The Imperial Collapse Playbook

#41
#42
Benghazi

Judicial Watch announced on 18 May 2015 that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts. The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria. The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/bengha...-al-qaeda-in-syria-new-documents-show/5450504

Although the documents do not reveal who was responsible for sending weapons to Syria, it is quite obvious from the language used in the documents that it was a US initiative and the CIA presence in Benghazi at the time suggests that US intelligence was behind this gun-running operation.

Uncovering the chain of events that led to the attack on the US “consulate”, and the variety of militia the US and its allies were arming in Libya; could in turn reveal the full extent of the Obama administrations’ support of extremist proxy-forces in Syria. Which may explain the administrations’ zealous attempts to stifle any debate or serious questioning of the events that surround Benghazi.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-gun-running-qatar-libya-syria/5345464

“Despite the willingness of both AFRICOM Commander Gen. Carter Ham and Muammar Qaddafi to pursue the possibility of truce talks, permission was not given to Gen. Ham from his chain of command in the Pentagon and the window of opportunity closed,” reads Kubic’s statement for our report from last year.

Now we learn that the likely source of the stonewalling came from the State Department—and Secretary Clinton—herself. “On the day the U.N. resolution was passed, Mrs. Clinton ordered a general within the Pentagon to refuse to take a call with Gadhafi’s son Seif and other high-level members within the regime, to help negotiate a resolution, the secret recordings reveal,” reported the Times.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/hillar...izen-commissions-findings-on-benghazi/5429335

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, in a diplomatic cable from Libya last June, cited the apparent rise of “Islamic extremism” and the spotting of “the Al Qaeda flag” over buildings outside the city of Benghazi, where he and three other Americans were ultimately killed in an attack on Sept. 11.

“A number of local contacts agreed, noting that Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Libya and that the Al Qaeda flag has been spotted several times flying over government buildings and training facilities” in a small Libyan city about 100 miles east of Benghazi.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/benghazi-us-nato-sponsored-base-of-operations-for-al-qaeda/5309017

In their book entitled, Benghazi: The Definitive Report, authors Jack Murphy (Army Green Beret) and co-author Brandon Webb (Navy SEAL and friend of Glen Doherty who died in the Benghazi siege) also revealed that ‘Drone-Master J’, John O. Brennan - President Barack Obama’s current CIA Director nominee who was the President’s own deputy NSA advisor at the time, had been authorizing covert ‘unilateral operations outside of the traditional command structure’, using the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) across Libya and North Africa. It is Brennan’s black ops that are said to have prompted retaliation inside Libya that led to the September 11 Benghazi compound siege that killed four Americans, including ‘Ambassador’ Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-re...bya-caused-benghazigate-stevens-death/5322741

As Secretary of State in 2009, Hillary Clinton helped a right-wing coup in Honduras remove an elected left-of-center president, setting back the cause of democracy and enabling corrupt and drug-tainted forces to tighten their grip on the poverty-stricken country, as Jonathan Marshall explains.

 
#44
NAGOYA —
The secret to a long, happy life? Yasutaro Koide, a 112-year-old living in the central Japanese city of Nagoya who was officially recognized by Guinness World Records on Friday as the world’s oldest man, says to “not overdo.”
Koide was born on March 13, 1903, and worked as a tailor. He became the oldest man with the death of Sakari Momoi of Tokyo in July at age 112.
Three of his seven children, two of his nine grandchildren and one great grandchild attended a ceremony at a nursing home where he was given a plaque and a green vase.
Koide was beaming but teary-eyed as those attending applauded.
“The best thing is to not overdo,” Koide said. He also recommended not smoking or drinking and said his favorite food is bread.
Koide also recommends “enjoying everything,” according to local reports that say he can read the newspaper without glasses.
The newspaper Chunichi Shimbun quoted a granddaughter, Aya Kikuchi, as saying her grandfather once tended to be very strict about manners. “He was very stubborn, but he got nicer with age,” she said. “His lifestyle is one that avoids stress.”
One of the world’s fastest-aging countries, Japan has about 54,000 centenarians. So many, in fact, the government is reportedly considering scrapping or scaling back a 52-year-old program that presents each person reaching the century mark with an ornate sake dish and letter of congratulations from the prime minister.
The world’s oldest person is Susannah Mushatt Jones of Brooklyn, New York, who celebrated her 116th birthday on Monday.
 
#45
http://www.shtfplan.com/commodities...ow-bad-will-the-crash-of-2015-become_08212015
http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2...-the-elite-are-hiding-deep-beneath-the-earth/

This current market crash is happening in the context of a full-blown global financial meltdown. Stock markets all over the planet are collapsing, and currencies are being devalued left and right. The following comes from a recent piece by Wolf Richter...


