US Pollitics: Will Donald Trump Spur the Demise of the GOP? Will a New US Political Structure Emerge?

The Donald Trump phenomenon seems to have caused a Richter scale 7.0 earthquake on establishment politics... 

Caricature from Ben Garrison/hat tip zero hedge

Here are some noteworthy quotes on 'The Donald Phenomenon'

From analyst Martin Spring: (bold mine)

Without Ohio’s 66 delegates, Trump now faces an extremely difficult path to reach the majority of delegates he needs to avoid a “contested” GOP convention. So the establishment looks like it will win and no candidate will enter the convention with a majority of delegates locked up. So after the first ballot, they are free to vote for whoever the establishment wants. It looks like the computer may be right after all. This is beginning to appear to be a very insane situation. The last time no candidate had the required amount for a nomination was 1976. Under the rules of the GOP, all these primaries were pointless. Delegates can choose one of the candidates who ran, or someone else entirely – Romney?

With the people voting for Trump, the Republican Party may have to face a huge, strong anger backlash from his supporters. We are more likely to see a third party candidacy from Trump himself. The establishment will not have an outsider in that office so Trump might as well run third party to illustrate the corruption. The Republicans prefer Hillary to Trump any day of the week. The establishment fears ending elections that cannot be bought by their supporters, for their families might get fired from cushy jobs. Trump would not just sign whatever bill was put before him...

Someone like Trump presents a huge threat to the establishment. They would have to assassinate him because he got in their way. The establishment might try blaming Cuba again or someone else they really do not like. The talk behind the curtain is clear— hand it to Hillary and everything remains intact.

So a Republican split is looking more likely. They have drawn the line in the sand. By no means will they accept Trump. He might as well begin forming a third party. What is going to be exposed is that we do not live in a Democracy. As long as the people vote for their groomed candidates, the pretense is fine. Now when it threatens their existence, well it’s time to bring the grapes of wrath down upon everyone. Their mistake: they assume this will all blow over. Where they are wrong is that to defeat Trump, they must expose the truth. It’s their game and they make the rules. Your vote really means nothing to them. I suspect this is step one in what the computer warns will be an entirely new political system ahead.

From Libertarian author Robert Ringer: (bold added)

But make no mistake about it — all members in both wings of the party fully understand the importance of the theater aspect of the political game, never losing sight of the fact that their overarching, joint objective is to stay in power. Everything else about the game is secondary. The unspoken understanding among Demopublicans is, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. And if you refuse to play the game, you can be sure that you won’t be around long.”

Nevertheless, the Republican wing of the party has been dying a slow death since the end of the Calvin Coolidge era. Coolidge was the last great U.S. president, a fervent believer that the government’s role was to stay the hell out of the way, hence his slogan: “The business of America is a business.”

But when Coolidge handed the freedom baton to Herbert Hoover, the downward spiral began. Hoover was the George W. Bush of his time, offering little resistance to the big spenders in the Democratic wing of the party and paving the way for Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first president to fundamentally change America.

Like the stock market, there have been a few upticks here and there, most notably under Ronald Reagan, but the long-term trend line for America has been downward. And since the first anti-American president appeared on the scene in 2009, members of the Republican wing of the Demopublican Party have not even made a pretense of opposing policies that are specifically intended to collapse the economy.

As a result, everything has been going along just fine for the anti-American crowd for seven years, with the Demopublicans moving ever closer to fascist control of the populace. Then, suddenly, from out of nowhere that damn Donald Trump came along and started threatening to burst the Beltway bubble. Of course, the establishment didn’t take him seriously at first, which is likely to go down in history as their Waterloo mistake.

Like Napoleon, they were breathtakingly arrogant and, as a result, completely miscalculated the strength of their sworn enemy — the American people. Now that Republicans realize they made a terrible mistake in mocking and dismissing the chosen leader of the masses, The Donald, they have become increasingly frantic.

It’s become a real-life version of Road Runner (Trump) and Wile E. Coyote (establishment Republicans). Every time the latter thinks they’ve convinced Republican voters that Trump is a fraud, a phony, and/or an unknowledgeable fool, they wake up in the middle of the night to the haunting sounds of “Beep! Beep!”

I’m hoping that Trump’s great contribution to America will be the official end of the pompous Republican wing of the Demopublican Party — the wing that has brought us such frauds as Recreant Romney, Mush McCain, Mooch McConnell, and, more recently, Robo Rubio. Make no mistake about it, the power brokers behind the scenes are still determined to maintain the status quo, but there’s a good chance that their long-running scam is finally coming to an end

Will the Trump phenomenon expose on the populist fraud called Democracy which the establishment has used as camouflage to protect their interests?

From conservative author Pat Buchanan (emphasis mine)

What the co-conspirators of Sea Island were up at the Cloisters was about as religious as what the Bolsheviks at that girls school known as the Smolny Institute were up to in Petrograd in 1917.

From what has been reported, it would not be extreme to say this was a conspiracy of oligarchs, War Party neocons, and face-card Republicans to reverse the results of the primaries and impose upon the party, against its expressed will, a nominee responsive to the elites’ agenda.

And this taxpayer-subsidized “Dump Trump” camarilla raises even larger issues.

Now America is not Russia or Egypt or China.

But all those countries are now moving purposefully to expose U.S. ties to nongovernmental organizations set up and operating in their capital cities.

Many of those NGOs have had funds funneled to them from U.S. agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy, which has backed “color-coded revolutions” credited with dumping over regimes in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia.

