Martin Armstrong

Ukrainian soldiers have nothing. People had been donating money to support them. While the West's injection of career politicians only replaced the head - Yanukovich - what is going on now is the corruption the people were revolting against is still in  the first place. Money donated to the soldiers has not been getting to them. Now the Ukrainian people are simply bringing food to their own troops because the corruption takes the money. Ukraine's soldiers have taken to Facebook to ask for help...

Putin at least stands for what he truly believes in. That is far more than we find in Western Politicians.

Fascism has been a term applied to the manner of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator/bureaucracy that is unelected or a republic with pretend “lifetime” politicians, controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government. Such systems have always placed the “good” of the state before the worth of an individual. Government has abused its power and looks upon the people as a herd of unwashed wild animals for them to drive in whatever direction they desire for their own self-interest. They retain that power by preaching to the ignorant that they are never the problem, it is always the “rich” who refuse to turnover everything they own so politicians can live high and mighty. This is why Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Washington, and Franklin, just to mention a few, forbid direct taxation. They experienced that the power to directly tax the people destroys the liberty of the people for once a direct tax is imposed, you must account for whatever you do, earn, and have. The future of the present and younger generations is being systemically wiped out and therein we will discover the seeds of revolution.

What you have to realize is that this trend is inevitable... we are hopelessly lost in a declining spiral vortex of debt and corruption that will only change with war and civil unrest.

Russia and China are becoming closer thanks to Obama and his insane policies behind the NSA that have left America trying to find friends in a dark hour. The sanctions being imposed on Russia have sent China into its camp. The USA is finding it increasingly more difficult to be the bully in the school-yard. No former administration has ever acted with such arrogance and blind stupidity than the Obama Administration. The net result is to empower Russia and to inspire a new dynamic-duo of Russia-China against the USA. China supported Russia, when Western countries launched an anti-Russian campaign. With both of their economies turning down, this is by no means the proper time to impose sanctions. All this policy is doing is re-enforcing Putin and placing him in the position where he must become more aggressive or seem weak in the shadow of Obama.

We are entering a completely new era in economics. Either (1) if countries perceive that their borrowings curtail their ambitions (thus we have a check and balance), however (2) if countries cannot borrow, then they may invade and revert to the old Conquest Model relying upon the spoils of war, which included the confiscation of assets belonging to an adversary. Either Putin backs down, or he asserts the same principles and is then forced to invade in short-order just to economically survive.

The Feds are gathering and have brought in hired guns. We are more likely than not headed into a military confrontation – the first since Waco. Keep in mind that Obama’s head of the Justice Department, Eric Holder now Attorney General, called the shots on Waco back then. He got away with it before – why not again?

The following is a new ad campaign in Britain. As we have warned numerous times - muddle-thruugh has failed; Martin Armstrong notes, the politicians have squandered everything and now they are hunting down capital everywhere and the view is people have to pay whatever they demand or you are just a criminal. Nobody even bothers to look at what they are doing to the world economy. These advertisements are appearing everywhere and they will only succeed in created the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.

"Is it true that nearly 80% of Nevada is still owned by the Federal Government who then pays no tax to the State of Nevada? This seems very strange if true as a backdrop to this entire Bundy affair." The truth behind Nevada is of course just a quagmire of politics. Sorry, but to all the commentators who call Bundy a tax-cheat and an outlaw, be careful of what you speak for the Supreme Court has made it clear in 1845 that the Constitution forbids the federal rangers to be out there to begin with for the Feds could not retain ownership of the territory and simultaneously grant state sovereignty. At the very minimum, it became state land – not federal.

"We have been warning that 2014 is the beginning of a new cycle that will see a highly unusual convergence between our domestic (civil unrest & revolution) data and our international war model. Both converge for the first time since the 1700s when there were US and French Revolutions and the fall of monarchy." The civil unrest will develop first outside the USA and turn up more aggressively in the USA after Q3 2015. Nonetheless, it still begins in 2014 for the USA as well. We are starting to see this in the West where memories of previous events still linger deep wounds from 1992.

"It is not what an individual needs that is the issue. Take all the money away from Bill Gates. How will this improve your life at all? The issue is how much is government consuming. But as long as they point to the 'rich' they get to waste your money.

The solution is not to raise taxes on the rich, for government will still spend more than it takes in regardless of who pays... It is taxes that we must address – not how much someone else makes."

This week the state legislature of Michigan became the 34th state to demand a “Constitutional Convention” in the United States.  Pursuant to Article 5 of the US Constitution, if 2/3rds of the states call for such a convention, (meaning 34 states) it must take place. In such a convention, the entire Constitution is subject to review and can be altered and changed.

This is no plain modern event with civil unrest erupting because of an interconnected world. These are grassroots uprisings cross-fertilized perhaps from a world contagion yet they often have similarities – corrupt governments. Turkey, Ukraine, Thailand, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina are all middle-income democracies with elected leaders besieged by people angry at misgovernment, corruption and economic sclerosis. These days it is no longer just dictators who have something to fear from the crowd. This is the promise of Marxism that centralized planning and false promises are coming home and governments are too corrupt and incompetent to deliver what they have claimed for decades.

Does anything about 2014 remind you of 2008? The long lists of visible stress in the global financial system and the almost laughably hollow assurances that there are no bubbles, everything is under control, etc. etc. etc.  certainly remind me of the late-2007-early 2008 period when the subprime mortgage meltdown was already visible and officialdom from Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan on down were mounting the bully pulpit at every opportunity to declare that there was no bubble in housing and the system was easily able to handle little things like defaulting mortgages. The party, once again, is clearly ending and raises the question: "If asset bubbles no longer boost full-time employment or incomes across the board, what is the broad-based, “social good” justification for inflating them?"

For Obama to claim that a public vote in Crimea would violate the Constitution of Ukraine and International Law is really just as absurd that the same argument put forth by Putin that nothing in Kiev was legal because it was not signed by Yanukovych. There should be a vote, but it should be monitored independently to ensure it is real. To argue that no state may move to secede from a federal government is ridiculous...