Tag Archives: Hunt for Taxes

Jan 3 2018

Universal Basic Income – Insanity or Rational?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Economics

Re-Posted Jan 3, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: What is your opinion of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg idea of universal income?

ANSWER: The idea of free money being touted by Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg only demonstrates that they know nothing about humanity or economics. They see universal free money as a cushion for workers whose jobs might be replaced by automation or robots. They argue that free money could provide workers with the flexibility to retrain for a new career, pursue creative interests, or start their own business.

If we are talking about a temporary benefit during a retraining period, then that is an entirely different idea from a universal basic income guarantee. You can drive down the streets in New Jersey and you see hand-made signs posted that they pay cash for diabetes medical material handed out free by the government. They also sell food stamps. You cannot change humanity. Some people will obey the rules and others will circumvent them.

The last thing you want to do in society is provide to the population some sort of guaranteed income where people can stay home and do nothing. This will foster the same hatred of anyone who works and has more than they do and it will promote hatred and class warfare.

When the automobile was invented, that displaced people who were carpenters making wagons. When the Dust Bow hit during the Great Depression, it added to the displacement of farmers. The tractors replaced people tilling the soil just as the cotton gin replace slave labor in the South. Technology will always replace workers and the greater the tax burden, the greater the incentive to replace workers.

Neither Elon Musk nor Mark Zuckerberg has any clue about economic history for if they did, they would understand that technology always advances and displaces segments of the workforce. This is also one reason governments like war to thin the herd when unemployment rises.

Providing free money is actually an experiment in Finland. It began one year ago taking 2,000 unemployed Finns who were randomly selected from across the country for a trial testing universal basic income. Each month for two years they would receive €560 euros from the government, tax-free. They can spend the money however they decide. The plus of this program is the reduction in bureaucracy. As I said, the US government hands out food stamps but people sell them. From an economic standpoint, this system is less costly than the current one in play with bureaucrats determining what they will allow people to have or not. The full report on the Finland experiment will not be issued until the 2-year program is complete after January 1st, 2019.

 

Jan 2 2018

JFK TRUTH – The Mob, CIA and the 8 paid ASSASSINS


Published on May 11, 2017

November 22, 1963, eight Assassins were paid 50,000 each, to assure our Leader of the free world JFK, CAMELOT, would never survive another day. The meeting the day prior of the plan and the participants who wanted him dead would surprise you. All conspiracy theories, and recent books still do not tell you the truth, as they were also paid by the CIA, since the original patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald story, is proven to not even be possible. This is the true story and explanation to what really took place that day. It’s disturbing, embarrassing, and hurtful our nation, planned his assassination; for money, power, and different political ambitions. This is a non monetized, brief encounter to the JFK Murders explained from the film that is over 3 hours long. “JFK 911 A Rich Mans Game” that I shortened to get to THE POINT of the JFK murders truth, and explains why the other conspiracy theories are NOT TRUE. AND THIS IS THE TRUTH YOU HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR!
Jan 2 2018

War in the Classroom


By Tabitha Korol       

The year was 2011, and a freshman in Newton South High School, in Newton, Massachusetts, asked her father if it was true that the “Israeli occupation forces” had “imprisoned, tortured and killed” hundreds of Arabic women who had been “active in the Palestinian resistant movement.”  Her father, Tony Pagliuso, asked for the source of this misinformation.  It was her 540-page Arab World Studies Notebook, a highly explosive textbook filled with fabrications, shown to contribute, at least in part, to the marked decrease, from 84 to 57 percent, in student sympathy for Israel. In another textbook, The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography, a question reads, “If a Palestinian suicide bomber kills several dozen Israeli teenagers in a Jerusalem restaurant, is that an act of terrorism or wartime retaliation against Israeli government policies and army actions?”  These are not unique.

The editor, Audrey Park Shabbas, employed by Arab World and Islamic Resources and School Services, authored the volume to improve the Arab image because the truth is unpalatable in Western society, and the Israeli image is scapegoated in the process, consistent with the 1400-year Islamic war against Jews and Western civilization.  Schools also distribute Scholastic’s maps that omit Israel from the modern Middle East.

Other education sources used across America are the Internet’s Flashpoints: Guide to World Conflicts, which identifies Jerusalem as the capital of (the non-existent) Palestine; handouts that omit the numerous and deadly Arab terrorist attacks on Israel; and A Muslim Primer that presents a deceptive, sugar-coated version of the subjugated Muslim woman’s life.  Biased textbooks in use throughout America are World History: The Human Odyssey; World History: Human Legacy; World Civilizations: The Global Experience; A Muslim Primer: Beginner’s Guide to Islam, and more.  I have personally reviewed four textbooks and written exposés accordingly, and many concerned professionals and members of the public are working hard to combat the manipulation of our youth, but the disinformation continues to proliferate.