In the early 1950s, in Iran and Guatemala, the CIA of the Dulles brothers did this work.

Whatever ones thinks of Vladimir Putin, can anyone blame him for not wanting U.S. agencies backing NGOs in Moscow, whose unstated goal is to see him and his regime overthrown?

And whatever one thinks of NED and its subsidiaries, it is time Americans took a hard look at the tax-exempt foundations, think tanks and public policy institutes operating in our capital city.

How many are like AEI, scheming to predetermine the outcome of presidential elections while enjoying tax exemptions and posturing as benign assemblages of disinterested scholars and seekers of truth?

How many of these tax-exempt think tanks are fronts and propaganda organs of transnational corporations that are sustained with tax-deductible dollars, until their “resident scholars” can move into government offices and do the work for which they have been paid handsomely in advance?

How many of these think tanks take foreign money to advance the interests of foreign regimes in America’s capital?

We talk about the “deep state” in Turkey and Egypt, the unseen regimes that exist beneath the public regime and rule the nation no matter the president or prime minister.

What about the “deep state” that rules us, of which we caught a glimpse at Sea Island?

Has the Trump phenomenon been the "karma" from US foreign imperialist backdoor policies or US government's meddling abroad?

Or could it be that the Donald may be just be another Trojan horse?

From Bill Bonner: (underscore mine)

But we find it hard to imagine that The Donald hasn’t already made a deal with the “powers that be.”

His career was forged in the white heat of the building trade – with mafia-run unions, along with banks and regulators in Las Vegas and New York hammering him.

He denies it. But he depends on all of them – the government, the banks, and the system of Bubble Finance – to keep his fortune intact.

He knows how important they are. And he knows how they operate.

Donald claims to be one of the greatest dealmakers in history. It is hard to imagine that he hasn’t made the most important deal of his life.

Central bank inflationism seem to have spread to drastically affect even the political spectrum. 

And yet the Trump, Europe's refugee crisis, Europe's rise of right wing politics, territorial disputes, Middle East crisis, Brexit and many more seems just the appetizer.

Graphics: 67 Countries which the US Government is Obliged to go to War for

The policeman of the world has defense treaties with 67 countries, which means US government is obliged to go to war to defend them during conflicts.

Writes the Mental Floss (hat tip Lew Rockwell )

The United States has entered a lot of treaties over the years, especially after the complicated network put in place after World War II. The Myth of Entangling Alliances by Michael Beckley sought to figure out a hard number for just how many countries the United States has agreed to defend in war. Thanks to NATO, ANZUS, OAS, and bilateral agreements, the U.S. has promised 67 countries protection. Here's a look at the list included in Beckley's paper:

Some insights from the above. First, there is a big probability for the US to be drawn into (needless) wars. Second, the US government military have been spread too thin. Third, this represents great business for the military industrial complex. Fourth, this also represents expanded US political influence on nations with which the US has defense treaties. Fifth, expanded political influence also translates to monetary and economic influence (US dollar standard)

Quote of the Day: The Saudi Arabian Government is the Ultimate Inspiration and Financial Benefactor of the Islamic State

A lengthy excerpt from analyst David Stockman from his latest article on the Middle East crisis:

The truth is, the long era of the so-called oil crisis never happened. It was only a convenient Washington invention that was used to justify statist regulation and subsidization of energy domestically and interventionist political and military policies abroad.

Back in the late 1970s as a member of the House Energy Committee I argued that the solution to high oil prices was the free market; and that if politicians really wanted to cushion the purely short-term economic blow of a Persian Gulf supply interruption the easy and efficient answer was not aircraft carriers, price controls and alternative energy subsidies, but the Texas and Louisiana salt domes that could be easily filled as a strategic petroleum reserve (called SPRO).

During the Reagan era we unleashed the energy pricing mechanisms from the bipartisan regime of price and allocation controls which had arisen in the 1970s and began a determined campaign to fill the SPRO. Thirty-five years later we have a full SPRO and a domestic and world economy that is chock-a-block with cheap energy because the pricing mechanism has done its job.

In fact, OPEC is dead as a doornail, and the real truth has now come out. Namely, there never was a real oil cartel. It was just the House of Saud playing rope-a-dope with Washington, and its national oil company trying to do exactly what every other global oil major does.

That is, invest and produce at rates which are calculated to maximize the present value of its underground reserves. And that includes producing upwards of 10 million barrels per day at present, even as the real price of oil has relapsed to 50 year ago levels.

What this also means is that Imperial Washington’s pro-Saudi foreign policy is a vestigial relic of the supreme economic ignorance that Henry Kissinger and his successors at the State Department and in the national security apparatus brought to the table decade after decade.

Had they understood the energy pricing mechanism and the logic of SPRO, the Fifth Fleet would never have been deployed to the Persian Gulf. There also never would have been any Washington intervention in the petty 1990 squabble between Saddam Hussein and the Emir of Kuwait over directional drilling in the Rumaila oilfield that straddled their historically artificial borders.

Nor would there have been any “crusader” boots trampling the allegedly sacred lands of Arabia or subsequent conversion of Bin-Laden’s fanatical Sunni mujahedeen, which the CIA had trained and armed in Afghanistan, to the al-Qaeda terrorists who perpetrated 9/11.

