Three Neo-Nazis Lead Ukraine’s Presidential Contest: Gallup Finds Ukrainians Despise All the Candidates

Posted on March 21, 2019 by Eric Zuesse.

Eric Zuesse

Gallup headlined on March 21st, “Ukraine’s Election: Voters Disenchanted Ahead of Key Vote”, and “World-Low 9% of Ukrainians Confident in Government”. Might the reason for both be that no candidate in the contest is respected by the Ukrainian public, and that only three — the candidates with the least-low public approval — are the only ones who have even a remote chance of winning, and that all three of those candidates are racist-fascists, or hold the ideology of nazism? This will be documented here:

Nazism, which is the ideology of fascism but with a heavy added component of racism, has been doing well in post-‘revolutionary’, or post-2013, or post ‘Maidan’ ‘revolution’, Ukrainian politics. The form of racism that dominates today’s Ukraine is against Russians more than against Jews, and so though the ideology is the same as was Germany’s nazi ideology, its main ethnic target isn’t the same. Some of Ukraine’s leading nazis are, in fact, Jews who hate Russians. Whereas Germany’s nazis wanted to exterminate all Jews, Ukraine’s nazis want to exterminate all Russians. But this is all that Ukraine’s voters are being offered, ever since the democratically elected President was thrown out in February 2014. He was fairly unpopular, but not as despised as the politicians who replaced him and his Government are.

The three top Presidential contenders in the upcoming March 31st election, as shown in all the polling, are:

Yulia Tymoshenko, the former ‘gas princess’ who had been convicted and sent to prison for skimming from Ukraine’s gas monopoly, the National Oil and Gas Company of Ukraine. She had established herself as a passionately anti-Russian Prime Minister and had been the preferred candidate of the Barack Obama U.S. Administration to win the 25 May 2014 election, but that election was instead won by a more moderate anti-Russian, the candy and shipbuilding oligarch Petro Poroshenko, who, as President, continued the ethnic-cleansing campaign that had been started by the interim leader of Ukraine who had been selected as Ukraine’s leader in a famous phone call by Victoria Nuland, who was U.S. President Obama’s top operative planning and executing the February 2014 U.S. coup, which coup overthrew the elected President, who hadn’t been sufficiently anti-Russian to suit U.S. President Obama. When I posted the transcript of that phone call years later, I noted that: “This historically mega-important phone-call, which was posted to the internet a week later, on February 4th — three weeks before the man whom she named there received (just as she had instructed) the appointment to lead the post-coup Ukraine — isn’t even being denied by Washington. Instead, it’s either ignored by them, or else totally misrepresented, in the ‘historical’ accounts by the agents of the U.S. regime.” The person she selected there to rule the interim government was “Yats” Yatsenyuk, Tymoshenko’s choice, who was chosen because if Nuland had appointed Tymoshenko, then Tymoshenko would have been unable to run in the 25 May 2014 Ukrainian Presidential election.

Petro Poroshenko, the incumbent President, and Ukrainian oligarch who had beaten Tymoshenko in the 2014 contest. He continued the ethnic cleansing campaign because unless enough of the voters in the far eastern region of Ukraine — where the elected President who had been ousted had received over 90% of the votes — were killed or else evacuated Ukraine (mostly by fleeing into neighboring Russia), Ukraine would again have an insufficiently anti-Russian Government to satisfy the U.S. Government, which wanted Ukraine in NATO. Consequently, both the Obama Administration and the IMF were strong supporters of continuing the ethnic-cleansing campaign. (And the U.S. regime is also using white phosphorous to burn whole areas to death in Syria, and a French officer who complained about it was punished by the French Government.) That campaign in far-east former Ukraine had enough success so as to ensure continuation of a rabidly anti-Russian Ukrainian Government, in elections such as now are taking place.

Volodmyr Zelenskiy, the popular Ukrainian actor and comedian who played Ukraine’s President on Ukranian TV, in a series telecast on a TV channel that is owned by the Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who, as a U.S.-appointed governor in eastern Ukraine during Poroshenko’s Presidency, had planned and overseen in Odessa on 2 May 2014 a massacre of opponents of the U.S. coup. Subsequently, Poroshenko fired Kolomoyskyi — an oil and gas oligarch himself — because Kolomoyskyi’s personal team of thugs, which he called his “militia,” had raided the National Oil and Gas Company of Ukraine, in order to expel the new government-appointed chief. So, Kolomoyskyi hates Poroshenko, and is determined that Poroshenko not be re-elected. His preferred candidate, and employee, Zelenskiy, leads in the polling, thus far. Zelenskiy is like a Ukrainian Donald Trump, who also won because he had no plicy-making track-record and he ran against people who did.