More than 10,000 teachers attended Shabbas’s hundreds of three-day teacher-training sessions from 2000 to 2006, and were thus persuaded and made skillful at reaching and indoctrinating more than 25 million students over ten years.   Additional corroboration comes from visiting biased speakers, such as the notorious anti-Israel Noam Chomsky, an aficionado of the Iran-supported, world’s most powerful terrorist group/army, Hezbollah, responsible for large-scale bombings and suicide attacks on Americans and Israelis; Linda Sarsour, anti-Semite, jihadi and proponent of FGM (Female Genital Mutiliation); and academia’s Paul Beran, then-director of Harvard University’s Outreach Center, now leader of SHARIAsource, recognized for promoting BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) against Israel to the Presbyterian Church.

It took alert parents and involved citizens and intense investigation and reports by The Massachusetts Board of Education, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), the American Jewish Committee and Verité Educate to expose Newton High’s ethical violations and unacceptable practices and to finally have the school admit the Outreach Center’s strong influence.  Key criticism was leveled at Harvard International Review’s Hatem Bazian’s fallacious portrayal of Palestinians as the indigenous victims and Jews as the colonialists; at the textbooks for their academic dishonesty through inaccuracies, false information, plagiarism, deceptive editing, and hate-filled, religious-proselytizing websites; assignments designed to prejudice students toward a suicidal one-state solution for Israel/the West Bank/Gaza, revealed in Miriam F. Elman’s “Palestinian Propaganda is  Infiltrating US Public Schools”; and biases against Israel and the US while sanitizing Islamic ideology and terrorism, explained by Rafael Medoff in Breaking Christian News.

Examples of other schools across the country that inculcate Islamism and unfairness in the classroom include Bellaire High, in Houston, Texas, cited for extreme claims about Israel’s history; Carlmont High in Belmont, California, which invited Linda Sarsour and other anti-Semites to advocate BDS and tutor radical positions against Israel; and La Plata High, a Maryland public school that forces the children to learn about Islam, memorize the Five Pillars of Islam, and recite the Shahada, the Islamic oath of conversion.  By contrast, there is a considerable lack of parallel information being taught about Christianity and Judaism because Islamists precedently announced their aversion and umbrage.  This generation of children is being fed an egregiously biased version of an ideology that is incompatible with democracy and corrosive to our beliefs, morals, and ideals.  Let us be clear: their ultimate purpose is the conversion of our children.

The Intense focus on Islamic subjects is carefully selected.  For example, the status of women is profoundly misrepresented, the origin and purpose of their sharia-compliant clothing falsified and unsupported by scholarship.  One author asserts that “Islam and the Quran created major improvements in the status of women,” when the truth is otherwise.  The worst conditions for women are concealed, including the practices of genital mutilation and honor killings; accusations of adultery and stoning; their treatment as property and legal inferiority; endorsed beatings by their husbands; the fact that a woman may have no rights to show her face, walk alone, drive a vehicle or attend schools. International speakers and experts who offer genuine facts, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Anni Cyrus, Brigitte Gabriel, and Noni Darwish, are not among the invitees.

The textbooks elevate Islam over Judaism and Christianity, one being John Esposito’s Islam, the Straight Path, in which he declares that revelations given to the Jews and Christians were false. By contrast, he cites as truth, rather than belief, that God sent Muhammad as his final messenger and that God’s sacred language is Arabic.  Students write about Moslem pilgrimages, including to Jerusalem as “your homeland,” when Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran.  Many textbooks explain the rise and spread of Islam as being a successful acceptance of ideas, rather than the result of persecution and wantonly destructive conquerors who beheaded the non-believers, kidnapped the women for forced conversion and sexual slavery, and enriched themselves with appropriated bounty.

The textbooks’ definition of jihad varies from the benign, the spiritual struggle within oneself against sin, to the traditional, the struggle against the enemies of Islam, but the goal is always the same – that of bringing the whole world under Islamic law, as explained by Bernard Lewis. Omitted is the account of hundreds of members of the Jewish Meccan tribe, the Quarayza, beheaded in 627 AD for rejecting Muhammad as Prophet, and the more than 109 verses in the Quran that decree violence and death to Jews and Christians, and the destruction of Israel.

