President Trump urges investors to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into American economy

It’s no secret that President Trump’s business skills have put America first which was the overall theme of the President’s Davos speech

DAVOS, Switzerland (INTELLIHUB) — President Donald Trump gave an amazing speech to investors at the World Economic Forum on Friday, and even scooped up a group of ultra-elite who plan to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into America’s newfound robust economy.

With the DOW Jones Industrial Average sitting at over 26,000, the highest level in history, President Trump has retained full-on bragging rights, after policies his administration implemented are now allowing individuals and businesses to reap the benefits.

INDEXDJX: .DJI

The Commander-In-Chief explained to the Davos crowd how the DOW is up nearly fifty percent from what it was at the time of the election and pointed out that if the opposing party would have won it likely would have been down fifty percent.

“The stock market is up over fifty percent since my election,” he said. “Had the Democrat would have won, I believe that we would have been down fifty percent.”

Featured Image: CNBC/YouTube

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Shepard Ambellas is an opinion journalist, analyst, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub News & Politics (Intellihub.com). Shepard is also known for producing Shade: The Motion Picture (2013) and appearing on Travel Channel’s America Declassified (2013). Shepard is a regular contributor to Infowars. Read more from Shep’s World. Follow Shep on Facebook. Subscribe to Shep’s YouTube channel.

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Switzerland’s Top Party Initiates Referendum to Close Borders

By Dan Lyman  1-17-2018

The Swiss People’s Party (SVP), a nationalist-populist faction that currently holds the most seats in Switzerland’s Federal Assembly, will end ‘free movement’ agreements with the EU, returning full immigration controls to Bern.

The initiative has been approved by the Federal Chancellery and must now garner 100,000 signatures by July 16, 2019, before it can be put to a national vote, pending further consideration by parliament. If successful, the Swiss government would have one year to negotiate the termination of various agreements with Brussels.

Key arguments from the initiative include –

“A free and self-determined country like Switzerland has to control immigration itself, as most of the successful countries in the world do. It would never occur to them to grant over 500 million citizens of other states a legal right to immigration. Rather, many countries tighten their immigration laws against the background of global political developments with the aim of aligning immigration strictly with their economic needs, their security and the country’s potential.“

“Since the introduction of the free movement of persons with the EU, we no longer determine who is allowed to come to Switzerland and who does not. This must be over.  The limitation initiative requires that immigration be regulated and controlled independently by Switzerland.“

Switzerland is not an EU member state, but maintains bilateral agreements with the bloc, including free movement permissions within the Schengen Area which enable EU citizens to live and work in the country, in exchange for Switzerland’s ease of access to the European ‘single market.’

However, immigration has quickly become a sore subject in Switzerland as net population growth is approaching 80,000 per year, with nearly one-quarter of the country’s 8.3 million inhabitants now being foreigners, as well as another 300,000-plus citizens of neighboring countries who cross borders daily to work in Switzerland and enjoy its comparatively higher wages.

Nearly half of foreigners in Switzerland are collecting welfare benefits, and an influx of migrants are changing the culture, and contributing to a rise in crime and a deterioration of Switzerland’s world-renowned reputation as one of the safest countries in the world.

“Our country has undergone immigration in recent years like never before. Its population growth has exploded to that of a third-world country,” said Lukas Reimann, President of Action for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland, which co-authored the initiative. “Apart from the mountain regions, Switzerland now has one of the highest population densities in Europe.”

SVP leader Albert Rösti echoed these sentiments, saying, “A free and sovereign country like Switzerland must autonomously regulate immigration on its territory. Most of the world’s best performing states are doing this.”

Read more at newswars.com

 

 

 

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Some Europeans Have Never Been Outside The EU

When it comes to holidays and travelling in general, Europe has a lot to offer.

Cosmopolitan cities jam packed with culture, pristine beaches, excellent ski resorts, you name it. Given all of that, it comes as little surprise that many Europeans never travel outside the EU.

As Statista"s Niall McCarthy notes, the most recent Eurobarometer data showing the share of people who have travelled at least once outside the EU was published in 2014.

You will find more statistics at Statista

The above infographic shows the results of the research, with Swedes most likely to have been outside the EU. That is more than likely due to the long and open border with neighbouring Norway which is not part of the EU.

The same story is likely true for Austria due to its proximity to Switzerland.

People in newer member states in Eastern Europe are least likely to have been outside the EU with Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary and Romania all towards the bottom of the ranking.

Interestingly, Portugal comes second last, possibly due to the fact that it only shares a land border with Spain. Only 18 percent of all Portuguese residents have travelled outside the EU.

Debunking The Myths About An Attack On North Korea

Submitted by The Saker,

First, the bragging dummies

Trump and Haley are still at it.  They want to force China to take action against the DPRK by threatening to take North Korea “into their hands” if China refuses to comply.  Haley said, “But to be clear, China can do more, (…) and we’re putting as much pressure on them as we can. The last time they completely cut off the oil, North Korea came to the table. And so we’ve told China they’ve got to do more. If they don’t do more, we’re going to take it into our own hands and then we’ll start to deal with secondary sanctions.”

First, let’s reset this scene in a kindergarten and replay it.

Kid A has a fight with Kid B.  Kid A threatens to beat up Kid B.  Kid B then tells Kid A to go screw himself.  Kid A does nothing, but issues more threats.  Kid B keeps laughing.  And then Kid A comes up with a brilliant plan: he threatens Kid C (who is much much bigger than Kid B and much much stronger too!) by telling him "if you don’t make Kid B comply with my demands, I will take the issue in my own hands!".  The entire schoolyard erupts in hysterical laughter.

Question: how would you the gauge the intelligence of Kid A? Anyway...

This would all be really funny if this was a comedy show.  But what this all is in reality is a slow but steady progression towards war.  What makes this even worse is the media’s obsession with the range of North Korean missiles and whether they can reach Guam or even the USA.  With all due respect for the imperial “only we matter” (and nevermind the "gooks"), there are ways “we”, i.e. the American people can suffer terrible consequences from a war in the Korean Peninsula which have nothing to do with missile strikes on Guam or the USA.

Image via The Saker

The lucrative target: Japan

This summer I mentioned one of the most overlooked potential consequences of a war with the DPRK and I want to revisit this issue again.  First, the relevant excerpt from the past article:

While I personally believe that Kim Jong-un is not insane and that the main objective of the North Korean leadership is to avoid a war at all costs, what if I am wrong?  What if those who say that the North Korean leaders are totally insane are right? Or, which I think is much more likely, what if Kim Jong-un and the North Korean leaders came to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose, that the Americans are going to kill them all, along with their families and friends?  What could they, in theory, do if truly desperate?  Well, let me tell you: forget about Guam; think Tokyo!  Indeed, while the DPRK could devastate Seoul with old fashioned artillery systems, DPRK missiles are probably capable of striking Tokyo or the Keihanshin region encompassing Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe including the key industries of the Hanshin Industrial Region.  The Greater Tokyo area (Kanto region) and the Keihanshin region are very densely populated (37 and 20 million people respectively) and contain an immense number of industries, many of which would produce an ecological disaster of immense proportions if hit by missiles.  Not only that, but a strike on the key economic and financial nodes of Japan would probably result in a 9-11 kind of international economic collapse.  So if the North Koreans wanted to really, really hurt the Americans what they could do is strike Seoul, and key cities in Japan resulting in a huge political crisis for the entire planet.  During the Cold War we used to study the consequences of a Soviet strike against Japan and the conclusion was always the same: Japan cannot afford a war of any kind.  The Japanese landmass is too small, too densely populated, to rich in lucrative targets and a war would lay waste to the entire country. This is still true today, only more so.  And just imagine the reaction in South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by missiles!  The South Koreans have already made their position unambiguously clear, by the way. As for the Japanese, they are officially placing their hopes in missiles (as if technology could mitigate the consequences of insanity!).  So yeah, the DPRK is plenty dangerous and pushing them into their last resort is totally irresponsible indeed, nukes or no nukes.