Here are recent polling results:

On March 13th, Reuters headlined “Comedian Zelenskiy extends Ukraine presidential poll lead”, and reported SOCIS polling during 5-10 March showed 20.7% for Zelenskiy, 13.2% for Poroshenko, and 11.0% for Tymoshenko.

Wikipedia’s article “Opinion polling for the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election” shows trendlines for each polling organization and for each of the three major candidates. Zelenskiy is now around 25%, and both Poroshenko and Tymoshenko are each around 18%.

Therefore, Zelenskiy seems to be heading into a run-off against either Poroshenko or Tymoshenko.

The Gallup report on March 21st, “World-Low 9% of Ukrainians Confident in Government”, said that:

Currently in the lead — according to other national polls in Ukraine — is comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelensky, who is most widely known for playing the president of Ukraine in the popular television series “Servant of the People.” Like his character on the show, Zelensky is campaigning largely on an anti-corruption platform — which likely resonates with many voters. Incumbent Poroshenko is working to shift the focus off of the many scandals he has been accused of and is taking a hard-line stance, promising to join NATO and reclaim Crimea if he wins re-election. Tymoshenko initially led the large field of candidates but has fallen in the polls recently as rumors regarding her involvement in corrupt deals for natural gas have resurfaced.

However, whoever will ultimately win, will almost certainly continue the U.S. Government’s campaign to get Ukraine admitted into America’s anti-Russian military alliance, NATO, so as to be able to place U.S. missiles close enough to Moscow so that a blitz knockout blow to conquer Russia could — some U.S. strategists hope and believe — become possible.

Obama’s strategy to conquer Russia is being carried forward by his successor, Trump.

Here is additional background on each of the three individuals who is a prospective next President of Ukraine:

Tymoshenko: In a phone-conversation with a political supporter on 18 March 2014, while Tymoshenko was Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s preferred candidate to replace the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Obama’s February 2014 entirely illegal and very bloody coup in Ukraine had just recently overthrown, the then Ukrainian candidate to replace Yanukovych, Tymoshenko said “We should take weapons and shoot those God damned Russians along with their leader [Putin]. … I hope that [as Ukraine’s President] I will use all my connections [especially Obama and Clinton], and stir the entire world to action in order to make Russia into a field of scorched earth. … We should burn them with nuclear weapons!” Since Ukraine had no nuclear weapons, she was expressing there the hope that her connections inside the U.S. White House and State Department would produce a Third World War that would terminate Russia.

Poroshenko: The way he carried out the ethnic-cleansing campaign that had been started by the interim leader of Ukraine whom Obama’s agent Victoria Nuland had appointed, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was to capture and kill all leaders of the resistance, and to bomb and terrorize into submission the residents in the resisting region. Under Yatsenyuk, a system was planned to be patterned upon Hitler’s treatment of Jews, Gypsies and other unwanted people, and it entailed concentration camps, but Poroshenko just wanted the people to die or else escape into Russia, so they’d not be voting in any future Ukrainian election. He also wanted the U.S. to help him to defeat the resistors, so that Ukraine could retake Crimea, which had been part of Ukraine during 1954-2014 but was Russian — and strongly pro-Russian ever since at least 1783. The Soviet dictator, Khruschchev, had been Ukrainian, and he arbitrarily transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954. Obama and Clinton insisted that Khruschev’s arbitrary decision continue to be honored, regardless of what the residents of Crimea wanted. Trump does likewise.

Zelenskiy: His patron, Kolomoyskyi, was one of the two main planners of the 2 May 2014 extermination inside the Odessa Trade Unions building, in which people who had distributed leaflets opposing the coup were trapped and burned and clubbed and shot to death. Like Donald Trump when Trump had run for the U.S. Presidency in 2016 against Clinton, Zelenskiy has no political track-record, but only political blatherings, by which his alleged policy-views can become (however dubiously) inferred by voters. And he seems likely to become Ukraine’s President in the same way that Trump did: by having no actual policymaking track-record, and running against opponent(s) whose policymaking track-records the electorate already know to be rotten.