Not found in textbooks is Israel’s history – not 1948, when five surrounding Arab states declared war on the new state of Israel and lost, or 1967, when the Arabs again attacked Israel and lost, leaving behind Arabs who stayed and accepted Israel citizenship and Arabs who fled and remained as stateless pawns, neglected by their brethren.  Mislaid is the number of Jews – between 800,000 and one million – who fled for their lives from Islamic countries, and were absorbed by Israel.  Missing are a timeline that would verify Israel’s attacks as retaliatory to the Arab leaders’ calls to annihilate Israel, and a correct definition of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as “religious,” as declared in the Quran, confirming that anti-Semitism is integral to the Moslem culture. The textbooks do not explain Islamic terrorism and radicalism as religious precepts of jihad, or the incitement to hate that permeates Palestinian and Islamic society. Palestinians extol terrorism, praise terrorists as heroes and deceased murderers as martyrs after whom streets, cultural events, and public squares are named, and for which parents are handsomely rewarded – with “humanitarian aid” funded by UN countries. Anti-Semitism is endemic to the Koran, and none of this is mentioned.

The correct definition of Islam, with its religious, legal, political, economic, social and military components is a 100% system of life, and the greatest threat to the world.  There are organizations that work to free our schools of Islamic propaganda, but the programs of study have been bought and paid for by the Saudis, and theirs is the agenda.  Hence, the lessons are plagued with poor scholarship, revisionism, and blatant anti-Israel bias, and supported by a corrupt media that fuels the skewed perspective.

It is now evident that we are at war, a war that is being waged in the classroom, with its weaponry aimed at our children’s minds.  The diligent work, “Indoctrinating our Youth,” by CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, has resulted in the removal of some curriculum materials, but not all.  Despite parental rights to know what their children are learning, teaching staff does not provide full disclosure.  And, for every school that removes falsehoods, there are a hundred more that are continuing its use, now beginning at 3rd grade level.  It is up to us to pursue what must be stopped for the sake of our survival as a republic.  Go to www.schoolbias.org or call CAMERA, at 617-377-6911.  To quote a popular phrase, “If you see something, say something.”

 

Jan 2 2018

No More Games – Ambassador Nikki Haley Announces U.S. Removing $255 Million Aid To Pakistan…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on January 2, 2018 by

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley delivered strong remarks today during a press briefing surrounding U.S. policy toward Pakistan and Iran.

“The administration is withholding $255 million in assistance to Pakistan. There are clear reasons for this. Pakistan has played a double game for years. They work with us at time, and they also harbor the terrorists that attack our troops in Afghanistan. That game is not acceptable to this administration.”

WATCH:

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Think BIGLY – On a geopolitical level the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is shadowed by a strong  Pakistani economic relationship with China.  China is Pakistan’s biggest investor.  China has also recently been identified as covertly propping up North Korea with smuggled oil shipments: “Very Disappointing“.

The central U.S. Pakistani relationship has always been about our fight against the terrorist networks of the Taliban in Afghanistan.  Pakistan has played both sides of that coin.  In August of 2017 President Trump warned Pakistan our relationship with them would be different if they did not stop enabling the Taliban.

The U.S. primary goal in Afghanistan is to force the Taliban to enter negotiations with the legitimate Afghanistan government and achieve a peaceful resolution toward a stable, non terrorist/non-extremist, nation.  Pakistan’s duplicitous action has become an impediment to that goal.

Knowing that ultimately a decision-point would would be reached with both Pakistan and China, President Trump began constructing the counter-leverage last year via an enhanced economic relationship with India and Prime Minister Modi.

Given the current antagonism by both Pakistan (via Afghanistan) and China (via North Korea), we can anticipate that President Trump will now enter a phase of elevated and open (ie. very public) economic engagement with India.  “Indo-Pacific”

Predictable leverage in the ongoing dynamic will remain centered around economics.

In addition to the withdrawal of direct financial support for Pakistan, China will now face increased trade-policy-scrutiny, as well as lesser beneficial economic trade outcomes.

Predictably, the Most Favored Nation (MfN) trade status, a primary driver of U.S./China trade with great benefit toward Xi Jinping, is going to become increasingly leveraged as a negotiation strategy.

U.S. India ties are NOW a key and central component to the approach.

NOT COINCIDENTALLY the following surfaces as an ‘ah-ha moment’ for many:

President Trump thinks long term… and VERY strategically:

T-REX […]  Prime Minister Modi’s visit in June highlighted the many areas of cooperation that are already underway in this new area of our strategic relationship.

Our defense ties are growing. We are coordinating our counterterrorism efforts more than ever before. And earlier this month, a shipment of American crude oil arrived in India, a tangible illustration of our expanding energy cooperation. The Trump administration is determined to dramatically deepen ways for the United States and India to further this partnership.