Yet, for some reason, the western media rarely mentions Japan or the possible global economic consequences on a strike against Japan.  Very few people know for sure whether the North Koreans truly have developed a usable nuclear weapon (warhead and missile) or whether the North Korean ballistic missile truly can reach Guam or the USA.  But I don’t think that there is any doubt whatsoever that North Korean missile can easily cover the roughly 1000km (600 miles) to reach the heart of Japan.  In fact, the DPRK has already lobbed missiles over Japan in the past.  Some red blooded US Americans will, no doubt, explain to use that the US THAAD system can, and will, protect South Korea and Japan from such missile strikes.  Others, however, will disagree.  We won’t know until we find out, but judging by the absolutely dismal performance of the vaunted US Patriot system in the Gulf War,  I sure would not place my trust in any US made ABM system.  Last, but not least, the North Koreans could place a nuclear device (not even a real nuclear warhead) on a regular commercial ship or even a submarine, bring it to the coast of Japan and detonate it.  The subsequent panic and chaos might end up costing even more lives and money than the explosion itself.

Then there is Seoul, of course.  US analyst Anthony Cordesman put is very simply “A battle near the DMZ, directed at a target like Seoul, could rapidly escalate to the point at which it threatened the ROK’s entire economy, even if no major invasion took place."

[Sidebar: Cordesman being Cordesman, he proceeds to hallucinate about the effects of a DPRK invasion of the ROK and comes up with sentences such as “Problems drive any assessment of the outcome of a major DPRK invasion of the ROK, even if one only focuses on DPRK- ROK forces. The DPRK has far larger ground forces, but the outcome of what would today be an air – land battle driven heavily by the overall mobility of DPRK land forces and their ability to concentrate along given lines of advance relative to the attrition technically superior ROK land and air forces could inflict is impossible to calculate with any confidence, as is the actual mix of forces both sides could deploy in a given area and scenario“.  Yup, the man is seriously discussing AirLand battle concepts in the context of a DPRK invasion of the South!  He might as well be discussing the use of Follow-on-Forces Attack concept in the context of a Martian invasion of earth (or an equally likely Russian invasion of the Baltic statelets!).  It is funny and pathetic how a country with a totally offensive national strategy, military doctrine and force posture still feels the need to hallucinate some defensive scenarios to deal with the cognitive dissonance resulting from clearly being the bad guy.]

Why does Cordesman say that?  Because according to a South Korean specialist “DPRK artillery pieces of calibers 170mm and 240mm “could fire 10,000 rounds per minute to Seoul and its environs.”   During the war in Bosnia the western press spoke of “massive Serbian artillery strikes on Sarajevo” when the actual rate of fire was about 1 artillery shell per minute.  It just makes me wonder what they would call 10,000 rounds per minute.

The bottom line is this: you cannot expect your enemy to act in a way which suits you; in fact you should very much assume that he is going to do what you do not expect and what is the worst possible for you.  And, in this context, the DPRK has many more options than shooting an ICBM at Guam or the USA.  The nutcases in the Administration might not want to mention it, but an attack on the DPRK risks bringing down both the South Korean and the Japanese economies with immediate and global consequences: considering that rather shaky and vulnerable nature of the international financial and economic system, I very much doubt that a major crisis in Asia would not result in the collapse of the US economy (which is fragile anyway).

We should also consider the political consequences of a war on the Korean Peninsula, especially if, as is most likely, South Korea and Japan suffer catastrophic damage.  This situation could well result in such an explosion of anti-US feelings that the US would have to pack and leave from the region entirely.

How do you think the PRC feels about such a prospect?  Exactly.  And might this not explain why the Chinese are more than happy to let the USA deal with the North Korean problem knowing full well that one way or another the USA will lose without the Chinese having to fire a single shot?

The terrain

Next I want to re-visit a threat which is discussed much more often: North Korean artillery and special forces.  But first, I ask you to take a close look at the following three maps of North Korea:

These full-size maps can be downloaded from here.

What I want you to see is that the terrain in North Korea is what the military call “mixed terrain”.  The topography of North Korea article in Wikipedia actually explains this very well:

The terrain consists mostly of hills and mountains separated by deep, narrow valleys. The coastal plains are wide in the west and discontinuous in the east.  Early European visitors to Korea remarked that the country resembled “a sea in a heavy gale” because of the many successive mountain ranges that crisscross the peninsula. Some 80 percent of North Korea’s land area is composed of mountains and uplands, with all of the peninsula’s mountains with elevations of 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) or more located in North Korea. The great majority of the population lives in the plains and lowlands.

Being from Switzerland I know this kind of terrain very well (it’s what you would see in the Alpine foothills called “Oberland” or “Préalpes”) and I want to add the following: dense vegetation, forests, rivers and creek with steep banks and rapid currents.  Small villages and *a lot* of deep, underground tunnels. There are also flat areas in North Korea, of course, but, unlike Switzerland, they are composed mostly of rice fields and marshes.  In military terms this all translates into one simple and absolutely terrifying word: infantry.

Why should the word infantry scare so much? Because infantry means on foot (or horses) with very little airpower (AA and MANPADS), satellites (can’t see much), armor (can’t move around), gunships, submarines or cruise missiles can do.  Because infantry means “no lucrative targets” but small, dispersed and very well hidden forces.  Company and even platoon-level warfare.  Because infantry in mixed terrains means the kind of warfare the US Americans fear most.

The adversary

And with that in mind, let’s repeat that besides its huge regular armed forces (about a million soldiers plus another 5 million plus in paramilitary organizations) the DPRK also has 200,000 special forces.   Let’s assume that the Western propaganda is, for once, saying the truth and that the regular armed forces are poorly equipped, poorly trained, poorly commanded and even hungry and demotivated (I am not at all sure that this is a fair assumption, but bear with me).  But spreading that amount of soldiers all over the combat area would still represent a huge headache, even for “the best and most powerful armed forces in history” especially if you add 200,000 well-trained and highly motivated special forces to the mix (I hope that we can all agree that assuming that special forces are also demotivated would be rather irresponsible).  How would you go about finding out who is who and where the biggest threat comes from? And consider this: it would extremely naive to expect the North Korean special forces to show up in some clearly marked DPRK uniforms.  I bet you that a lot of them will show up in South Korean uniforms, and others in civilians clothes.  Can you imagine the chaos of trying to fight them?

You might say that the North Koreans have 1950"s era weapons.  So what?  That is exactly what you need to fight the kind of warfare we are talking about: infantry in mixed terrains.  Even WWII gear would do just fine.  Now is time to bring in the North Korean artillery.  We are talking about 8,600 artillery guns, and over 4,800 multiple rocket launchers (source).  Anthony Cordesman estimates that there are 20,000 pieces in the “surrounding areas” of Seoul.  That way is more than the US has worldwide (5,312 according to the 2017 “Military Balance”, including mortars).  And keep in mind that we are not talking about batteries nicely arranged in a flat desert, but thousands of simple but very effective artillery pieces spread all over the “mixed terrain” filled with millions of roaming men in arms, including 200,000 special forces.  And a lot of that artillery can reach Seoul, plenty enough to create a mass panic and exodus.