The U.S. regime praises Ukraine now as a ‘democracy’ (and Americans apparently believe that). Before the U.S. take-over, it was called (by the U.S. Government and its allies) ‘authoritarian’ or ‘a dictatorship’. (That was when Ukraine had a freely elected President, who represented the whole country, instead of a truncated country, without the two regions that have the most strongly pro-Russia voters, who had voted the heaviest for that democratically elected President. The U.S. regime wants to control those regions, too, but without its residents. The U.S. regime wants the land, but not the people. The U.S. wants those people there eliminated. This is the type of ‘democracy’ America now is.)

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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Which Nations Will Crumble and Which Few Will Prosper in the Next 25 Years?

Posted on March 21, 2019 by Charles Hugh Smith

What will separate the many nations that will crumble in the next 25 years and those few that will survive and even prosper while the status quo dissolves around them? As I explain in my recent book Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic, the factors that will matter are not necessarily cultural or financial; being hard-working and wealthy won’t be enough to save nations from coming apart at the seams.

Here are the factors that will matter in the next 25 years:

1. The ability to engage and survive non-linear change, which is rapid, unpredictable and systemic, as opposed to linear change which is gradual, predictable and limited in nature.

None of the current political systems are decentralized enough and adaptable enough to survive the non-linear era we’re entering. As I explained in What If Politics Can’t Fix What’s Broken?, the politics of centralized compromise and incremental, top-down adjustments are wholly inadequate to dealing with non-linear disruptions.

2. The nations that cannot jettison their parasitic elites will fall; the few that find the political will to jettison their parasitic elites will have the wherewithal to survive and possibly even prosper as the global status quo collapses around them.

The problem, as we all know, is the parasitic elites rule the centralized hierarchies of wealth and political power, and they will cling to power even as the nation they rule crumbles around them. The hubris, complacency and greed of the ruling parasitic elites is near-infinite; the idea that the political and financial structures that they dominate will not survive simply doesn’t exist in the parasitic elites, with the exception of a few outliers who are constructing remote bugout compounds with landing strips etc.

Unfortunately for these outliers, they can’t escape satellite and drone imagery, or the loose tongues of employees, contractors, etc.

By the time the populace awakens to the precariousness of the entire status quo, it will be too late to effect meaningful change via removing the parasitic elites from power. Just as Rome was too hollowed out to survive by the end, the status quo structures will be too enfeebled to adapt quickly enough to survive.

3. Centralization of wealth, power and control has been the “solution” for hundreds or even thousands of years. We’re approaching Peak Centralization and the systemic failure of centralization as the “solution” to anything.

The only sustainable solution going forward is radical decentralization of capital, political power and control of resources. The parasitic elites rule solely because wealth and power are so highly concentrated in the hands of the few. As the financial and political systems unravel and fail, solutions that are completely outside these centralized hierarchies will arise–if the populace is free to embrace them.

4. Solutions will obsolete the existing centralized financial and political structures. Reforms will all fail, as the parasitic elites will never relinquish their control or power. The “solution” will be the total collapse of the centralized financial and political structures and the parasitic elites that control them.

5. Adaptability and flexibility will be the core survival traits going forward. The only structures adaptable and flexible enough to respond quickly and effectively enough to survive are decentralized networks– non-hierarchical, distributed rather than centralized, self-organizing rather than top-down.

Few if any of the “leading citizens” of Rome anticipated its collapse 20 years prior to the implosion. That is as true of the parasitic elites now as it was then. Collapse is truly “impossible” in the current mindset; it isn’t even conceivable that what works now will stop working. But complacent belief in the permanence of the status quo doesn’t stop friction or rust, nor will it stop collapse.

As an American, I hope the citizenry comes to understand the choice is simple and profound: either tolerate the dominance of our numerous parasitic elites and watch the nation come apart and fail or jettison the centralized structures the parasitic elites need to enforce their dominance. 

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 ebook, $12 print, $13.08 audiobook): Read the first section for free in PDF format.

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Hyper-Hypocrisy of The West about ISIS

Posted on March 20, 2019 by Eric Zuesse.

