Middle East

Within one hour of the Paris attacks and without any evidence, the story was set in stone that the perpetrator was ISIL. This is the way propaganda works.

Global policymakers have gone to incredible measures to stabilize market, financial and economic backdrops. Yet reflationary measures will continue to only further destabilize. When policy-induced “risk on” is overpowering global securities markets, fragilities remain well concealed. Fragilities, however, swiftly manifest with the reappearance of “risk off.” Rather quickly securities markets demonstrate their proclivity for illiquidity and so-called “flash crashes.” So after an unsettled week in global markets, the critical issue is whether “risk on” is giving way to “risk off” dynamics.

The paradox of the current global crisis is that for the last five years, all relatively responsible and independent nations have made tremendous efforts to save the United States from the financial, economic, military, and political disaster that looms ahead. And this is all despite Washington’s equally systematic moves to destabilize the world order, rightly known as the Pax Americana. But the US needs to think fast. Their resources are shrinking much faster than the authors of the plan for imperial preservation had expected. The point of no return will pass once and for all sometime in 2016, and America’s elite will no longer be able to choose between the provisions of compromise and collapse.

If there is one 'winner' from last night's terrible events in Paris, it is France's anti-EU, anti-immigration far-right wing Front Nationale party leader Marine Le Pen. Having already ascended to the lead in yet another poll ahead of France's 2017 elections, Le Pen came out swinging this morning call for France to "re-arm itself," stating that radical Islam must be "eradicated" from France. She further demanded that border controls be made "permanent" and binational Islamists must be depreived of their French passport.

Trump, for all his contradictions, gives voice to the “isolationist” populism that Rubio and his neocon confederates despise, and which is implanted so deeply in the American consciousness. Why us? Why are we paying everybody’s bills? Why are we fighting everybody else’s wars? It’s a bad deal! This is why the neocons hate Trump’s guts even more than they hate Paul.

“This is [a] man-made crisis in our industry we have created,” al-Rhumy said. “And I think all we’re doing is irresponsible.”

Gold bullion coin and bar demand surged in Q3 as gold’s continuing COMEX driven price weakness in July and sharp falls in stock markets in China and globally in August saw store of wealth buyers internationally again accumulate bullion.

With winter looming, some European states are warning that a humanitarian crisis may be right around the corner as the proliferation of anti-migrant fences and border controls has slowed refugees on their trek to Germany. Now, hundreds of thousands could end up stranded. Fearing a "catastrophe" on its soil, Slovenia has now built its own razor wire border barrier, a move Croatia calls "a waste of time." 

According to the U.S. State Government 2013-2015 Foreign Assistance report, an estimated $5.9 billion was spent on foreign military funding alone in fiscal year 2014.  This is equivalent to 17% of the estimated $35 billion spent on total global aid discussed in our previous article. U.S. foreign military aid to countries ranged from $200,000 to $3.1 billion. Of the top 10 recipients, two countries received 75% of the $5.9 billion.

Empires, like adolescents, think they’ll live forever. In geopolitics, as in biology, expiration dates are never visible. When death comes, it’s always a shock. "At the beginning of the great unraveling, in 2015, I was still a young man. Like everyone else, I didn’t see this coming. Today, in 2050, fewer and fewer people can recall what it was like to live among those leviathans... Thirty-five years and endless catastrophes later on a poorer, bleaker, less hospitable planet, it’s clear that we just weren’t paying sufficient attention. Had we been listening, we would have heard the termites. There, in the basement of our common home, they were eating the very foundations out from under us. Suddenly, before we knew quite what was happening, all that was solid had melted into air."

Considering the crises facing Europe, the question is no longer: Will the EU survive? It is Orban’s question: Will European civilization survive the century? If the mass migrations are not halted, the rise of nationalist regimes at the expense of Europe’s liberals and leftists is inevitable.

Are we in for another nuclear standoff with the Kremlin?