Think total, abject and bloody chaos

So when you think of a war against North Korea, don’t think “Hunt for Red October” or “Top Gun”.  Think total, abject and bloody chaos.  Think instant full-scale FUBAR.  And that is just for the first couple of days, then things will get worse, much worse.  Why?

Because by that time I expect the North Korean Navy and Air Force to have been completely wiped-off, waves after waves of cruise missiles will have hit an X number of facilities (with no way whatsoever to evaluate the impact of these strikes, but nevermind that) and the US military commanders will be looking at the President with no follow-up plan to offer.  As for the North Koreans, by then they will just be settling in for some serious warfare, infantry-style.

There is a better than average that a good part of the DPRK elites will be dead.   What is sure is that the command and control of the General Staff Department over many of its forces will be if not lost, then severely compromised.  But everybody will know that they have been attacked and by whom.  You don’t need much command and control when you are in a defensive posture in the kind of terrain were movement is hard to begin with.  In fact, this is the kind of warfare where “high command” usually means a captain or a major, not some faraway general.

You might ask about logistics?  What logistics I ask you? The ammo is stored nearby in ammo dumps, food you can always get yourself and, besides, its your home turf, the civilians will help.

Again, no maneuver warfare, no advanced communications, no heavy logistical train – we are talking about a kind of war which is much closer to WWII or even WWI than Desert Storm.

[Sidebar: as somebody who did a lot of interesting stuff with the Swiss military, let me add this: this kind of terrain is a battlefield were a single company can stop and hold an entire regiment; this is the kind of terrain where trying to accurately triangulate the position of an enemy radio is extremely hard; this is the kind of terrain where only horses and donkeys can carry heavy gear over narrow, zig-zagging, steep paths;  entire hospitals can be hidden underground with their entrance hidden by a barn or a shed; artillery guns are dug in underground and fire when a thick reinforced concrete hatch is moved to the side, then they hide; counter-battery radar hardly works due to bouncing signals; radio signals have a short range due to vegetation and terrain; weapon caches and even company size forces camps can only be detected by literally stepping on them; underground bunkers have numerous exits; air-assault operations are hindered by the very high risk of anti-aircraft gunfire or shoulder-fired missiles which can be hidden and come from any direction.  I could go on and on but I will just say this: if you want to defeat your adversary in such a terrain there is only one technique which works: you do what the Russians did in the mountains in southern Chechnia during the second Chechen war – you send in your special forces, small units on foot, and you fight the enemy on his own turf.  That is an extremely brutal, dangerous and difficult kind of warfare which I really don’t see the Americans doing.  The South Koreans, yes, maybe. But here is where the number game also kicks in: in Chechnia the Russians Spetsnaz operated in a relatively small combat zone and they had the numbers.  Now look at a map of North Korea and the number of North Korean special forces and tell me – do the South Koreans have the manpower for that kind of offensive operations?  One more thing: the typical US American reaction to such arguments would be “so what, we will just nuke them!".  Wrong.  Nuke them you can, but nukes are not very effective in that kind of terrain, finding a target is hard to begin with, enemy forces will be mostly hidden underground and, finally, you are going to use nukes to deal with company or platoon size units?!  Won’t work.]

If you think that I am trying to scare you, you are absolutely correct. I am.  You ought to be scared.  And notice that I did not even mention nukes.  No, not nuclear warheads in missiles.  Basic nuclear devices driven around in common army trucks.  Driven down near the DMZ in peacetime amongst thousands of other army trucks and then buried somewhere, ready to explode at the right time.  Can you imagine what the effect of a “no-warning” “where did it come from?” nuke might be on advancing US or South Korean forces?  Can you imagine how urgent the question “are there any more?” will become?  And, again, for that the North Koreans don’t even need a real nuclear weapon.  A primitive nuclear device will be plenty.

I can already hear the die-hard “rah-rah-rah we are number 1!” flag-wavers dismissing it all saying “ha! and you don’t think that the CIA already knows all that?”.  Maybe they do and maybe they don’t – but the problem is that the CIA, and the rest of the US intelligence community, has been so hopelessly politicized that it can do nothing against perceived political imperatives.  And, frankly, when I see that the US is trying to scare the North Koreans with B-1B and F-22s I wonder if anybody at the Pentagon, or at Langely, is still in touch with reality.  Besides, there is intelligence and then there is actionable intelligence. And in this case knowing what the Koreans could do does not at all mean know what to do about it.

Speaking of chaos – do you know what the Chinese specifically said about it?

Can you guess?

That they will “not allow chaos and war on the peninsula."

Enter the Chinese

Let’s talk about the Chinese now.  They made their position very clear: “If North Korea launches an attack that threatens the United States then China should stay neutral, but if the United States attacks first and tries to overthrow North Korea’s government China will stop them."  Since there is no chance at all of a unprovoked North Korean attack on the South or the USA, especially with this threat by the Chinese to remain neutral if the DPRK attacks first, let’s focus on the 2nd part of the warning.

What could the Chinese do if the US decides to attack North Korea?  There basic options depend on the nature of the attack:

1. If the US limits itself to a combination of missile and airstrikes and the DPRK retaliates (or not), then the Chinese can simply provide technical, economic and humanitarian aid to the DPRK and denounce the US on a political level.


2. If the USA follow up with a land invasion of some kind or if the DPRK decides to retaliate in a manner which would force the USA into a land invasion of some kind, then the Chinese could not only offer directly military aid, including military personnel, but they could also wait for the chaos to get total in Korea before opening a 2nd front against US forces (including, possibly, Taiwan).

That second scenario would create a dangerous situation for China, of course, but it would be even far more dangerous for US forces in Asia who would find themselves stretched very thin over a very large area with no good means to force either adversary to yield or stop.  Finally, just as China cannot allow the USA to crush North Korea, Russia cannot allow the USA to crush China.  Does that dynamic sound familiar?  It should as it is similar to what we have been observing in the Middle-East recently:

1. Russia->Iran->Hezbollah->Syria


2. Russia->China->DPRK

This is a very flexible and effective force posture where the smallest element is at the forefront of the line-up and the most powerful one most removed and at the back because it forces the other side to primarily focus on that frontline adversary while maximizing the risks of any possibly success because that success is likely to draw in the next, bigger and more powerful adversary.

Conclusion: preparing for genocide

The US has exactly a zero chance of disarming or, even less so, regime changing the DPRK by only missile and airstrikes.  To seriously and meaningfully take the DPRK “in their hands” the US leaders would need to approve of a land invasion.  However, even if that is not the plan, if the DPRK decides to use its immense, if relatively antiquated, firepower to strike at Seoul, the US will have no choice to move in ground forces across the DMZ.  If that happens about 500,000 ROK troops backed by 30,000 US military personnel will face about 1 million North Korea soldiers backed by 5 million paramilitaries and 200,000 special forces on a mix terrain battlefield which will require an infantry-heavy almost WWII kind of military operations.  By definition, if the USA attacks the DPRK to try to destroy its nuclear program such an attack will begin by missile and air strikes on DPRK facilities meaning that the USA will immediately strike at the most valuable targets (from the point of view of the North Koreans of course).  This means that following such an attack the US will have little or no dissuasive capabilities left and that means that following such an attack the DPRK will have no incentive left to show any kind of restraint.  In sharp contrast, even if the DPRK decides to begin with an artillery barrage across the DMZ, including the Seoul metropolitan area, they will still have the ability to further escalate by either attacking Japan or by setting off a nuclear device.  Should that happen there is an extremely high probability that the USA will either have to “declare victory and leave” (a time-honored US military tradition) or begin using numerous tactical nuclear strikes.  Tactical nuclear strikes, by the way, have a very limited effectiveness on prepared defensive position in mixed terrain, especially narrow valleys.  Besides, targets for such strikes are hard to find.  At the end of the day, the last and only option left to the USA is what they always eventually resort to would be to directly and deliberately engage in the mass murder of civilians to “break the enemy’s will to fight” and destroy the “regime support infrastructure” of the enemy’s forces (another time-honored US military tradition stretching back to the Indian wars and which was used during the Korean war and, more recently, in Yugoslavia).  Here I want to quote an article by Darien Cavanaugh in War is Boring:

On a per-capita basis, the Korean War was one of the deadliest wars in modern history, especially for the civilian population of North Korea. The scale of the devastation shocked and disgusted the American military personnel who witnessed it, including some who had fought in the most horrific battles of World War II (…).  These are staggering numbers, and the death rate during the Korean War was comparable to what occurred in the hardest hit countries of World War II. (…)  In fact, by the end of the war, the United States and its allies had dropped more bombs on the Korean Peninsula, the overwhelming majority of them on North Korea, than they had in the entire Pacific Theater of World War II.

“The physical destruction and loss of life on both sides was almost beyond comprehension, but the North suffered the greater damage, due to American saturation bombing and the scorched-earth policy of the retreating U.N. forces,” historian Charles K. Armstrong wrote in an essay for the Asia-Pacific Journal.  “The U.S. Air Force estimated that North Korea’s destruction was proportionately greater than that of Japan in the Second World War, where the U.S. had turned 64 major cities to rubble and used the atomic bomb to destroy two others. American planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea—that is, essentially on North Korea—including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to 503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theatre of World War II.”  As Armstrong explains, this resulted in almost unparalleled devastation.  “The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.”

 

Twelve to fifteen percent of the entire population was murdered by US forces in Korea during the last war (compare these figures to the so-called ‘genocide’ of Srebrenica!).  That is what Nikki Haley and the psychopaths in Washington DC are really threatening to do when they speak of taking the situation “in their own hands” or, even better, when Trump threatens to “totally destroy” North Korea.  What Trump and his generals forget is that we are not in the 1950"s but in 2017 and that while the Korean War and a negligible economic impact on the rest of the planet, a war the middle of Far East Asia today would have huge economic consequences.  Furthermore, in the 1950"s the total US control over the mass media, at least in the so-called “free world” made it relatively easy to hide out the murderous rampage by US-lead forces, something completely impossible nowadays.  The modern reality is that irrespective of the actual military outcome on the ground, any US attack on the DPRK would result is such a massive loss of face for the USA that it would probably mark the end of the US presence in Asia and a massive international financial shock probably resulting in a crash of the currently already fragile US economy.  In contrast, China would come out as the big winner and the uncontested Asian superpower.

All the threats coming out of US politicians are nothing more than delusional hot air.  A country which has not won a single meaningful war since the war in the Pacific and whose Army is gradually being filled with semi-literate, gender-fluid and often conviction or unemployment avoiding soldiers is in no condition whatsoever to threaten a country with the wide choice of retaliatory options North Korea has.  The current barrage of US threats to engage in yet another genocidal war are both illegal under international law and politically counter-productive.  The fact is that the USA is unlikely to be able to politically survive a war against the DPRK and that it now has no other option than to either sit down and seriously negotiate with the North Koreans or accept that the DPRK has become an official nuclear power.

 

Switzerland Is Well-Prepared For A Civilization Collapse

More than perhaps any other nation, Switzerland is prepared for a massive civilization collapse. In fact, if the government itself collapses in Switzerland, most people who live there probably won’t even notice.

A decentralized government (the kind America was supposed to have been founded on) makes it possible for Switzerland to be prepared for a collapse. The mountains and valleys mean that Swiss towns and villages are geographically independent of each other, yet linked in a spider-web of robust connections. But that isn’t all.

The Swiss towns are prepared for water system failures, which would affect the ability to access clean water. According to Marginal Revolution, all around Switzerland, there are thousands of water fountains fed by natural springs. Zurich is famous for its 1200 fountains – some of them quite beautiful and ornate – but it’s the multiple small, simple fountains in every Swiss village that really tell the story. Of course, they look elegant, but if and when central water systems are destroyed these fountains are a decentralized and robust system for providing everyone in the country with clean, pure, drinkable water.

Despite being at peace since 1815, Switzerland is still prepared for a war. Swiss males (and perhaps females in the future) are required to serve in the military (those who cannot pay a special tax) creating a robust reservoir of trained citizens ready to serve in case of an emergency.

As a further example of how ridiculously well prepared the Swiss are for any and all threats, there are things like hidden hydroelectric dams built inside of unmarked mountains so that in the event of mass bombings, they’ll still have electricity from these secret facilities. And, remember, these are the things the Swiss government has let us know about. It is thought that there are probably more fortifications and hidden goodies scattered about the country’s landscape. –Marginal Revolution

Buried deep alongside the hydroelectric dams, shelters, and food stores, the Swiss also have libraries ready to reboot civilization. In one underground bunker, there are detailed instructions on how to build devices for reading all known data storage formats, even older formats like floppy disks. If that knowledge is otherwise lost, future generations can still decode our current and past data storage devices to access the data within correctly. Essentially, the researchers involved in this particular project have attempted to create a “Rosetta Stone” of data formats and are using a ridiculously secure Swiss bunker as the storage point for that knowledge.

Not only do the Swiss have thousands of military bunkers permeating the Swiss mountains, there are also several hundred thousand private and public fallout shelters the largest of which can hold about 20,000 people. Some of the largest installations have been decommissioned and even turned into museums but there is little doubt that they could be rapidly re-purposed in a SHTF scenario. As the Swiss continue to improve their already fantastic railway system it’s standard practice to convert old railway tunnels to security shelters.

Switzerland is famous for being the place to store wealth in times of crisis. That remains true today. The “old-rich” store their gold in heavily guarded Swiss banks, the “nouveau-riche” store their bitcoins in Swiss underground bunkers built to withstand cyber- and nuclear attack. It’s no surprise that Nassim Taleb likes Switzerland because this is a country that has made itself anti-fragile in order to survive the black swans of civilizational collapse.

H/T: [Zerohedge]

49% Favor Mandatory Military Service For US Youth

Nearly half of Americans favor mandatory military service for the country’s youth, according to a recent poll from Gallup.

As TheAntiMedia"s Carey Wedler details, the polling organization surveyed 1,006 Americans over the age of 18 between November 3 and November 4, and 49% of those questioned expressed support for compulsory service.

Further, “a majority of Republicans, including independents who lean Republican, favor it (57%), as do men (57%) and those 65 or older (66%),” Gallup summarized.

Gallup noted that efforts to actually impose such a policy - such House Rep. Charles Rangel’s repeated attempts between 2003 and 2015 to mandate it through legislation - have fallen flat.

Americans’ preferences for a traditional draft have fluctuated over the decades. Gallup explained:

“A majority of Americans (54%) in 1977 favored sticking to a volunteer force, but two 1980 surveys showed a majority wanting to return to a military draft. Eventually, most Americans endorsed the all-volunteer concept, with five polls conducted between 1998 and 2007 showing majorities from 69% to 85% rejecting a return to the draft.”

The draft was a powerful point of contention during the divisive Vietnam War, prompting many of those selected to fight to burn their draft cards in protest.