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

During the period of 17 September to 11 December of 2016, the United States and its allies carried out a massive operation to move ISIS’s surviving jihadists who were in the oil-producing Iraqi region of Mosul, into the Syrian oil-producing region of Deir Ezzor and Palmyra. This was done so that those oil-stealing-and-selling jihadists in Iraq would now be stealing Syria’s oil and would thereby increase the likelihood of overthrowing Syria’s long-existing non-sectarian Government. The U.S. and its allies would then replace that Government by one which would be controlled by the fundamentalist Sunni Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia, the long-time leading oil-power, and which family are America’s main foreign ally. The Sauds are crucial to maintaining the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The U.S. aristocracy rely upon them.

Now that ISIS is being defeated by Syria’s Government (and by its allies Russia and Iran) in Syria, the United States and its allies are trying to find other governments that will take them in as refugees. It’s part of a deal the U.S. regime reached with ISIS.

The issue of what to do with the thousands of surviving but (temporarily) defeated ISIS members — and with their spouses and children — has raised hypocrisy to perhaps the highest level in all of history. Its background needs to be understood if one wants to understand the sources of that enormous hypocrisy. Here’s this background:

When Russia started bombing ISIS in Syria on 30 September 2015, it greatly disturbed the U.S. regime, which therefore started on 12 October 2015 to air-drop weapons into that area so as to help the jihadists to shoot down Russia’s jets, which were bombing ISIS. America’s Fox News Channel headlined “US military airdrops 50 tons of ammo for Syrian fighters, after training mission ends”. The U.S. didn’t start bombing ISIS in Syria until 16 November 2015, and the U.S. Government’s excuse for not having bombed them earlier was “This is our first strike against tanker trucks, and to minimize risks to civilians, we conducted a leaflet drop prior to the strike.” They pretended that it was done out of compassion — not in order to extend for as long as possible ISIS’s success in taking over territory in Syria.

And then on 26 February 2019, Syria’s government news-agency reported that the U.S. had sent to the U.S. Federal Reserve 40+ tons of gold that ISIS had accumulated from selling, on the international black markets, oil from Syria’s oil-producing region around Deir Ezzor — Syria’s oil stolen by ISIS and the proceeds now being stolen yet again by the U.S. regime — and this gold now being sent to the U.S. (On March 8th I reported the further background and context of that U.S. theft from Syria.) The U.S. regime had offered to ISIS-members who were in Syria’s oil-producing region a choice either to become captured and killed by Syria’s Government, or else for them to give to the U.S. that gold, and the option which was selected by the jihadists was to give the gold to the U.S., which is therefore now trying to find other countries to send the jihadists to as ‘refugees’ (since Syria certainly doesn’t want them, and neither does the U.S. regime). The U.S. regime is honoring its commitments to those ‘former’ ISIS members and their families, to assist them to find countries which will accept those people as ‘refugees’. Sweden, being very liberal (meaning ideologically very confused), happens to be one of these countries, and is actually considering and debating whether to allow them in.

Zero Hedge is perhaps the keenest news-site for exposing The West’s rampant hypocrisies (and so all of The West’s propagandistic ’news’-sites hate it and call it ‘fake news’ even though it actually is more reliably accurate than the mainstream ones themselves are); and, on March 10th, it pointed out that Sweden was in a flurry over whether to accept, as refugees, ISIS jihadists who have escaped, and their spouses and children. Zero Hedge truthfully pointed out that,

Sweden’s new government, which was finally formed in January after months of delay, is introducing policies that will lead to more immigration into Sweden — despite the main governing party, the Social Democrats, having run for office on a promise to tighten immigration policies.

The right to family reunion for those people granted asylum in Sweden who do not have refugee status is being reintroduced — a measure that is estimated to bring at least 8,400 more immigrants to Sweden in the coming three years. According to the Minister of Migration, Morgan Johansson, this measure will “strengthen integration,” although he has not explained how.

“I think it is a very good humanitarian measure; 90 percent [of those expected to come] are women and children who have lived for a long time in refugee camps, [and] who can now be reunited with their father or husband in Sweden”, Johansson said.

This is supposed to be ‘democracy’?