For us today, it’s plain to see why this matters. India represents the world’s largest democracy. The driving force of our close relationship rests in the ties between our peoples – our citizens, business leaders, and our scientists.

Nearly 1.2 million American visitors traveled to India last year. More than 166,000 Indian students are studying in the United States. And nearly 4 million Indian Americans call the United States home, contributing to their communities as doctors, engineers, and innovators, and proudly serving their country in uniform.

As our economies grow closer, we find more opportunities for prosperity for our people. More than 600 American companies operate in India. U.S. foreign direct investment has jumped by 500 percent in the past two years alone. And last year, our bilateral trade hit a record of roughly $115 billion, a number we plan to increase.

Together, we have built a sturdy foundation of economic cooperation as we look for more avenues of expansion. The announcement of the first Global Entrepreneurship Summit ever to be hosted in South Asia, to take place in Hyderabad next month, is a clear example of how President Trump and Prime Minister Modi are promoting innovation, expanding job opportunities, and finding new ways to strengthen both of our economies.

When our militaries conduct joint exercises, we send a powerful message as to our commitment to protecting the global commons and defending our people. This year’s Malabar exercise was our most complex to date. The largest vessels from American, Indian, and Japanese navies demonstrated their power together in the Indian Ocean for the first time, setting a clear example of the combined strength of the three Indo-Pacific democracies. We hope to add others in coming years.

In keeping with India’s status as a Major Defense Partner – a status overwhelmingly endorsed last year by the U.S. Congress – and our mutual interest in expanding maritime cooperation, the Trump administration has offered a menu of defense options for India’s consideration, including the Guardian UAV. We value the role India can play in global security and stability and are prepared to ensure they have even greater capabilities.

And over the past decade, our counterterrorism cooperation has expanded significantly. Thousands of Indian security personnel have trained with American counterparts to enhance their capacity. The United States and India are cross-screening known and suspected terrorists, and later this year we will convene a new dialogue on terrorist designations.

In July, I signed the designation of Hizbul Mujahideen as a Foreign Terrorist Organization because the United States and India stand shoulder-to-shoulder against terrorism. States that use terror as an instrument of policy will only see their international reputation and standing diminish. It is the obligation, not the choice, of every civilized nation to combat the scourge of terrorism. The United States and India are leading this effort in that region.

But another more profound transformation that’s taking place, one that will have far-reaching implications for the next 100 years: The United States and India are increasingly global partners with growing strategic convergence.  (more)

~ Secretary Rex Tillerson

 

… Think BIGLY

Jan 2 2018

Bitcoin Still in Trouble


Armstrong Economics Blog/Cryptocurrency

Re-Posted Jan 2, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

The rally in BitCoin was a perfect 13 weeks up from the last strategic low. It peaked with the Weekly Array the week of 12/18 which was both a Panic Cycle and a Directional Change. However, with the impending ban in South Korea on trading cryptocurrencies, the high of December appears to be at least an important temporary high. A weekly closing back below 9425 will ten to confirm the end of the bull market for now.

South Korean plans to restrict cryptocurrency trading. Bitcoin investors saw the collapse to $13,600 from the previous day trading at $16,500 dollars. South Korea, one of the world’s most important countries for virtual currency trading, wants to ban the opening of anonymous accounts for cyber currencies, among other things. There will also be a new law that will allow regulators to close stock exchanges where Bitcoin & Co. is traded under certain circumstances. “We share the view that cryptocurrency trading is irrationally overheating,” the government said. “We can no longer tolerate this abnormal speculation.”

Nearly a million people are estimated to own Bitcoin. South Korea is very important because it represents around one-fifth of Bitcoin’s global trade. Regulation by South Korea is extremely important. Even the German financial supervision warns that the risk is total loss for investors. Many view this as if it were the Dutch Tulip Bubble since BitCoin cannot be used in the economy in a fair and orderly manner.

Jan 2 2018

Understanding Cycles & Dynamic Inter-connectivity


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jan 2, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong; I really do not think the world respects your work. I read on your blog there was going to be a bad flu from Australia that would hit Britain. Then a few days later, the headline here is all about what you forecast. You really have to go public and let people support your work in a meaningful way. The world really does need to listen.

All the best from your former home.

EB

REPLY: I understand. I get a lot of emails on this subject. The world is not ready to understand cycles. All the methods of analysis are generally wrong. All the analysts who try to compete with me do so on an OPINION basis, not methodology. They offer their OPINION and pound their chest. This is not about OPINION. This is about global correlation. We all have opinions and they are never 100% perfect. There have been times my personal “opinion” has been proven wrong by Socrates. This is why I always try to make sure “opinion” is separates from a forecast.