In Gallup’s poll idea of forcing young people to serve a mandatory year in the armed forces - as opposed to a draft - was unsurprisingly least popular among young people.

Four in ten favored the proposition, however, marking a significant portion of those who would potentially be affected but still wanted to see it enacted.

“While Americans today are not overwhelmingly in favor of it, neither are they overwhelmingly opposed,” Gallup observed.

Militarism has long been a core element of American identity, as evidenced by millions of Americans’ stalwart devotion to and respect for soldiers. Though it currently remains unlikely that mandatory service will be implemented, that half the country would support it reflects this value system.

Countries that require mandatory service include Israel, North Korea, China, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Egypt, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

"This May Be The End Of Europe As We Know It": The Pension Storm Is Coming

Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

I’ve written a lot about US public pension funds lately. Many of them are underfunded and will never be able to pay workers the promised benefits - at least without dumping a huge and unwelcome bill on taxpayers.

And since taxpayers are generally voters, it’s not at all clear they will pay that bill.

Readers outside the US might have felt safe reading those stories. There go those Americans again… However, if you live outside the US, your country may be more like ours than you think.

This week the spotlight will be on Europe.

The UK Is Headed to a Retirement Implosion

The UK now has a $4 trillion retirement savings shortfall, which is projected to rise 4% a year and reach $33 trillion by 2050.

This in a country whose total GDP is $3 trillion. That means the shortfall is already bigger than the entire economy, and even if inflation is modest, the situation is going to get worse.

Plus, these figures are based mostly on calculations made before the UK left the European Union. Brexit is a major economic shift that could certainly change the retirement outlook. Whether it would change it for better or worse, we don’t yet know.

A 2015 OECD study found workers in the developed world could expect governmental programs to replace on average 63% of their working-age incomes. Not so bad. But in the UK that figure is only 38%, the lowest in all OECD countries.

This means UK workers must either build larger personal savings or severely tighten their belts when they retire. Working past retirement age is another choice, but it could put younger workers out of the job market.

UK retirees have had a kind of safety valve: the ability to retire in EU countries with lower living costs. Depending how Brexit negotiations go, that option could disappear.

Turning next to the Green Isle, 80% of the Irish who have pensions don’t think they will have sufficient income in retirement, and 47% don’t even have pensions. I think you would find similar statistics throughout much of Europe.

A report this summer from the International Longevity Centre suggested that younger workers in the UK need to save 18% of their annual earnings in order to have an “adequate” retirement income.

But no such thing will happen, so the UK is heading toward a retirement implosion that could be at least as damaging as the US’s.

The Swiss Are No Different Despite the Prudence

Americans often have romanticized views of Switzerland. They think it’s the land of fiscal discipline, among other things. To some extent that’s true, but Switzerland has its share of problems too. The national pension plan there has been running deficits as the population grows older.

Earlier this month, Swiss voters rejected a pension reform plan that would have strengthened the system by raising women’s retirement age from 64 to 65 and raising taxes and required worker contributions.

From what I can see, these were fairly minor changes, but the plan still went down in flames as 52.7% of voters said no.

Voters around the globe generally want to have their cake and eat it, too. We demand generous benefits but don’t like the price tags that come with them. The Swiss, despite their fiscally prudent reputation, appear to be not so different from the rest of us.

This outcome in Switzerland captures the attitude of the entire developed world. Compromise is always difficult. Both politicians and voters ignore the long-term problems they know are coming and think no further ahead than the next election

Switzerland and the UK have mandatory retirement pre-funding with private management and modest public safety nets, as do Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, and Hungary.

Not that all of these countries don’t have problems, but even with their problems, these European nations are far better off than some others.

France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Spain Are in Deep Trouble

The European nations noted above have nowhere near the crisis potential that the next group does: France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Spain.

They are all pay-as-you-go countries (PAYG). That means they have nothing saved in the public coffers for future pension obligations, and the money has to come out of the general budget each year.

The crisis for these countries is quite predictable, because the number of retirees is growing even as the number of workers paying into the national coffers is falling.

Let’s look at some details.

Spain was hit hard in the financial crisis but has bounced back more vigorously than some of its Mediterranean peers did, such as Greece. That’s also true of its national pension plan, which actually had a surplus until recently.

Unfortunately, the government chose to “borrow” some of that surplus for other purposes, and it will soon turn into a sizable deficit.

Just as in the US, Spain’s program is called Social Security, but in fact it is neither social nor secure. Both the US and Spanish governments have raided supposedly sacrosanct retirement schemes, and both allow their governments to use those savings for whatever the political winds favor.

The Spanish reserve fund at one time had €66 billion and is now estimated to be completely depleted by the end of this year or early in 2018. The cause? There are 1.1 million more pensioners than there were just 10 years ago. And as the Baby Boom generation retires, there will be even more pensioners and fewer workers to support them.

A 25% unemployment rate among younger workers doesn’t help contributions to the system, either.

Overall, public pension plans in the pay-as-you-go countries would now replace about 60% of retirees’ salaries. Plus, several of these countries let people retire at less than 60 years old. In most countries, fewer than 25% of workers contribute to pension plans. That rate would have to double in the next 30 years to make programs sustainable.

Sell that to younger workers.

The Wall Street Journal recently did a rather bleak report on public pension funds in Europe. Quoting:

Europe’s population of pensioners, already the largest in the world, continues to grow. Looking at Europeans 65 or older who aren’t working, there are 42 for every 100 workers, and this will rise to 65 per 100 by 2060, the European Union’s data agency says. By comparison, the U.S. has 24 nonworking people 65 or over per 100 workers, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which doesn’t have a projection for 2060. (WSJ)

While the WSJ story focuses on Poland and the difficulties facing retirees there, the graphs and data in the story make clear the increasingly tenuous situation across much of Europe.

And unlike most European financial problems, this isn’t a north-south issue. Austria and Slovenia face the most difficult demographic challenges, right along with Greece. Greece, like Poland, has seen a lot of its young people leave for other parts of the world.

This next chart compares the share of Europe’s population that 65 years and older to the rest of the regions of the world and then to the share of population of workers between 20 and 64. These are ugly numbers.

Source: WSJ

The WSJ continues:

Across Europe, the birthrate has fallen 40% since the 1960s to around 1.5 children per woman, according to the United Nations. In that time, life expectancies have risen to roughly 80 from 69.

In Poland birthrates are even lower, and here the demographic disconnect is compounded by emigration. Taking advantage of the EU’s freedom of movement, many Polish youth of working age flock to the West, especially London, in search of higher pay. A paper published by the country’s central bank forecasts that by 2030, a quarter of Polish women and a fifth of Polish men will be 70 or older.

Source: WSJ

This Coming Crisis Is Beyond the Power of Politicians

I could go on on reviewing the retirement problems in other countries, but I hope you begin to see the big picture. This crisis isn’t purely a result of faulty politics - though that’s a big contributor.

It’s a problem that is far bigger than even the most disciplined, future-focused governments and businesses can easily handle.

Worse, generations of politicians have convinced the public that their entitlements are guaranteed. Many politicians actually believe it themselves. They’ve made promises they aren’t able to keep and are letting others arrange their lives based on the assumption that the impossible will happen. It won’t.

How do we get out of this jam?

We’re all going to make big adjustments. If the longevity breakthroughs that I expect to happen do so soon (as in the next 10–15 years), we may be able to adjust with minimal pain. We’ll work longer years, and retirement will be shorter, but it will be better because we’ll be healthier.

That’s the best-case outcome, and I think we have a fair chance of seeing it, but not without a lot of social and political travail. How we get through that process may be the most important question we face.

