Governments do not and never had appreciated “Free” Speech; and our founders knew that and its why we have the 1st and 2nd amendments.
Tag Archives: battle for Aleppo
WW III Is Near as Russia Is Militarizing Rockets to Take Out US Satellites Leaving Amerca Defenseless
It’s obvious to anyone with military training that in today’s world, if there was a war, the wind would be the one that dominated in space. Take out your opponents satellites and GPS and you are finished.
Tax Revolt in Belarus Turning to Mass Arrests
Armstrong Economics Blog/Civil Unrest
Re-Posted Mar 27, 2017 by Martin Armstrong
For weeks now, thousands of people have gone public in Belarus to protest against a special tax for “little workers” and demanded the resignation of Aleksandr Grigoryevich Lukashenko who has been the autocratic President of Belarus, in office since July 20th, 1994. Lukashenko had issued a decree that people who work less than six months a year have to pay a tax of 189 euros. This was to prevent “social parasitism”, which he explained was the justification. In view of the protests, he temporarily suspended the decree, but the crisis is getting worse.
Lukashenko is seen by many as really a dictator. His police arrests those who were going to speak at the protest and they stormed the human rights office arresting people there in advance. The instability building in Belarus is really serious. Additionally, Lukashenko has lashed out at Russia and accused Moscow of violating their 20-year old border agreement, in a escalating dispute that has become a source of tension with his country’s neighbor and strongest ally. It appears that we will see the collapse of the current government by 2020.
Russia and Belarus share a border under a 1996 deal that set up a commonwealth known as the Union State. However, in February 2017, Russia set-up checkpoints at crossings into Belarus in response to Mr Lukashenko’s decision to introduce five-day visa waivers for citizens of 79 countries, including the US and EU member states. This has provoked tensions with Russia which is concerned that Belarus will move towards the west.
Everywhere we look around the global, tensions are building in conflicts both domestic and international. This is on schedule for building in intensity going into the peak of the next wave of the Economic Confidence Model hitting in 2022-2023. We must keep this in mind relative to markets moving forward.
NATO Troops moved from Germany to Poland on Weekend
Armstrong Economics Blog/Russia
Re-Posted Mar 27, 2017 by Martin Armstrong
Soldiers were moved on the weekend from the garrison at Vilseck and were restationed at Orzysz in Poland close to the border with Belarus. This was a NATO unit consisting of units from the USA, Great Britain and Romania. With tensions building between Belarus and Russia, this particular troop reassignment is interesting to say the least.
Macedonia Reject Soros & the EU Socialism
Armstrong Economics Blog/Eastern Europe
Re-Posted Mar 27, 2017 by Martin Armstrong
For 26-days straight, thousands of people have taken to the streets in order to send the message to Soros and European leaders that the people of Macedonia are a sovereign nation who utterly reject the left-wing agenda to divide the nation and bring a socialist-Muslim coalition to power. Johannes Hahn is an Austrian politician, who since November 2014 is Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement. He went to earlier last week to Skopje, in Macedonia, where he held talks with political representatives in a bid to contribute to a solution to the political deadlock there to get Macedonia to join the EU.
There was considerable corruption where the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski was forced to resign in December 2015. The EU brokered elections in December 2016 to end the protests against the government of Gruevski. The December 2016 elections have left a transitional government was installed including from 20 October 20th, 2015 with the two main parties, VMRO-DPMNE and the Social Democratic Union (SDSM).
Then in late December, the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama invited the leaders of four Albanian parties in Macedonia to Tirana for a meeting at which they formulated a so-called “Tirana Platform,” which was really under the auspices of the Albanian government. This called for the Albanian language to be granted official status in Macedonia, judicial reform, EU membership and NATO membership. This was the first straw that broke the back where the people were protesting about the status of the Albanian language in Macedonia. According to the census from 2002, there were 1.3 million Macedonians of which there were 509,000 Albanians in the country.
What is clear is there has been a concerted effort to take over Macedonia by the European Commission. This seems to be part of their need to sure up the EU following BREXIT and to create a NATO buffer against Russia. However, Johannes Hahn’s attempt to win over the politicians in Macedonia prompted protests of more than 200,000 people coming to the streets – a huge number for Macedonia. It was reported:
“Hahn, instead of meeting with us, wrote on his Twitter account that the road to the EU remains open for Skopje. He did not mention the name of our country, but wrote Skopje instead. Well, Commissioner Hahn, Macedonia is not just Skopje. Macedonia is Bitola, Ohrid, Prilep, Kumanovo, as well, and all the other 43 cities and towns where tonight 200,000 people took to the streets,” Protest organizer Bogdan Ilijevski said, according to Independent.mk.