Needless to say, the massive US “shock and awe” invasion thereafter which destroyed the tenuous Sunni-Shiite-Kurd coexistence under the Baathist secularism of Saddam Hussein would not have happened, either. Nor would the neocon war mongers have ever become such a dominant force in Imperial Washington and led it to the supreme insanity of regime change in Libya, Syria, Yemen and beyond.

In short, the massive blowback and episodic eruptions of jihadist terrorism in Europe and even America that plague the world today would not have occurred save for the foolish policy of Fifth Fleet based energy policy.

Still, there is an even more deleterious consequence of the Kissinger Error. Namely, it has allowed the House of Saud, along with Bibi Netanyahu’s political machine, to egregiously mis-define the sectarian and tribal conflicts which rage in today’s middle-east.

The fact is, there is no such thing as generic Islamic terrorism. The overwhelming share of the world’s 1.3 billion or so Sunni Muslims are not remotely interested in Jihaddism.

Likewise, the 200 million adherents of the Shiite Muslim confession are not terrorists in any religious or ideological sense. There are about 60 million Shiite in India and Pakistan and their quarrel, if any, is rooted in antagonisms with Hindu-India, not the West or the US.

Similarly, the 80 million Shiite domiciled in Iran, southern Iraq, southern Lebanon and the Alawite communities of Syria have been host to sporadic terrorist tactics. But these occurred overwhelmingly in response to efforts by outside powers to occupy Shiite communities and lands.

That is certainly the case with the 20-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which gave rise to Hezbollah defense forces. It is also true of the Shiite uprisings in Baghdad and southern Iraq, which gave rise to the various militias that opposed the US occupation.

Moreover, post-1979 Iran has never invaded anyone, nor have the Shiite communities of northern Yemen, who are now being bombarded by Saudi pilots driving US supplied war planes and drones.

In short, there has never been a Shiite-based ideological or religious attack on the West. The anti-Americanism of the Iranian theocracy is simply a form of crude patriotism that arose out of Washington’s support for the brutal and larcenous regime of the Shah—–and which was reinforced during Iraq’s US aided invasion of Iran during the 1980s.

By contrast, the real jihadi terrorism in the contemporary world arose almost exclusively from the barbaric fundamentalism of the Sunni-Wahhabi branch of Islam, which is home-based in Saudi Arabia.

Yet this benighted form of medieval religious fanaticism survives only because the Saudi regime enforces it by the sword of its legal system; showers its domestic clergy with the bounty of its oil earnings; and exports hundreds of millions to jihadists in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Iran, Egypt and numerous other hot spots in the greater middle east.

At the end of the day, the House of Saud is also the ultimate inspiration and financial benefactor of the Islamic State, as well. Had it not provided billions in weapons and aid to the Syrian rebels over the last five years, there would be no civil war in Syria today, nor would ISIS have been able to occupy the dusty, impoverished towns and villages of the Upper Euphrates Valley where it has established its blood-thirsty caliphate.

So this weekend’s execution of a Saudi Shiite cleric who never owned a gun or incited anything other than peaceful protest among the downtrodden Shiite communities of eastern Arabia is truly the final straw. It was a deliberate provocation by a reprehensible regime that has so thoroughly corrupted the War Party that it even managed to have Washington shill for its preposterous appointment to head of the UN Commission on Human Rights!

Russia’s Putin Defense of Syria: Why the US is Against it and Why Putin Acted

Well the war against the ISIS has taken a dramatic twist. 

Russia’s Putin has joined the war by initially by conducting airstrikes against ISIS targets. But they are doing this independently from US and the latter’s allies. 

Russia has reportedly expanded air operations to cover other Syrian rebels which includes those supported by the US. 

The Chinese government reportedly will be sending warplanes in support of Russia’s campaign as Russia’s warplanes will be allowed access to Iraq’s air base. Finally, Iran and the Hezbollah have reportedly been preparing to launch ground troops on Syria.

In short, Russia and her allies have launched a coordinated campaign not only to flush out the ISIS but also to secure Syria’s Assad regime. 

And it’s not that Russia has been trying to get the goat of the US. Russia’s reportedly earlier asked for the “America and its allies to agree to coordinate their campaign against the terrorist group with Russia, Iran and the Syrian army, but according to Bloomberg, the Obama administration has so far resisted.”

Now why the US government is against Russia

From Daniel McAdam’s at the Lew Rockwell Blog offers an explanation: (bold mine)

The Obama Administration is not happy about this development.

The US has been bombing Syria for a year without permission from the Syrian government and without a UN Security Council resolution authorizing an attack on a sovereign nation. That means US strikes on Syrian soil are illegal according to international law. However the first US response to the Russian strikes against ISIS in Syria was to condemn the Russian government for not coordinating its strikes with the US.

Unsurprisingly, the US mainstream media once again rushed to carry water for the US administration, with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour pondering whether Russia answering the legitimate Syrian government’s request for assistance would open itself up to war crimes charges! In Amanpour’s world there is no crime in a year of bombing a sovereign state with not even a fig leaf UN resolution to back it up. The only crime is to resist the US empire. No wonder in a world of media austerity, Amanpour is a well-compensated regime propagandist.

Rather than welcoming Russian efforts against ISIS and al-Qaeda, the US claims that unless Russia also focuses on removing the Assad government from power its efforts are “doomed to failure.” The US claims to be concerned that the Russians are attacking the “moderate” Syrian rebels trained by the United States — but even US generals have admitted that group consists of a grand total of four or five individuals. So it’s hard to understand the sudden concern. Each new batch of “moderates” the US churns out seems to defect to al-Qaeda or ISIS within minutes of deployment in Syria.

