to reduce their dependence on the dollar…just as the US will need foreigners to embrace it more than ever. Rock meet hard place.
If $12+ trillion (plus the continuing growth in available dollars) is no longer needed as reserves for international settlement – where does that money go? Well, a relatively small reduction in dollar trade replaced by Yuan, Ruble, Real, etc. (say 5%-10% over a period, say 2014) would free up $600 billion to $1.2 trillion to move where dollars are still readily accepted…the US of A. Typically, these dollars would be levered up (say conservatively 5x’s)…and voila, $3 trillion to $6 trillion of purchasing power is introduced to America in 2014.
Things like stocks, bonds, and Real Estate would be very positively pushed higher and higher (rents, insurance, etc. would also be unwelcomingly pushed higher as wages remain flat due to structural unemployment issues…in other words, asset owners are rewarded, wage earners are punished). The Federal Reserve’s Z1 Household Survey for 2014 would be similar to 2013’s 11+% increase in US assets by $9.5 trillion ($84.5 trillion (’12) to $94 trillion (’13))…all while household liabilities (mortgages, all loans, etc.) barely increased ($140 billion) and wages remained flat.
But let’s say in 2015 the pace of BRICS non-dollar trade continues expanding and international settlement in non-dollars grows by 10% to 20%…and 10% to 20% of dollars are no longer needed as reserves to buy oil, wheat, finance trade, etc. etc. This is about $1.2 trillion to $2.4 trillion formerly held reserves cleared to go looking for their home…the US. $1.2 trillion to $2.4 trillion levered again very conservatively @ 5x’s (or 20% cash down) is $6 trillion to $12 trillion in “hot” money looking for assets.
With just a fraction of all the inflation the US exported over the ’71-present period coming home…this creates what amounts to a hyper-monetary dollar overdose in America. Foreign holders of US money chasing assets in America where dollars are readily accepted. And of course, once these things start, they create a momentum of their own and eventually a likely counter by the administration to freeze out these dollars and the likely panic this ensues both domestically and internationally.

IMPLICATIONS

The minority of Americans with assets see their value rise but the majority will get much poorer…those dependent on wages and social programs (generally younger, with families, retirees living on SS, etc.) absent assets are made dramatically poorer (wages stagnant while costs rise…rent, food, insurance, school, fuel, etc.). The economy suffers as consumers lose ground and inequality runs rampant. How it plays out from there is impossible to know as supply and demand implications are met with 2nd derivative government reactions and on and on and on. Beyond that, it’s all just plain guesses with little historical precedence to guide us.
Of course there are many steps and actions that could be taken to acknowledge our challenges and collectively address them through shared sacrifice and a long term restructuring of our economy. But the 4+ decade trend of fraudulent accounting, financialization, and, well, like a hundred other trends that need be reversed seem unlikely to be voluntarily addressed. Prepare for the solution to be involuntarily applied in a time and manner not of our choosing.

Understanding Ebola - Proteins Blocks Early Step of Immunity

 One of the human body's first responses to a viral infection is to make and release signaling proteins, interferons, which amplify the immune system response to viruses.

Over time, many viruses have evolved to undermine interferons’ immune-boosting signal.

A paper published in Cell Host & Microbe describes a mechanism unique to the Ebola virus that defeats attempts by an interferon to block viral reproduction in infected cells. The study explains how the production by the virus of a protein called Ebola Viral Protein 24 (eVP24) stops the interferon-based signals from ramping up immune defenses. With the body's first response disabled, the virus mass produces itself and triggers the too-large immune response that damages organs and can become deadly as part of Ebola virus disease (EVD).

The study spotlights the part of the body's defense system that fights infection called innate immunity, the mix of proteins and cells that most quickly recognizes an invasion by a virus. This part of immunity keeps a virus from quickly reproducing inside cells. To trigger an effective, early response to viral infection, interferons must pass on their signal to other cells. This occurs through other messengers inside cells as part of interferon signaling pathways, with the last of these messengers turning on genes inside the nuclei of cells to drive the immune response.

The study determined the structure of eVP24 when bound to its cellular targets, transport proteins called karyopherins. Researchers used these structures to show how, in place of an interferon's natural downstream signal carrier phosphorylated STAT1, eVP24 docks into the karyopherins meant to escort STAT1 into cell nuclei, where it turns on interferon-targeted genes. By interfering at this stage, eVP24 cripples innate immunity to cause EVD.