Sharp macroeconomic analysis, big market calls, and shrewd predictions are all in a week’s work for visionary thinker and acclaimed financial expert John Mauldin. Since 2001, investors have turned to his Thoughts from the Frontline to be informed about what’s really going on in the economy. Join hundreds of thousands of readers, and get it free in your inbox every week.

Switzerland Tops World's Most Competitive Countries Index (Yemen Least)

Something else "Murica is no longer #1 in...

A recently released World Economic Forum report has found that the global economy is recovering well nearly a decade on from the start of the global financial crisis with GDP growth hitting 3.5 percent in 2017. The eurozone in particular is regaining traction with 1.9 percent growth expected this year. As Statista"s Niall McCarthy points out, the improvement in Europe"s economic fortunes can be seen in the report and the following infographic which shows that six European economies are among the world"s ten most competitive.

You will find more statistics at Statista

The World Economic Forum defines national competitiveness as the set of institutions, policies and factors determining productivity levels. 

Switzerland grabbed top spot in the report with an index score of 5.86 out of 7, recording strong and balanced results across the most important determining factors such as health, primary education and a reliable macroeconomic environment.

The United States comes second for national competitiveness, though the report notes that it needs to improve its macroeconomic environment as well as health and education, both of which scored poorly.

Eight of the world"s ten worst countries for national competitiveness were in Africa.

Yemen has been devasted by war in recent years and it comes bottom with a score of 2.87. It was followed by Mozambique and Chad, both of which had a score of less than three. The only other non-African country in the bottom ten was Haiti which scored 3.22.

Over 1.1 Million Refugees Remain In Limbo Across Europe

The majority - 52 percent - of asylum applications received by EU countries, Norway and Switzerland in 2015 and 2016 are still awaiting a decision.

You will find more statistics at Statista

As Statista"s Martin Armstrong notes, due to the historic influx of people over this period, that share accounts for roughly 1.1 million people, according to new analysis of Eurostat data by Pew Research Center.

Aside from those still in limbo over their future, 880,000 have had their applications accepted - the majority of such applicants came from Syria (about 520,000).

Which Countries Have The Most Economic Complexity?

As Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes, rvery country has an economy that is unique.

In some places, such as the United States or Germany, economies are able to produce many different goods and services that get exported around the world. These countries tend to house world-class businesses in sectors like financials, technology, consumer goods, and healthcare, with companies that produce highly specialized goods like automobiles, software, or pharmaceutical products. Ultimately, these are innovative economies that can roll with the punches, creating growth even when prospects are dim.

In other places, this level of sophistication is just not there. Innovation and knowledge are stunted or non-existent for most industries, and these countries may focus exclusively on one or two goods to pay the bills. Venezuela’s reliance on oil is an obvious example of this, but there are even many Western countries that miss the mark here as well.

MEASURING ECONOMIC COMPLEXITY

In 2009, a team at Harvard formalized a measure of economic complexity that compared nations based on the sophistication of their economies. Now known as the Economic Complexity Index (ECI), the exact measurement is complicated, but it essentially uses data on two main things to uncover the underlying level of economic complexity:

1. Economic Diversity 
Measures how many different products a country can produce.

2. Economic Ubiquity
Measures how many countries are able to make those products.

In other words: if a country produces only a few goods, that economy is not very complex. Further, if a country produces many different products, but they are all simple ones that can be replicated elsewhere, the economy is still not complex. See full details on the project here.

RANKING THE MOST COMPLEX ECONOMIES

Here are the most complex economies in order, along with the changing rankings over time:

As you’ll notice, the most recent set of data is from 2015.

Topping the list are the economies of Japan (1st), Switzerland (2nd), Germany (3rd), and South Korea (4th). The United States sits in 9th place, and Canada is further down at 33rd.

Australia, which relies heavily on commodities, ranks notably low for Western countries in 73rd place, where it is sandwiched between Kazakhstan and the Dominican Republic.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

The most recent iteration of the index also highlighted some movers and shakers over the last 10 year period:

In particular, the crisis in Venezuela has had an effect on economic complexity, eroding any sophistication that existed.

Meanwhile, Cuba’s economy is also in the decline in terms of sophistication – and with major exports including raw sugar (27%), rolled tobacco (15%), nickel (12%), oil (11%), hard liquor (7%), and crustaceans (4%), it’s not hard to see why.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Philippines is the biggest mover upwards, ascending 28 spots.

Some African countries are also moving fast up the rankings: Botswana, Malawi, Uganda, and Cameroon each jumped over 20 spots.

Hey Advertisers: The Data-Mining Emperor Has No Clothes

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

When a big advertiser pulls its online adverts and its sales remain unchanged, that tells everyone who"s paying attention something important.

It"s an article of widespread faith that data-mining enables advertisers buying online adverts to target consumers with laser-like precision. Vast warehouses of servers grind through billions of records of consumer profiles and transactions and with a bit of algorithmic magic, distill all this data down to the prime target audience for whatever good or service you"re selling: probiotic goo, battery-powered back-scratchers, Zombiestra(tm), investment newsletters based on darts tossed by monkeys, etc.

And everybody knows online media is the place every advertiser wants to be and needs to be. By some measures, online advertising exceeded television advert spending in 2016 (around $70 billion each). Unlike traditional media advertising, which is stagnating or declining, online advertising is still expanding smartly--especially in mobile media.

Combine the promise of god-like targeting via data-mining with fast-growing online platforms, and you"ve got advertisers falling over themselves in their rush to spend billions more on online advertising.

As if that wasn"t enough to get advertisers salivating, the time consumers spend online continues to expand as well:

There"s one little problem with this narrative: online adverts don"t work as well as they"re advertised. Proctor and Gamble recently announced that a significant reduction in their online social-media advert spending had no measurable effect on sales.

The only possible conclusion (unless you"re selling online adverts for a living) is: online adverts don"t work.

There"s another little multi-billion-dollar fly in the ointment of online advertising known as click-fraud-- the clicks on adverts may not be humans actually interested in the product being advertised but automated bots skimming money from advertisers or competitors.

So all those clicks aren"t from actual consumers; they"re bots clicking on click-farm sites which send a small fee for every click to the owner of the site, which just so happens to be the owner of the bots clicking on the adverts.

Or an advertiser finds they owe $100,000 in click-fees for the tens of thousands of clicks their adverts garnered--but most of the clicks were generated by competitors seeking to bleed the advertiser of revenues and introduce false data points.

Click-fraud is the industry"s dirty little secret, and the numbers are kept secret lest the reality that the Emperor has no clothes gets out. Despite all the hoopla about mobile adverts, fast-growing market, blah blah blah, there is precious little real-world evidence that online adverts actually do the intended job of generating new sales and attracting new loyal customers.

Just look at the online advertising you"re being served. Do you get adverts promoting airline tickets to destinations you"ve just been to and that you"ll never return to, adverts promoting wrenches after you"ve just bought the only wrench you"re going to need in this life, etc.?

If this contextual advertising is the best that data-mining can do, it"s pathetically ineffectual. Assuming you haven"t installed ad-blocking software (another industry reality that is rarely mentioned), have you ever clicked on any of the adverts in the sidebars of your social media or email websites--except by accident?

But what about all those thousands of data-points Big Data has collected on us all? All our purchases, all our credit history, how much time we spend online, the sites we visit most often, and all the rest of the mind-numbing details of every day life.