Hot money is already fleeing emerging markets. Higher rates in the US will drain more capital out of countries that need it the most. It will pressure emerging market currencies and further increase the likelihood of a debt crisis in countries whose governments, banks, and corporations borrow in a currency other than their own. This scenario would be bad enough for the emerging economies. But now

China has devalued the yuan to stimulate its exports
and thus its economy at the expense of others.
And one thing has become clear on Wednesday: these struggling economies that
compete with China are going to protect their exports against Chinese encroachment.
Hence a currency war.
Two more major shots in the currency war were fired on Thursday by Kazakhstan and Vietnam...
Hit by sharp declines in crude prices, the oil-producing nation of Kazakhstan introduced a freely floating exchange rate for the tenge, which subsequently lost more than a quarter of its value.
The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) devalued the dong (VND) by 1 percent against the dollar on Wednesday—its third adjustment so far this year—and simultaneously widened the trading band to 3 percent from 2 percent previously, the second increase in six days.

A quarter of its value? Now that is a devaluation.

In the coming days, we are likely to see even more emerging markets devalue their currencies in a global “race to the bottom”. But this “race to the bottom” presents a great danger to financial markets. As I have written about previously, there are 74 trillion dollars in derivatives globally that are tied to the value of currencies. As foreign exchange rates start flying around all over the place, there are going to be financial institutions out there that are going to be losing obscene amounts of money. - Michael Snyder

most experts agree that a covert economic war has been going on between the yuan and the dollar, while some are suggesting that the explosion in Tiajin may also be part of a hot war that could see the Chinese military strike back – all with the powers that be explaining why or what is happening. If retaliate and hostilities boil over into a real conflict, the elite of this world are headed straight for their bunkers and redoubts while the rest of us are left to face a number of dire possibilities. How far will they really go?

Report: Russia Prepares To Deploy 50,000 Troops To Ukraine: “Cities Burning, Hundreds Dead”
All Out War on Russia’s Doorstep: Full Scale Military Operation by Kiev Forces against Donbass
Against Ukraine War? Obama May Seize Your Assets
President Obama has already re-authorized an E.O. giving him the ability to seize farms, food, processing plants, energy resources, transportation, and skilled laborers during national emergency.
Last year the United States targeted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal assets, along with the assets of scores of other Russian officials and businessmen. At that time we warned that Putin would not take such a move lying down and surrender to the will of the West.

As the President of Russia, what do you do when those same sanctions now target your personal wealth and business interests? Do you sit idly by while $40 billion dollars are confiscated from your personal accounts? What course of action do you take next? That is exactly the position that Vladimir Putin is now in, and according to the following report, National Security Adviser Susan Rice makes it clear that the United States is seriously considering this as an option.

The strategy may have worked out great when the United States seized the assets of deposed leaders in Egypt and Libya. It’s an entirely different matter when you target the President of a nuclear armed nation and one who has had no qualms about going head-to-head with the United States, not just in rhetoric but with his actions both economically and militarily.

It’s been suggested that Vladimir Putin may have prepared a multi-pronged strategy that may include an attack on U.S. financial markets as part of a broader war strategy, the timing of which would be almost impeccable given that a variety of analysts and insiders have warned that the Fall of 2015 may see an increase in the acceleration and intensity of economic crisis.
Why blame domestic fiscal policy or central bank machinations when Russia would be an ideal scapegoat for a U.S. stock market crash and subsequent economic collapse.
Details remain sketchy, but if Russia has in fact put boots on the ground in Ukraine then we could well be seeing the opening salvos of World War III in real- time.

Chinese-American Brinkmanship

As America prepares for a dramatic retaliation, we should be mindful of the
escalations that have already transpired since the Chinese devalued their currency by 1.7%.
August 12, 2015 Massive chemical explosion in China
August 14, 2015 Massive chemical explosion in Texas.
August 16, 2015 U.S. government warns China about covert agents in U.S. as reported in the NY Times
August 16, 2015 North Korea threatens to invade the United States and use new secret unknown weapons to make war with America inside the United States.
August 17, 2015 As previously mentioned, Russia reported to be sending in 50,000 more troops for placement on Ukraine border. There is now a strong likelihood that there will be a Russian invasion.
August 18, 2015 China and Russia begin holding very large joint military drills.
There are two other very disturbing facts that when considered in the context of the present day, should be of grave concern to the citizens of the United States.