Understanding exactly how the Ebola virus targets the interferon pathway could help guide drug development moving forward. It may be possible to find an antibody or molecule that interferes with eVP24, or that works around its competition with STAT1, such that treatment of patients with extra interferon might become useful against the virus.

Read the study.

Joke of the Day - Medical Advances in Getting People to Look for Work

A doctor from Israel says:   "In Israel the medicine is so advanced

that we cut off a man's testicles; we put them into another man,

and in  6  weeks he is looking for work."

The German doctor comments:   "That's nothing, in Germany we take part

of the brain out of a person; we put it into another person's head,

and in 4 weeks he is looking for work."

A Russian doctor says:  "That's nothing either. In Russia we take out

half of the heart from a person;  we put it into another person's chest,

and in 2 weeks he is looking for work."

The U.S. doctor answers immediately: "That's nothing my colleagues,

you  are way behind us....in the USA , about 3 years ago, we grabbed a

person from Kenya with no brains, no heart, and no balls....we made him

President of the United States ,

and now.......the whole  country is looking for work.

The REAL Reason for New U.S. and French Military Involvement In Iraq

 
Submitted by George Washington
 
Why is Obama now re-committing the U.S. military to Iraq? Why is France strongly backing military action?
Obama says it’s to protect minorities.    That’s nothing new.  Obama is the fourth president in a row to bomb Iraq … while claiming it is for humanitarian purposes.
But the architects of the Iraq War (the one which started in 2003) themselves admitted it was about oil.
But what about now? Why are the U.S. and France deploying military force in Iraq now?
Well, ISIS captured some key oil fields in the Kurdish region of Iraq on August 3rd.
Mere days later, the U.S. started bombing ISIS.
And the strikes were targeted in protecting oil resources. As International Business Times notes:

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby tweeted: “US military aircraft conduct strike on Isil [Islamic State] artillery. Artillery was used against Kurdish forces defending Erbil, near US personnel.”

Two F-18 fighters dropped laser-guided 500-pound bombs on the mobile artillery target. Militants of the Islamic State were using artillery that has been abandoned by the Iraqi army when it fled to shell Kurdish forces defending the regional capital of Kurdistan.

US airstrikes were very small and very targeted and the Peshmerga Kurdistan forces are waiting for more strikes by the US fighter jets, according to reports.

Similarly, the Military Times reported yesterday:

The Pentagon’s top war planner … Army Lt. Gen. William Mayville, the director of operations, or “J-3” for the Joint Staff [said]  “I think in the immediate areas where we have focused our strikes, we have had a very temporary effect … and we may have blunted some [ISIL] tactical decisions to move in those directions further east toward Erbil,” Mayville said.

“However, these strikes are unlikely to affect ISIL’s overall capabilities or its operations in other areas of Iraq and Syria,” he said.

Obama authorized the airstrikes for two specific purposes. One mission is to prevent an ISIL advance into the city of Erbil ….

It should be noted, initially, that months of murder, mayhem and brutality by ISIS on Christians and other minorities didn’t cause the U.S. or France to intervene militarily for “humanitarian” reasons.
And notice that the airstrikes were very targeted on protecting Erbil … the regional capital of Kurdistan.
The U.S. and France have never lifted a finger to protect the Kurds.   Indeed, the U.S. has actively betrayed the Kurds and let them be slaughtered.  For example, during the Gulf War, the U.S. called on the Kurds to rise up against Saddam (implying that he would protect them), but then let Saddam slaughter the Kurds en masse.
So why are the U.S. and France moving now to protect Erbil?
Because Erbil has now become a major oil center.  The Kurdish government estimates that the region is the world’s 9th largest oil producer.
Oil companies from around the world operate in Kurdistan, including (major oil companies are indicated in bold, U.S. and French oil companies in italics):
USA

• Exxon Mobil
• Chevron
• Aspect Energy
• Marathon Oil Corporation
• Hillwood International Energy
• Hunt Oil
• Prime Oil
• Murphy Oil
• Hess Corporation
• HKN Energy
• Viking International

France

• Total

Canada

• Forbes and Manhattan
• Western Zagros Resources
• Talisman Energy Inc
• NIKO Resources
• Ground Star
• Shamaran

South Korea

• Korea National Oil Company (KNOC)

Turkey

• Genel Energy
• Petoil
• Dogan

Britain

• Gulf Keystone Petroleum
• Sterling Energy
• Heritage Oil

Anglo-French

• Perenco

UAE

• TAQA
• Dana Petroleum

Austria

• OMV

China

• China acquired a significant presence in Iraqi Kurdistan after Sinopec Group bought Addax Petroleum in 2009.