However, that article, as noted at Zero Hedge, was written by Judith Bergman, of the Gatestone Institute. Sometimes, even such vicious propaganda-organizations, as that, produce authentic news, and here was such an instance. (It’s yet another reason why arguing ad-hominem, instead of strictly — that is, 100% — ad-rem, is essential to avoid, in order to determine truth and reject lies. That was a truthful article. Though Bergman wrote for a hate-mongering anti-Muslim site, the reporting in it was honest and factual. So, here’s some ad-hominem background to it, not as a part of the argument in this particular case — regarding Sweden’s debate over whether to accept former ISIS members as refugees — but instead as context explaining how this truth came to be published by the hate-mongering Gatestone🙂

The Gatestone Institute is a rabidly pro-Israeli-Jews, and rabidly anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim operation, which was founded and is run by the heir and grand-daughter, Nina Rosenwald, of the biggest early (1895) investor in Sears Roebuck & Co., Julius Rosenwald. He died in 1932. His heir and son was Nina’s father, and in 1939 he “was one of three founding members of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA).[12] [Nina] Rosenwald’s mother, a professional violinist, was a refugee from both the Russian Revolution and Nazi Germany.[9].” Nina, being not very bright, was never able to rid herself of the prejudices her parents felt against Palestinians and generally against Muslims (since Israel’s main supremacism is against Muslims, because Israel’s ruling ethnicity, Jews, have been stealing land from Muslims). Nina identifies herself as “a human rights activist”. (As was said at the start here, this issue “has raised hypocrisy to perhaps the highest level in all of history.”) She had, in fact, hired John Bolton as Gatestone’s Chairman; and, for his service as that, during June 2017 to March 2018 (when he became hired as Trump’s National Security Advisor), Bolton received $310,000. So, Bill Berkowitz headlined on 27 September 2018 “Meet Nina Rosenwald, the Sears Heiress Seeding Islamophobia at Home and Abroad”, and he brought together and linked to the great reporting by Max Blumenthal and by Lee Fang, documenting the Gatestone Institute’s rabid global hate-mongering for Israel.

But, in this particular case (the article by Judith Bergman), there was no deceit, because nothing in her reporting violated Nina Rosenwald’s biggest hatred, hatred of Muslims — so, these truths were acceptable to Rosenwald. Bergman’s article happened to be truthful Israeli propaganda. (After all: some propaganda is truthful.)

The Israeli regime won’t have any credibility whatsoever unless it condemns Sweden’s compassion for jihadists and for the wives and children of jihadists. Israel’s Minister of Justice had endorsed exterminating all Palestinians, but that rationale — sheer bigotry — for opposing them, isn’t suitable for foreign consumption, and so it was almost immediately disappeared from its public posting (shown there at that link). If Israel can’t pretend to be against Muslims on account of jihadists, then Israel’s barbaric treatment of its Palestinians won’t make any sense at all to the many fools (mainly in America, Israel’s chief patron) who support Israel (such as the Rosenwalds do). The U.S. regime hides the barbarous reality of Israel, but that reality isn’t blacked-out quite as much in the rest of the world; so, Israel can’t afford to be publicly silent regarding jihadists, even in cases where the U.S. regime would prefer such silence. Obviously, the U.S. regime wants Sweden to accept those ‘former’ ISIS members (because the U.S. regime aims to conquer Russia and all nations — such as Syria — that are allied with Russia, and uses ISIS, Al Qaeda, and nazis, as “boots-on-the-ground” mercenaries, in order to do that), and so this ISIS-as-refugees issue is one on which the American regime and the Israeli regime happen to disagree.

Bergman closed her article by describing the Swedish Government’s efforts to be compassionate toward jihadists while the Swedish Government also provides an appearance of caring for the safety of non-jihadist (the vast majority of) Swedes:

On a positive note, however, at the end of February, the Swedish government presented plans to introduce legislation that would criminalize membership of a terrorist organization.This new law would enable the prosecuting of returning ISIS fighters who cannot be connected to a specific crime, but who were proven to have been part of a terrorist organization. Critics have pointed out that it has taken years for the government to take steps to criminalize membership of terror organizations.

Sweden is hypocritically ‘neutral’, but actually a vassal nation of the United States. Sweden is being pushed by its master, the U.S. regime, to accept some of the people the U.S. Government had been protecting in order for the U.S. to become enabled to take over Syria and to deliver it to the U.S. aristocracy’s chief ally the Sauds; and, so, the Swedish Government is now trying to square this circle, in order to satisfy everyone at least somewhat. This split loyalty (between the imperial master, and the domestic public) is what’s called ‘democracy’, nowadays. The master pulls one way, the public are confused or undecided, and the U.S. regime’s other main Middle Eastern ally, Israel, is pulling in the exact opposite direction, on this particular matter. This is how international affairs actually are being decided. The various aristocracies come to an agreement on how to proceed. The respective publics are virtually ignored, except as fronts for their PR. That’s today’s international order, just as has been the case for thousands of years: it is agreements that are reached between aristocracies.