What is interesting is that the US-led coalition dropping bombs on Syria for the past year has yet to even consider the mounting civilian body count from its attacks. Not a word from the US government about large numbers of civilians it has killed in Syria. Yet there is plenty of evidence that the civilian toll taken by American bombs is exceedingly high. The moment the Russians join the fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria, however, the US suddenly becomes obsessed with civilian deaths — even as no evidence has arisen aside from suspicious reports from opposition-friendly “human rights” organizations that any civilians have been killed in the first day of Russian strikes.

What “evidence” exists of civilian casualties in the Russian strikes comes from the war machine funded Institute for the Study of War (ISW), headed by Victoria Nuland‘s sister-in-law Kimberly Kagan. ISW’s Genevieve Casagrande — a former dolphin expert who quite frankly does not look like a seasoned foreign policy expert —  claimed to know that Russia’s airstrikes “did not hit ISIS militants and rather resulted in a large number of civilian casualties.” Based on what? Only the unquestioning mainstream media could tell us. But of course they do not.

The bottom line is this: the US is opposing Russia’s attacks on ISIS and al-Qaeda — two branches of the same tree that are a proven threat to the US homeland — because Russia is not also attacking the Assad government, which could never be a threat to the United States.

Who really is protecting us? Obama with his ongoing Assad obsession?

Danger ahead!

Meanwhile, conservative author Pat Buchanan says that Russia’s Putin has only been adroitly responding to the interventionist US foreign policy predicated on the latter's aversion to national self-determination.

From Lew Rockwell.com (bold mine)

So Vladimir Putin in his U.N. address summarized his indictment of a U.S. foreign policy that has produced a series of disasters in the Middle East that we did not need the Russian leader to describe for us.

Fourteen years after we invaded Afghanistan, Afghan troops are once again fighting Taliban forces for control of Kunduz. Only 10,000 U.S. troops still in that ravaged country prevent the Taliban’s triumphal return to power.

A dozen years after George W. Bush invaded Iraq, ISIS occupies its second city, Mosul, controls its largest province, Anbar, and holds Anbar’s capital, Ramadi, as Baghdad turns away from us — to Tehran.

The cost to Iraqis of their “liberation”? A hundred thousand dead, half a million widows and fatherless children, millions gone from the country and, still, unending war.

How has Libya fared since we “liberated” that land? A failed state, it is torn apart by a civil war between an Islamist “Libya Dawn” in Tripoli and a Tobruk regime backed by Egypt’s dictator.

Then there is Yemen. Since March, when Houthi rebels chased a Saudi sock puppet from power, Riyadh, backed by U.S. ordinance and intel, has been bombing that poorest of nations in the Arab world.

Five thousand are dead and 25,000 wounded since March. And as the 25 million Yemeni depend on imports for food, which have been largely cut off, what is happening is described by one U.N. official as a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

“Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years,” said the international head of the Red Cross on his return.

On Monday, the wedding party of a Houthi fighter was struck by air-launched missiles with 130 guests dead. Did we help to produce that?

What does Putin see as the ideological root of these disasters?

“After the end of the Cold War, a single center of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think they were strong and exceptional, they knew better.”

Then, adopting policies “based on self-conceit and belief in one’s exceptionality and impunity,” this “single center of domination,” the United States, began to export “so-called democratic” revolutions.

How did it all turn out? Says Putin:

“An aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions. … Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster.

Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.”

Is Putin wrong in his depiction of what happened to the Middle East after we plunged in? Or does his summary of what American interventions have wrought echo the warnings made against them for years by American dissenters?

Putin concept of “state sovereignty” is this: “We are all different, and we should respect that. No one has to conform to a single development model that someone has once and for all recognized as the right one.”

The Soviet Union tried that way, said Putin, and failed. Now the Americans are trying the same thing, and they will reach the same end.

Unlike most U.N. speeches, Putin’s merits study. For he not only identifies the U.S. mindset that helped to produce the new world disorder, he identifies a primary cause of the emerging second Cold War.

To Putin, the West’s exploitation of its Cold War victory to move NATO onto Russia’s doorstep caused the visceral Russian recoil. The U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine that overthrew the elected pro-Russian government led straight to the violent reaction in the pro-Russian Donbas.

What Putin seems to be saying to us is this:

If America’s elites continue to assert their right to intervene in the internal affairs of nations, to make them conform to a U.S. ideal of what is a good society and legitimate government, then we are headed for endless conflict. And, one day, this will inevitably result in war, as more and more nations resist America’s moral imperialism.

Nations have a right to be themselves, Putin is saying.

They have the right to reflect in their institutions their own histories, beliefs, values and traditions, even if that results in what Americans regard as illiberal democracies or authoritarian capitalism or even Muslim theocracies.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Americans had no problem with this, when Americans accepted a diversity of regimes abroad. Indeed, a belief in nonintervention abroad was once the very cornerstone of American foreign policy.

Wednesday and Thursday, Putin’s forces in Syria bombed the camps of U.S.-backed rebels seeking to overthrow Assad. Putin is sending a signal: Russia is willing to ride the escalator up to a collision with the United States to prevent us and our Sunni Arab and Turkish allies from dumping over Assad, which could bring ISIS to power in Damascus.

Perhaps it is time to climb down off our ideological high horse and start respecting the vital interests of other sovereign nations, even as we protect and defend our own.