In turn, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov was forced to refuse to meet with Hahn. The crisis that has been brewing was made worse by Hahn who had criticized Ivanov’s decision to refuse to meet with the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) leader Zoran Zaev, who gained Albanian support in return for concessions including the institution of Albanian as a second official language.
Soros’s Open Society is the attempt to force political change rather than allow laissez-faire capitalism to even exit. We do not live in a democracy when politicians reject the will of the people and we do not live under capitalism when governments are corrupt, take bribes to regulate benefits for special interests. That is simply an oligarchy – not capitalism as in Adam Smiths Invisible Hand.
THERE WILL BE THOSE WHO PERISH IN THE NEXT CRISIS, AND THOSE “WHO SURVIVE IN UNDERGROUND LUXURY”
If it does go nuclear more than just a handful of bomb’s few few will survive and the tech will fail in those shelters before the radiations drops to safe levels. Keep in mind the a target might be a Nuclear power plant — 🙂
In Stunning Defeat, House Republicans Abandon Obamacare Repeal Effort
by Tyler Durden
Re-Posted From ZERO HEDGE Mar 24, 2017 3:40 PM
To summarize today’s latest Congressional rollercoaster, the pundits and the White House were wrong, and the online betting markets were right.
Following a day of drama in Congress yesterday, Friday was another nail-biter until the last moment, and after Trump’s Thursday ultimatum failed to yield more “yes” votes, the embattled bill seeking to replace major parts of Obamacare was yanked Friday from the floor of the House.
As a result, Trump suffered a second consecutive blow as opposition from within his own party forced Republican leaders to cancel a vote on healthcare reform for the second time, casting doubt on the president’s ability to deliver on other priorities.
The withdrawal pointed to Trump’s failure to charm republicans in the last minute, raising questions about whether he could unify Republicans behind his pro-growth legislative goals of tax reform and infrastructure spending.
NBC News reported that the President Donald Trump asked House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., to pull the bill. A source told NBC that Ryan during visit to Trump at the White House earlier Friday afternoon had “pleaded to pull” the bill after telling the president that the GOP leaders had failed to convince enough House Republicans to support the bill.
Trump personally told Washington Post reporter Robert Costa about the move to avoid an embarrassing loss in the House during a phone call, Costa tweeted. “We just pulled it,” Trump reportedly said to Costa.
A large number of GOP House members had declared their opposition to the bill since Thursday night. It was the second time in less than 30 hours that Republicans postponed a scheduled House vote on the American Health Care Act. Republicans could afford to lose at most 22 members of their caucus in the vote. But as of Friday afternoon, there were 34 GOP House member publicly opposing the bill.
Ryan visited Donald Trump at the White House at around 1 p.m. to inform him of the shortfall in support.
The second delay was another humiliating setback for GOP leaders and Trump, who had thrown his weight behind the bill.
Trump on Thursday night demanded that the House vote on the plan on Friday, and said he would not agree to change the bill further than he already had in an effort to persuade wavering Republicans to back it.
Shortly after the president drew that line in the sand, GOP leaders amended the bill further to allow states, as opposed to the federal government, to mandate what essential health benefits have to be part of all insurance plans.
But as was the case on Thursday, GOP leaders knew Friday that if the vote occurred as scheduled, the bill would be defeated. The problem those leaders face is not from Democrats, who hold a minority of 193 seats in the House, and who were all expected to vote against the bill.
Ultimately, and this may be the real take home message, the Freedom Caucus demonstrated it is more powerful than Trump as of this moment. Which, incidentally, means it is time to start getting very nervous about the upcoming debt ceiling negotiation, in which the Freedom Caucus will likely get its way.
Finally, with over half a trillion in budget cuts now out of the picture, Trump may be able to proceed to his tax reform, but he will have about $500 billion in potential tax cuts to work with now that repeal of Obamacare is indefinitely delayed.
As for the humiliated Paul Ryan, he just wants to move on… for obvious reasons.
Update 7: Finally, Trump capped off the failed process with the following comments to the press saying, among other things, that the best thing Republcans can do now is simply pursue tax reform while Obamacare implodes naturally.