Hungary

• MOL

India

• Reliance Industries

Papua New Guinea

• Oil Search

Russia

• Norbest
• Gazprom Neft

Norway

• DNO

Iraq

• Oil Search (Iraq) Limited
• Kar Group
• Qaiwan Group

Spain

• Repsol

Independent

• AFREN

Yup … with Chevron, Exxon, Marathon, Hess and Total operating major facilities in Erbil, the latest Iraq war is also about oil … as confirmed by the New Yorker, New Republic and Vox.
For those who don't believe that Iraqi oil is driving foreign policy, take a look at what Brookings wrote in June:

It should be obvious that a key consideration for the United States arising from [the seizure of huge swaths of Iraq by ISIS] is its potential to affect Iraqi oil production.

***

Any significant disruption of current Iraqi oil production or long-term diminution in its expected growth could have major repercussions for the U.S. economy.

Kurdistan also possesses approximately 89% of all Iraqi natural gas reserves.  And so the West - including France - is eager to protect Kurdish hydrocarbons from falling into the hands of ISIS.

Postscript: Indeed, virtually all U.S. wars involve a fight over hydrocarbons.

Order Out Of Chaos: The Doctrine That Runs The World

Guest Post Brandon Smith


From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire. - Winston Churchill, February 1920, in an article that appeared in the Illustrated Sunday Herald
 
The concept of conspiracy frightens some people, so much so that they are willing to overlook any and all evidence that world events are for the most part directed, rather than chaotic and coincidental. For those who are uneducated and unaware, explanations for the terrible tides of politics and war generally revolve around a false understanding of Occam’s razor. They argue that the theory states that the “simplest explanation” is usually the correct one for any particular problem or crisis. But Occam’s razor actually states that the simplest explanation according to the evidence at hand is usually the correct answer for any given problem. That is to say, the simplest explanation must conform to the evidence, or it is likely not correct.

Unfortunately, “skeptics” of directed conspiracy often turn a blind eye to evidence that is contrary to their simple explanations, while arguing that simplification is its own vindication. In other words, they don’t feel the need to defend their simplistic worldview because, in their minds, simplicity stands on its own as self-evident. There was a time when men believed that the planets revolved around each other because they were tied together by long glass strings, and this was evident to them because it was the simplest explanation they could come up with. The thinking of skeptics of the New World Order and concerted globalization is much like this.

The most common argument they tend to exploit is that the world is far too “chaotic” and that if the elites are actually seeking a fully centralized one-world system, they are “failing miserably” because so many cultures are so clearly divided. For anyone who holds this argument as logical or practical, first I would suggest they look beyond the surface of the various conflicts at the similarities between these so called “enemies.”

For example, what about the United States versus Russia? These two nations have a long history of opposing ideologies and have come close to war time and time again. Certainly, average Americans see themselves as individualists and Russians as socialist or communist. Average Russians see Americans as capitalist imperialists and see themselves as humanists. But what about their respective governments? What about their respective financiers and oligarchs? Do they really see each other as enemies?

If that were so, then why did American Wall Street tycoons and the U.S. military aid the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917?

A false paradigm was created when internationalists supported the Bolshevik Revolution and allowed Russia to become a communist-held country. The eventual Cold War that resulted created the rationale used by the military-industrial complex to build a massive standing army (which is not part of the U.S. Constitution), an army which could then be sent around the world to subdue various nations and even possibly be used to oppress the American people.

Even today, the false East/West paradigm continues, with America painted as the bumbling villain and Russia painted as the stalwart and reasonable objector. Yet Russia’s top government officials and our top government officials work closely with and answer to the same international financiers and elites, like the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements, as I outlined in great detail in False East/West Paradigm Hides The Rise Of Global Currency and Russia Is Dominated By Global Banks, Too.

Even closer to current events, the U.S. has now entered into military operations against ISIS insurgents moving rapidly through Iraq’s northern regions toward Baghdad. However, if ISIS is the enemy, why did the U.S. and our ally, Saudi Arabia, support and train ISIS agents in Syria as well as Iraq?

Is it just irony that our government helped birth ISIS and now the White House is at war with the group? Or is it possible that maybe, just maybe, a greater plan is afoot?