How many times have we heard some food is bad for you and then they reverse it a decade later? The standard method of analysis is always trying to reduce everything to a single cause of action. That methodology is lethal to knowledge and the future. It blocks our advancement in every field of science like Global Warming. Let’s see, it has gotten warmer in the past 25 years so that must be because of cars. They start with that assumption and never test the data before 1850 because there were no cars then. Why bother? We know the cause is cars, they say. So look for data to prove the assumption.

This to me is absurd. You can also say everyone who has ever eaten a carrot had eventually died and that means carrots must be long-term deadly. It was assumed that illness was in the blood. So the logical conclusion was to bleed people. If they died, it was never because they took too much blood, but they did not bleed them soon enough.

I just am tired of beating my head against a brick wall. Society has to break and only then will we look to new dynamic interconnectivity that is the path to understanding. There are those in New York City who just cannot stand what I do. They refuse to consider there is a methodology at issue here and prefer to blame me the messenger claiming I have too much “influence” and that is why they are wrong. They would try to kill me if they could since they tried that one before but I survived. Why admit you may be wrong when you can blame someone else for your failures? That, unfortunately, infects a large part of humanity.

Going public is the only way to preserve this research and push it forward for posterity. I have not changed my mind. We were granted our business license in China. It took three years of investigation and that is by no means an easy accomplishment. So we now have the seal of approval from China and that will be the biggest market the other side of 2032. Now we are getting closer to going public

Jan 2 2018

Why Models Fail


Armstrong Economics Blog/Understanding Cycles

RE-Posted Jan 2, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

 

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Did AIG use the Black-Scholes Model and that is what created the crisis again in 2007?

WJ

ANSWER: No. It’s my understanding that AIG developed different models, they called a “Value-at-Risk Model,” (VaR) which used a binomial-expansion-technique to start valuing their positions. I believe the original model was developed at Moody’s. However, like the Black-Scholes Model, it too lacked depth. In model development, it is extremely complex.

Virtually every model created tends to be predominately flat with a minimum of dynamic variables lacking understanding of TIME. Then the testing period lacks the database reflecting all conditions. In the case of Black-Scholes, they back-tested only with data to 1971. If I created a model with only data from 2009 forward, then it would be biased to presume a bull market is normal in the stock market.

The Value at risk (VaR) model is a measure of the risk of investments. It estimates how much a set of investments might lose, given normal market conditions, in a set time period such as a day. VaR is typically used by firms and regulators in the financial industry to gauge the number of assets needed to cover possible losses. It obviously failed in 2007-2009 because once again it was not a “normal market condition” for it fails utterly to understand CONTAGION when sound assets are sold to raise cash for other assets that collapse. The assumption of the model is its own nemesis.

For example, if a portfolio of stocks has a one-day 5% VaR of $10 million, this actually means that there is a 5% probability that the portfolio will fall in value by more than $1o million over a one-day period if there is no trading. Therefore, a loss of $1o million or more on this portfolio would be expected on 1 day out of 20 days given a 5% probability. A loss which exceeds the VaR threshold is termed a “VaR breach“.

So you can see, such models are incapable of determining TIME and as a result, they will always fail during a CONTAGION that they cannot see coming.

This is why the bulk of portfolio models fails during a financial crisis. This is also why some of the top Institutional portfolios come to our firm because they have realized that only TIME determines the success of any model and making broad assumptions of probability have ALWAYS failed. If you cannot model TIME and CONTAGION, you will be wiped out during a crisis and VaR will fail just as Black-Sholes.

 

Jan 1 2018

President Trump Calls Out Pakistan “Lies and Deceit”…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on January 1, 2018 by

On August 21st, 2017, President Trump began a very familiar process toward Pakistan within the geopolitical strategy known to us as The Trump Doctrine: ‘the accurate assignment of responsibility’, by honestly calling out the historic nature of the relationship.

In a remarkable speech on Afghanistan policy, President Trump addressed the nation and stated the continued Pakistani support of the Taliban extremists was only impeding the quest for peace.

The Trump policy goal was not Pakistan eliminating the Taliban, but rather outlining how the Afghanistan solution begins with the Taliban entering negotiations with the Afghan government.  Pakistan -supporting the Taliban- continues to undermine that goal.

With little change since August, today President Trump calls out Pakistan:

(Twitter Link)

AUGUST 2017 […] “The next pillar of our new strategy is to change the approach in how to deal with Pakistan. We can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.

“Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan. It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists. In the past, Pakistan has been a valued partner. Our militaries have worked together against common enemies.

