This post was published at The Official Hagmann Report
Pat Buchanan Asks “If We Erase Our History, Who Are We?”
Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,
When the Dodge Charger of 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields Jr., plunged into that crowd of protesters Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, Fields put Charlottesville on the map of modernity alongside Ferguson.
Before Fields ran down the protesters, and then backed up, running down more, what was happening seemed but a bloody brawl between extremists on both sides of the issue of whether Robert E. Lee’s statue should be removed from Emancipation Park, formerly Lee Park.
With Heyer’s death, the brawl was elevated to a moral issue. And President Donald Trump’s initial failure to denounce the neo-Nazi and Klan presence was declared a moral failure.
How did we get here, and where are we going?
In June of 2015, 21-year-old Dylann Roof gunned down nine Christians at an evening Bible study in Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church. A review of Roof’s selfies and website showed him posing with the Confederate battle flag.
Gov. Nikki Haley, five years in office, instantly pivoted and called for removal of the battle flag from the Confederate war memorial on the State House grounds, as a ‘deeply offensive symbol of a brutally offensive past.’
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 15, 2017.
Korea And Venezuela: Flip Sides Of The Same Coin
Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
By suggesting that he might order a U. S. regime-change invasion of Venezuela, President Trump has inadvertently shown why North Korea has been desperately trying to develop nuclear weapons – to serve as a deterrent or defense against one of the U. S. national-security state storied regime-change operations. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Venezuela and, for that matter, other Third World countries who stand up to the U. S. Empire, also seeking to put their hands on nuclear weapons. What better way to deter a U. S. regime-change operation against them?
Think back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The U. S. national-security establishment had initiated a military invasion of the Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, had exhorted President Kennedy to bomb Cuba during that invasion, and then had recommended that the president implement a fraudulent pretext (i.e., Operation Northwoods) for a full-scale military invasion of Cuba.
That’s why Cuba, which had never initiated any acts of aggression against the United States, wanted Soviet nuclear missiles installed in Cuba. Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro knew that there was no way that Cuba could defeat the United States in a regular, conventional war. Everyone knows that the military establishment in the United States is so large and so powerful that it can easily smash any Third World nation, including Cuba, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Venezuela.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 16, 2017.
It takes a village to ruin everything
Here is a formula for you: ‘smaller problem, bigger solution.’
It’s quite an elite formula, and I’ll explain it as I go along.
‘Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.’ (David Rockefeller, Memoirs 2003)
In a future sea of darkness, the islands of light, toward which people desperately grope, are clusters of buildings occupied by mega-corporations and government agencies.
To achieve a measure of survival, people seek those islands and the jobs that come with them.
When you sign on and are accepted, you pledge a loyalty that knows no bounds, because there is no viable alternative. You cease worrying about the crimes your employer is committing, because you are safe, you are out of the darkness, and you want to stay there.
What would cause this future to come to pass? Many answers have been offered. I’ll add a factor to the list.
This post was published at Jon Rappoport on August 15, 2017.
Korean War Part II: Why It’s Probably Going To Happen
Though a lot of people in my line of work (alternative economic and geopolitical analysis) tend to be accused of “doom mongering,” I have to say personally I am not a big believer in “doom.” At least, not in the way that the accusation insinuates. I don’t believe in apocalypse, Armageddon or the end of the world, nor do I even believe, according to the evidence, that a global nuclear conflict is upon us. In fact, it annoys me that so many people seem desperate to imagine those conclusions whenever a crisis event takes shape.
I think the concept of “apocalypse” is rather lazy – unless we are talking about a fantastical movie scenario, like a meteor the size of Kentucky or Michelle Obama’s Adam’s apple hurtling towards the Earth. Human civilization is more likely to change in the face of crisis rather than end completely.
I do believe in massive sea changes in societies and political dynamics. I believe in the fall of nations and empires. I believe in this because I have seen it perpetually through history. What I see constant evidence of is that many of these sea changes are engineered by establishment elitists in government and finance. What I see is evidence of organized psychopathy and an agenda for total centralization of power. When I stumble upon the potential for economic disaster or war, I always ask myself “what is the narrative being sold to the public, what truth is it distracting us from and who REALLY benefits from the calamity.”
This post was published at Alt-Market on Wednesday, 16 August 2017.
Why We’re Doomed: Our Economy’s Toxic Inequality
Anyone who thinks our toxic financial system is stable is delusional. Why are we doomed? Those consuming over-amped “news” feeds may be tempted to answer the culture wars, nuclear war with North Korea or the Trump Presidency. The one guaranteed source of doom is our broken financial system, which is visible in this chart of income inequality from the New York Times: Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart.
This post was published at Charles Hugh Smith on WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2017.
Inside The Opioid Crisis That You’re Not Allowed To See
Via StockBoardAsset.com,
Earlier this month, U. S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions unveiled a plan to go after doctors and pharmacies suspected of healthcare fraud by oversubscribing opioids. America’s opioid epidemic killed 33,000 people in 2015 making it the worst drug crisis in our history. Last week, President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a national emergency allowing the executive branch to direct funds towards treatment facilities and supplying police officers with naloxone.
As a socio-economist on the front lines of the opioid crisis in Baltimore, Maryland, I am about to take you through an opioid experience like you’ve never seen before. We’re going to travel into the inner city of Baltimore and interview current and former addicts of opioids and heroin. Some of these individuals used heroin 15-minutes before the cameras started rolling.
These individuals have never been given the chance to tell their story until now. Baltimore’s mainstream news is not allowed to share this because it breaks the narrative that everything is awesome. It turns out that Baltimore could have the largest methadone clinic in the United States called Turning Point Clinic. Each of the interviewees are current and past patients of the clinic and speak very negatively about it. A similar description of Baltimore is heard from each of the interviewees of a hellacious city with decades of deindustrialization, drug abuse, and violent crime.
In the first video, three women who are current or past addicts of opioids tell the story of clinics, doctors, and pharmacies flooding the street of Baltimore with opioids. Gina mainly speaks about the Turning Point Clinic – how a preacher who operates the facility went from ‘nothing to now wearing $1000 gators, flying private jets, and driving Bentleys’. As described by one of the women, it looks like ‘zombie-land’ outside of the clinic.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 15, 2017.
Iran Threatens Trump With Restart Of Nuclear Program “Within Hours”
One day after Iran announced it was preparing to send a flotilla of warships to the western Atlantic Ocean following the announcement of a massive $500 million investment in war spending, the Iranian regime is fast emerging as the latest potential geopolitical headache for the Trump administration, after it warned on Tuesday that Iran could abandon its 2015 nuclear deal signed with Obama with world powers “within hours” if the United States imposes further sanctions on Tehran, president Hassan Rouhani said in his first address to Iran’s parliament since being sworn in to a second term, and hinted that Iran could quickly boost enrichment up to levels even higher than before it signed the nuclear accord.
“Those who try to return to the language of threats and sanctions are prisoners of their past delusions,” Rouhani said in the address. “If they want to go back to that experience, definitely in a short time – not in weeks or months, but within hours or days – we will return to our previous [nuclear] situation very much stronger.”
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 15, 2017.
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