The Syrian war has already spawned a Syrian refugee crisis

Importantly, cross your fingers that these two major opposing alliances won’t cross each other's path, because this may be worse than a global stock market crash or economic/financial crisis, as the Syrian war may be the trigger to World War III. 

Quote of the Day: Volkswagen Is Now An Object Of US Foreign Policy

Government Motors executives knowingly kept putting faulty ignition switches on vehicles, playing the numbers game and covering up its con game that killed 120+ people. Then they pocket the US Justice Department and walk away with inconsequential fines and no criminal prosecution.

The Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) will have 3 corporate officers/managers sent to prison for a very long time for a salmonella outbreak, even in spite of shaky evidence that these folks were acting out in a criminal manner.

Volkswagen *increases its investment in Russia* and bypasses the EPA’s politically-motivated, special interest-benefiting mandates, and so the company is currently being threatened with $18B in fines, while that same Justice Department cranks up a criminal probe and the financial markets slaughter 20%+ of the company’s value. Volkswagen is now an object of US foreign policy and Middle East diplomacy.

As dominoes continue to fall — Germany, France, the United Kingdom, South Korea and Italy are calling for queries into Volkswagen — the damage to the iconic German company became more clear Tuesday. Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn has apologized and is fighting to keep his job, denying reports in German media that he would be replaced by Matthias Müller, the chairman of VW’s sister company Porsche. Volkswagen’s stock dropped nearly 20 percent Tuesday, a repeat of Monday’s slide. Qatar, the oil rich nation that is one of the Volkswagen’s largest shareholders, has already lost $5 billion on its investment.

This is from Karen De Coster at the Lew Rockwell Blog.

Politics, finance and economics are interconnected.

Ron Paul: Yemen Exploding: Is The Stage Set for the Big War?

I recently asked if the bombing by Saudi Arabian government on Yemen’s Houthi movement will have a ripple effect: 

Will this proxy war lead to a tit for tat with Iran? Will this foment an expanded theater of conflict between the US backed by her allies against the Russia-China alliance? (As side note: Russia and Iran recently signed a defense pact)

In his latest outlook, the great Ron Paul expands this view: (source: Ron Paul Institute/Lew Rockwell.com) [bold mine]

Rapid changes are occurring in Yemen. Ever since United States had to leave its military base there, other powers have been lining up to benefit from the chaos. It has been revealed that Saudi Arabia has commenced bombing targets in Yemen. Egypt has announced its support for the Saudi effort. I am quite confident that this support is in compliance with our instructions to our puppet leader now in charge in Egypt. The current president of Yemen, Hadi, a leader who took over after the Arab Spring revolution, has been removed from power. He is said to have escaped to Saudi Arabia, and those who are now in charge in Yemen will most likely kill him if he returns.

Yemen has been instrumental in the US effort to fight al-Qaeda in the region. Unsuccessfully, I might add. The Houthis who have deposed Hadi are said to get their support from Iran and are now likely the strongest political force in the country. But they will not have an easy time of it. Too much is at stake for the United States and Saudi Arabia. We don’t read much about the Saudi Air Force being involved in military conflict, but the seriousness of the situation has prompted them to do exactly that. There are also reports that 150,000 or more troops are massed near the borders of Yemen for a probable invasion. It is assumed that other Arab nations will be involved, along with Egypt. One report said that it appears the country is “sliding toward a civil war.” I would suggest that it’s past sliding toward the civil war, and, rather, is involved deeply in a civil war that is now spreading outside its own borders.

The neoconservatives, I am sure, will blame everything on Iran. And it’s likely Iran may have been involved in giving some type of support to the Shia that now are on the verge of taking over the country. But one must ask, “How does this compare to the support the United States has given to over 100 countries in recent years, with a major portion going to the Middle East?” There’s a big difference between a country becoming involved in a crisis next door and a country getting involved 6000 miles away.

It looks like the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, a military dictator who was deposed in the Arab Spring revolution, is now aligned with the Shia Houthis who are supported by Iran. This will not be tolerated by the United States, and we can expect the US to provide indirect military assistance to those who are prepared to invade Yemen and install a US friendly dictator.

Foreign forces’ bombs and occupation will serve to unify the citizens of Yemen despite their other differences. As a matter of fact, it’s been our presence in this country for more than a decade that has been an aggravating factor. The fact that al-Qaeda type rebel forces have done well in the various countries in recent years is because they gain support from the local people with the promise that the foreign invaders will be expelled. This certainly is true when it comes to the type of support that the people give, tacit or otherwise, to the very ruthless ISIS forces. It amazes me how these ragtag rebels can out-fight and outfox various countries whose forces are larger and better armed. The so-called rebels find that their promise to expel the invaders is a strong motivating factor to gain support for the military resistance. The catch-22 is that the more we or any other nation try to subdue a foreign country, the stronger the opposition becomes.

This new expansion of the war in Yemen is a bad sign. The situation could easily worsen, involve many countries, and last for a long time to come. The stage for the “Big War” may well be set and we will be hearing a lot more about Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula in the coming months. If this war gets out of hand, I would expect that the benefits of $45 per barrel of oil will soon end. There is no doubt in my mind that the American people — financially and for security reasons — would be better served if we just came home and avoided these nonsensical military interventions that are carried out in behalf of various special interests that control our foreign policy.