“The Pakistani people have suffered greatly from terrorism and extremism. We recognize those contributions and those sacrifices, but Pakistan has also sheltered the same organizations that try every single day to kill our people. We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars, at the same time they are housing the same terrorists that we are fighting. But that will have to change. And that will change immediately.

“No partnership can survive a country’s harboring of militants and terrorists who target U.S. service members and officials. It is time for Pakistan to demonstrate its commitment to civilization, order, and to peace. (transcript link)

President Trump states truth boldly.  If anything President Trump stated was not the truth the Trump Doctrine -placement of strategic ownership- would not work.  However, the entire international community knows that Pakistan, including their intelligence service ISI, has a great deal of hidden sympathy toward Islamic extremists within Afghanistan.

Never was that reality more stark than when the international community realized that 9/11 terrorist Osama Bin Laden held refuge inside Pakistan for almost a decade.  Within the governing systems inside Pakistan there is a large contingent of Taliban sympathy.  This reality has been the 800lb gorilla amid public discussions of international national security for several years.

August 2017 was the first time a U.S. President called it out, publicly.

This is where those who follow Trump closely will note a familiar pattern emerging.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are to Pakistan, as the DPRK is to China.

Remember, the solution to the threat that is Kim Jong-un is to assign direct responsibility toward Beijing.  In a similar approach, the solution toward eliminating the threat of extremist violence from the Taliban is to assign direct responsibility toward Pakistan.  President Trump began that process in August.

However, those who have followed closely will note there’s additional references.

♦When the threat is Sunni Extremism, the problem was/is the Muslim Brotherhood and the enabling of Qatar.  Trump assigned responsibility for solving that issue to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council.   It is the GCC who are confronting Qatar, not the United States.

♦When the threat is Syria’s chemical weapon, the problem was/is the Assad regime and ISIS.  Trump assigned responsibility for solving that issue to Russia; Russia initially refused to solve it, so Trump bombed the shit out of Assad – Russia/Assad took ownership, the chemical weapon use stopped; further action was not needed by the United States.

♦When the threat is DPRK’s nuclear weapons, the problem was/is Kim Jong-un and the enabling China.  Trump assigned responsibility for solving that immediate threat to China.  It is Beijing who can force Kim Jong-un to stand down, without war – Not the United States.

See the pattern?  In each example President Trump assigns responsibility.  However, the important element is the underlying ownership must be based entirely on truth.  In each of the examples the truth was/is that Gulf States/Qatar, Assad/Russia, and China/Beijing were manipulating and enabling the problem behavior.  By calling out that truth, each enabler was forced to take ownership and corrective action.

The same approach extends here with Afghanistan.  However, the solution is not Pakistan eliminating the Taliban per se’; the solution lies in leveraging Pakistan to force the Taliban into negotiations with the legitimate Afghan government.   Like the previous examples of Saudi Arabia and China, Trump has now assigned ownership of this objective to Pakistan.

 

Jan 1 2018

Iran Political Clarification


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics

Re-Posted Jan 1, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Two things:

 

“He is remembered for publicly stating that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth.”

 

Although he is indeed remembered in the West for ‘saying’ that, the truth is that phrase was a gross mis-translation of what he did say in Farsi. Just a simple lie. I don’t think you should be party to the perpetuation of a lie.

And, with Pahlevi, his ‘claim’ to the throne was problematic. His father was not an aristocrat and in fact was installed by the British. Real granular knowledge of history is useful, don’t you think?

 

REPLY: My piece on Iran does not support either side. I am fully aware that I am well read in Iran. The question was simply about the cycle of political change. That does not endorse the claim to the Throne under Mohammad Reza’s reign, marked the anniversary of 2,500 years of continuous Persian monarchy since the founding of the Achaemenid Empire by Cyrus the Great. That took place on the 12–16 of October back in 1971.

 

He revised the calendar making the benchmark the beginning of the First Persian Empire, measured from Cyrus the Great’s coronation. He introduced the White Revolution, which a series of economic, social and political reforms designed to transform Iran into a modern global power. He offended the religious conservatives by granting women suffrage.

 

I fully appreciate his claim to the throne is disputed and he was only the second of the House of Pahlavi and thus the conservatives dispute his heritage to the throne. That is not my concern. Like Trump, our model forecast the 2016 election back in 1985. Trump appeared and read the people’s discontent and beat 17 Republicans to their shock. It was not Trump the person, it was just being there at the right time. If it was not Trump, it would have been someone else. The cycle was turning – plain and simple.