  • 1 In the Bundy standoff of last year, it was common knowledge that the Chinese fully intended to put a solar energy farm on the Bundy Ranch.
  • 2 The Chinese are heavily invested in solar power development in the United States. And what would a highly developed solar system replace? It could replace nuclear power, thus rendering the nuclear power plants to be worthless.
 
#48
Can Kickers United - Why It's Getting Downright Hazardous Out There

It’s getting downright hazardous out there, and not just because the robo-machines were slamming the “sell” key today. The real danger comes from the loose assemblage of official institutions which claim to be running the world.

They might better be referred to as “can kickers united.” It is now blindly obvious that they have lapsed into empty ritualism, contrivance and double-talk in the face of a global economy and financial system that is becoming more unstable and incendiary by the day.

We are now 74 months into a so-called “recovery” cycle that is well longer than the post-war average, yet the Fed is still manning the emergency fire hoses:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-20/can-kickers-united-why-its-getting-downright-hazardous-out-there

Global Derivatives: $1.5 Quadrillion Time Bomb

When investing becomes gambling, bad endings follow. The next credit crunch could make 2008-09 look mild by comparison. Bank of International Settlements(BIS) data show around $700 trillion in global derivatives.

Along with credit default swaps and other exotic instruments, the total notional derivatives value is about $1.5 quadrillion – about 20% more than in 2008, beyond what anyone can conceive, let alone control if unexpected turmoil strikes.

The late Bob Chapman predicted it. So does Paul Craig Roberts. It could “destroy Western civilization,” he believes. Financial deregulation turned Wall Street into a casino with no rules except unrestrained making money. Catastrophic failure awaits. It’s just a matter of time.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/global-derivatives-1-5-quadrillion-time-bomb/5464666

Central Banks Have Become A Corrupting Force

If central banks purchase stocks in order to support equity prices, what is the point of having a stock market? The central bank’s ability to create money to support stock prices negates the price discovery function of the stock market.

The problem with central banks is that humans are fallible, including the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and all the board members and staff. Nobel prize-winner Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz established that the Great Depression was the consequence of the failure of the Federal Reserve to expand monetary policy sufficiently to offset the restriction of the money supply due to bank failure. When a bank failed in the pre-deposit insurance era, the money supply would shrink by the amount of the bank’s deposits. During the Great Depression, thousands of banks failed, wiping out the purchasing power of millions of Americans and the credit creating power of thousands of banks.

Is the stock market decline of August 20-21 welcome or unwelcome?

At this point we do not know. In order to keep the dollar up, the basis of US power, the Federal Reserve has promised to raise interest rates, but always in the future. The latest future is next month. The belief that a hike in interest rates is in the cards keeps the US dollar from losing exchange value in relation to other currencies, thus preventing a flight from the dollar that would reduce the Uni-power to Third World status.

The Federal Reserve can say that the stock market decline indicates that the recovery is in doubt and requires more stimulus. The prospect of more liquidity could drive the stock market back up. As asset bubbles are in the way of the Fed’s policy, a decline in stock prices removes the equity market bubble and enables the Fed to print more money and start the process up again.

On the other hand, the stock market decline last Thursday and Friday could indicate that the players in the market have comprehended that the stock market is an artificially inflated bubble that has no real basis. Once the psychology is destroyed, flight sets in.

If flight turns out to be the case, it will be interesting to see if central bank liquidity and purchases of stocks can stop the rout.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/08/23/central-banks-become-corrupting-force-paul-craig-roberts-dave-kranzler/
 
#49
Is This Black Monday Crash The BIG ONE? It Doesn't Matter

Plenty amongst you will be talking about economic cycles, and opportunities, and debate how to ‘play’ the crash, but all this is useless if and when a market doesn’t function. And just about all markets in the richer part of the world stopped functioning when central banks started buying assets. That’s when you stopped being investors. And when market strategies stopped making sense.

Central banks will come up with more, much more, ‘stimulus’, but what China teaches us today is that we’re woefully close to the moment when central banks will lose the faith and trust of everyone. After injecting tens of billions of dollars in markets, which thereby ceased to function, the global economy is in a bigger mess then it was prior to QE. The whole thing is one big bubble now, and we know what invariably happens to those.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-24/black-monday-crash-big-one-it-doesnt-matter

BLACK MONDAY August 24th: Exposes Rigged U.S. Markets, Game Tilted In Favor Of Wall Street

The markets are rigged; they always have been. Now, however, the stakes are so high that nations rise and fall with the price of oil or change in currency exchange rates. The world has become an extremely volatile place. The new normal is now so extreme that the wiggle room that once existed is all gone. Virtually everyone sits right between a rock and a hard place.
The power that the bankers and brokers now wield greatly exceeds their capacity to use it responsibly. Forget about using their influence wisely, the banksters are actually responsible for the perpetual war economy that has been foisted on the American people. This situation cannot be allowed to continue. If it does, it will only set up the planetary civilization for the “Crash of the Millennium“.