The proxy war map from the Zero Hedge

The Yemeni factions from Stratfor

US Dollar Standard In Jeopardy: Australia, Germany, France and Italy to Join China’s Infrastructure and Investment Bank

I have recently blogged  about out how the US government has been losing political capital. In the context of geopolitics, UK has decided to join China’s $50bn Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the first among the G-7 nations despite American protests.

But bad news appear to be mounting for the US as many other nations appear to be jumping aboard China’s project.

First, Australia warms up to the Chinese  project.

From the Australian Financial Review:

The Australian Industry Group has urged the federal government to push ahead with joining China's specialist infrastructure bank declaring this would make the country an active participant in the changing economic landscape of the region rather than just a bystander.

The business group's chief executive Innes Willox welcomed signs the government was changing its mind on the institution saying this would position Australia as a player in strategic decision making in regional infrastructure investment and further its regional trade activities.

Treasurer Joe Hockey signalled last Friday that Australia was reconsidering its opposition to the US$50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) after decisions by New Zealand and the United Kingdom to join.

Today Germany, France and Italy reportedly announced plans to also hop into the Chinese bandwagon

From the Guardian:

Gap widens between US and allies on new China-led lending body, with Britain among other countries already taking part in AIIB and Australia considering it

A senior US diplomat said it was up to individual countries to decide on joining a new China-led lending body, as media reports said France, Germany and Italy have agreed to follow Britain’s lead and join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

A growing number of close allies were ignoring Washington’s pressure to stay out of the institution, the Financial Times reported, in a setback for US foreign policy.

In China the state-owned Xinhua news agency said South Korea, Switzerland and Luxembourg were also considering joining.

The Financial Times, quoting European officials, said the decision by the four countries to become members of the AIIB was a blow for Washington, which has questioned if the new bank will have high standards of governance and environmental and social safeguards.

The US dollar standard looks very much in jeopardy

Five Signs that Shows of the US Government's Rapidly Eroding Political Capital Base

The US government’s grip on domestic and international politics seem to be slipping fast.

First, the US financial imperialist plan to isolate and drop Russia from the global financial system has backfired.

From Sovereign Man’s Simon Black: (bold mine)

If Vladimir Putin is remotely capable of laughter (the jury is out on that one…) then he’s probably doing so right now.

Russia is once again Arch-Enemy of the United States. It’s like living through a really bad James Bond movie, complete with cartoonish villains.

And for the last several months, the US government has been doing everything it can to torpedo the Russian economy, as well as Vladimir Putin’s standing within his own country.

The economic nuclear option is to kick Russia out of the international banking system. And the US government has been vociferously pushing for this.

Specifically, the US government wants to kick Russia out of SWIFT, short for the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications.

That’s a mouthful. But SWIFT is an important component in the global banking system because it lays the foundation for banks to communicate and transfer funds with one another.

It’s a network protocol of sorts. Whenever a bank in Pakistan does business with a bank in Portugal, the funds will clear through the SWIFT network.

According to the SWIFT itself, they link over 9,000 financial institutions worldwide in over 200 countries, which transact 15 million times per day.

Bottom line, being part of SWIFT is critical to conducting business with the rest of the world. And if Russia gets kicked out of SWIFT, it would be a disaster.

Now, SWIFT is technically organized as a ‘Cooperative Society’ and governed by a board of directors.

There are 25 available board seats, and each seat is allocated for a three-year term to a specific country.

The United States, Belgium, France, Germany, UK, and Switzerland each hold two seats. A handful of other countries hold just one seat. And of course, most countries don’t hold any seats at all.

Here’s what’s utterly hilarious—

On Monday afternoon, not only did SWIFT NOT kick Russia out… but they announced that they were actually giving a BOARD SEAT to Russia.

This is basically the exact opposite of what the US government was pushing for.

Awkward…

But this story is even bigger than that.

Because at the same time that the US government isn’t getting its way with SWIFT, the Chinese are busy putting together their own version of it called CIPS.

CIPS stands for the China International Payment System; it’s intended to be a direct competitor to SWIFT, and a brand new way for global banks to communicate and transact with one another in a way that does NOT depend on the United States.

We’ll talk about CIPS in more details in a future letter. But in brief, it addresses some serious weaknesses, inefficiencies, and technological challenges of SWIFT.

And it should be ready to go later this year.

Make no mistake, this is the beginning of the end of the US dollar’s global hegemony. It’s time to stop hoping that it won’t happen and time to start preparing for it.

Second, against US wishes, UK decides to join China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

From the Financial Times (bold mine) 

The Obama administration accused the UK of a “constant accommodation” of China after Britain decided to join a new China-led financial institution that could rival the World Bank.

The rare rebuke of one of the US’s closest allies came as Britain prepared to announce that it will become a founding member of the $50bn Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, making it the first country in the G7 group of leading economies to join an institution launched by China last October.

Thursday’s reprimand was a rare breach in the “special relationship” that has been a backbone of western policy for decades. It also underlined US concerns over China’s efforts to establish a new generation of international development banks that could challenge Washington-based global institutions. The US has been lobbying other allies not to join the AIIB.

Relations between Washington and David Cameron’s government have become strained, with senior US officials criticising Britain over falling defence spending, which could soon go below the Nato target of 2 per cent of gross domestic product.

Third, the first open spat over Ukraine between the US-NATO and Germany

From Sputnik International (bold mine) 

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has told his US counterpart John Kerry that it is too early to take any pride in the western strategy towards the Ukraine crisis, just days after accusing the US of "dangerous propaganda" over Ukraine.