 

There is a 26-year cycle that is quite dominant throughout Iranian history. There have been many revolutions that have often centered even on religion. The Sassanid Shâhs (Great Kings), 223/4-651 AD is a classic example. The Sassanids replaced the Hellenophile Parthian dynasty, with the program of deliberately reviving the Zoroastrian Achaemenid Persian Empire, aspiring to recover all the former provinces of the Achaemenids (Egypt, Syria, Anatolia). Zoroaster was the predecessor to Christianity and the source of the story of the Three Wise Men.

Zoroaster was a prophet whose teachings were the religious foundation of ancient Iranian-speaking peoples. This became the religion of Zoroastrianism, which is often considered to be the first world religion. It is still practiced by a tiny population. There are approximately 11,000 Zoroastrians who live in the United States, 6,000 in Canada, 5,000 in England, 2,700 in Australia and 2,200 in the Middle East. Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, was actually the world capital of Zoroastrianism. The  Sasanian Revolution was all about restoring the old religion. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was similar in overthrowing the Shah to reestatlish an Islamic State.

From that birth of the Sasanian Kingdom in 223/224BC, the 26-year cycle brings us precisely to 2017/2018 (cycle #69 from that revolution). Hence, I am looking at this less from a political standpoint of supporting either side in Iran, where we have a lot of readers I know, but from a purely cyclical viewpoint.

I have no interest in promoting any religion for that to me is a personal choice

Dec 31 2017

Jumpin’ Ju-Ju Bones, What a Year…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on December 31, 2017 by

During the final hours of each year there are people, pundits and authors much more eloquent than I who are able to encapsulate the prior twelve months, and all the ramifications therein.

Perhaps part of the reason CTH struggles with philosophical hindsight is because we spend almost all of our time looking, as far as possible, in the opposite direction – always toward the horizon.

Maybe, just maybe, that purposeful decision is part of the reason we find it easier to relate to the strategic goals and planned objectives of President Donald John Trump.  Indeed, as someone acutely stated ‘our president seems to have an eery ability to see around corners’.  Often, what initially seems as a disconcerting position to take, quickly finds the criticism unfounded as the larger truth is something invisible until we turn the corner.

What a journey we are on.

Decades of economic manipulation by the professional political class has now turned upside-down, and more than ever people are realizing the extent to which our national wealth was been intentionally undermined by global control agents and their purchased enablers in Washington DC. Arguably, the greatest achievement in the past year is the resurgence of Main Street and common sense economic policy.  A lot of people hate President Trump because of that simple fact.

The beauty of it is, POTUS Trump doesn’t care.

With or without the support of DC -often by just sheer will, grit and determination- President Trump is going to Make America a Great and balanced economy again. It is no longer an ‘if’ proposition, it’s happening.

POTUS Trump doesn’t care if the benefactors are blue or red, black or green, or any other category of constituency or self- identity; if you are American, you will benefit. Period.

Pretty cool.

Additionally refreshing is knowing all the cabinet members put on their socks every day knowing their mission objective is not political.  As the President directs all oppositional fire upon himself, all of the officials stay MAGA-mission-centric.  If you think about it, it’s the exact opposite approach of historic reference.

Usually the higher up the politician is within the apparatus, the more they try to retain their own placement and avoid controversial positions.  President Trump flips that dynamic and takes all the controversial positions so those underneath his leadership can advance their action toward the larger goal.  Whenever Trump takes a rare break, the opposition is able to look around, briefly, and realizes “oh, snap” they’ve lost ground.

Trump’s opposition spends so much time confronting him personally, while looking only at the granules moving at their feet, they fail to notice the tectonic plates have shifted.  It’s really quite remarkable.  Funny too.  As soon a Trump tweets “BOO”, they quickly go back to chasing him…. “curse you villain“!   Too funny.

I’ll admit, y’all know, back in 2015 I thought this MAGA approach was possible… yet, I had no idea it would be this level of MAGA successful.  We always knew who the decepticons were – but we also thought they would attempt to retain their masks.

Boy howdy was that ever wrong.

As soon as the decepticons realized Donald Trump was actually intent on destroying their 30-year-built Potemkin village, the UniParty dropped all pretense and came screaming out of the shadows right behind us…. man, that was weird at first.  It was like living amid the vampire pod-people as our neighbors and not knowing who was actually infected at the checkout line in the grocery store.  Fortunately MAGA hats, or MAGA discussion, is like garlic to ’em.

In 2017 their uncontrollable autonomic responses became known as “triggering”.

Funny stuff.