Global Trade In Freefall: Container Freight Rates From Asia To Europe Crash 60% In Three Weeks

What happens next?

Well, some, such as the world’s largest container shipping company, Maersk Line, will desperately try to no longer lose money on every transit, with a plan to raise spot freight rates by $1,000 from ports in Asia to ports in northern Europe, with effect from Sep 1. Other major container shipping companies have similar plans.

The virtually guaranteed outcome of this "strategy", as there is simply not enough demand as the world careens off the global recession cliff to offset a surge in freight costs, will be an even greater collapse in trade volumes.

How to Survive a Stock Market Crash: “Take These Immediate Steps”

http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-ne...ket-crash-take-these-immediate-steps_08242015

It Is Time To Kick Prepping Into Overdrive, Because This Stock Market Crash Is Just The Beginning

http://endoftheamericandream.com/ar...this-stock-market-crash-is-just-the-beginning
 
#56
In order to stop, or at least forestall this downward slide into financial/economic/political oblivion, the US must move quickly to undermine every competing economy in the world through whatever means it has left at its disposal, be it a bombing campaign, a revolution or a pandemic (although this last one can be a bit hard to keep under control).
https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2014/10/how-to-start-war-and-lose-empire.html

Heroes are hard to come by. Villains are easier to manufacture and that makes us all potential heroes.

Three manufactured villains announced by the White House in 2015 were; Russia, ISIS and Ebola.

Important for everyone to know that there’s nobody looking out for you. Not DC, not Moscow and not Beijing.

Imagine what other trapper keepers are in store for us.
 