Steinmeier, speaking on a visit to the US, said to Kerry at a joint press conference in Washington: "It is far too early to pat our shoulders and take pride in what we've achieved."

His comments come days after an official in German Chancellor Angela Merkel's offices had complained of US Air Force General Philip Breedlove's "dangerous propaganda" over Ukraine, and that Steinmeier had talked to the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg about him.

Fourth, the average Americans see the US government as the most important problem.

From Gallup.com

Americans continue to name the government (18%) as the most important U.S. problem, a distinction it has had for the past four months. Americans' mentions of the economy as the top problem (11%) dropped this month, leaving it tied with jobs (10%) for second place

Though issues such as terrorism, healthcare, race relations and immigration have emerged among the top problems in recent polls, government, the economy and unemployment have been the dominant problems listed by Americans for more than a year.

The latest results are from a March 5-8 Gallup poll of 1,025 American adults.

Finally, actions speak louder than words (demonstrated preference), record Americans have been ditching US passports.

From CNBC.com (bold mine)

According to the latest data from the Treasury Department, spotted by Andrew Mitchel at the International Tax Blog, a record 3,415 Americans renounced their citizenship in 2014. That was up from the 2,999 in 2013 and more than triple the number for 2012.

You can read the list of individuals who renounced here.

While some may see taxes as the main reason to flee, that's only part of the story. The big policy change that's causing people to give up their American citizenship is FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

It may sound wonky. But the act requires foreign banks to reveal any Americans with accounts over $50,000. Banks that don't comply could be frozen out of U.S. markets. And Americans overseas—even those who never lived in the U.S. or have a tangential connection here—are now under far more pressure to file detailed tax returns and pay U.S. taxes on their overseas income.

The program was designed to catch more wealthy overseas tax cheats. But one of its unintended consequences is that those Americans are simply giving up on being Americans.

And as part of this exodus, Americans in Asia have also been dumping their citizenship, from Asian Investor.net

A fast-rising number of Americans based in the region are disposing of their US citizenship, citing increasing difficulty of managing their financial affairs due to growing regulatory demands.

I have posted about FACTA here. 

So underneath those record stocks have been a progressing US political entropy. Yet what happens if the US suffers a recession or another financial crisis?

Video: Retired US General Westley Clark: Our friends and allies funded ISIS to destroy Hezbollah

Interesting comments by a US retired four-star general and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Westley Clark on CNN who says that the the jihadist rebel group ISIS was "funded by friends and allies" of America "to fight Hezbollah", and whose recruits have been "zealots and religious fundamentalists", thereby creating a "Frankenstein".

The Great Wars of the American Empire: The Philippine Mamasapano ‘Operation Exodus’ Debacle

This post by retired Professor Michael Rozeff at the Lew Rockwell looks very relevant applied to the Philippines today: (bold mine)

Looking at a map of current American military engagements overseas, one cannot help but notice their wide geographical spread and their seemingly interminable nature. Battles have raged in Europe (Yugoslavia and Ukraine), in Africa, in the Middle East, and in central Asia. The American Empire has launched this country into a series of battles that have no end in sight and no location that may not become a focal point of military force. These battles, each a war in its own right, have drawn in forces and resources from U.S. allies in Europe through NATO and even drawn in Japan. The scope of this war is global. In fact, one part of this war has been called the Global War on Terror. To understand this war and grasp its meaning, in the hope of bringing it to an end, a descriptive name is needed that tells us what this war is about. The name suggested here is the “Great War of the American Empire”. Since World War I, another disastrous war that American joined, is called the Great War, we can refer to the Great War of the American Empire also as Great War II.

Great War II comprises a number of sub-wars. The American Empire is the common element and the most important driver in all the sub-wars mentioned below. American involvement has never been necessary in these sub-wars, but the decisions to make them America’s business have come from the Empire’s leaders. The name “Great War of the American Empire” emphasizes the continuity of all the sub-wars to produce one Great War, and the responsibility of the American Empire in choosing to participate in and create this Great War. Had America’s leaders chosen the radically different path of non-intervention and true defense of this continent, rather than overseas interventions, Great War II would not have occurred and not still be occurring.

The Great War of the American Empire began 25 years ago. It began on August 2, 1990 with the Gulf War against Iraq and continues to the present. Earlier wars involving Israel and America sowed the seeds of this Great War. So did American involvements in Iran, the 1977-1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Even earlier American actions also set the stage, such as the recognition of Israel, the protection of Saudi Arabia as an oil supplier, the 1949 CIA involvement in the coup in Syria, and the American involvement in Lebanon in 1958. Poor (hostile) relations between the U.S. and Libya (1979-1986) also contributed to a major sub-war in what has turned out to be the Great War of the American Empire.

The inception of Great War II may, if one likes, be moved back to 1988 and 1989 without objection because those years also saw the American Empire coming into its own in the invasion of Panama to dislodge Noriega, operations in South America associated with the war on drugs, and an operation in the Philippines to protect the Aquino government. Turmoil in the Soviet Union was already being reflected in a more military-oriented foreign policy of the U.S.

Following the Gulf War, the U.S. government engages America and Americans non-stop in one substantial military operation or war after another. In the 1990s, these include Iraq no-fly zones, Somalia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Haiti, Zaire, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Liberia, Albania, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Serbia. In the 2000s, the Empire begins wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and gets into serious military engagements in Yemen, Pakistan, and Syria. It has numerous other smaller military missions in Uganda, Jordan, Turkey, Chad, Mali, and Somalia. Some of these sub-wars and situations of involvement wax and wane and wax again. The latest occasion of American Empire intervention is Ukraine where, among other things, the U.S. military is slated to be training Ukrainian soldiers.