- TRUMP SAYS IN END WOULD’VE BEEN 10 VOTES SHORT, MAYBE CLOSER
- TRUMP TO NYT:WHEN OBAMACARE `EXPLODES’ DEMS MAY BE OPEN TO DEAL
- TRUMP SAYS BEST THING WE CAN DO IS LET OBAMACARE EXPLODE
- TRUMP: WOULD BE `TOTALLY OPEN’ TO DEM HELP ON NEW HEALTH BILL
- TRUMP: NOW GOING FOR TAX REFORM, WHICH I’VE ALWAYS LIKED
- TRUMP: I’M NOT BETRAYED, I’M DISAPPOINTED, IT WAS IN OUR GRASP
- TRUMP: SPEAKER PAUL RYAN WORKED VERY HARD
Update 6: Trump bluffed… and failed, and moments ago House Republicans unable to find enough votes in support of the bill, have pulled today’s vote:
- TRUMP ASKED U.S. HOUSE LEADERS TO CANCEL VOTE ON REPUBLICAN HEALTHCARE BILL – HOUSE LEADERSHIP AIDE
- TRUMP SAID TO TELL WASH. POST JUST PULLED HEALTH CARE BILL
- TRUMP SAYS “WE JUST PULLED IT”- WASHINGTON POST REPORTER IN TWEET
- REPUBLICAN LEADERS POSTPONE VOTE ON HEALTHCARE BILL
- TRUMP SAID TO TELL WASH. POST `I DON’T BLAME PAUL’ RYAN
Update 5: With the health bill vote set to take place around 4pm, moments ago NBC reported that ahead of the vote the Republican conference will hold a closed-door meeting, perhaps to try and cobble together a last minute deal even as most whip count show at least 30 republicans voting against the deal.
- HOUSE REPUBLICANS TO HOLD CLOSED-DOOR MEETING SOON: NBC
* * *
Update 4: After a series of conflicting headlines earlier, CNN is now reporting that Paul Ryan has made the trip to the White House to inform Trump: “We don’t have the votes.”
Update 3: Moments ago new headlines surfaced that Paul Ryan was headed to the White House to brief President Trump on where the Healthcare legislation currently stands. And, in an exact repeat of the mass confusion that dominated the press yesterday, headlines continue to be completely contradictory and only serve to further the chaos.
On the one side, Bloomberg is reporting that GOP leaders are not confident they have the votes with one House aide even admitted that Republican discussions have morphed from trying to whip votes to trying to figure out what to do after the bill fails.
GOP LEADERS NOT CONFIDENT THEY HAVE VOTES TO PASS HEALTH BILL
HOUSE LEADERS MULLING NEXT STEPS IF HEALTH BILL FAILS: AIDE
And Rep. Gohmert tweeted there’s a “good chance vote may be postponed.”
That said, Reuters subsequently released a statement from Rep. Mullin
saying that things are looking up for the late afternoon healthcare
vote.
REP MULLIN: “WE’RE TRENDING YES ON THE VOTE”: RTRS
Meanwhile, The Hill’s latest whip list suggests that the number of Republican ‘no’ votes is actually growing rather than shrinking and currently stands at 34.
In reality, despite all the jawboning, we suspect that no one will really know how this thing is going play out until the votes are counted later today.
Update 2: The House has just passed a procedural vote by a margin of 230 – 194 which now clears the path for 4 hours of floor debate on the healthcare bill which will be followed by a vote later this afternoon on the legislation. Update per The Hill:
Six Republicans voted against the rule, an unusually high number. Lawmakers typically do not break ranks on procedural votes, which are viewed as a referendum on how leadership is managing the floor.
Among the Republicans who voted against the rule were Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Walter Jones (N.C.). All three voted Thursday night against invoking what is known as “martial law” rule to speed the legislation to the floor.
Lawmakers typically stick with their party on the rules votes even if they plan to vote against the underlying legislation.
The rule stipulates that floor debate on the healthcare legislation will last four hours, with time equally divided between Republicans and Democrats.
That sets up a likely vote around 4 p.m. or 5 p.m.
Meanwhile, The Hill’s latest whip list still shows around 30 Republicans planning to vote against the bill which is more than the maximum of 22 defections GOP leaders can afford and have the bill still pass.
Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t share this apparent nervous break down from Rosa DeLauro during the procedural debate:
Update 1: As largely expected, the House Rules Committee has just signed off on the GOP’s ObamaCare repeal plan, with a 9-3 vote, which clears the path for a showdown vote later today. The panel was the bill’s final stop before heading for a floor vote.