All of this data-mining is predicated on a false assumption: that my past purchases predict my future purchases. Other than the most brain-dead conclusions--yes, I will buy gasoline again somewhere in the near future, probably at Costco, using either the Costco credit card or an airline mileage credit card--this data has little or no effective predictive value because our spending is tightly limited, controlled and prioritized, so there"s near-zero leeway for impulse buys or unplanned purchases.

Spending can be constrained by modest levels of disposable income (i.e. cash left after paying all the essential bills, existing debt, etc.) or by budgeting.

As for enticing me to buy gasoline elsewhere than Costco, or switching credit cards--you"re wasting your money. Giving me $1 off each gallon would work, but only as long as I got this enormous discount--a discount that will bankrupt the issuer in short order.

As for enticing me to switch credit cards--I tear up multiple card offers every week, and have done so for years. So the card offers are batting zero despite literally thousands of pitches via mail, print and online adverts. No "targeted ad" based on data-mining is going to change that.

I might switch if you give me back 10% of all purchases in cash, but that"s an offer that will bankrupt the card issuer.

The fantasy that"s repeated in every account of the staggering effectiveness of mobile advertising is this: I"m walking past a pizza shop and my mobile phone displays a coupon for that very pizza shop. Wow! Imagine the power of combining location with all the treasure trove of big-data-mining about little old me!

Here"s a credit card purchase from three years ago for a pizza shop--this guy is a pizza fan, no doubt about it. This advert is a statistical winner.

Nice, except that 1) I rarely eat pizza, and when I do, it"s generally at home; 2) I never buy meals on impulse, since that ruins my diet/fitness regime (and I"m too thrifty to buy meals on impulse anyway) and 3) my phone is often not with me, off or otherwise disabled.

What this tired narrative never includes is my dismissal of the advert as a matter of habit, and the possibility the advert alienates me in longlasting ways. Most of us never look at ads, and the more you make them intrusive, the more we hate the website, the advertiser and whatever product/service is being pitched.

Advertisers may have unwittingly poisoned themselves and their product/service. The net result of the data-mined, contextual, statistically targeted advert may well be a consumer who blacklists the pizza shop from then on.

This alienation is of course completely opaque to the data-mining software: there are no data traces left by blacklists/ alienation.

But the flaws in data-mining-yields-advertising-success are much, much deeper than this: human behavior is contingent on events that have yet to happen, and the decision process is completely invisible to data mining and algorithms.

Here"s some examples from my recent purchase history.

I recently bought an airline ticket to Switzerland. Whatever inferences the data-mining software might extract from this will necessarily be false, as the motivation was completely contingent and unpredictable: my brother was in a motorcycle accident, and he needed my help as his wife was hundreds of kilometers away caring for the grandkids.

Whatever inferences the data-mining software extracted from the meal I purchased at an Italian cafe a week later would also be intrinsically useless/ false as the only reason we went to that cafe was it was the only restaurant my brother could reach on foot with his cast and cane.

What inference could any software extract from this that would be useful because it was accurate? None. The situation, the motivation, every single part of the decision was intrinsically opaque to any data-mining software.

As for what else I bought in town--groceries, paid in cash--another zero for the data-mining software.

The only item of any value that I did buy, I bought through my brother"s account--another layer no software could possibly penetrate. Software will wrongly attribute the purchase to his profile, not mine, a totally false projection.

Virtually every inference that automated software attempted to extract from my spending would be worse than useless, as it would be misleading. The only inferences with a shred of accuracy--here is a consumer who randomly buys an airline ticket to Europe--is utterly useless to advertisers.

The only adverts that have any chance of working are the traditional variety that assume only one in 10,000 people will have a contingency-based need or desire for the product or service being advertised. So the adverts attempt to reach 1 million people in the hopes that a hundred might be interested and a handful might proceed further.

What advertisers who are shaking themselves out of the online-advert trance are discovering is that the data-mining advert Emperor has no clothes. The industry as it stands can"t identify which clicks are fraudulent or accidental, which ads actually trigger a sale, or which ads actually alienate potential customers.

When a big advertiser pulls its online adverts and its sales remain unchanged, that tells everyone who"s paying attention something important: the industry isn"t doing a very good job for the billions it"s being paid.

*  *  *

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Amid 2017's Fascist Disinformation Mania, Brandon Smith Fears "Something Larger Afoot"

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Years ago in 2012, I published a thorough examination of disinformation tactics used by globalist institutions as well as government and political outfits to manipulate the public and undermine legitimate analysts working to expose particular truths of our social and economic conditions.

If you have not read this article, titled Disinformation: How It Works, I highly recommend you do so now. It will act as a solid foundation for what I am about to discuss in this article. Without a basic understanding of how lies are utilized, you will be in no position to grasp the complexities of disinformation trends being implemented today.

Much of what I am about to discuss will probably not become apparent for much of the mainstream and portions of the liberty movement for many years to come. Sadly, the biggest lies are often the hardest to see until time and distance are achieved.

If you want to be able to predict geopolitical and economic trends with any accuracy, you must first accept a couple of hard realities. First and foremost, the majority of cultural shifts and fiscal developments within our system are a product of social engineering by an organized collective of power elites. Second, you must understand that this collective is driven by the ideology of globalism — the pursuit of total centralization of financial and political control into the hands of a select few deemed as "superior" concertmasters or "maestros."

As globalist insider, CFR member and mentor to Bill Clinton, Carroll Quigley, openly admitted in his book Tragedy And Hope:

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank ... sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

The philosophical basis for the globalist ideology is most clearly summarized in the principles of something called "Fabian Socialism," a system founded in 1884 which promotes the subversive and deliberate manipulation of the masses towards total centralization, collectivism and population control through eugenics. Fabian Socialists prefer to carry out their strategies over a span of decades, turning a population against itself slowly, rather than trying to force changes to a system immediately and outright.  Their symbol is a coat of arms depicting a wolf in sheep"s clothing, or in some cases a turtle (slow and steady wins the race?) with the words "When I strike I strike hard."

Again, it is important to acknowledge that these people are NOT unified by loyalty to any one nation, culture, political party, mainstream religion or ethnic background.

In fact, they will happily sacrifice any country or any group of people if it will get them closer to their goal.

They are not defenders of the free market as the idiots on the extreme left like to claim. In fact, they abhor any business model that is not dominated by a government and a bureaucracy designed to give them an unfair advantage through legislation. Anyone who thinks free markets are the cause of our economic ailments in the past decade has lost sight of the fact that we have not had anything even remotely resembling free markets for more than a century. The corporations leftists and common socialists constantly wail about could not exist without government charter and the legal loopholes surrounding limited liability. So please, socialist warriors, shut up about free markets. You have no idea what you are talking about.

The globalists are also not loyal acolytes of any particular theological tradition (at least not any that are clearly identified). Meaning, they are NOT organized around Judaism or even loyalty to Israel as is the common claim of the clowns that make up what some are now calling the "Alt-Right." Globalists do not care about Jewish people or Jewish beliefs even though some of them are genetically Jewish.

While a minority of globalists are associated with the political extremist faction known as "Zionism," Zionists are just another exploitable group to them, and their greater objective has nothing to do with the elevation of Israel. They will gladly fund Islamic extremist groups, for example, that desire and will willingly carry out the obliteration of Israel or the murder of Jewish people. They also exploit elements of the Israeli government to trigger chaos on the other side of the chess board.