Terror and terrorism are invoked to rationalize some operations. Vague threats to national security are mentioned for others. Protection of Americans and American interests sometimes is made into a rationale. Terrorism and drugs are sometimes linked, and sometimes drug interdiction alone is used to justify an action that becomes part of the Great War of the American Empire. On several occasions, war has been justified because of purported ethnic cleansing or supposed mass killings directed by or threatened by a government.

Upon close inspection, all of these rationales fall apart. None is satisfactory. The interventions are too widespread, too long-lasting and too unsuccessful at what they supposedly accomplish to lend support to any of the common justifications. Is “good” being done when it involves endless killing, frequently of innocent bystanders, that elicits more and more anti-American sentiment from those on the receiving end who see Americans as invaders? Has the Great War II accomplished even one of its supposed objectives?

The Great War of the American Empire encompasses several sub-wars, continual warfare, continual excuses for continual warfare, and continual military engagements that promise Americans more of the same indefinitely. There is a web site called “The Long War Journal”that catalogs events all over the globe that are part of the Great War II, what the site calls the Long War. This site is a project of the “Foundation for Defense of Democracies”, which is a neocon organization that is promoting the Great War of the American Empire.

What they see, and accurately see, as a Long War is a portion of what is here called the Great War of the American Empire. The difference is that all the interventions and sub-wars of the past 25 years and all the military outposts of the U.S. government that provide the seeds of future wars and interventions are included in the Great War II. They all spring from the same source, even though each one has a different specific character.

"Several sub-wars, continual warfare, continual excuses for continual warfare, and continual military engagements…" For “the latest occasion of American Empire intervention” Professor Rozeff should now include the Philippines.

In 2012 I posted here of a US drone strike against supposed domestic  terrorists that cost many civilian lives. The event had been sparsely covered by international media and appears to have existed in a vacuum in domestic media.

Apparently that has been an appetizer for things to come…

The latest fiasco from the anti terrorism operations conducted  by the Philippine government at Mamasapano Maguindanao last January 25, which claimed lives of 44 government SAF (Special Action Force) at least 18 from the Moro International Liberation Front (MILF), 5 from the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters  and several civilians, appears to have the US government’s imperial fingerprints all over it.

And many of these accounts have been been covered by both domestic and international media.

Drones had reportedly been active during the pre-operations surveillance “Drones ‘twinkled at night’” (Inquirer) and during the operations: “US drone watched Mamasapano debacle” (Inquirer). 

Malaysian bomb expert Zulkifli Abdhir or nicknamed “Marwan”, one of the targets of the operations, reportedly wrote to his brother via email, just prior to his death, to detail on the US involvement in the campaign against Muslim rebels by the use of Orion spy planes and Predator drones (Philstar/MSN)

There was even reports that an American had been killed during the operations but has been (naturally) denied by the US embassy (Rappler). 

Low intensity operations-conflicts (LICs) are frequently considered “classified information”, thus will be denied…until exposed or declassified after several years.

Curiously, headlines over the past few days has been buzzing with accounts of direct US government involvement in Philippine affairs. 

A Philippine politician reported of ‘secret embassy cables’ that was exposed by Wikileaks in 2010 of how the US government had funded and planned counterterrorism measures in the south that may have led to the clash (Philstar)

Yesterday’s headlines showed that based on testimony of an insider or an anonymous SAF officer, who reportedly said “Americans dictated every move”, the US was behind Oplan Exodus (Inquirer).

Today’s headlines shows that there have been ‘8 Americans sighted monitoring Oplan Exodus’ (Inquirer) where American officials monitored the execution of plan that went awry.

This reminds me of the infamous Bay of Pigs. The Bay of Pigs operations according to wikipedia.org was “a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961.  A counter-revolutionary military, trained and funded by the United States government's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Brigade 2506 fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF) and intended to overthrow the Communist government of Fidel Castro. Launched from Guatemala, the invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban armed forces, under the direct command of Prime Minister of Cuba Fidel Castro.”

The modern day equivalent of the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group then has been the Philippine SAF. Instead of an invasion in the name of anti-communism then, today has been about assassinations in the name of war on terror. 

The Bay of Pigs was initially denied by officials (History Channel) but later admitted to by the late US President John F Kennedy (JFK). Eventually chain of events from the Bay of Pigs led to the assassination of JFK

Back to the Mamasapano blunder.

Has this been the quid pro quo from all the credit rating upgrades the Philippine government has received from the US credit ratings?  For the Philippine government to fight the American empire's ‘Great Wars’ here, as a vassal state and or as proxy?

You see credit ratings has embedded political colors too.

For instance, the US government’s economic sanctions against Russia (due to their Ukraine standoff) has indirectly incited downgrades on Russia’s debt by the major western credit ratings. Reasons for downgrades seems founded on infirm grounds according to Sprott Money analysis. So having interpreted political dimension for such actions, in response, the governments of China and Russia have been working to establish their own credit rating agencies to rival or to counter the western peers (Reuters, RT.com)

In other words, in today's financialization of the global economy, credit ratings can serve as instruments of political control (carrot and stick) or even psychological warfare

What seems as, hasn’t been what really is. 

These are just examples of possible asymmetric non-linear linkages in a complex world.

Very interesting developments.