As of now, the plan is to begin debate on the healthcare bill at 10AM EST. There is expected to be a 1 hour debate on rules and then 4 hours of general debate which sets the House up for a procedural vote around 11:15 am EST and a final vote expected around 4.45 pm.
* * *
Yesterday was undoubtedly a debacle of a day for Republicans which ultimately culminated with the failure of the Trump administration and Paul Ryan to secure a sufficient number of votes from the House Freedom Caucus to pass their healthcare bill (we covered the chaos here). And after the day of misery, team Trump decided that they would rather not continue the political charade in perpetuity and instead decided to offer conservatives in the House an ultimatum: vote tomorrow (i.e. today) or “I’m done with healthcare.”
Which, of course, would seem to be a negotiating tactic taken directly for The Art of the Deal 101:
Meanwhile, the Associated Press seemed to sum up the gravity of today’s vote the best, referring to it simply as a “gamble with monumental political stakes.”
“In a gamble with monumental political stakes, Republicans set course for a climactic House vote on their health care overhaul after President Donald Trump claimed he was finished negotiating with GOP holdouts and determined to pursue the rest of his agenda, win or lose.”
With all that said, per Fox News, after a few procedural moves, the House will likely vote on Trumpcare sometime in the mid-to-late afternoon with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) predicting that the vote will wrap up by 4:30 or 5 p.m. ET.
As we pointed out yesterday, the TrumpCare vote is the first high-stakes political battle of Trump’s Presidency and pits Trump against the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. For Trump, failure to pass healthcare reform would be a major blow as it was a signature component of his campaign and could signal that he will face an uphill battle against the Freedom Caucus to implement other policy initiatives. For conservatives, they must choose between supporting their party and a bill that has been dubbed “Obamacare-lite” at the risk of alienating powerful conservative funders, like the Koch Brothers and their various Super PACs, which got them elected in the first place.
Meanwhile, “round-the-clock” negotiations continue as the White House and mainstream Republicans attempt to sway some last minute votes.
Meanwhile, Trump met inside the Cabinet room with the Freedom caucus to try and rally conservatives to the cause. He also tweeted, urging supporters to call their representatives to back the bill.
A senior administration official told Fox News after the meeting with Trump and the conservative group that there was a deal in the works, but that it was not yet finalized. A source from the Freedom Caucus later said there wasn’t yet a deal.
“I would say progress is being made, and that progress should be applauded with the efforts by the White House to deliver on a campaign promise, and to lower premiums for every American from coast to coast and in between,” Meadows said. He also called Trump’s involvement “unparalleled in the history of our country.”
And while it’s almost impossible to predict how today’s vote will turn out, Goldman Sachs is pegging the chances of success at 60%.
The House vote on the American Health Care Act (AHCA) has been delayed due to a lack of support. Our subjective odds of passage in the House before the upcoming two-week congressional recess, which begins April 7, are 60%. This is slightly lower than our last estimate, in part because there appears to be somewhat greater-than-expected opposition among centrist Republicans, in addition to the well-known opposition among members of the conservative “Freedom Caucus”
Meanwhile, Trump started his lobbying efforts early on twitter.
So, grab your popcorn and flip on C-SPAN…should be a fun Friday.
Russophobia – Symptom Of US Implosion
by Tyler Durden
Authored by Finian Cunningha, via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
There was a time when Russophobia served as an effective form of population control – used by the American ruling class in particular to command the general US population into patriotic loyalty. Not any longer. Now, Russophobia is a sign of weakness, of desperate implosion among the US ruling class from their own rotten, internal decay.
This propaganda technique worked adequately well during the Cold War decades when the former Soviet Union could be easily demonized as «godless communism» and an «evil empire». Such stereotypes, no matter how false, could be sustained largely because of the monopoly control of Western media by governments and official regulators.
The Soviet Union passed away more than a quarter of a century ago, but Russophobia among the US political class is more virulent than ever.
This week it was evident from Congressional hearings in Washington into alleged Russian interference in US politics that large sections of American government and establishment media are fixated by Russophobia and a belief that Russia is a malign foreign adversary.
However, the power of the Russophobia propaganda technique over the wider population seems to have greatly diminished from its Cold War heyday. This is partly due to more diverse global communications which challenge the previous Western monopoly for controlling narrative and perception. Contemporary Russophobia – demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin or Russian military forces – does not have the same potency for scaring the Western public. Indeed, due to greater diversity in global news media sources, it is fair to say that «official» Western depictions of Russia as an enemy, for example allegedly about to invade Europe or allegedly interfering in electoral politics, are met with a healthy skepticism – if not ridicule by many Western citizens.
