Obama Administration

America is not Greece, but judging from the Obama administration's just-unveiled plans to bailout Puerto Rico's disastrous debt situation, the American territory may have to sacrifice a little more sovereignty to get some relief. Obama is pressing for Congress to give Puerto Rico (PR) sweeping powers to reduce its $73 billion debt burden through a form of bankruptcy protection not now available to American territories and will also ask lawmakers to establish an independent body to monitor the island’s fiscal affairs (a la Troika).

"As examples of products that were not made entirely in the US — contrary to their billing — it highlighted a sandwich bag that was produced in Thailand and a toy car that was assembled in the US with some imported parts, including a Chinese steering wheel."

If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

History may eventually decide the "New World Order" started on September 28, when Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama had a 90-minute face off at the UN in New York. Irrespective of spin – “productive” according to the White House, “tense” according to a source close to the Kremlin – facts on the ground accumulated almost immediately.

We presume the 'threat' of selling hundreds of billions of dollars of US Treasuries has prompted a softening in the "Currency manipulator" rhetoric from The US Treasuy department. Having previously said the Yuan is "significantly undervalued," today's report shifts the comment to stating that the Yuan is "below appropriate medium-term valuation." Of course, The US Treasury would know exactly how all of the world's currencies should trade in this centrally-planned world.

• Great News: China’s GDP Growth Beats Forecasts as Stimulus Supports Spending (BBG)
• Oh wait, maybe not: China GDP: Deflategate Comes to Beijing (WSJ)
• Actually, definitely not: Shanghai rebar falls to record low after weak China GDP (Reuters)
• But who cares: European Shares Gain on Earnings as Bonds Drop, Metals Decline (BBG)

"Yellen is doing this with the blessing of the President because he doesn’t want to have a recession - or worse- in his administration. I’m a developer, I’m not complaining from my own standpoint, I’m just saying that at some point, you have to raise interest rates, you pay nothing. They are trying to put the recession - and it could be a beauty - into the next administration."

Until Putin’s speech the world was intimidated by the Washington Bully. Resistance to Washington brought swift retribution. In the Middle East and Africa it brought economic sanctions and military invasions that destroyed entire countries. In France and other US vassal states it brought multi-billion dollar confiscations of bank net worth as the price of not following Washington’s policies toward other countries. Other countries felt powerless in the face of the arrogant hegemonic Unipower, which from time to time replied to noncompliance with threats. President Putin of Russia brought all that to end on September 28. He stood up before the world in the presence of the overflowing hubris of the hegemon and belled the cat.

It was clear what was about to happen in Syria only because we understood one important fundamental – that there are no “sides” in any modern conflict, only proxies fighting on a global chessboard controlled by the same elitist interests. Syria represented a perfect catalyst for a planetary scale conflict triggered between East and West in a way that could divert attention from internationalists. Modern war, whether through kinetics or economics, is almost always theater designed to distract and terrorize the masses, which are the true target of any conflagration.

Whatever the efforts of that expansive corps of intelligence analysts (and the vast intelligence edifice behind it), when anything happens in the Greater Middle East, you can essentially assume that the official American reaction, military and political, will be “surprise” and that policymakers will be left “scrambling” in a quagmire of ignorance to rescue American policy from the unexpected. The evidence, after all, is largely in.  In these years, for what now must be approaching three-quarters of a trillion dollars, the national security state and the military seem to have created an un-intelligence system.  Welcome to the fog of everything.

The reason these articles are so important, is not because they are based on intel leaked by an additional whistleblower (i.e., not Snowden), but because you can’t read the information without concluding quite simply that the U.S. empire is completely and totally out of control. That the plethora of American military adventures overseas are not only not making us safer, but are in fact making us far more vulnerable.

As the old adage goes: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and as the recent bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz clearly shows, the US military presence in Afghanistan is doing wonders for stability and security which is presumably why the Obama administration has just done a 180 on troop deployment in the country.

Admittedly it's not Mayweather-Pacquiao, but Las Vegas is buzzing ahead of tonight's rumble-in-the-jungle between Bernie and The Battle-axe. While Joe Biden remains the most notable absentee (or will he?) there are three other 'debaters' to carry water and towels for Hillary and Bernie as they drag one another left-er and left-er and more populist-er. In the pre-fight Sanders has lobbed some awkward Iraq War questions at 'hawkish' Hillary but as Clinton's 2008 campaign manager notes, "she's rolled out Latinos for Hillary, Women for Hillary, and met the leadership of Black Lives Matter; she has checked a lot of boxes walking into this debate."

The stage is being set for World War III, but most Americans are completely and totally oblivious to all of this because they are so wrapped up in their own little worlds. Most Americans still seem to assume that the Russians and the Chinese are our "friends" and that any type of conflict between major global powers is impossible. Well, the truth is that conflict has already begun in Ukraine and Syria, and tensions are rising with each passing day. It won’t happen next week or next month, but we are on the road to World War III.

Another sad chapter in the CIA's book of failed government overthrows comes to a close, leaving the Syria "rebels" that the CIA had supported for years, to fend for themselves, and handing over Syria to Putin, who has once again "won" or as the administration would prefer to spin it, "has hung himself."