#57
Matthew Weaver
Hip-hop has emerged as the latest covert weapon in the US government’s hapless attempts to unseat Cuba’s communist government.
Like its previous efforts, including exploding cigars, Cuban Twitter and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, the attempt to co-opt rappers ended in ignominious failure, new documents have shown.
For more than two years, the American development aid organisation USAid has been secretly trying to infiltrate Cuba’s underground hip-hop movement, according to records obtained by the Associated Press.
The idea was to use Cuba’s rappers “to break the information blockade” and build a network of young people seeking “social change” to spark a youth movement against the government of President Raul Castro.
The operation followed a familiar pattern to other tactics in America’s secret war in Cuba - it was amateurish and profoundly unsuccessful.
On at least six occasions, Cuban authorities detained or interrogated people involved in the operation. They also confiscated computer hardware, which in some cases contained information that endangered Cubans who are thought to have had no idea they were caught up in the clandestine programme.
The USAid operation also ended up compromising Cuba’s vibrant hip-hop culture, which has produced some of the hardest-hitting grassroots criticism since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.
Musicians that USAid contractors tried to promote left the country or stopped performing after pressure from the Cuban government, and one of the island’s most popular independent music festivals was taken over after officials linked it to USAid.
The programme is laid out in documents involving Creative Associates International, a Washington contractor paid millions of dollars to undermine the Cuban government. The thousands of pages include contracts, emails, preserved chats, budgets, expense reports, power points, photographs and passports.
The work included the creation of a “Cuban Twitter” social network and the dispatch of inexperienced Latin American youth to recruit activists, operations that were the focus of previous revelations.
USAid denied that the programme was covert. In a statement, it said it was aimed at strengthening civil society “often in places where civic engagement is suppressed and where people are harassed, arrested, subjected to physical harm or worse”. Creative Associates has yet to comment.
At first, the hip-hop operation was run in Cuba by Serbian contractor Rajko Bozic. His project was inspired by the protest concerts of the student movement that helped undermine former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
Contractors would recruit scores of Cuban musicians for projects disguised as cultural initiatives but really aimed at boosting their visibility and stoking a movement of fans to challenge the government.
Bozic focused much of his efforts on Los Aldeanos, a hip-hop group frustrated by official pressure and widely respected by Cuban youth for its hard-hitting lyrics.
“People marching blind, you have no credibility,” the group rapped in Long Live Free Cuba!. ‘’Go and tell the captain this ship’s sinking rapidly.”
Creative used a Panama front company and a bank in Lichtenstein to hide the money trail from Cuba, where thousands of dollars went to fund a TV programne starring Los Aldeanos. It was distributed on DVDs to circumvent Cuba’s censors.
Then the Colombian rock star Juanes announced a September 2009 concert in the heart of Havana. Creative managers held a two-day strategy session on how to persuade Juanes to let Los Aldeanos perform with him.
It didn’t happen, but Juanes publicly thanked the rappers after the concert and was photographed with them.
The contractors were pleased; they believed this kind of public support by a major celebrity would protect Los Aldeanos from state pressure.
Juanes’s spokesman, John Reilly, said the concert had no political agenda and that “Juanes and the other organising artists did not have any knowledge” of what others did.
Later, Los Aldeanos’s charismatic frontman, Aldo Rodriguez, was detained for illegal possession of a computer.
Xavier Utset, who ran the programme for Creative, saw the arrest as a perfect test of whether raising Aldo’s profile would keep him out of jail.
In the end, a relative of Aldo’s phoned Silvio Rodriguez, himself a legendary singer. Rodriguez told AP that he called a friend in Cuba’s culture ministry and asked for the computer to be returned. If there was a problem, he told the friend, “tell them I gave them the computer as a present”.
“Evidently he did what I said,” Rodriguez said. “I never imagined that a programme like this could exist ... When you find out you could be surrounded by a conspiracy, it’s shocking.”
At one point, the contractors approached a government sex education institute run by Raul Castro’s daughter, Mariela, to be part of the Exit festival in Serbia, even as its organisers were running the anti-Castro hip-hop operation.
Mariela Castro said her institute sent two representatives to the festival but didn’t build deeper ties because the festival “didn’t have anything to do with the work we were doing”.
Contractors paid $15,000 to underwrite an arts and music festival put on by the family of Pablo Milanes, the well-known singer of “nueva trova” music and a man with close government ties. Their secret aim was to seed “the minds of festival organisers with new ideas” and persuade them to send “high-impact messages” to the audience, read one report.
Milanes’s daughter, Suylen Milanes, said government officials turned up the day before the festival and warned her that she was associating with unsavoury characters. They even showed her copies of Bozic’s emails, which they called suspicious, she recalled.
Bozic was detained coming into Havana with equipment, including a potentially incriminating memory stick, generating anxiety among the contractors. He cut short his trip and other contractors were told he wouldn’t be returning soon.
Then, Cuban authorities detained a photographer working with Adrian Monzon, the only Cuban who documents show knowingly worked for Creative Associates on the hip-hop programmr. State security then interrogated Monzon, a video jockey. He told Creative that the Cuban authorities were worried about Bozic and suspected links to the CIA.
Four months later, Los Aldeanos left Cuba for their first trip off the island to perform at the Exit festival in Serbia.
On the side, they were the unwitting recipients of leadership training meant “to focus them a little more on their role as agents of social mobilisation,” wrote Utset, a veteran of Cuban pro-democracy efforts.
Monzon was detained again returning to Havana in April 2011, his computer and a memory stick seized. When they were returned, he realised they contained a document with the names of two Creative Associates managers.
Monzon and Utset have refused to comment. Aldo would only say that his “conscience is clear”.
In August 2010, Los Aldeanos took the stage at Rotilla, one of Cuba’s largest independent music festivals. Before a crowd of about 15,000 people they criticised government officials by name and taunted the police.
“The police instead of making me hate them, inspire pity, because they are such shit-eaters they don’t even realise they are victims of the system. Viva Cuba libre,” Aldo’s partner rapped.
Within months, a USAid contractor told his handlers that the Cubans said USAid had infiltrated the festival, and soon enough, the Cubans took it over.
Los Aldeanos eventually moved to South Florida after complaining that the Cuban government made it impossible for them to work in their own country. Their most recently published lyrics are softer-edged.
In slickly produced videos, Aldo plays with dogs and children, making only scattered political references as he raps about helping people love each other, and making the world a better place.
 
#58
Nobody should be expecting DC to leave Afghanistan but what’s with the shitshow with Taliban marching in and crying children clinging on to wings of military jets? It’s a bad production and what’s the title on the trapper keeper?
 
#59
Sigh…

One reason is already posted above.

Predictive Programming or ”Pee Pee”

YEWUOAU You’re either with us or against us. America good Afghanistan bad. Afghanistan bad America good.

Azurite for Sumer I needs me some nickle and cobalt for my electric Boeing yo.

How to spend more than $2.2 trillion and go out with a dud

How to retreat from from a defeat and seek out defeats elsewhere

The Imperial Collapse Playbook
 

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