The funniest of all funny things is when you ‘trigger’ someone infected with TDS, their expressed world-view can change instantaneously.  Their belief is whatever is opposite of Trump.  The most recent example highlights Islamic Terrorists and Iranian Mullahs as the great defenders of institutions cherished by those with anti-Trump sensibilities. Weird people.

He’s one guy, and he has them entirely surrounded.

Perpetually triggered, consistently paranoid and surrounded.

Damned funny, if you ask me.

When it comes to 2018 all I can tell you is, if the decoder ring holds up, this is going to be exciting.  Yes, more winning. After a year of increasing success, POTUS Trump appears to have the timing of the whac-a-mole machine down pat.

Before Donald Trump won the presidency we accepted his approach. Trump enters a battle-space, any battle-space, with adversaries 360° around him; and yet somehow he has them surrounded. As President Trump enters year #2, this approach continues.

On a scale of 1 to 10 the average person has a sense of internal purpose around level four. People of intense historic consequence generally exhibit a stronger personal drive which pushes their scaled sense of purpose to around a seven. However, Donald Trump, now President Trump, as exhibited throughout his life’s accomplishments, carries a sense of purpose considerably higher – perhaps the highest in our life time.

During the phase of the industrial revolution the highest captains of Main Street industry were known as “Titans”. The economic Titans accomplished incredible achievements in building and industry.

These giants moved the nation forward. Relentless forward progress. They never stopped moving forward, and they carried a resolve so severe and consequential they never allowed anything to stand in the way of their purpose driven objectives. National politicians knelt at the desks of these nationalist Titans.

Wolfmoon’s explainer more true today than it was a year ago:

“Well, I don’t really have to do any holding together, now that I figured out what Trump is up to. He is shaking things out, but counting on Trump gravity to pull things back together as he moves along.

He is moving “forward” at speeds Obama could not even dream of.

You and I will be anti-Trump trolls one day and MAGA heroes the next. Get used to it. Trump speed is the new normal. Some will call it flip-flopping, but that’s not what it is. Trump is dodging and weaving through reality faster than the reality can react to disrupt his plans.

I was explaining this to my wife. This is a roller-coaster now. Trump is no longer waiting for people to keep up. He is taking his bewildering art-of-the-deal campaign schtick into geopolitics, and for a lot of people who can’t keep up or hold on, it will be a rough ride.

Trump is no longer playing only with evil and cunning players who are still predictable, easily beatable dopes, like Hillary. He is playing against killers, with his own team of killers, and all the while he has scheming creeps like Hillary, BGI, SPLC, and the neocons gunning for him. Snake Ryan ready to bite when nobody is looking. “Warhead” McCain screaming for Russian blood. Psycho Kim and Samoa Obama plotting some kind of intrigue to take him down. And THOSE are the lightweights.

This is the majors now. Trump has to outwit world-class adversaries and “frenemies” by defining the deals that they will agree to. One minute they will think Trump is their friend – the next minute, a cunning, bitter foe.

And he has to do this with evil cheerleaders like Warhead, Linderace, Dipsy Dowd, Maggie Haterman, and Fake Yapper trashing him or praising him alternately, no matter which way he goes. They can’t keep up, either.

Neither can many around him. I think that half of the problem with advisers crashing into each other is they don’t realize what Trump is doing.

And people will trash you, and they will trash me. Get used to it. I’ve already caught plenty of people mocking me. Well, just wait a week in Trump time. Look stupid and conned by Trump one minute, and you look like a sage three days later.

Trump will not find perfect solutions. He will find OPTIMAL solutions. We cannot ask for more. Trump has stood by and watched Perfect murder Good for 8 years – maybe longer. He’s not gonna do it. He’s going to deliver the best outcome possible, and he’s not waiting for us to feel relaxed about it.

Best presidency ever! Just hang on. More winning is coming, but a lot of people are going to scream that it’s all over at EVERY turn.

The best way through this is to define viewpoints, not people, because people will shift as they change position and velocity in Trump gravity. Bash the neocon, warmonger, and dopey globalist positions – not the people who are going to hold them one moment and come loose from them later.

Trump is Jupiter moving through the asteroid belt. He is going to pull people into his orbit. A few will get slung off into space, but most will come along for the ride of their lives.

I am ON the Trump Train for good, even if I scream that I want off and can’t take it.

In the end, I only want to scream “TOO MUCH WINNING!!!” (link)

….”And we will win, and you will win, and we will keep on winning… Believe me. And we will win so much, you will get tired of winning; and you will say: please Mr. Trump, we can’t take all of this winning… And I will say to you, NO. …We will win more, and we will keep winning,.. and we will win, and we will keep on winning…. I love you”…

~ President Donald Trump

Happy New Year !