What is increasingly apparent here is a gaping chasm between the political class and the wider public on the matter of Russophobia. This is true for Western countries generally, but especially in the US. The political class – the lawmakers in Washington and the mainstream news media – are frenzied by claims that Russia interfered in the US presidential elections and that Russia has some kind of sinister leverage on the presidency of Donald Trump.
But this frenzy of Russophobia is not reflected among the wider public of ordinary American citizens. Rabid accusations that Russia hacked the computers of Trump’s Democrat rival Hillary Clinton to spread damaging information about her; that this alleged sabotage of American democracy was an «act of war»; that President Trump is guilty of «treason» by «colluding» with a «Russian influence campaign» – all of these sensational claims seem to be only a preoccupation of the privileged political class. Most ordinary Americans, concerned about making a living in a crumbling society, either don’t buy the claims or view them as idle chatter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week dismissed the Congressional hearings into alleged Russian interference in US politics. He aptly said that US lawmakers and the corporate media have become «entangled» in their own fabrications. «They are trying to find evidence for conclusions that they have already made», said Peskov.
Other suitable imagery is that the US political class are tilting at windmills, chasing their own tails, or running from their own shadows. There seems to be a collective delusional mindset.
Unable to accept the reality that the governing structure of the US has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people, that the people rebelled by electing an outsider in the form of business mogul-turned-politician Donald Trump, that the collapse of American traditional politics is due to the atrophy of its bankrupt capitalist economy over several decades – the ruling class have fabricated their own excuse for demise by blaming it all on Russia.
The American ruling class cannot accept, or come to terms, with the fact of systemic failure in their own political system. The election of Trump is a symptom of this failure and the widespread disillusionment among voters towards the two-party train wreck of Republicans and Democrats. That is why the specter of Russian interference in the US political system had to be conjured up, by necessity, as a way of «explaining» the abject failure and the ensuing popular revolt.
Russophobia was rehabilitated from the Cold War closet by the American political establishment to distract from the glaring internal collapse of American politics.
The corrosive, self-destruction seems to know no bounds. James Comey, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told Congress this week that the White House is being probed for illicit contacts with Russia. This dramatic notice served by Comey was greeted with general approval by political opponents of the Trump administration, as well as by news media outlets.
The New York Times said the FBI was in effect holding a «criminal investigation at the doorstep of the White House».
Other news outlets are openly airing discussions on the probability of President Trump being impeached from office.
The toxic political atmosphere of Russophobia in Washington is unprecedented. The Trump administration is being crippled at every turn from conducting normal political business under a toxic cloud of suspicion that it is guilty of treason from colluding with Russia.
President Trump has run afoul with Republicans in Congress over his planned healthcare reforms because many Republicans are taking issue instead over the vaunted Russian probe.
When Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was reported to be skipping a NATO summit next month but was planning to visit Moscow later in the same month, the itinerary was interpreted as a sign of untoward Russian influence.
What makes the spectacle of political infighting so unprecedented is that there is such little evidence to back up allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. It is preponderantly based on innuendo and anonymous leaks to the media, which are then recycled as «evidence».
Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said earlier this week that he has seen no actual evidence among classified documents indicating any collusion between the Trump campaign team and the Russian government.
Even former senior intelligence officials, James Clapper and Michael Morell who are no friends of Trump, have lately admitted in media interviews that there is no such evidence.
Yet, FBI chief James Comey told Congress that his agency was pursuing a potentially criminal investigation into the Trump administration, while at the same time not confirming or denying the existence of any evidence.
And, as already noted, this declaration of open-ended snooping by Comey on the White House was met with avid approval by political opponents of Trump, both on Capitol Hill and in the corporate media.
Let’s just assume for a moment that the whole Trump-Russia collusion story is indeed fake. That it is groundless, a figment of imagination. There are solid reasons to believe that is the case. But let’s just assume here that it is fake for the sake of argument.
That then means that the Washington seat of government and the US presidency are tearing themselves apart in a futile civil war.
The real war here is a power struggle within the US in the context of ruling parties no longer having legitimacy to govern.
This is an American implosion. An historic Made-in-America meltdown. And Russophobia is but a symptom of the internal decay at the heart of US politics.
The FBI’s Conspiracy Theory of a Trump/Putin Collusion Has No Clothes
The only ones that trump can trust in Washington are his kids and personal friends.
#SocialismSucks
Of course this is what he would say he is a Demorat!
Centinel2012 