Saturday, May 20, 2017


   














Syrian Prison Executions – Anatomy of a Smear Campaign 
Ted Faison, May 20, 2017

“…The public has become accustomed to media and government stories peddled without evidence, playing on shear emotion…the headlines stick in our minds. It’s not what’s true, it’s what people believe, and headlines are great indoctrination tools. Who cares about proof anymore?...

Syria is in the throes of a CIA-backed insurgency. Islamist extremists of every extraction, not to mention ISIS, with the common goal of replacing al-Assad with an extreme form of Sunni Islam. Everyone armed with American weapons supplied directly by the US or indirectly through Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others…

Syria has since been the target of a massive, relentless disinformation campaign…the US government needed total, uncompromising public support. What better way to get that support than to depict your enemy as a sadistic, barbaric dictator?...

The smear campaign against Syria in general – and Bashar al-Assad personally – has been ongoing for years. We’ve seen nothing but horror stories come out of Syria. Allegations of chemical weapons, barrel bombing of civilians, terrible crimes against humanity. We’re seldom presented with evidence, yet the headlines stick in our minds. It’s not what’s true, it’s what people believe, and headlines are great indoctrination tools. Who cares about proof anymore?...

The smear machine is again in high gear, with reports of mass executions in a Syria prison accompanied by ghastly headlinesThe mass media stories on Syrian prison exterminations conjure up images of people tortured to death in dark, dingy rooms.

They turn our stomachs.
They cry out for justice.
If only they were true.

If my mother taught me anything, it was "don’t believe everything you read"…so let’s look at the stories more carefully to see if they merit our belief... In a court of law, one would immediately demand proof. Where is the evidence?... 

As it turns out, they’re all based on a single report published by Amnesty International. On the surface, the report is formatted to look like a scholarly paper, with footnotes, dates, methodologies, procedures. All very impressive to the layman…

But Amnesty’s purpose wasn’t to present facts but rather to sway opinion, and at the highest levels: The US Congress, the US courts, the US presidency, the United Nations, not to mention the western public in general

…And what to say about recent reports of a crematorium inside the Saydnaya prison grounds?... With a little digging, we discover that all the stories are tied (again) to a single source: a newly declassified satellite image of Saydnaya prison… No other proof. Not even a single witness, alleged or otherwise…

…The public has become accustomed to media and government stories peddled without evidence, playing on shear emotion. The pseudo-journalists of today are heavy on accusations and light on facts, especially when dealing with perceived foes of the United States.

We’re all still waiting for the evidence about Russia’s tampering with the US elections, Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Convention servers, Russia’s secret ties with Trump. Given what’s at stake, if evidence existed it would have been presented long ago, and the massive US smear machine would have had a field day.”

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Edmund "Ted" Faison is a software architect living in Southern California. With an electrical engineering degree from California State University, Fullerton, he has published several books on computer and software technology. He also…developed a keen interest in international affairs, with special emphasis on American foreign policy.

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Read the complete article: 

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A statement from the article with which I would disagree:
Syria is an enemy of the Saudis, who are America’s best friend. No foreign country has more control of the US government than Saudi Arabia.”  I believe that role is shared with, if not exceeded by, Israel.


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This may come as a great shock to many people, but multiple evidence shows Amnesty International is no longer the ethical champion of human rights that it may once have been.



Monday, May 01, 2017

To understand the real reasons for war, follow the money. . .



 America’s Financial War Strategy

By Alasdair Macleod
April 20, 2017

EXTRACTS:

“America’s renewed desire to escalate military tensions is a front for America’s continual financial war, this time directed at North Korea, Syria and possibly Iran. 

This is likely to be the opinion of China’s strategic advisors. We analyse the geopolitics and economics behind America’s war strategy from China’s perspective, concluding that it is entering its final phase. 

China’s exit plan appears to be to tie the pricing of energy and then other major commodities to gold, returning to the pre-1971 status quo, when the dollar was just a settlement link between commodity prices and gold. Except this time, the dollar itself will be side-lined, so far as China is concerned, which will use the yuan instead for its empire, which will be far larger than that of the US in time

It is because of American-led operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria that Europe is flooded with refugees, bringing undercover terrorists with them. 

There can be little doubt that a dispassionate analyst would recommend America abandons military action, so there must be other reasons behind America’s war-mongering…

The relationship between Russia and China is strong, and they are likely to coordinate their strategic responses to American aggression in both Korea and Syria. 

The question is, if America continues to escalate its bellicose actions against North Korea, Syria, and possibly Iran, what will their response be? For clues, we should look at this from China’s point of view. 

The People’s Liberation Army’s most influential strategist, Major-General Qiao Liang laid out his overall strategic philosophy at a book-study forum of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in Autumn 2015…

Qiao’s principal thesis is that America uses the dollar to manage external trade and finance for its domestic benefit. 

Many of us are familiar with the proposition that by exporting dollars and dollar-denominated bank credit, America creates wealth for both the US government and the major American banks, and that the dollar’s reserve status is accordingly vital to the US economy. 

But Qiao takes this much further, claiming that since the dollar’s peg to the gold price was abandoned, America has initiated a cycle of economic boom and bust among foreign users of the dollar for its own benefit…

[Qiao] claims that Saddam Hussein was overthrown because he instituted a policy of selling oil for euros, not dollars. That was true, and there is little doubt that the threat to dollar hegemony was discouraged. He claims the break-up of Yugoslavia was to undermine the status of the new euro…

Qiao then turns his attention to the contemporary cycle (in 2015) of dollar management, claiming it was now aimed at China… 

However, China has protected herself from America’s financial attacks through its national ownership of the banks and by capital controls. Consequently, only foreigners can sell yuan to buy dollars, or withdraw dollars from their own operations to invest in Treasuries. Therefore, the damage was always going to be limited…

China also bends with the wind. While America increases her Naval domination of the Pacific region, instead of fighting it she merely increases her influence towards the West. This is the basis of the One Belt One Road project, which is already running goods trains as far as Madrid and London.