Back in September of 2018, the U.S. regime was backed by the United Nations in opposing Russia’s and Syria’s plan simply to slaughter all of the tens of thousands of Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists (and their families), whom the Syrian Government had exiled to Idlib, Syria’s most pro-jihadist province, and who were being collected there with the intention to destroy them all at the very end of the war — finally to finish them off there. Both Syria’s Government and Russia’s Government wanted simply to destroy them en-masse, at the war’s end. However, because of the success of that U.S.-based (and also U.N.-backed) international propaganda campaign arguing that bombing them would be ‘inhumane’, those jihadists survive, and will probably also be moved to other nations. Sweden could become one such nation, if they decide to take in not only ‘former’ ISIS but ‘former’ Al Qaeda, as ’refugees’. The U.S. has protected both of those groups, against Syria’s Government.

Hypocrisy exists when people don’t care enough about their values so as to think carefully through to decide what values — if any — they actually hold, and what their actual priorities are. Fools like that are the meat upon which their aristocrats constantly feast, producing, as the aristocracy’s excrements, bigots (such as jihadists, and such as the majority of Israelis — and such as people who accept those bigots). Without those fools, aristocrats would need to actually earn a living, instead of merely to live off the fat (the fools) of the land and thereby producing this waste-matter, bigots, who make things difficult for everybody else, including for any decent people who might happen to exist in the given receiving nation (such as in Sweden).

The origin of The West’s hypocrisies that claim to be supporting “human rights” and “democracy” around the world, while actually invading or overthrowing target-governments, go back at least as far as Cecil Rhodes in the late 1800s, and the rationale that’s given of it is entirely fraudulent. It is the difference between, on the one hand, an authentic revolution, which can sometimes produce a democracy, versus, on the other hand, a coup or else an invasion, neither of which can, nor is actually designed to, produce a democracy. But the PR has to say the reason for an invasion or coup or sanctions (such as against Venezuela or Iran or Syria or Libya or Iraq or Ukraine) is to promote ‘human rights’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘oppose corruption’ in the given target-country that’s to be, basically, destroyed. Suckers are necessary, in order for this fraud — the actual aristocratic control of international relations — to succeed. And that’s how the system works. It works by that combination, of liars and fools.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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The Neutered Fed Is Politically Trapped

Posted on March 20, 2019 by Charles Hugh Smith

In this era of fake news and deep-fake digital recordings and images, it’s important to use unedited images. With this firmly in mind, here is an unedited photo of Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell and former Fed Chairs Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke from their recent unprecedented appearance on 60 Minutes:

The purpose of the Fed chiefs’ dog-and-pony show was to promote the notion that the Fed really really really (try not to laugh out loud) “cares” about the average American, even though 85% of the $30 trillion in gains generated by the Fed’s policies flowed to the top 10% and roughly two-thirds of the gains flowed to the top few percent.

The bottom 80% got essentially nothing except a drastic reduction in the purchasing power of their stagnating wages. If this is how the Fed “cares” about average Americans, I wonder what they’d do if they chose to impoverish average Americans. Oh wait a minute, they already did.

I’ve covered this in recent essays:

The Fed’s “Wealth Effect” Has Enriched the Haves at the Expense of the Young

What Killed the Middle Class?

It’s All About Who Reaps the Gains (Asset Bubbles) and Who Eats the Losses (Stagnating Wages)

What triggered the unprecedented propaganda-fest of the three Fed monkeys? The realization that the Fed is evil is seeping into public awareness, and the Fed honchos are awakening to the reality I’ve spoken to here many times: the Fed is now constrained politically in terms of how far it can go to bail out the banks and the super-wealthy again.

Speak no evil (Jay Powell), see no evil (Janet Yellen) and hear no evil (“I saved the fortunes of the super-rich, oops I mean the world” Ben Bernanke) were trotted out to deny the Fed is evil, which only confirms that the Fed is in fact evil. Why else line up the Fed Chairs like school kids giving their book reports?

The Fed is now trapped by three dynamics:

1. It has been neutered by the stock market–nobody believes the Fed is “independent” or that it “cares” about anything but the market and the financial aristocracy who own it.