Those who argue that all our ills are engineered by "the jeeeewwws!" or "the tribe" are poorly informed and have chosen an overly simplistic broad-brush explanation for a much more complex enemy they have no ability to fathom. They tend to cite "evidence" that is highly unverified and poorly sourced.  They think the Rothschilds are the root of all globalism when the Rothschilds are just one element of a greater cabal.  Ask them which globalist institutions actually argue for Jewish or Zionist supremacy and they won"t be able to produce evidence of any, unlike the numerous globalist institutions and champions that OPENLY argue for GLOBALISM even at the expense of Jews and the nation of Israel (i.e. Barack Obama"s consistent support of Islamic extremist groups and the Arab Spring).  In fact, ask them for evidence that Jews or Zionists are the core of the globalist agenda and they will copy and paste the same list of perhaps two dozen Council on Foreign Relations members that are Jewish while ignoring the thousands of other members that are not.

They also tend to argue that the fascist movements of the past century were actually "doing battle with the globalist agenda" — i.e. they were the "good guys."  Sorry to break it to the "Alt-Right" crowd, but almost everything they believe is wrong.

I have noticed a disturbing trend within liberty movement and conservative circles; a kind of invasion, if you will. A minority of disinformation agents and useful idiots are operating within liberty outlets to push an ideological revolution oddly similar in tactics to those used by Soros funded groups overtaking the political left. It is my belief that while some globalist created movements are meant to provoke the left to zealotry and cultural Marxism, other globalist created movements are meant to provoke the right to zealotry and a misplaced adoration for fascism.  Divide and conquer is the game here.

As I noted in my last article "Globalists Will Throw Antifa To The Wolves To Further Their Agenda", the left is essentially a lost cause. Any semblance of the so called "classical liberal" that is so commonly linked back to certain American revolutionaries and founding fathers was snuffed out long ago. They don"t exist anymore. Conservatives (not necessarily Republicans) have taken up the mantle of individual liberty and small government. The labels may have changed, but the principles remain the same. Conservatives are the natural enemy of globalists. The ideals of conservative thought and the globalist agenda are mutually exclusive — both cannot exist within the same space at the same time. One of them has to go for the other to function.

So, what are elitists with aspirations of becoming god-kings to do? Well, they could try to attack conservatives directly, but this does not mean our ideals will disappear. The ideals might even spread and flourish in reaction to a crackdown, which is the opposite effect that social engineers desire. Instead, 4th generation warfare is in order. That is to say, conservatives must be bamboozled into embracing actions contrary to their principles.

They must be conned into applauding big government instead of fighting against it. They must be tricked into rationalizing violations of the Constitution instead of exposing said violations as a spreading cancer. They must be cajoled into cheering for even more expensive and ill conceived war efforts that do not serve the interests of Americans. They must be fooled into praising the relationship between corporations and government instead of working to dismantle the government framework that coddles corporations and protects them from free markets.

While globalists cannot destroy conservatism from without, they might be able to use 4th Gen tactics to destroy conservatism from within. Conservatives have to be convinced that conservative values are weaknesses that must be abandoned for the "greater good." At this point, conservatives would no longer be conservative; they become something else entirely.

While the liberty movement in particular has been hyper-focused on the dangers of cultural Marxism and communism, the real danger is the psyop being played within the political right. Both communism and fascism serve globalist interests. It is to their advantage to promote both and to even pit one against the other. The key is to use the left to drive conservatives to desperate measures and then link conservatives to ideals that are counter to their natures until the original ideals are forgotten.

There are some core weakness to the propaganda campaign that gut the narrative completely. The fact that the establishment is grasping at such methods to me seems desperate, but then again, I make a rule never to underestimate people"s laziness or their ignorance. So, lets look at the primary argument popping up in every liberty comment thread and chat board: "Globalists are purely communists, and fascism is a misunderstood and necessary counterpunch."

This assertion falls apart fantastically when historical fact is applied and one realizes that BOTH communism and fascism were movements funded and supported by the very same financial elites. Yes, that"s right, fascism cannot be opposed to globalism, because globalists created fascism to serve their purposes.

To find the most comprehensive evidence compiled on the relationship between the financial elites and the rise of fascism and communism, one of the best sources is the work of Professor Antony Sutton. Here Sutton answers questions on some of these ties, including the elitist funding and technological development of the Nazis as well as the Soviet Union:

Let"s not forget about the Bush family legacy of financial support for the Third Reich - yet some people are attempting to feed a growing argument that the globalists were opposed to Hitler or vice versa...?

Globalist conglomerates like the Rockefeller"s Standard Oil were even exposed during the Nuremberg trials as having funded and aided Nazi technological advancements throughout the war using close relationships to IG Farben. This is made clear in the "Von Knieriem Documents" within the Nuremberg and WWII congressional investigative record, which can be read in full in Elimination Of German Resources For War, starting on page 1302.

This means that the disinfo-argument that "perhaps the elites funded fascism in the beginning but turned against it later" is a no-go. Of course, these revelations were ultimately buried and no one of import was ever prosecuted.

So, to be absolutely clear - Fascist movements are NOT a counterweight to communism, they are controlled opposition to communism.  If you want to join a real opposing movement to cultural marxists and communists, then the only answer is a movement that supports individual liberty and the reduction of government power.  Fascism does not support either.

Beyond general cash flow and technological backing for fascist governments, the globalist ideology is almost identical to fascist models. Mainstream assumptions aside, fascists are not true nationalists, rather, they are ideologues seeking to spread globally — their propaganda base just happens to begin with national pride. As mentioned earlier, globalism is best understood through the lens of Fabian Socialism, and Fabian Socialism is essentially fascism; though fascism tends to add a frontman dictator as a figurehead rather than an open cabal of oligarchs.

Fabian Socialists (globalists) are so fond of fascism that they have in the past presented unabashed defense of the Third Reich. George Bernard Shaw, a celebrity member of the Fabians, is notorious for praising the methods of both the Nazis and Stalin, including the mass murder of undesirables.

The difference between the communist model and the Nazi model? Nazis believed in population control based on genetic origin, while communists believed in population control based on labor potential. Both standards appeal to globalists.

Bottom line - fascists are slaves for globalists, just as communists are slaves for globalists. Both support big government power, both undermine personal freedoms. There is little more than cosmetic differences between them when one knows the true history behind each movement.

The disinformation brigade drumming up the pro-fascist/pro-Hitler dialogue on conservative forums may be part of a funded agenda to demonize liberty movements by false association. Or, it may be an attempt to lure conservatives into thinking the only way to counteract the insanity of the extreme left is to become more like their classic enemy, the fascist. And, perhaps it is simply a gaggle of morons with zero historical reference parroting what they have been hearing in their online echo chambers for years, but now they see an opportunity generated by the fear surrounding the mania of cultural Marxists.

They will seethe in the comments of this article, that is certain. I will be accused of being a "Zionist agent," with zero proof of course. They will froth at the mouth about how "something must be done" about the cultural marxists as if our only other choice is to adopt even more egregious methods.  They will gather a dozen of their friends from their favorite online haunts and "mob up" to flood forums with angry discord to make it appear that there are more of them out there than really exist (much like social justice warriors do), but it is unlikely they will produce any hard evidence countering anything I have presented here. Their opinions might be loud, but they are also irrelevant.

My concern is that there is something larger afoot.

That maybe, just maybe, the conservative right is being tenderized in preparation for radicalization, just as much as the left has been radicalized. For the more extreme the social divide, the more likely chaos and crisis will erupt, and the globalists never let a good crisis go to waste. Zealots, regardless of their claimed moral authority, are almost always wrong in history. Conservatives cannot afford to be wrong in this era. We cannot afford zealotry.  We cannot afford biases and mistakes; the future of individual liberty depends on our ability to remain objective, vigilant and steadfast. Without self examination, we will lose everything.