China prefers her trade partners to take yuan in payment, and will lend them yuan if called upon. In time, yuan payments will have convertibility into gold using the Shanghai Gold Futures Market when it gains greater depth, making it superior to the dollar as a settlement currency…

Embedded in Qiao’s analysis is an understanding that the Chinese empire will not only become far larger than the US in terms of trade, but by understanding the weaknesses of American financial imperialism, it will be more enduring… 

Let us assume for a moment that his thesis is valid, then Trump’s threats to escalate a regional war over North Korea and/or Syria/Iran takes on a wholly different light…

By threatening North Korea, dollar investment is likely to flow out of trade and investment in South Korea and Japan, back to US Treasuries… this could solve two pressing problems: the first is to persuade Congress to sanction an increase in the deficit limit, it always being easier to persuade Congress to finance a government at war, and the second is to attract the necessary dollar-denominated capital to buy Treasury debt, without having to increase interest rates…

China will avoid being undermined by these negative capital flows. Unknown to the public, America has already failed in its financial war against China, and needs new victims, which is why the attention has switched to the Korean peninsula as well as the Middle East. 

Trump now realises the only way his presidency can prosper is to encourage capital flight into America from abroad, and have the debt limit raised to accommodate it…

Japan and South Korea will most probably have studied Qiao’s paper, becoming wise to America’s true motives, and are therefore more likely to distance themselves from trading in dollars thereafter. Their private sectors will be slow to understand these financial dynamics, so will remain victims. 

But for governments and large corporations, the American gaff has been blown. This is likely to lead us into a new world, where the dollar’s decline as a reserve and trade currency accelerates, as America runs out of its pump-and-dump victims. And when that happens, the dollar is almost certain to rapidly lose its purchasing power, leading to a global currency reset and a far higher dollar price for gold…

China places a great emphasis on hoarding gold, both for itself and its citizens… But China has gone even further, seeking to control the global market by making the Shanghai Gold Exchange the largest physical exchange by far. 

She has now introduced yuan gold futures contracts, which will be followed by yuan oil futures contracts in time. This ensures that foreign traders in commodities and wholesale goods can sell forward the yuan they receive in return for gold, increasing the attractiveness of trade finance and settled in yuan compared with dollars. And when the yuan oil contract is introduced, oil importers will use the yuan contracts to sell oil for gold.

In one simple action, China is ready to change the pricing of oil to gold instead of dollars… 

This should come as no surprise to the American state, close to being declared check-mate by China on the geopolitical chess board. The dollar price of gold is likely to rise sharply, reflecting the loss of purchasing power for the dollar, and it will end the American dollar’s exorbitant privilege, enjoyed since the end of the gold standard in 1971. 

It is potentially the coup-de grace for both the paper dollar and American imperialism.

Conclusion

China is thinking ahead, and has its own unique understanding of how America manages its financial empire for the benefit of its domestic economy, at the expense of everyone else. 

China has protected herself, and attempts by America to undermine China’s economy have already failed. Attention is now focused elsewhere. 

The latest war-mongering against North Korea, Syria and possibly Iran has much to do with persuading Congress to raise the debt ceiling, and to encourage capital flight back into a new wave of US Treasuries without interest rates being raised. This neatly explains Trump’s change of heart over foreign adventures…

China’s publication of Qiao’s analysis has alerted government strategists everywhere to the use of this tactic, reducing its efficacy. America is running out of fools to fleece.

The end game for the dollar and America’s harvesting of foreign countries is therefore in sight, and it will likely end with a final dollar crisis. China could bring this about at a time of its own choosing, simply by introducing the planned oil futures yuan contract alongside the gold futures yuan contract… 

This explains the dynamics being played out at the highest levels, and America has the most to lose. But because China still owns large quantities of US Treasuries and dollar reserves, for the moment she might prefer more time before executing the coup de grace.

But execute it, she will. 

Her fundamental objective is to remove America’s ability to profit from having everything priced in dollars. 

Logically, that means getting oil and other key commodities referenced in gold, as they were before the Nixon shock in 1971, with fiat currencies merely being the settlement media. 

America must be careful not to bring forth the date of her own demise by attacking North Korea, Syria, or Iran.” 


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Watch:
The West lives in debt – Putin
(YouTube, 5:05)

“They say that if you want to understand the values of a particular society - take a look at its architecture and buildings. Which ones stand out as the most glamorous in today's world? Why of course - the international banks and financial institutions. 

All countries live in debt, albeit to much larger proportions in the West - but to whom? A handful of fat cat CEOs. 

In this quick outtake, Putin talks about the state of the international economy. The key point to take away is that the US prints fiat money, backed by nothing more than thin air, while the national debt level only gets larger (19 trillion!) 

The only way this situation can change is through the imposition of a parallel financial system that steers away from the US dollar as the reserve currency. 

Gaddafi attempted to do this in his time, through the use of the gold backed dinar. Russia and China are the only ones left that allude to the possibility of a world in which the dollar is no longer the reserve currency. 

In theory, such a system would dismantle the 500 year old Rothschild Empire. The empire that continually sponsors both sides of wars...”