2. It can’t force people to borrow and spend or lenders to lend to poor credit risks.

3. It is finally being recognized as the key driver of widening wealth and income inequality.

Some may claim the December stock market swoon “tutored” the Fed, but it was actually neutered: Fed credibility is a bad joke as everyone now knows the Fed is the stock market’s slave. And since the top 10% own the vast majority of stocks, the Fed is the slave of the financial aristocracy. Everything else is fancy footwork, obfuscation and propaganda.

Everyone now knows that the only meaningful goal of Fed policy is propping up the world’s greatest credit-asset bubble because the Fed has elevated the stock market to the benchmark for the entire economy. Nothing else matters, and oh, by the way, the trillions created out of thin air by the bubble belong to the already wealthy.

While the Nation Fragments Socially, the Financial Aristocracy Rules Unimpeded

As noted in The Coming Crisis the Fed Can’t Fix: Credit Exhaustion, the Fed can’t force households or corporations to further burden themselves with additional debt, nor can it force lenders to give “free money” to borrowers who are guaranteed to default. Rather than possessing godlike powers, the Fed is toothless. The only power it has is to inflate asset bubbles that benefit the few at the expense of the many.

This chart shows the precise effect of Fed policies since 2008: a vast, unprecedented expansion in the wealth and income of the financial aristocracy at the expense of everyone below.

Any questions about why the Fed is politically trapped? How much more of this will the American public be able to stomach before a populist from the left or right or heck, even the center, publicly call out the Fed’s backstopping of the stock market as the driver of soaring wealth-income inequality and demands the Fed be stripped of its power to protect and reward the banks, financiers and the super-wealthy?

 

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 ebook, $12 print, $13.08 audiobook): Read the first section for free in PDF format.

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Five Benefits of Life Without NATO

Posted on March 20, 2019 by DavidSwanson

This week, war industry employee Hans Binnendijk claimed in the weapons-advertisement conveyance Defense News that we all get five big benefits from NATO:

1) Russia refrains from seizing Eastern Europe.
2) The United States gets to have bases in Europe from which to attack the Middle East, and gets to trade stuff with Europe.
3) Europe’s militaries are united into one big happy military.
4) Asian countries refrain from cooperating with each other.
5) The world is at peace and governed by treaties and agreements.

Of the United Nations’ 18 major human rights treaties, the United States is party to 5, fewer than any other nation on earth, except Bhutan (4), and tied with Malaysia, Myanmar, and South Sudan, a country torn by warfare since its creation in 2011. The United States is punishing officials of the International Criminal Court for seeking to uphold the rule of law. The United States has torn up the Iran agreement and the INF treaty and removed itself from the Paris Climate Agreement. The United States has military operations active in 14 countries and has bombed at least 7 countries this year. The world is not at peace, and the rule of law is precisely what the U.S. government does not want.

So much for point #5 above. Understanding the fundamental dishonesty of point #5 ought to help us with the other four.

Russia spends on its military 7 percent of what NATO does, and Trump is pushing hard and mostly successfully for NATO to spend more, and for more nations to join NATO (as long as they aren’t Russia). Russia has been reducing its military spending each year. The best way to prevent attacks on countries would be to actually support the rule of law, diplomacy, cooperation, and aid, and to cease engaging in attacks on countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, etc.)

While the United States has bases in and trades with dozens of non-NATO countries, the people of the United States and of the world would be better off without those bases and with fairer trade.

While Europe is perfectly capable of uniting its militaries, it and the world would be better off if it got rid of them.

While Asian nations are perfectly capable of starting their own wars, they and the world would be better off with former members of NATO pushing for peace.

Former members? Well, just imagine the benefits of a post-NATO world.

First and foremost, we would have more time to devote in the coming years and decades to drooling over the ever-imminent revelations of the holy Mueller Report.

I’m kidding.

But there would be some significant benefits. Here are five:

1) Fewer wars.
2) A Green New Deal beyond its advocates’ wildest imaginings with not a dollar needing to be taxed or created.
3) An end to starvation, the lack of clean water, and various diseases.
4) Global good feelings for the former-NATO members who accomplished #3 for loose pocket change.
5) Schools so well funded and well run that people learn the history of NATO.

David Swanson will be unwelcoming NATO to Washington, D.C., on April 4th. Will you?

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