As the sinister Rahm Emanuel famously said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

If a crisis of opportunity does not present itself in the time frame you need, why not ENGINEER a crisis to fit your goals? This is a tactic that has been used by elites for generations, and it is called the Hegelian dialectic.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s work was the very foundation of the collectivist/socialist ideology, and it inspired Karl Marx during his writing of The Communist Manifesto. Hegel was an avid statist who believed that the collective must be ruled and directed by centralized governance and that all individualism should be sacrificed for the greater good.

Hegel wrote that the state “has supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State… for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges.”

In his dialectic theory, Hegel conjured a strategy by which the establishment elites could control the masses through deliberately created division. To define the Hegelian dialectic method simply, the ruling body must first trigger a problem or crisis that causes the citizenry to react with fear and demand a solution. The rulers then offer a solution, which they had already predetermined before they had started the crisis; this solution would usually entail more power for the elites and less freedom for the citizens.

The world appears divided and chaotic exactly because it has been MADE that way by a select few in the globalist establishment. In fact, if you were to name any war in the past 100 years, any competent alternative analyst would easily produce undeniable evidence of the involvement of international banks and think tanks pulling strings on both sides.

If you don’t understand the concept of “order out of chaos,” then you’ll never understand a thing.
Engineered chaos serves several purposes. It provides distraction and cover for the elites to implement other plans that they would rather not have noticed.

It also provides a scapegoat for the masses, who are now divided against each other. When violent changes are implemented that produce destructive consequences, the people must be placated with an easily identifiable villain. Certain changes globalists wish to make in the way the world functions require the careful exploitation of scapegoats.

For example, the globalists at the IMF have been discussing the establishment of a global basket currency for years to replace the U.S. dollar.

Russia and the East have also, conveniently, been calling for the IMF to replace the dollar with their Special Drawing Rights basket.

And finally, as well as conveniently, the elites in the U.S. government have launched a controlled coup in Ukraine and initiated direct economic confrontation with Russia, thereby giving the East the perfect excuse to dump the U.S. dollar as world reserve and replace it with a basket currency system under the IMF. Despite claims that Vladimir Putin is “anti-globalist,” the Russian is in fact an avid supporter of the IMF, and has stated his goal is to continue Russia’s IMF membership in a larger capacity:

In the BRICS case we see a whole set of coinciding strategic interests. First of all, this is the common intention to reform the international monetary and financial system. In the present form it is unjust to the BRICS countries and to new economies in general. We should take a more active part in the IMF and the World Bank’s decision-making system. The international monetary system itself depends a lot on the US dollar, or, to be precise, on the monetary and financial policy of the US authorities. The BRICS countries want to change this.

Yes, Vladimir, and so do the manipulative social engineers at the IMF...

Hopefully, you have the sense to see how this works: problem, reaction, solution. Economic or physical war is launched between East and West, while the dollar is killed in the process. The masses react by demanding a fair and balanced replacement for the dollar as world reserve so that economic stability can return. The Americans blame Russia and the East for their fiscal misfortune. The East blames the hubris of the West for its own downfall. Neither side blames the banksters, who started the whole calamity to begin with. And the elites swoop in as saviors with a new Bretton Woods-style agreement to appease all sides and cement their global currency system, the system they had always wanted. And with a global economic currency and authority in place, global governance is not far behind — order out of chaos.

This process is more psychological than political in its goals. One could argue that if the elites already have control of all central banks and governments, then why do they need a global government? The answer is that these men do not want secret global governance, they want open global governance. They want us to ACCEPT the idea as a fact of existence, for only when we agree to participate in the lie will they then have truly won.

The end result of World War I was the creation of the League of Nations and the argument that sovereignty leads to disunion and catastrophe. World War II led to the creation of the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. I believe that a third world war is nearly upon us, one that may involve weapons of monetary destruction more so than weapons of mass destruction. Each supposed disintegration of global unity has eventually led to greater centralization, and this is something the skeptics seem to forget. The progression of crises suggests that the next war will lead to total globalization under the dominance of a minority of elitists posing as "wise men" who only wish to bring peace and harmony to the masses. In the meantime, the skeptics will continue to mindlessly debate in the face of all reason that the whole thing was a fluke, an act of random mathematical chance, leading coincidentally to the one thing the establishment rulers crave: total global totalitarian micromanagement.

You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com Alt-Market, where this article first appeared, is an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense. Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the system and build something better.